Deena Barber
When you read this, fireworks and Fourth of July events will be a distant memory. The challenge of writing this article is that it is done a month in advance. It is mid-June, and I am already thinking about what I will be doing to celebrate our country’s anniversary. It will be 249 years since our country was founded. That makes 2026 our semi-quincentennial celebration. That word should be in the National Spelling Bee.
Our monthly meetings always start with reports from leadership. President Debbie made a request for SOT (Support Our Troops) Welcome Home cards, as well as Thank You cards for kids to give to their teachers at the Justin Food Bank. Our club is very involved here on the Ranch and in the community.
I was happy to design our card this month for our club. Of course, it is not a wholly original design, as I found it on Pinterest. However, the choice of colors and stamp designs make it original. Nine of our talented group of Stampers volunteered to teach the card. Each table teacher had four eager Stampers who took instruction on how to put the card together. I was happy to see that both teachers and students seemed to enjoy making it. We always love getting together and chatting while cutting, stamping, and glueing. It did not have a Fourth of July theme but, really, how many people send out cards for that?
Seeing that I have quite a bit of space left for this article, I thought that it would be fun to research national holidays for July. Here is one that you may not know existed: National Emoji Day is July 17. That particular date was chosen because it is the date displayed on the calendar emoji. Yep, I checked, and that is true.
Who invented the emoji, you ask? Well it was Shigetaka Kurita, of course. He designed 176 emojis in 1999. They are considered a primitive language and the first language of the digital world. They are displayed in the New York Museum of Modern Art.
In 2022 Apple added the emoji keyboard to their iPhone, and two years later, Android followed. The Unicode Consortium adds new emojis every year. It requires a lengthy submission and approval process and may take up to two years from the first draft to be added to your phone.
Did you know that when adding an emoji to a sentence, the proper etiquette is to add it at the end, after the punctuation?
As they continue to evolve, one can consider that in the future, the written word will no longer exist and will be completely replaced by symbols. Heaven help us!
If you have any questions regarding our club, please contact Debbie Warrick at 214-668-9441 or debbiew02@verizon.net.