DECEMBER 27

December 27th 2017

Up and at 'em

only to hurry up and wait

while my car thawed out.

How my car and not John's

was covered in ice,

so thick it took 20 minutes

to clear the windows.

I got to LDO to find out

they had not called us to advise

the room was being used today.

boooooooo

I drove home,

and sat in the car until

all the ice was melted

and cleared off too.

During that time I fielded 

a couple calls from friends,

texted, played a game

and got a phone call

from hospital - advising us

that Dad was doing better,

would need oxygen for another

few weeks to a month at least,

and asking if he could be sent

back to Valleyview.

I asked Dad who was quite thrilled

to be heading back to routine

and out of the hospital

where he was tired of being 

"a human pin cushion".

I came in

and put on pyjamas

because I had an unexpected free day!

By 2pm was not feeling great,

no fever,

John was out helping get Dad

back to Valleyview,

so I headed to bed.

I slept till 5.

The evening was spent

watching tv under a blanket,

with hubby deciding

it was to be an early night

for me just in case.

Tomorrow is Thursday,

if I feel better,

it will be donuts with Dad

and a late birthday with his buddy.

History of the Times Square New Year’s Eve Ball

Revelers began celebrating New Year’s Eve in Times Square as early as 1904, but it was in 1907 that the New Year’s Eve Ball made its maiden descent from the flagpole atop One Times Square. Seven versions of the Ball have been designed to signal the New Year.

The first New Year’s Eve Ball, made of iron and wood and adorned with one hundred 25-watt light bulbs, was 5 feet in diameter and weighed 700 pounds. It was built by a young immigrant metalworker named Jacob Starr, and for most of the twentieth century the company he founded, sign maker Artkraft Strauss, was responsible for lowering the Ball.

As part of the 1907-1908 festivities, waiters in the fabled “lobster palaces” and other deluxe eateries in hotels surrounding Times Square were supplied with battery-powered top hats emblazoned with the numbers “1908” fashioned of tiny light bulbs. At the stroke of midnight, they all “flipped their lids” and the year on their foreheads lit up in conjunction with the numbers “1908” on the parapet of the Times Tower lighting up to signal the arrival of the new year.

The Ball has been lowered every year since 1907, with the exceptions of 1942 and 1943, when the ceremony was suspended due to the wartime “dimout” of lights in New York City. Nevertheless, the crowds still gathered in Times Square in those years and greeted the New Year with a minute of silence followed by the ringing of chimes from sound trucks parked at the base of the tower—a harkening-back to the earlier celebrations at Trinity Church, where crowds would gather to “ring out the old, ring in the new.”

In 1920, a 400 pound Ball made entirely of wrought iron replaced the original. In 1955, the iron Ball was replaced with an aluminum Ball weighing a mere 150 pounds. This aluminum Ball remained unchanged until the 1980s, when red light bulbs and the addition of a green stem converted the Ball into an apple for the “I Love New York” marketing campaign from 1981 until 1988. After seven years, the traditional glowing white Ball with white light bulbs and without the green stem returned to brightly light the sky above Times Square. In 1995, the Ball was upgraded with aluminum skin, rhinestones, strobes, and computer controls, but the aluminum Ball was lowered for the last time in 1998.

For Times Square 2000, the millennium celebration at the Crossroads of the World, the New Year’s Eve Ball was completely redesigned by Waterford Crystal and Philips Lighting. The crystal Ball combined the latest in lighting technology with the most traditional of materials, reminding us of our past as we gazed into the future and the beginning of a new millennium.

Good night from John Street