Featuring the history of OK.
To all North Pole City Elves, those in Santa’s Village, in the Lower 48 and all around the world, this is your weekly update for the week of March 22, 2022. I'm your host Walter "Mistletoe" Livingstone. Let's go to press.
| For the week of March 21, 2022 your sponsor will be: Ourself, WELF-NPC North Pole City Radio Station. Now broadcasting live on the Internet, WELF-NPC North Pole City Radio is now 24/7. |
| Santa and the supervisors from workshops and warehouses have come to an agreement for spring break. Originally Santa has said that he wants all elves on break this week, but has agreed to allow a skeleton crew to work half shifts or quarter shifts this week on a volunteer basis. Once the productivity quota is caught up, he wants the elves to take the additional time off. |
| Following orders and directives from Santa, Edward Hinklemywer will be waving any recording of work overages in reference to potential time-off tax this week for any workshops, factories, and warehouse workers. As you know, all workshops, factories, and warehouses were scheduled to be closed this week due to spring break; however, with these temporary agreements the overwork taxation system needs to be put on hold. All of the offices for the Department of Elfland Security with the expectation of the Security Detail Division will be closed this week. |
| The Division of WWW/PR have been busy working on the WELF-NPC North Pole City Radio station webpage to expand it to allow for additional show pages which will be coming out soon. Check out the new WELF-NPC page on TAOLF.com. |
| We will have mild temperatures this week with no snow in the forecast. Enjoy the nice weather for your Spring Break. |
| The WELF-NPC North Pole City Radio has established a new Internet based connection for the radio station which will now allow listeners from all over the world to tap into our radio feed and listen in to the radio station. If you are away from North Pole City for any reason, you can now pick-up the station by connecting to TAOLF.com and selecting the WELF-NPC News Radio from the North Pole City menu. There is a link to the station’s live broadcast page or you can listen to the station right form TAOLF.com. The station will be adding more and more shows to the broadcast as time permits and there will be rebroadcasts of old time radio shows that Santa, Mrs. Claus, and the elves just love to listen too while they are working. The first show added to the rotation is the Matinee Theater which was a 30 minute show that originally broadcasted in the 1940s on Sunday afternoons at 2.pm. You can now listen to this show on WELF-NPC North Pole City Radio. Also, if you are on Twitter and follow @TAOLF you will get a tweet every time a show starts on the station. |
| On March 23, 1839, the initials “O.K.” were first published in The Boston Morning Post. Meant as an abbreviation for “oll korrect,” a popular slang misspelling of “all correct” at the time, OK steadily made its way into the everyday speech of Americans.During the late 1830s, it was a favorite practice among younger, educated circles to misspell words intentionally, then abbreviate them and use them as slang when talking to one another. Just as teenagers today have their own slang based on distortions of common words, such as “kewl” for “cool” or “DZ” for “these,” the “in crowd” of the 1830s had a whole host of slang terms they abbreviated. Popular abbreviations included “KY” for “No use” (“know yuse”), “KG” for “No go” (“Know go”), and “OW” for all right (“oll wright”).Of all the abbreviations used during that time, OK was propelled into the limelight when it was printed in the Boston Morning Post as part of a joke. Its popularity exploded when it was picked up by contemporary politicians. When the incumbent president Martin Van Buren was up for reelection, his Democratic supporters organized a band of thugs to influence voters. This group was formally called the “O.K. Club,” which referred both to Van Buren’s nickname “Old Kinderhook” (based on his hometown of Kinderhook, New York), and to the term recently made popular in the papers. At the same time, the opposing Whig Party made use of “OK” to denigrate Van Buren’s political mentor Andrew Jackson. According to the Whigs, Jackson invented the abbreviation “OK” to cover up his own misspelling of “all correct.”The man responsible for unraveling the mystery behind “OK” was an American linguist named Allen Walker Read. An English professor at Columbia University, Read dispelled a host of erroneous theories on the origins of “OK,” ranging from the name of a popular Army biscuit (Orrin Kendall) to the name of a Haitian port famed for its rum (Aux Cayes) to the signature of a Choctaw chief named Old Keokuk. Whatever its origins, “OK” has become one of the most ubiquitous terms in the world, and certainly one of America’s greatest lingual exports. |
| The North Pole City Commerce Association has decided to declare everyone who participated in the St. Patrick’s Day pub crawl and Scavenger Hunt winners of the contest. There were so many entries turned in at the office it is so hard to determine a single winner of the event. Next year they will be redesigning the judging of the contest; however, with thousands participating they are calling this year's event a great success. |
| The North Pole City Council and Santa have asked the engineers and cartographers who put together the “official” North Pole City map to start working on a map for Santa’s Village as well. The only map that exists for Santa’s Village is one that Santa sketched on a piece of papyrus when we came to the area many years ago. “Having a nice map hanging up in my office would be very nice,” said Santa, “and probably needed to plan out some expansion in the future.” |
| The North Pole City Sports League has put out a statement to suggest that those from the Department of Elfland Security Departments who will be participating in this year’s Reindeer Games that you may want to take advantage of this nice weather we are having and your time off to start getting in shape for the games. Take some time to relax and take some walks or runs and you will be glad you did this summer. |
| There are many events, picnics, parties, and open houses going on throughout the entire city this week that there are just too many to list. Just make sure you get out there, enjoy yourself and relax a little bit. Enjoy your spring break. |
| WELF-NPC would like to wish a very happy 425th birthday to Carrie "Cookie" Winterboune from Office of Elf Affairs. Carrie Cookie has just transferred to the Office of Elf Affairs from the Candy Cane Factory and plans on helping Edward Hinklemyer to get more of the Elf Workers Union Handbook up on the website. We wish you many more happy years and good luck with your project. |
This is Walter “Mistletoe†Livingstone with the reminder: Even though you are growing up, you should never stop having fun.
Have a good evening, and be sure to tune in next week for another WELF-NPC North Pole Radio News Update.
