A quiet Birthday Celebration

[Gary]

Today, I celebrate my 70th Birthday. It just doesn't seem like it has been 70 years; I do wonder how time flew by so quickly!
This morning I spent time flushing some of the last few tomato seed I had fermenting for seed saving. It is a messy/smelly process but I am in my element doing it. There is a specail "enjoyment" of knowing you have done something enduring in that process.

I had a long day yesterday. All this past year, as some of you may or may not know, I have been attending Clown School with my 16 year old grandson, Zachary. We graduated in June as Certified Kentucky Derby Festival Clowns . BriarPatch , a Hobo/Tramp alter ego, volunteers in a number of different groups and spent half the day at Ireland Community Hospital at Fort Knox. It serves the base community and cares for the service men stationed there, their families and others who spend time at the base. . My friend Kathleen ( Daff-O-Dill) is a doctor there; we completed the clowing school together and she invited me down to a special luncheon at the #2 Clinic. We had a great time with lots of fun and laughs. Spent a short time on the childrens section as well. So I have taken it easy today. I even had a short nap. My youngest son arrived late afternoon and shared pictures taken on vacation. He and his fiancee went on vacation via AmTrac for two weeks to and from California via Chicago. He has all of his pictures to share with his lap top. We are really celebrating my birthday tomorrow when we can all be together.
Gary

[GeorgeSims]

Best wishes for a great birthday, Gary. May you enjoy many more.

[dirtundernails]

Happy quiet Birthday, Gary. May tomorrow be festive!
Love your thread starters.
dun

[bluelacedredhead]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR GARY
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU...

AND MANY MORE.............................................. ..............................................

:D

I'm glad you had a Wonderful Day Thursday bringing Cheer to those in Need of a little Sunshine.

May Your Day Saturday be Filled with Lots of Sunshine of Your Own.

[redbrick]

Happy Birthday Gary!

[mrtomatoexpres]

happy birthday gary with the kind of person you are you should have atleast 70 more birthdays :) :) :) :) :)

[johno]

Glad you made another trip around the sun Gary. Hope you have many more!

[Helen Wong-Joe]

Hi Gary, Happy Birthday to you and may all your wishes come true. Have a grand time with your family tomorrow.

[sunmad strawgirl]

Very happy birthday and double congratulations to you and your grandson on your clowning accomplishments. That must have been a very special time for both of you. With all you're doing, I'm glad you choose to spend some of your time on the forum here with us. Enjoy your day tomorrow - I'm glad you can surround yourself with those that love you in celebration of you!

[flowerpower]

Happy Birthday Gary. Have a happy and healthy year.

[Gary]

Good morning all, and Thank You for the kind Birthday Wishes!
You may be interested to know that the Hill sisters, Mildred and Patty, who wrote that tune lived and grew up in the Old Bellewood Female Seminary for Women. Their Father founded the seminary and was the head master. It was a popular girls school in the 1800s. The Bellewood Children's Home from which I retired a few years ago was located next door to the school and acquired the property when it closed about 1915.
I hope you find this of interest.
Gary/Louisville



“Happy Birthday to You" is by far the most well-known song in the English-speaking world, and perhaps the whole world, too. For nearly a century, this simple ditty has been the traditional piece of music sung to illions of birthday celebrants every year — everyone from uncomprehending infants to U.S. presidents; it has been performed in space; and it has been incorporated into untold millions of music boxes, watches, musical greeting cards, and other tuneful products. It therefore surprises many to discover that this ubiquitous song, a six-note melody composed in the 19th century and accompanied by a six-word set of repetitive lyrics, is still protected by copyright — and will be for decades to come.

The "Happy Birthday" story begins with two sisters from Kentucky, Mildred J. Hill and Patty Smith Hill. Patty Smith Hill, born in 1868, was a nursery school and kindergarten teacher and an influential educator who developed the "Patty Hill blocks" used in schools nationwide, served on the faculty of the Columbia University Teachers College for thirty years, and helped found the Institute of Child Welfare Research at Columbia in 1924. Patty's older sister, Mildred, born in 1859, started out as a kindergarten and Sunday-school teacher like her sister, but her career path took a musical turn, and Mildred became an composer, organist, concert pianist, and a musical scholar with an speciality in the field of Negro spirituals. One day in 1893, while Mildred was teaching at the Louisville Experimental Kindergarten School where her sister served as principal, she came up with the modest melody we now know as "Happy Birthday"; sister Patty added some simple lyrics and completed the creation of "Good Morning to All," a simple greeting song for teachers to use in welcoming students to class each day:

Goodmorning to you,
Good morning to you,
Good morning, dear children,
Good morning to all.

The Hills' catchy little tune was unleashed upon the world in 1893, when it was published in the songbook Song Stories for the Kindergarten. (The composition of "Good Morning to All" is often erroneously reported as having occurred in 1859 by sources that confuse Mildred Hill's birth date with the year she created the melody.) After the song proved more popular as a serenade for students to sing to their teachers (rather than vice-versa), it evolved into a version with the word "teacher" replacing "children" and a final line matching the first two, and "Good Morning to All" became more popularly known as "Good Morning to You." (Ironically, in light of the copyright battles to come, "Good Morning to All" bore more than a passing resemblance to the songs "Happy Greetings to All" and "Good Night to You All," both published in 1858.)
Here the trail becomes murky — nobody really knows who wrote the words to "Happy Birthday to You" and put them to the Hills' melody, or when it happened. The "Happy Birthday to You" lyrics first appeared in a songbook edited by one Robert H. Coleman in March of 1924, where they were published as a second stanza to "Good Morning to You"; with the advent of radio and sound films, "Happy Birthday" was widely popularized as a birthday celebration song, and its lyrics supplanted the originals. By the mid-1930s, the revamped ditty had appeared in the Broadway musical The Band Wagon (1931) and had been used for Western Union's first "singing telegram" (1933), and when Irving Berlin's musical As Thousands Cheer made yet another uncredited and uncompensated use of the "Good Morning to All" melody, Jessica Hill, a third Hill sister who administered the copyright to "Good Morning to All" on behalf of her sisters, sprang into action and filed suit. By demonstrating the undeniable similiarities between "Good Morning to All" and "Happy Birthday to You" in court, Jessica was able to secure the copyright of "Happy Birthday to You" for her sisters in 1934 (too late, unfortunately, to benefit Mildred, who had died in 1916).
The Chicago-based music publisher Clayton F. Summy Company, working with Jessica Hill, published and copyrighted "Happy Birthday" in 1935. Under the laws in effect at the time, the Hills' copyright would have expired after one 28-year term and a renewal of similar length, falling into public domain by 1991. However, the Copyright Act of 1976 extended the term of copyright protection to 75 years from date of publication, and the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998 added another 20 years, so under current law the copyright protection of "Happy Birthday" will remain intact until at least 2030.

[Joan]

Hey Gary - what a great birthday - I hope your day is special and enjoyable - quiet or not!

[fawnmeadow]

Happy Birthday Gary, hope you will have many, many more. Making people laugh should keep you young.