October 9th

John Lennon should have been 68 today.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Jackson Browne is 60.

Jackson Browne has been both an introspective, cerebral songwriter and a politically attuned voice of conscience. He emerged in the early Seventies as a soul-baring young folksinger whose songs dealt with riddles of romance and existence. In his middle period he became a more extroverted rock and roller. Later work grew more topical in nature as Browne sang of political and social realities within and beyond our borders.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Robert Wuhl is 57. Wuhl, known most recently for Arli$$, shared in two Emmys for writing for the Academy Awards show (1991, 1992). NewMexiKen liked him best as the coach in Bull Durham.

“Okay, well, uh… candlesticks always make a nice gift, and uh, maybe you could find out where she’s registered and maybe a place-setting or maybe a silverware pattern. Okay, let’s get two! Go get ’em.”

Tony Shalhoub, Monk, is 55.

Guillermo del Toro, writer-director-producer of El Laberinto del fauno, is 44.

Annika Sorenstam is 38.

Sean Lennon is 33.

Charles Walgreen was born on this date in 1873. Yes, he’s the man who began the Walgreen’s drug store chain, starting in Chicago. It was a Walgreen’s soda fountain employee who invented the malted milkshake in 1922, which puts him right up there with Edison as far as NewMexiKen is concerned.

And Bruce Catton was born on this date in 1899.

Bruce Catton was fifty when he began work on the first two of what would become thirteen books on the Civil War – Mr. Lincoln’s Army, (1951) followed one year later by Glory Road. His debut was hailed by the Chicago Tribune as “military history at its best.” He “combines the scholar’s appreciation of the Grand Design with a newsman’s keenness for meaningful vignette,” said Newsweek. Catton immersed himself in a vast range of primary materials, especially the diaries, letters and anecdotal reports of soldiers on the ground, which gave his books from the outset their unique, “you are there” ambience.

In 1954, Catton became the first editor of American Heritage Magazine in Washington, where he remained as Senior Editor until his death in 1978.

“There is a near-magic power of imagination in Catton’s work,” wrote Oliver Jensen, who succeeded him as editor of the magazine, “that seemed to project him physically into the battlefields, along the dusty roads and to the campfires of another age.”

Neil Baldwin