Happy Birthday to a Special Someone!

Happy Birthday, Fyodor.

Happy Birthday, Ezra.

oh yes! Happy Birthday Fyodor Mikhailovich indeed!!!!

And happy birthday to John Keats, divine immortal Keats.

And a slightly belated Happy Birthday to Dylan Thomas.

Taken to hospital, at the end, he said to the attending doctor, "I drank eighteen straight whiskies. That must be a record." Damn fool. How about writing eighteen more great poems!

I have a live recording of Under Milkwood in which he takes the main role and have been listening to it. It sends shivers up and down my spine.

Didn't he die from the same reason as Michael Jackson ? A bad doctor ?
Never heard that somebody could die from drinking whiskey...

As long as you don't add ice ofcourse.

"After excessive drinking, unconsciousness can occur and extreme levels of consumption can lead to alcohol poisoning and death."

I have heard the bad doctor theory as well. I am not sure it is accepted. Perhaps he had bad medical care, but his drinking, whether totally directly, or just aided by poor doctors, is what killed him, I think.

I was told this week that Caitlin, his wife, supposedly said "Life with Dylan was like a piece of raw meat."

LOL Mackie, you always make me giggle.

Dylan Thomas's death was a huge tragic loss to literature, as great as was Keats's. I mourn (and celebrate) them both always.

raw meat can definetly kill you but excessive drinking ?

speaking about drinking, why not read together "under the vulcano" by Lowry ?

Happy Birthday to Stephen Crane (have any of us read his stories once out of school?)!

I have to look for that audio of Under Milk Wood. Dylan Thomas' old audios are great.

One of my favorite poetry books is a collection of poems that Dylan Thomas read aloud in public at some time during his life. It is among the most euphonic collections around. Dylan Thomas Selects is the name of it, an old New Directions book.

Close your eyes and listen to this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsVvxWeOAsc

#9

Dylan Thomas:The Caedmon CD Collection Unabridged
By Dylan Thomas

Price: $29.95
On Sale: 11/9/2004
Formats: Audio

Available Audio Formats: CD

buy Dylan Thomas:The Caedmon CD Collection Unabridged:
Book Description

Beginning in February 1952, Dylan Thomas made a series of memorable and historic recordings for a new record label called Caedmon. In fact, Dylan Thomas was the first to record for this new label, started by two 22–year–old women, Marianne Roney and Barbara Cohen. Little did they know that in addition to capturing a part of history they also launched an industry of spoken–word recording.

This collection not only contains the incredible Caedmon recording sessions, but also recordings from the BBC, CBC, and other archival material Caedmon originally published in the 1950s and 1960s.

Highlights include: "A Child's Christmas in Wales" and "Five Poems"; "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night", his prose: Adventures in the Skin Trade and Quite Early One Morning, and his final work – Under Milk Wood, a play.

With stunning original album cover art, and an introduction read by former poet laureate Billy Collins, this unique collection includes not only Dylan Thomas reading his finest works, but also rare recordings of Thomas reading his favorite writers, including W.H. Auden and William Shakespeare.

available at http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780060790837/Dylan_ThomasThe_Caedmon_CD_Coll...

Dammit, now I'll have to get that.

And I know I've posted this link about a 100 times, but I can't resist hearing it again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuPO2Kvqlms

You can't begin to try to appreciate Hopkins unless you can h-e-a-r this. A poem on paper is one thing, poem or beautiful prose - this is quite another ting.

Ah, TCM, that version of Under Milk Wood is on my ipod. That is one of my favorites of all time.

A little grist for EF's mill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtOQi7xspRc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2FT4_UUa4I&feature=related

well fecking hurryupaboutit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p856CfM64w8

14 yes, I listen to it regularly too.

I am a draper mad with love...

Happy Birthday, Robert Musil. Someday, I shall read you.

Well, well. Perhaps the Camus discussion belongs here today. Happy Birthday, Al!

He was born on the 3rd anniversary of Tolstoy's death. Fair exchange?

Happy B-Day Albert! You died too young and the world was worse off w/out you around to point us toward humaneness amidst so much evil (er, "absence of good").

Happy Birthday to Ivan Sergeyvich Turgenev, creator of Bazarov, author of the marvellous Sketches from a Hunters Album and translator into French of Eugene Onegin.

I've not read Sketches from a Hunters Album. What's it like?

I'm afraid I've not yet gotten through an English let alone a French translation of Eugene Onegin - ah, another great work still ahead!

Happy Birthday Ivan!

Well, Fyodor is listed as having a birthday today, but we wished him one about two weeks ago.

He aged too fast.

Happy Birthday, Fyodor.

Sounds like the Julian calendar wreaking havoc again.

Home is the hunter, home from the hill... Happy birthday to RL Stevenson. Arrrr, Matey.

I had never heard that before. I like it!~!
belva

happy birthday to Margaret Atwood. b. 1939

Happy birthday to Alan Moore, too!

The man's face still gives me nightmares.

Happy Birthday to Voltaire, who had nice nipples.

Happy birthday to Robert Kennedy and of course, brother Duane Allman.

Happy Birthday Beryl Bainbridge

happy birthday to jane mowbray. a slayer, certainly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgUs7yWnDJ8&feature=related

29> and how didst thou acquire this little titbit of info eh tomcat?

30> there's lotsa youngsters hereabouts who might be thinkin' Duane Who?, so....http://www.squidoo.com/duane-allman and this....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1PiHsS8LP8

31> heard of her, but knew little about her; good intro here: http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth10

32...love 'em!

29, 33 re Voltaire

Murr is referring to a famous sculpture of Voltaire, which I had recently posted elsewhere.

Here, for the enjoyment of all, is my hero again:

see, nice nipples.

happy birthday George Eliot

Yes indeed!!!!

And Happy Birthday also to Benjamin Britten, who was born on this day, appropriately enough, St Cecilia's Day, the parton saint of music.

there is much matter in GE's essays.

on the other hand CS Lewis and Aldous Huxley died on this day, 22 Nov.

As did JFK. Died on this date.

Happy Birthday, Marshall Berman, Oscar Robertson (poetry in motion), and me.

Somebody here recognizes the Big O! The greatest triple double man in collegiate history. It makes me feel gooood.

Wish I'd a been around to see him play guys.

Porius,

you are falling down on the job.

Is it not your self-assigned task to give us YouTube links to everything under the sun? Sooooo, where is the Big O YouTube?

The Big O? I rode with him in an elevator once. Remember him and Lew Alcindor playing together in the early '70s? That was some of the best of basketball.

I got to see Lew Alcindor in 1984 at The Forum, only by then he was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and he was gettin' the ball down low from some nobody named Earvin, rather than Oscar.

And yeah, polu's right, Porius, where's the link?

'Rique, I saw those games at the Forum, too, when we used to live in L.A. Was that you who was sitting next to me?

Mighta been 'elizabet. I was that gangly teenager with the headphones and the mullet.

The Big O had amazing passing skills. But does anyone remember when retired and became the color commentator for basketball games. He was so enthusiastic! "Whoah!" "Wow!"

He didn't last long though. A man of few words, apparently.

watch the 2 great shotfakes at the end of the clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecgwZVnvPIc

don't forget "Butterbean" Love.
don't forget Jerry Lucas, who has the bible by memory, and a deadly hook shot.

sorry polu-tropos, I was under the impression that you tube efforts were lookt upon as a dunder-graduate scratching its zits, as the redoubtable "Goat" would say.

