Gore Vidal is 84 today.
Steve Reich is 73. Let this paragraph from Alex Ross in The New Yorker explain Reich’s compostitions:
In this sense, “Different Trains,” for recorded voices and string quartet, may be Reich’s most staggering achievement, even if “Music for 18” gives the purest pleasure. He wrote the piece in 1988, after recalling cross-country train trips that he had taken as a child. “As a Jew, if I had been in Europe during this period, I would have had to ride very different trains,” he has said. Recordings of his nanny reminiscing about their journeys and of an elderly man named Lawrence Davis recalling his career as a Pullman porter are juxtaposed with the testimonies of three Holocaust survivors. These voices give a picture of the dividedness of twentieth-century experience, of the irreconcilability of American idyll and European horror—and something in Mr. Davis’s weary voice also reminds us that America was never an idyll for all. The hidden melodies of the spoken material generate string writing that is rich in fragmentary modal tunes and gently pulsing rhythms.
The NPR 100 included Reich’s “Drumming” among its “100 most important American musical works of the 20th century.” Here’s that report. (RealPlayer)
Ernest Evans is 68; that’s Chubby Checker. His version of “The Twist” was number one in both 1960 and 1962, though not at my high school where the Carmelite fathers decreed it too impure.
My daddy is sleepin’ and mama ain’t around
Yeah daddy is sleepin’ and
mama ain’t around
We’re gonna twisty twisty twisty
‘Til we turn the house down
Worst lip-syncing ever.
Senator Jeff Bingaman is 66 today.
Roy is 65.
In their three-plus decades in Las Vegas, Siegfried & Roy have performed for more than 25 million people. Through the years, they have seen many changes in the city’s entertainment scene, some of which they were personally responsible for. The illusionists opened the door to family entertainment, setting a standard in stage extravaganzas that cannot be duplicated anywhere in the world.
Lindsey Buckingham is 60. For years I thought Lindsey was Stevie and Stevie was Lindsey.
Keb’ Mo’ is 58.
Dave Winfield is 58.
A true five-tool athlete who never spent a day in the minor leagues, Dave Winfield played 22 seasons, earning 12 All-Star Game selections. At six-feet, six-inches, he was an imposing figure and a durable strongman with the rare ability to combine power and consistency. In tours of duty with six major league teams, Winfield batted .283, hit 465 home runs, and amassed 3,110 hits. He was a seven-time Gold Glove winner and helped lead the Toronto Blue Jays to their first World Championship in 1992.
Dennis Eckersley is 55.
Dennis Eckersley blazed a unique path to Hall of Fame success. During the first half of his 24-year big league career, Eck won over 150 games primarily as a starter, including a no-hitter in 1977. Over his final 12 years, he saved nearly 400 games, leading his hometown Oakland A’s to four American League West titles and earning both Cy Young and MVP honors in 1992. The only pitcher with 100 saves and 100 complete games, Eckersley dominated opposing batters during a six-year stretch from 1988 to 1993, in which he struck out 458 while walking just 51.
Al Sharpton is 55.
Donna Moss is 40. That’s Janel Moloney of The West Wing.
Gwen Stefani is 40, neither “Hollaback” nor “Girl.”
A few times I’ve been around that track
So it’s not just gonna happen like that
Cause I ain’t no hollaback girl
I ain’t no hollaback girl
(A hollaback girl is a girl who lets boys do whatever, then waits for them to call, to holler back. Originally it meant a cheerleader who echoed the lead cheerleader’s call. The song uses both meanings well.)
John Ross was born on October 3rd in 1790.
He spent his early life trying to design a new government for the Cherokees, based on the U.S. government, with a constitution and three separate but equal branches and democratically elected leaders. He respected the American justice system so much that when the state of Georgia tried to force Cherokees off their land, John Ross chose not to go to war, but instead took Georgia to court. It was the first time that an Indian tribe had ever sued the U.S. over treaty rights, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court. The case was decided in 1832, and Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in his opinion that the state of Georgia did not have jurisdiction over Cherokees and therefore could not force the Cherokees to leave their land. But President Andrew Jackson refused to enforce the decision. He said, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”
Six years later, 15,000 Cherokees were forced out of their homes at gunpoint by American soldiers, gathered together in camps and then forced to walk to the new “Indian Territory” west of the Mississippi, an event that became known as The Trail of Tears. The camps had horrible hygienic conditions, and an epidemic of dysentery killed an estimated 8,000 Cherokees, including John Ross’s wife.
Emily Post was born on October 3rd in 1873, thank you very much.
She taught as the basis of all correct deportment that “no one should do anything that can either annoy or offend the sensibilities of others.” Thousands found their social problems solved by her simple counsels. Her name became synonymous with good manners.
Mrs. Post’s advice was varied. She gave suggestions about how to inculcate good manners in an active 7-year-old boy and she could and did answer complicated questions about the proper way to address titled persons of Europe.
But for the most part she advised the debutante, the confused suitor and the newly married couple who wished to establish themselves in good relations with the world about them. She always avoided giving lonelyhearts advice and never suggested ways to capture a husband or wife, although many young persons found courtship easier because of what she said.
George Bancroft was born on October 3, 1800. As Secretary of the Navy, Bancroft initiated the creation of the United States Naval Academy in 1846. A historian even more than a politician, Bancroft wrote one of the first great histories of the U.S., the multi-volume History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent.