And what are the white-ish blobs on the sides of the twigs? These sticks are wrapped in parafilm in SIP cups. 
If my cutting IS upside down, what should I do? Let it continuue to leaf out as is OR take it out of the potting mix SIP, unwrap the parafilm and????
Thanks!

White stuff is beginings of roots and yes the cutting is upside down. I advice you reverse it.

Thanks speedmaster. If I reverse it and stick this end into the potting mix, There goes the green bud, right? :(

So I pulled it out of the potting mix, tried to clean it off in order to wrap in parafilm and I used a brush whose bristles were too hard. :( I guess the end that's been sitting in the soil is naturally more tender, the "bark" / skin ripped. I hope its still okay OR should I amputate / cut-off that area?

I guess my real question is how deep should the "root" end of a twig be planted? Is there such a thing as too shallow? As you can see from the pic, the bud is only 1-inch from the end so now that I've inverted it correctly, it only has 1-inch into the potting mix.

When I did that earlier this season, I used a wider pot and laid the cutting sideways about a half inch deep with the bud pointing up - it already had a number of roots coming out of what should have been the top part and a half inch shoot coming down at an angle from where your bud sits - it is growing fine in the pot. 
Good luck!

Exactly what Ed said.

Would you show us where the bark was scrapped off?  If it came off easily that's a sign the part of the cutting in the soil was starting to rot which would mean the soil is too wet.  You want to have a lot of air spaces in the rooting medium so the cutting doesn't rot.  That's why many people use mostly perlite or coco coir that's been squeezed out and re-fluffed.  You get plenty of moisture with good air circulation.

Recently I have one cutting has roots at the top end only. So I cut it (one node) again and buried it very shallow in the top soil. 
after 2 weeks, the roots grew a lot. two buds  are sprouting.

If this too far OT I'll be ok with your deleting it.

I had a cutting form roots at every node while laying down in spag moss. If I were to have planted horizontally eventually it would have sent up sprouts at some or all of the nodes, right.

At some point the nodes could be divided to make individual plants.

So is this the reason for laying the upside down rooted cuttings horizontally?