Sad, that: Oscar unable to do the color commentator thing because he was too enthusiastic. I saw him in the old (Eighth Avenue) Madison Square Garden, and once at the old Boston Garden (so many old places gone, alas; but then, yesterday was my birthday). Those teams where he paired with Arlen Bockhorn in the backcourt captured in a poem by a former friend:

Oscar Robertson, Oscar Robertson,
Oscar Robertson, Oscar Robertson,
Oscar Robertson, Arlen Bockhorn,
Oscar Robertson, Oscar Robertson

here's a title for a short story: Who's Afraid of Red Holtzman. Arlen could Bocksout tho, couldn't he?

today is a great day for genre fiction - happy birthday Poul Anderson (Scifi) and Arturo Perez-Reverte (mystery)!

Not to mention PD Eastman, author of that great childhood classic "Are you my mother?"

No, I am a dog.

Speaking of dogs, Happy birthday Charles Schultz!!!

Also, we give thanks for being given Genie Ionesco on this date!

Happy Birthday, Bob Steuding, poet laureate of Ulster County (New York) and, most recently, author of "The Heart of the Catskills"

happy birthday to William Blake and the author of PILGRIMS PROGRESS, John Bunyan

Happy Birthday to Stefan Zweig.

Happy birthday to Clive Staples (Jack) Lewis. 1898.

On this date the poet Dylan Thomas entered Heaven.

We missed Don Delillo back on the 20th.

Happy Birthday to Louisa May Alcott (1832) and Madeleine L'Engle (1918).

Happy birthday to two great satirists: Samuel Langhorn Clemens, and Jonathan Swift.

happy birthday to Ranier Maria Rilke, b. 1875, d. 26 Dec. 1926.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/again-and-again-however-we-know-the-landscape-of/

Your link isn't working. Try again.

Happy Birthday Joseph Conrad!

Joseph Conrad at The end of the Tether
Lost it when he heard about Almeyer's Folly
Causing him to unleash the Secret Agent

Finding the Nigger of the Narcissus
At the center of The Heart of Darkness
Nearly cost Lord Jim his Youth.

Tell us another tale, Marlowe.

Happy Birthday to Kate O'Brien!

...and that articulate literary giant, Ozzy Osbourne.

#65

Great one, Gene!

#65 Yes, I like that too!

Happy birthday to Samuel Butler, 1835-18 June 1902
His excellent NOTEBOOKS, and THE WAY OF ALL FLESH, an undoubted influence on the modern novel, whatever that might be.

Not to be mistaken with the Schoolmaster author of HUDIBRAS (1774-1839)
http://www.poetry-online.org/butler_samuel_hudibras.htm

Happy Birthday to Benny Hinn!

You know, for years I thought Benny Hinn was just a misspelling of Benny Hill. Whoa, there Nelly!

HAHA!!!
whoooer missis!

On this day died Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart. 27 Jan. 1756 - 5 Dec. 1791

H.B. to Samuel Butler & Thomas Carlyle.

I'm aware this is the Birthday Channel, but Frank Zappa died today, so just this once (if you'll humor me) let this be...the Deathday Channel. Porius, this is your cue for some Zappa YouTubes.

While we're waiting for Porius, here's Frank Zappa's Don't Eat the Yellow Snow...

ohyolittlebopeep dip-loma i'll jus pu u inacohma wisum durr-tee law
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI1Vp7uSx_w&feature=related

Thank you for that, Porius!

Porius, in your opinion, would you describe yourself (as I would describe myself) as just an Ordinary Average Guy?

What think you? Sirrah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_qHU_6Ofc0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bxVoFp7NKU

Tend My Garden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqeErugWXZ4&feature=related

Such a fine pedal steel player
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt30eBN2Q2M&feature=related

To answer your question yes Enrique I'm afraid that I have more of the yahoo than is good for me. But as the Emperor whateverhisnamewas in that Mozart movie said, so piquantly: "there it is."

Knut is blasé about his third birthday.

Robert

Old Trollope gave up the ghost on this date. I've been making my way through his dozens of novels, etc. I have almost never been let down by the great master. Few books have pleased me as THE LAST CHRONICLE OF BARSET. We are but midgets next to such as him. He did as much work in his lifetime as 100 men. Tolstoy got much pleasure from reading Anthony Trollope's novels, hardly a bad recommendation.

a little bit of Barchester Chronicles (BBC)
http://myspace.vtap.com/video/The+Barchester+Chronicles+%2528ep3%2529/CL02033728...

Watch great performances by among others, Geraldine McEwan, and Nigel Hawthorne. They were also fine in the Lucia and Miss Mapp series along with the delightful Prunella Scales who some may remember as Basil Fawlty's wife in that hilarious series. "Oh I KNOW."
Also featuring Connie Booth, ie. in FT

Happy belated b-day to Joan Didion. Taking the cue begun by geneg....

She's been to a lot of hoppin' places in her career: Miami, El Salvador, Bethlehem. She's written Political Fictions about Democracy and Sandinistas. She likes to read A Book of Common Prayer and listens regularly to The White Album. She's no magical realist by any stretch - a minimalist only stylistically, for she always has plenty to say, like her or not - but she spent a year, well After Henry, in what became for her The Year of Magical Thinking. We'll probably never know The Last Thing He Wanted, her late great underrated and underappreciated husband, John Gregory Dunne, that is, but I'm so glad, nevertheless, that Joan Didion has always been the kind of brilliant, eye-opening writer who's always strived to Play it As it Lays, meaning, oh, I don't know what, but I don't care at the moment, because We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live don't we? and Joan Didion writes about Where I Was From better than anybody else: where Santa Ana winds blow over San Gorgonio Pass and down into the concrete desert of Los Angeles and its mangled assortment of asphalt arteries spewing smog, where dreams come home to die, and hope is mocked.

The great Poet, novelist, historian, essayist, etc. etc. etc. died on this date. Ava Gardner was one of the few that showed at his funeral. This blows me away when I think about it. Oh the Poets name: Robert Graves.

>74 Porius:.

I thought that that happened in November... I think you were 30 days late in that one. :P

you are correct AC. Thanks.

Happy birthday to one of my biggest heroes, Noam Chomsky! Many happy returns of the day! Don't die on us now...

De Quincey d. on this date. So did John Lennon.
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/quincey.htm
And a great Lennon song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxol_huYpws&feature=related

I do believe it's Milton's birthday today (it's the 9th down here); he who has long since lost or found his ultimate Paradise.

89> what a coincidence that we'd decide on Paradise Lost on his b-day!

88> that's a fabulous, overlooked Lennon song. That entire album cranks. What's that one song of his on it that repeats over and over something like, "I don't want to be a soldier; I don't want to die." Heard side one of that record on the radio recently. Do I need to mention that it was 29 years ago tonight that John Lennon was murdered? We're all aware of that, right?

If I had to pick one Lennon song, it would be A Day in the Life.

Doesn't seem possible, or right EF.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85rPsIEHkyU

John Milton
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ont219AeYe0&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube...

A little taste of PL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl4e4mF5eMc&feature=related

happy birthday to Emily D.
and Algernon Blackwood checked out on this date.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algernon_Blackwood
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/x0/...

And happy birthday to Solzhenitsyn, the conscience of Soviet Russia

Cancer Ward in 2011!

Clarice Lispector (who's she?) would've turned 84 today.

Happy birthday to Flaubert one of the great taker-outers in Literature.
On this date died Robert Browning and Joseph Heller. Two summers ago I read through most of Heller and It was a pleasure every inch of the way. He had a wicked sense of humor. There were times that I thought my side would split. Not much escapes his novelists notice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4Kwyqu188g&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4Kwyqu188g&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZD72y28fSc&feature=related

Samuel Johnson died on this date in 1784. The great lexicographer pressed pennies into the hands of snoozing beggars so that they might beg on.

98: I read Life of Johnson about 5 years ago and I could not believe how much fun it was.

Wow, today was a sad day. Both Johnson and Mary Renault died today. I absolutely love her novels.

Happy birthday to all those poets: Heinrich Heine, William Drummond and the surreal Kenneth Patchen.

...As well as all those guitarists (Carlos Montoya, Nicholas McCarthy and, although some of us are not too fond of his political views, Mr. Wango Tango, himself, the Nuge...).

99 > Johnson was, for all his tics, a great man.
One of the great letters in the English language.
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/letter55.html

Happy Birthday to Shirley Jackson who wrote We have always lived in the castle and The Lottery. Very frightening and creepy stories.

>103 anna_in_pdx:

It's not fair! It's not fair!

103, 104

They'll stone you when you're trying to be so good
They'll stone you just like they said they would
They'll stone you when you're trying to go home
They'll stone you when you're there all alone
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody must get stoned

Bob Dylan

On this date died Arthur Machen,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Machen

It's Beethoven's birthday today. Happy Birthday, Ludwig! And my father's too ... my father who was too vain in his last years to wear a hearing aid, and thus had a hard time listening to his favorite composer.

Maybe he wanted to hear what Beethoven heard.

Happy birthday to three great Sci-Fi Authors:

Philip K. Dick,
Arthur C. Clarke, and
Jane Austen!

109: Yeah, I see your point - Captain Wentworth, Mr. Knightley and Mr. Darcy are definitely more fantasy than sci-fi though.

d. Dorothy L. Sayers.
b. John Kennedy Toole
Sayers gave us Lord Peter W.
Toole gave us a Confederacy of Dunces, as though we needed another one. Barnahkee, remember STRIPES, was named Times (otherwise known as fishwrapping) Man of the year. All that $$$ to the big banks with no oversight did the trick for old Barnahkee. BARNAHKEE you owe me MONEY! We are the change we have been waiting for indeed.

111: Too true. Well, at least we still have Lord Peter W.

Happy Birthday to Hector Hugh Munro 18 Dec. 1870 - 13 Nov. 1916. 'Saki' was also plagued with immense dowager aunts.
Happy Birthday also to Michael Moorcock.

Yes !!! Saki is missing on my TBR list. Porius which book do you advice ?

THE CHRONICLES OF CLOVIS (short stories)
THE UNBEARABLE BASSINGTON (novel)

You must also have the novels of Ronald Firbank on your TBR list.
Misterrrr Mac.

Hows about a little sample
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqR7KCxoQr4
Tobermory, again
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-w4LB0hGyU&feature=related

or, the only one I have, The Short Stories of Saki which includes everything, I believe, he write (short-story-wise).

>113 Porius:!

Dangit! I was waiting all week to wish Mike a happy birthday. I was even going to say something like:

"While Elric was stealing souls, Moorcock was stealing hearts."

Happy Birthday Mike! (pictures of Mike to follow: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/view?uname=jacob.silvia&subjectids=aS1GkBFcDv...

Happy Birthday to Italo Svevo.
died on this day Emily Bronte.
the sillys put in a picture of Charlotte instead of the ineffable Emily.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSnJ5ct6kos
Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2OL2q-j9Z8&feature=related

seems like builions and builions of years since he's been gone, Carl Sagan d. on this date.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M

d. Christopher Hibbert, a biographer of Sam: Johnson, and some few others
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Hibbert

George Eliot d. on this date. aka Mary Ann Evans.

Thackeray and Pinter died on this date.

Happy Birthday to Jesus ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ibnzzXsiyg

Or, happy birthday to Mithras?

Charles Lamb died on this date.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOMCCVum3d8

Theodore Dreiser d. on this date. A great friend of John Cowper Powys and Charles Fort, of those Damned Things.

Happy birthday, Mortimer Adler!

Well, as to Lamb, to say truth, it was time he were gone. The humour of the thing, if there was ever much in it, was pretty well exhausted; and a fifty nine year existence was a tolerable duration for a phantom.

I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I have heard objected to my late friend's writings was well-founded. Crude they are, I grant you -- a sort of unlicked, incondite things -- villainously pranked in an affected array of antique modes and phrases. They had not been his, if they had been other than such; and better it is, that a writer should be natural in a self-pleasing quaintness, than to affect a naturalness (so called) that should be strange to him. Egotistical they have been pronounced by some who did not know, that what he tells us, as of himself, was often true only (historically) of another; as in a former Essay (to save many instances) -- where under the first person (his favorite figure) he shadows forth the forlorn estate of a country-boy placed at a London school, far from his friends and connections -- in direct opposition to his own early history. If it be egotism to imply and twine with his own identity the griefs and affections of another—making himself many, or reducing many unto himself—then is the skilful novelist, who all along brings in his hero, or heroine, speaking of themselves, the greatest egotist of all; who yet has never, therefore, been accused of that narrowness. And how shall the intenser dramatist escape being faulty, who doubtless, under cover of passion uttered by another, oftentimes gives blameless vent to his most inward feelings, and expresses his own story modestly?

My late friend was in many respects a singular character. Those who did not like him, hated him; and some, who once liked him, afterwards became his bitterest haters. The truth is, he gave himself too little concern what he uttered, and in whose presence. He observed neither time nor place, and would e’en out with what came uppermost. With the severe religionist he would pass for a free-thinker; while the other faction set him down for a bigot, or persuaded themselves that he belied his sentiments. Few understood him; and I am not certain that at all times he quite understood himself. He too much affected that dangerous figure—irony. He sowed doubtful speeches, and reaped plain, unequivocal hatred.—He would interrupt the gravest discussion with some light jest; and yet, perhaps, not quite irrelevant in ears that could understand it. Your long and much talkers hated him. The informal habit of his mind, joined to an inveterate impediment of speech, forbade him to be an orator; and he seemed determined that, no one else should play that part when he was present. He was petit and ordinary in his person and appearance. I have seen him sometimes in what is called good company, but where he has been a stranger, sit silent, and be suspected for an odd fellow; till some unlucky occasion provoking it, he would stutter out some senseless pun (not altogether senseless perhaps, if rightly taken), which has stamped his character for the evening. It was hit or miss with him; but nine times out of ten, he contrived by this device to send away a whole company his enemies. His conceptions rose kindlier than his utterance, and his happiest impromptus had the appearance of effort. He has been accused of trying to be witty, when in truth he was but struggling to give his poor thoughts articulation.

I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice that my old friend is departed. His jests were beginning to grow obsolete, and his stories to be found out.

I have to confess I'm unfamiliar with Charles Lamb, though after reading your intriguing post, A_Musing (and your link, Por), I believe further investigation into this person is warranted. What's a good starting place?

Although I can't help but think I may be being had by even asking the question....

My post is a slightly adulturated passage from the preface to Last Essays of Elia; Elia was pseudonym for Lamb, and in Last Essays he killed his pseudonymous personality so he could posthumously publish his own essays.

I'd suggest A Dissertation upon Roast Pig for a quick intro - it is a brief essay that takes no more than a half hour to read. He is the funniest man to ever come out of England.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=Crude+as+they+are+a+sort+...

http://books.google.com/books?id=ofUtAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA124&lpg=PA124&dq=...

Happy birthday to William Gaddis!!!!!!

tomcat, I'm so glad you, uh, recognized him this day!

The Poet Rilke d. on this date.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/black-cat/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Li3LPgjWcI&feature=relatedHappy Birthday to Rudyard Kipling.

Marshall McCluhan d. on this date.
http://www.librarything.com/author/mcluhanmarshall

Really! Marshall McLuhan. Why, I remember when he was considered revolutionary.

The Medium is the Massage! I always thought that would have been a better title than The medium is the Message. Of course it was only becoming so in the sixties when he wrote. So it requires a certain amount of hindsight to see the massaging effects. I wonder what he made (or would have made) of the internet?

Happy Birthday to JG Frazier and his redoubtable wife who chased him out to his work everyday, that's James George as our own Slickpdx would know.

And Edward Morgan Forster, who knew a plucky person when he saw one.

Looking back in this thread I see that I have spent more time than has been worth it giving my happy birth days and death days. So this one to the American poet with the cheesy 'English' or whatever you might call it accent just may well be my last. To Thomas Stearns Eliot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2khDhfwsoE

Frank Kermode explains the accent:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnD75tk6uO4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDU85Xhr7To&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm-2i-8UHGI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR81bpR8Yh4&feature=related

Damn well better not be your last!

Here's a video to rile up you up: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTG6DPTx8QQ

Just kidding. Little Kidding so to speak.
To prove I was just kidding:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TqLmDhOdEc&feature=related

SG was a Kool Katt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9U6URQSF6U&feature=related
COMMANDER CODY and his LOST PLANET AIRMEN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9QpDvhshOQ&feature=related

Porius, as a relative newcomer, I've come to think of you as the birthday guy. I check in every morning to see who was once born and who died on this day. You are a hinge. So for my sake, stick around.

ditto here!~!

Waayl, as Ronald Reagan would put it. Happy Birthday to Stella Gibbons. I read 6 or 8 of her novels last summer with much pleasure. I even read a biography by her nephew. Biogs. by nephews don't work out too well as a rule, though Quentin Bell's was sturdy on its legs, all right. Also to that polymath Eco. FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM is a veritable occult education.

>145 Porius:.

Eco is the intellectual's Dan Brown. Just like Shea and Wilson are the lunatic's Eco.

Happy Birthday to Alan Watts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aufuwMiKmE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ8WeLrtFnY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RcjATFcbq4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOYIE-RX3No&feature=related

Poor Fanny Burney real person, idea, concept, ghostie, or whomever was she died in horrific pain on this day in Jan. Her father Charles, Musick Master was a friend of the Great Cham of Literature - Samuel Johnson.

What a day! Happy Birthday to Wilkie Collins, the very funny Graham Chapman, Stephen Hawking.
On this date died, Robert Burton, Galileo Galiliei, Paul Verlaine, and Dion Fortune (Violet Firth)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkxCHybM6Ek

Nicholson Baker too (though it may have been yesterday).

Katherine Mansfield died on this day. She sought out Gurdjieff towards the end but nothing doing.

A busy happy death day starting with Thomas Hardy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxRyjAWxKGg&feature=related

Barbara Pym
http://www.barbara-pym.org/bio.html

And Robert Anton Wilson whose work, I believe, should be better known.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEZtw1yt8Kc

James Joyce gave up the ghost on this date.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p856CfM64w8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtOQi7xspRc&feature=related

Happy Birthday to Richard Milhouse Nixon!!!

On this day Lewis Carroll died.
http://richardwiseman.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/lewis-carroll-401x543-1.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNFmHyXdJJ8&feature=related

Happy Birthday to Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 1622-17 Feb. 1673
And Tartuffe?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZLbgdIuaJM&feature=related

On a different, less literary note (sorry, Porius, but I can't find any thread where this can be posted in Enrique's empire, or its various subsidiaries), the deer are walking in the snow-covered woods this morning. They move in herds in the winter, instead of ones and twos; I counted six. To the much maligned deer, who are born and die too, after all.

John Dos Passos born on this day. The USA Trilogy, ahead of his time, with his McLuhanesque pastiche.

Perfect, Peter.

A WINTER EDEN

A winter garden in an alder swamp,
Where conies now come out to sun and romp,
As near a paradise as it can be
And not melt snow or start a dormant tree.

It lifts existence on a plane of snow
One level higher than the earth below,
One level nearer heaven overhead,
And last year's berries shining scarlet red.

It lifts a gaunt luxuriating beast
Where he can stretch and hold his highest feast
On some wild apple-tree's young tender bark,
What well may prove the year's high girdle mark.

So near to paradise all pairing ends:
Here loveless birds now flock as winter friends,
Content with bud-inspecting. They presume
To say which buds are leaf and which are bloom.

A feather-hammer gives a double knock.
This Eden day is done at two o'clock.
An hour of winter day might seem too short
To make it worth life's while to wake and sport.

Robert Frost
from West-Running Brook
1928

I'll take all the blame for the Literary-all-too-Literary.
Dang me dang me they ought a take a rope and hang me . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvn0VKkEBAw&feature=related

One more time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3-EwMJDQek&feature=related

Did I say one more time?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CM4lPH6N7zU&feature=related

John Mortimer and Edward Gibbon died on this date.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEdYBoTdvzU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c78Ek3Ebq_Y&feature=related

Mortimer's WHERE THERE'S A WILL : Thoughts on the Good Life is a fine book of essays by a man of the highest wisdom. Really.

Happy Birthday to Acton Bell 1820 - 28 May 1849
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsgttxYsw48&feature=related

Happy Birthday to Anton Chekov, Ben Franklin and Charlotte and Emily's poetic sister Anne Bronte.

...and a very sexy happy birthday to the Bangles' hot lead singer, Susanna Hoff...

Robert Anton Wilson was born on this date. And Rudyard Kipling cashed it in on 18 January.
Oh No Indeed By Jove No.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dJf5rO0-BM

Happy birthday, A.A. Milne and Daniel Webster!

On this date died John Ruskin (1900) and Robinson Jeffers (1962)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_-DvjGmAVc

Happy birthday to Eugene Sue, who never made as big a splash as Dumas.

Also, a very happy birthday to Lead Belly.

George Orwell died on this date in 1950. I was a tender bundle of one year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4s9pdL7tpA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBbCNfc1fUQ&feature=related
obama world
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM&feature=related

So are you saying, old man, that today is your birthday?

Not exactly, mine is on 30 January.

Well, boy, I was old enough to have heard of him, but I almost certainly hadn't.

Robert

Happy Birthday to Henri-Marie Beyle, 23 Jan. 1783 - 23 Mar. 1843

Winston Churchill died on this day in 1965.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0JsPXg-e1s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCdBuNLbV18&feature=related

When people make a big deal about my smoking cigars, I cite Winston.
One of the great cigar smokers, among other things.

Happy Birthday to Edith Wharton: http://www.edithwharton.org/index.php

The link goes to the website of The Mount, her Massachuessetts home that she designed.

172> I enjoy a cigar every now and again. I mean what's the harm, you don't inhale.

173> Edith Wharton knew how to design a compound! I want to go live there.

Tomorrow, the 25th, is the one year birthday of what was born on Jan. 25, 2009: The Quest for the Last Page of Ulysses, now this salon.

Excelsior! Brave Team Ulysses (BTU)!!! Onward, upward, to all the highest literary summits throughout the World!!

HB to Nastassia Kinski and Warren Zevon.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJiUD2ZSXJ8&feature=related

Warren is among the choir invisible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5puAN1PGQw

Lately he's been overheard in Mayfair.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MRu8N2K0NY

On 25 January 1882 Adeline Virginia Stephen was born (5 days later in the same year EF's good friend James A. A. Joyce joined her on this vale of tears). She wrote experimental and traditional novels, THE YEARS would be an example of the first and THE WAVES, the second. She was one of the great literary essayists of her time; she produced voluminous diaries and journals; she and her husband Leonard Woolf ran a small press.
She was the daughter of Leslie Stephen who was a great walker and Man of Letters. Vanessa Stephen her painter sister was married to influential art critic Clive Bell. They were the center of the sometimes naughty Bloomsbury Group. Which included among others: Roger Fry (VW wrote a biography of the great critic), Lytton Strachey (an eminent biographer himself), Dora Carrington (artist companion of LS), and John Maynard Keynes. 1rst Baron of Tilton. 1883-1946. Economist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN8RAm8_JHg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKwQ8kBMuJw&feature=related

W. Somerset Maugham was born on this date. 1874 -16 Dec. 1965.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_dSZQ_FbAxSA/SkrEla2JMPI/AAAAAAAABh8/sljrsMbP5Fo/s400/s...

And finally on this day died Wordsworth's sister Dorothy. 25 Dec. 1771 - 25 Jan. 1855.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/the_tls/articl...
http://www.rc.umd.edu/rchs/reader/dwdaff.html

Henry, you started a great salon. It has been a year of fun !

Who's Henry?

Henry = Enrique in English

You're welcome!

If you end up figuring out *all* of Brent's alter egos, you are a greater man than I, Gunga Din.

Wait, is the Salon 1 year old today? Where are the streamers and the cake?

When did the Ulysses read start again? I thought it was in March.

Oh yes, of course. I know four of his alter egos, and have you noticed that on his profile page he has a new face?

Yes, very handsome! :)

178> Thanks, Big Mac Daddy! You've been a huge reason for and part of the fun ya know! In fact, le salon (the name change to le salon...) was solely your idea, though I do remember Anna suggesting we change "Henry" to "Henri" - must give credit where credit is due. Thank God people here know French, because all I know is French fries!!!... ah hahaha hehheheh, that's not lame at all!

behindthetomes and EnriqueResurrected sends you his love, Anna!

Lewis Mumford died on this date.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Mumford

Happy Birthday to Charles Dodgson. And John Updike passed away on this January date.

Happy Birthday to David Lodge born in 1935.

187: Oh well done. I love his novels, they are so funny.

I'm giving up a little lunch time to inform those of you that care about such things that we have lost Howard Zinn, J.D. Salinger, and Pernell Roberts on this winter's day. Roberts played eldest son Adam on the TV series BONANZA with Lorne Greene (who sang RINGO), Dan Blocker (the gentle giant Hoss), and Michael Landon (Little Joe).
http://www.wildestwesterns.com/images/issue_3_images/randolph_scott_pernell_robe...

In the picture is, if my eyes don't deceive me, the redoubtable Randolf Scott -albeit a little long in the tooth.

Not Richard Starkey
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCyuq-ofnPc

A busy day. Happy Birthday to Anton Chekhov and Thomas Paine. And died: Robert Frost, Edward Lear and Henry Louis Mencken.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4bYv3uwDqc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnvNAvKWDeA&feature=related

I have been one . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qzo7fKGgWU
doesn't love a wall
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTglCBLomXA&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube...

And J.D. Salinger died today too. (thanks to booksfallapart, over in Les Amateurs, for the bad news!)

In truth, I barely remember the details of Catcher in the Rye anymore. But I carry with me Holden Caulfield, the critical outsider, and a sense of the sixties approaching, and with it, the moment Holden exemplified about to have its say.

happy birthday to Richard Brautigan, Vanessa Redgrave, and me.

Happy Birthday Por-Man!

How could I forget to mention Wiliam Claude Dukenfield, 29 Jan. 1880 - 25 Dec. 1946.
http://legendsrevealed.com/entertainment/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/wc.jpg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MZWq14uD-A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSkmU2w2W8A&feature=related

Thanks EF. There maybe some as good as you out there but none better.

Ah. I see that Normal Mailer was born on this day ... and after I said those nasty things about him on the Author v. Author thread. A tough little guy, he was; one who no doubt always wanted to be taller.

...Also Thomas Merton and Zane Grey...

Sandydog#1> Before my grandfather moved into a residential home a few years back, he was going to have an estate sale and knew I loved books and so invited me over to pick through his stuff before the actual estate sale began. I came across a ton of really old Zane Grey's, but not being much of a western fan, foolishly opted to pass on grabbing them. I say foolishly because one of the ones I passed on was a first edition in fair condition of Riders of the Purple Sage that later sold for $285 during his estate sale. That hurt bad when he told me.

Tough indeed, Peter! So tough he wrote Tough Guys Don't Dance. Is that true, that "tough guys" don't dance? Opinions anyone?

196> I just noticed your post. I'm so...**feels proud warm glow all over**

Por-Man, you're a Salonista, Man, and I...I...I love you, Man. Like in that Budweiser commercial. I'm weeping.

So tough that he bit off a guy's ear ... and this years before Mike Tyson did it.

Tough guys, in my experience, are the best dancers. The same self-esteem that makes them tough, makes them not care what people think of their dancing.

Happy Birthday to Muriel Spark.

Hey all you LT Super Freaks, happy birthday to Rick James.

...As well as YA author Jerry Spinelli.

Happy Birthday to James Joyce.

Happy Birthday indeed to James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, 2 Feb 1882 - 13 Jan 1941
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=james+joyce&btnG=S...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p856CfM64w8

Thank you to Papa Joyce for bringing us all together! Happy happy happy birthday and a hearty three cheers!
Hip Hip Hooray!
Hip Hip Hooray!
Hip Hip Hooray!

Forgive me, Father Joyce, for hating your Son, Ulysses.

( cringing...) Forgive Henri as he does not know what he is saying... : )

Mac, I've denied Ulysses even more than three times.

Do I have any hope of salvation in your opinion?

Holding a cross in my shaking hands : " Vade retro Satanas !!!!"

Happy Birthday to Dave Davies of The Kinks.
http://www.addictedtovinyl.com/images/artists/davedavies0309.jpg

Dave and brother Ray
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaojZhoeE5s&feature=related

Ray and Dave were born at 6 Denmark Terrace, Fortis Green (North London), in the Muswell Hill area. Listen to their fine LP (or CD) MUSWELL HILLBILLIES.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPRG7W7qQF0&feature=relatedhttp://www.youtube...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eYtNu_heiI&feature=related

Happy birthday to Michener, Stein, Mendelssohn, and Gutenburg...

According to Google, today is also Norman Rockwell's birthday. :)

It would be nice, for a change, to say that no one of note or notoriety was born or died today, but Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, was both born (1921) and died (2006) on this day.

Quite true, Pierre.

Robert Coover, Russell Hoban, and a great golfer, Alice Cooper, were all born today.

So was Dan Quail (sp?)

>216 absurdeist:.

I think you forgot his e.

But that's okay, he put it in a potato(e).

(which led to an interesting rave in Idaho?)

Happy Birthday William Burroughs.

And of course that guy from Spinal Tap, you know, the one with the amp that goes to eleven...

Thomas Carlyle died on this date in 1881, just one year before James Joyce was born.

The poet James Merrill died on this date in 1995.
http://onwardspoetry.blogspot.com/2009/02/christmas-tree-by-james-merrill.html

Porius: Charles Dickens, born on this day. You're falling down on the job, man.

Have had precious little time for birthdays P. Though I feel bad about missing the Sparkler's day.

Born this date, Brecht. Died this date, Pushkin.
Last minute notices, also born on this date: Jimmy Durante and Lon Chaney Jr.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-ldVj34Sfo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGjhBEs7Bp0

Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are!

Oh, no, Chingachgook, it's the Wolfman!

Sylvia Plath died on this date.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esBLxyTFDxE

Happy Birthday to Eva Gabor and Thomas Alva Edison.

Happy Birthday to everyone who has a birthday today.

My gosh. Getting carried away, aren't you, Peter? Or maybe on the verge of a breakdown.

He's just down because both Sylvia Plath and Frank Herbert passed away today. :(

and I remember Frank Herbert dying that day in 1986 like yesterday. There went the revised Dune Encyclopedia that was going to come out, had he lived. There went the spectacular Dune series into the hands much lesser and mostly incompetent writers.

>230 absurdeist:.

Ugh. Son of Author Fail. Who in their right mind hires the universe's biggest fanfic writer to continue a sci-fi epic that deserves a real author to continue the legacy.

I would have picked Pynchon.

Happy birthday to the guy who put feet on all our Jesus-fish!

Today is the Emancipator's birthday.

I've already packed it away in preparation for our move, but one of my favorite cartoonists was H. T. Webster, he of Casper Milquetoast fame, did a cartoon showing a mailman or some other circuit rider sitting on his horse hunkered down against the wind and snow talking to another man leaning against a fence in need of repair in front of a barn covered in snow. The caption runs along the line of, "The News, February 12, 1809: (the man on horseback says to the other man,) "Nothin' much goin' on. They wuz a baby boy born up to the Lincoln place, other than that not much."

Practically makes me want to cry just typing it. I'm such a romantic.

Yeah, me too, Gene.

I never thought of Lincoln as "the Emancipator" until I was a mailman, working out of the Temescal station in Oakland, California. It was the day before Lincoln's birthday and most of the carriers, who at time in that station were mainly black, gathered around the union rep before punching out. He wished them a good "Emancipator's birthday." Not just another day off. It choked me up.

Happy Birthday to Charles Darwin b. on this date in 1809. And Immanuel Kant checked out on this day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8N322sUfEU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzpL_5CI0WQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e1HiKzFLmg&feature=related

Happy Birthday to Elaine Pagels and Simon Schama.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqjS5528KdU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYRM4tYm-Ik

Robert Shea was born on this date. He wrote the ILLUMINATUS TRILOGY with Robert Anton Wilson. On this date the inimitable P.G. Wodehouse travelled to a remote whorl of the spiral. We can find out, maybe, which one by consulting Thomas Lethbridge's pendulum.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sHc98i6nVc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SZWFja6XHc

"a remote whorl of the spiral" - nice one Por-Man!

Look into TCL, EF, when you get the time, of course.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Charles_Lethbridge
Especially his POWER OF THE PENDULUM 1978

Happy Birthday to Claire Bloom, John Barrymore and Galileo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie8elzPavog

Died on this date: Jean-Baptiste Poquelin and Anne Radcliffe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wO9CAUGbx2g

poor JB, he wasn't allowed a burial in the city !

Happy Birthday to Gahan Wilson.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jr0V0p6MYJA
and Jack Palance
a little indelicate but . . .
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGxL5AFzzMY

Knut Hamsun died on this date in 1952.

Is it time to go home yet, Por-Man? I feel some hunger coming on.

Pan-fried.

Happy Birthday to Smokey Robinson, Lee Marvin, and Ansel Adams.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2kxlZDOHeQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPVBnfppFwk&feature=relate
A two-tonick Lee Marvin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKRGM33eadQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaf0NZFvliQ

I screwed up, SR & LM were the 19th, AA's birthday is today.

Lee Marvin's a Woodstock boy, y'know. (Not the festival; the town.) I run into people every few months who have a story about him.

Not many like L.M.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI1qBAVrjIs

He was shot in the ass in the Battle of Saipan.

Apparently, in Woodstock, he was a real character, in line with Tom Hardin, who was a crazy junkie, and Van Morrison, who no one would play with back then, because he was such a nasty alcoholic, though has since spent his life since then straightening himself out, and making great music.

Happy birthday to Wystan Hugh Auden and David Fosters Footnotes.
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/auden.stop.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIaAkKPJn_M&feature=related

And died on this date:
Malcolm X
Spinoza
Gershom Scholem

Ah, Spinoza. He and I share the same birthday, Porius, along with Oscar Robertson. And wonder of wonders--sporadic reader that I am--I've read all three of the dead-on-this-day guys.

Sove I. The Big O. A World of Wonders, no?

Yes. We'll get to him in detail, I hope (again, since we've already riffed on him), on November 24. The Emmanuel Spinoza of b'ballers!

Arthur Schopenhauer born on this date. Stephan Zweig died.
Happy Birthday to Julius Irving (Dr. J) and Fredric Chopin.

Dr. J and Chopin. What are the odds?

No shoe-inn certainly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPYJodKri9c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpTfb9SkKaQ&feature=related

Not Butch Waltz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C-oiN_KDD0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qa0Z6g1XJkU&feature=related
Now he likes musick very much
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R3pjDWRKmQ&feature=related

And finally a happy thought from old Arthur:
Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try to win one another's money. Idiots!

Oh, and Edward "Eddie Baby" Gorey

Born Samuel Pepys. Died, John Keats. Upon looking into Chapman's Homer he gave up the ghost.

Happy Birthday to W.B. DuBois, George Fredric Handel, and Johnny Winter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGZTikKCJvg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWZ6G5TN524&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqvBXqfOZiM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91sfrw106xs&feature=related
Schubert was not born nor did he die upon this Feb. date, he did write a lasting piece of musick though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7ixGAOwCiQ&feature=related

Some guy on another thread claims it's Luis Bunuel's birthday today. You know anything about that, Peter?

>262 copyedit52:.

Day late on that one. Buñuel's birthday was yesterday (the 22nd).

I'll have to go back and find that thread so I can tell that guy what's what.

Happy Birthday to August Derleth. First published Howard Phillip Lovecraft.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3ndSL2eFeg

Happy Birthday to Enrico Caruso and Abe Vigoda.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Miwejo0mgok

Happy Birthday to Anthony Burgess no matter what Roger Lewis says.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qbn57T83AX8
George Harrison.
Jim Backus.
Zeppo Marx.
Pierre August Renoir.

Died on this date: Beethoven and Richmond Lattimore, translator of Homer and others. Happy Birthday to Johnny Cash, Levi Strauss, Victor Hugo and "The Great One" Jackie Gleason.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsK1yxO4LWg&feature=related

Fats Domino was born today.

Wow! And he already has a ton of gold records. How'd he do that?

He's eighty-two today, Gene.

Oh, oh, I see. He wasn't born today, as you so plainly state, but on this date some few iterations ago. I see now.

Oh, oh, I see now too! Your sense of humor. My prosaic response must have been a splash of cold water. Sorry about that.

Happy Birthday:
Lawrence Durrell
John Steinbeck
Ralph Nader
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Died:
Spike Milligan
William F. Buckley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li73RRLEyW8&feature=related

Nader has a new novel out, "Only the Super-Rich can Save Us!"

The super rich can save me for sure ! Show me the money !!!

Happy Birthday to Michel de Montaigne.
And passed away on this date: Henry James.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfbBvZYwEbU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe2Nv3n8Mv4&feature=related

I dipped into Michel de Montaigne last year and stuck around to take a long swim. When in France--where I haven't been in a while--I've visited his realm, the Dordogne, and in particular the medieval town of Sarlat-la-Caneda. Oddly, there're few plaques or monuments noting the great essayist's local provenance, or none that I noticed anyway, dazzled as I was by the Place des Oies in the Vieux Ville.

Happy Birthday to David Niven and Roger Daltry and Ralph Ellison.
Died: George Herbert 1633 - George Grossmith 1912 - Arthur Koestler 1983.
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/herbert/love3.htm

Happy birthday to Jennifer Jones and Lou Reed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu8TH4SjCPI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FdWPeHFAMk&feature=related

Happy birthday to you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztoSUhbNntQ

d. D.H Lawrence and Phillip K. Dick.

Born: Arthur Machen.
Died: Graham Greene
Born: Doc Watson

Died: N. Gogol, William Carlos Williams.
Born: A. Vivaldi

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15535
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzCXjDuYQTA

The Overcoat
http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a0857.pdf

died - Edgar Lee Masters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL6GiR3ZmxM

A day late: I wasn't paying attention. William Carlos Williams, yesterday. Known mainly as a poet, I know, but his book of short stories The Doctor Stories, is quite nice.

Happy birthday to E.B. Browning, David Gilmour and Michelangelo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8Osse7w9fs&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbZen2OOA3M
You want to be an artist?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abNqqskRYeE&feature=related

An interesting book.
http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-00695-1.html

Happybirthday to Luther Burbank and Piet Mondrian.

Happy birthday to John McPhee, Cyd Charisse and Claire Trevor.
Sherwood Anderson died on this date. A great Am. writer in my book.

Claire Trevor
http://www.nakedauthors.com/uploaded_images/annex2020trevor20clairejm6-772281.jp...
Cyd Charisse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuJxYmJlEHY&feature=related
John McPhee's given me countless pleasurable hours.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66yuZWkxBik
THE DUMB MAN by Sherwood Anderson, not a spectre out of some anti-Statfordian of course.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvxyzPnI9mU

Happy Birthday to Bobby Fischer and Amerigo Vespucci.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ht-OqiuWVMk&feature=fvw
Also a happy birthday to Vita Sackville-West
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0a3dQWyxKM

Bobby Fischer. Nice pluck, Porius. Bobby would have been in the same graduating class at Erasmus Hall High School (in Brooklyn, N.Y.)--had he not dropped out--as Barbra Sreisand and (you'll appreciate this, Peter) Billy Cunningham.

Our all-time favorite point guard David Abramovitz's father is from Brooklyn. He migrated to Mexico and married and produced David and his brother Daniel. David and Luke Walton helped us to the State Championship in 1998. David is a businessman by morning (early morning one would think), he is an assistant with us (from Nov. thru March), and has recently accepted a professional coaching job in Mexicali. He has quite a story as he's played professional BB around the world (including 'Russia') until he had a back operation (several screws inserted) that forced him out of high-level BB. I've known David and Joel, his father, for 15 yrs. or so. Joel has recently had a stroke and Davy is doing his best with his busy schedule to see to Joel's needs. Basketball has been a rich experience for me over the years. There's really not much I haven't experienced on and off the court in the last 25 years. Truly an education.

Happy birthday to Bix Biederbecke.
Robert Shea died on this date.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ue9igC7flI

Bulgakov also died on this date. :(

Bulgy lives forever !

I'd like to wish a Happy Birthday to Osama bin Laden, author of Messages to the World.

Now you have really gone and done it!~!~!
belva

I know Belva,

I truly cannot fathom how Mac could say that Bulgakov lives forever when he's so obviously dead. Some people.

Happy Birthday to Gordon MacRae.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp5HCDGJsvM&feature=related

A very happy birthday and many happy returns to Carl Hiaassen, whose name I can never remember how to spell.

Happy Birthday to Mircea Eliade.

Born: Albert Einstein.
Died: Sir Thomas Malory.

Bulgi lives forever !!!

http://macumbeira-macumbeira.blogspot.com/2009/08/master-and-margarita-exercise-...

Born: Richard Ellmann.
Died: Howard Phillip Lovecraft and Rebecca West.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WC3yA0OCuk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6Z8ybDytlo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucv_cP7lKuc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7cZHooVfX4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twfpx3MeQUQ&feature=related

Howard Phillip ... you come up with the most obscure things, Porius.

Born: Samuel "Lightnin" Hopkins and Harry James.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVF-0JKLnd4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvBXKCFiZnI
Mo green onions
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke36JJ3mdSQ&feature=related
Baby please don't go
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtS8-_0xCJI&feature=related

Happy Birthday to James Madison and Henny Youngman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvwXEXJQ360
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Nz5TWRRv8A&feature=related
Born: Penelope Lively
Died: Marcus Aurelius
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6cK2SzMnus
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLD09Qa3kMk

Happy Birthday, Erich Fromm!

happiebirthday to prisylla magillacuddy author of WHEN IS NOT ENOUGH TOO MUCH.

Was she any relation to Cornelius McGillicuddy?

I dont think so.

McGillicuddy was Lucy Ricardo's maiden name.

L-U-C-Y!!!
Happy Birthday to Ursula Andress, Wyatt Earp and Hans Kung.

born: Henrik Ibsen
died: Victor Sawdon Pritchett and C. Wright Mills.
VSP
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/pritch.htm

Nice one Por-Man! Bought this, hc 1st ed. (yes, I'm bragging, rightly so) for a buck not too long ago. They don't make writers like V.S. Pritchett anymore do they?

yas sah EF, VSP is eminently readable literary critic. Right there with Edmund Wilson and co. A very fine biography of one of the 19th Cent. Russian giants - Turgenev.

Love 'em or hate 'em, Spike Lee was born today. I'll never forget watching Do the Right Thing in a college, cross-cultural literature class, and my what a culture clash did the ensuing discussions elicit.

Happybirthday to Rudy Rucker.

born : Chico Marx
died: Marie-Henri Beyle

born : Chico Marx
died: Marie-Henri Beyle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khJaHNocYK0

Happybirthday to Roger Bannister.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz3ZLpCmKC
Also to William Morris and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-world-is-a-beautiful-place/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnSKhkX0JPg

there's more
Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle
Clyde Barrow
Harry Houdini (Ehrich Weiss)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fh0F1glgKBk&feature=related

happy birthday to Flannery O'Connor. and to Howard Cosell, Bela Bartok, and Arturo Toscanini, there's a threesome for you.

happy birthday Tennessee Williams.

What a pair! Happybirthday to Joseph Campbell and Richard Dawkins.
And happybirthday to Martin Short and
ROBERT FROST.

died: Henry Adams.

Born: Michael York, Sarah Vaughan, Edward Steichen, Gloria Swanson.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx6WSiWH_zw&feature=related

Ah, yes, the Great Sarah Vaughan.

Virginia Woolf decided to end it early on this date.
Happybirthday to Maxim Gorky.

I really hate it when great authors decide to end it early. Don't you Por-Man?

HB to real life (though now deceased) under-appreciated author, Nelson Algren.

yeah, I still enjoy remembering the scent of my first girlfriend, lo, these many, many, years now. how about choo EF?

Cy Young's b-day today. There must be some award we can give him?
A very happy birthday to Gilbert Keith Chesterton. His biography of the "Sparkler" was immensely satisfying from start to finish.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4wUYTMcXBE

And of course a pair of old boys passed over on this date: Joyce Carey, and Emanuel Swedenborg, we must assume that E.S. was entered into one of his many busy heavens, must we not?

To be happy one must already be happy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=208sK4WS4CY&feature=related
I like this puppy for his inn-oh-sense.

first, the deaths: Charlotte Bronte and John Donne. And now, the births: Rene Descartes, Nikoloi Gogol and one of my own favorites, John Fowles - read his great collection of essays, etc. WORMHOLES.
More birthdays: Shirley Jones, Gordy Howe and Joseph Haydn.
Firstthelordourgord:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3yaohKugyI&feature=fvw
With the great Robert Preston:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3yaohKugyI&feature=fvw
Gould plays Haydn
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfu5VDjRKmA&feature=related

Happybirthday to William Harvey, Nickolai Gogol (it seems I celebrated his b-day one day early), and Sergei Rachmaninoff - they all get the blood a cirk-yoo-laytin, don't they?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifKKlhYF53w
Reading from DEAD SOULS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJPX1hZ6xos

CS Forester died on this date, but born on 2 April were Buddy Ebsen, Emmylou Harris, Leon Russell, Marvin Gaye, Alec Guinness and Hans Christian Andersen (well known for being a guest who overstayed his welcome).

Happybirthday to the truly great jane Goodall and Washington Irving.
Died on this date: Lester Bangs and Graham Greene.

Oliver (Goldy) Goldsmith died on this date. One of the few to have penned: novel, poem, and play, which became major works. THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD (1766); SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER; or THE MISTAKES OF A NIGHT (1773); THE DESERTED VILLAGE (1770).

Saul Bellow died on this date in 2005.
Born : Frank Gorshin and Spencer Tracy.

Hate it or Love it. Here is Spencer Tracy in the italian version :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdlJ8JMwpWs&feature=related

Happy Birthday to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, born this day in 1830, author of Preach My Gospel: A Guide to Missionary Service.

Happy Birthday to Merle Haggard.

Happy Birthday to William Wordsworth.
And to David Frost, Ravi Shankar and Billie Holiday.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4PSju9HYwU&feature=fvw

Happy Birthday to Juian Lennon and Shecky Greene.

Hey now.

For starters happy birthday to Ward Bond and Jean-Paul Belmondo.
Happy birthday also to Elias Lonnrot (1821), Charles Baudelaire (1821).
And passed away on this date Francois Rabelais (1553), 11 yrs. before Wm. Shake-speare, was born and Francis Bacon (1626), stuffing a fowl with ice.

Happy Birtday Jean - Paul ! I still quote your one-liners weekly !

Happy birthday to David Halberstam, one of the truly great writers of our times. He left us much too soon. Also to Max Von Sydow and Omar Sherif. Died on this day Evelyn Waugh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYHwoJQ5fpU

David Halberstam. Thank you por. He deserves a touchstone, no?

Indeed.

David Halberstam wrote one of the best baseball books I've ever read, about the 1941 season when DiMaggio (and his 56 game hitting streak) and the Yanks beat Ted Williams and the Red Sox for the American league championship in the last season of baseball before so many players, including Williams, answered the call to arms. It would not be until 1946 before the quality of major league baseball returned to normal. How bad was it you ask, bad enough the Boston Braves won the World Series in 1944. That's how bad it was.

On the last day of the season Williams went 4/5 or something (in the back of my mind double header niggles at me, in which case it would have been more like 6/8). At any rate he ended the season with a .407 (I believe) batting average. The last player to hit over .400. Some have come close, but not yet. Given the consistent quality of major league pitching, it may never be done again. Or will. Ted Williams may have been a real jerk in many ways, but he was an awesome baseball player. In his last ever plate appearance he hit a massive home run. The signature shot putting a dot to the career of one of the very best to ever take bat against ball. We won't talk about his so-so fielding.

Halberstam also wrote an excellent sports (and the business side of it) book about the Portland Trail Blazers season after their championship season: 1978, I think it was, or '79. The Breaks of the Game.

350> I used to be a HUGE MLB fan. In '94, Tony Gwynn of the San Diego Padres was flirting with .400 all season long....until the damn strike. He finished at .394 with something like 450 at bats. Haven't been much of an MLB fan since, and the steroid age really shined me off the MLB for good. I still consider Hank Aaron the all time Home Run King, and it's sickening to me that Roger Maris' single season HR record was eclipsed by 'roided up ballers. Yeah, I know the counter-argument, steroids don't help hand-eye coordination, but they do help strength (obviously) which increases bat speed and turns what once were routine flyouts into half-assed "home runs".

George Brett, in 1980, hit .390 and barely had enough at-bats (something like 440) to qualify for the AL batting title.

Rod Carew, with the Minnesota Twins, in '77, hit .388.

Those have been the three closest since Ted Williams and his magical .400 season.

I once met Hank, in a social setting of sorts. A real gentleman, without any pretense, except he insisted he wasn't "someone of note or notoriety" when we first met and I tongue-in-cheek asked him that, and then I pretended not to know who he was while we sat next to each other and talked. Mainly I talked. He was a good listener.

Never met Hank, but I've seen him play dozens of times. He and Phil Niekro were the Braves heroes the first time I lived in Atlanta. I had dinner with Knucksie and his sons. If one can say sitting across the room in a crowded restaurant from someone is "dining with them".

For all the bluster about a knuckleballer being worthy of the Hall of Fame, I'm sure he lost more 1 - 0 and 2 - 1 games than any other pitcher with a decent number of games behind him. Had he played with a real baseball team, say the Big Red Machine or the Dodgers or the Yankees he would have won over 400 games and maybe as many as 500. As it was he won well over 300 with a truly piss poor group of Braves teams. So, does this homer think he deserves his bust in Cooperstown? I've seen his flutter pitch tie Pete Rose up in literal knots on many occasions, you're damned right he deserves that spot. If a batter swings at a dipsy-doodle going fifty miles an hour and misses, that's a strike no less than had the ball been high and tight going 150 mph. I've seen batters, good competent batters, swing at a pitch that was five feet outside, shake their heads in wonder, and take that long, lonely walk back to the dugout pondering what they had just been a witness to. Knucksie was a treasure.

353> So are you going to enlighten us as to this "social setting" in which you met the All Time Home Run Leader in MLB History?

Fwiw, I've "met" Kenny Landreaux. Dodger Centerfielder on their '81 WS title team.

Damn right Phil Niekro belongs in the Hall. How many 16-21 or 17-18 seasons did he have? despite his ERA being in the low 3.00-3.50 range? I was a big Jeff Burroughs fan back in the day, Geneg. I'm sure you recall also the mad Hungarian, Al Hrabosky? That guy cracked me up on the mound. My Dad, whenever he entered a game in the late innings, would nudge me and say, "hey Brent, watch this," as Al went into his Grizzly-Bearish, psych-himself-up routine before practically every pitch. Good memories of the Braves...even before their '90s dominance.

I'll meet you on the new Sports thread, Henri (what do I call you now that I am no longer French?). And answer your impertinent question there:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/88962