It’s the birthday
… of Maya Lin. The designer of the Vietnam Memorial is 50.
… of Bill Keane. The artist and creator of Family Circus is 87.
… of comedian Bill Dana, born William Szathmary 85 years ago today. He was once a famed Astronaut, José Jiménez.
… of Diane Cilento. Ms. Cilento received a supporting actress Oscar nomination for her performance in Tom Jones but NewMexiKen liked her best as the spicy, outspoken passenger in Hombre. She’s 76 today.
… of Edward P. Jones. The author of the Pulitizer Prize winning novel The Known World is 59. A great book.
“If you write a story today, and you get up tomorrow and start another story, all the expertise that you put into the first story doesn’t transfer over automatically to the second story. You’re always starting at the bottom of the mountain. So you’re always becoming a writer. You’re never really arriving.”
Edward P. Jones quoted by The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor
… of Karen Allen is 58.
… of Mario Lemieux, 44.
… of Grant Hill. The basketball player, high school classmate of Emily, official daughter of NewMexiKen, is 37.
… of Kate Winslet. The actress is 34. She’s been nominated for the best actress Oscar three times and the best supporting actress Oscar twice.
… of Ray Kroc, developer of the McDonald’s empire, who was born on October 5th in 1902.
But by 1941, “I felt it was time I was on my own,” Mr. Kroc once recalled, and he became the exclusive sales agent for a machine that could prepare five milkshakes at a time.
Then, in 1954, Mr. Kroc heard about Richard and Maurice McDonald, the owners of a fast-food emporium in San Bernadino, Calif., that was using several of his mixers. As a milkshake specialist, Mr. Kroc later explained, “I had to see what kind of an operation was making 40 at one time.”
…
Mr. Kroc talked to the McDonald brothers about opening franchise outlets patterned on their restaurant, which sold hamburgers for 15 cents, french fries for 10 cents and milkshakes for 20 cents.
Eventually, the McDonalds and Mr. Kroc worked out a deal whereby he was to give them a small percentage of the gross of his operation. In due course the first of Mr. Kroc’s restaurants was opened in Des Plaines, another Chicago suburb, long famous as the site of an annual Methodist encampment.
Business proved excellent, and Mr. Kroc soon set about opening other restaurants. The second and third, both in California, opened later in 1955; in five years there were 228, and in 1961 he bought out the McDonald brothers.
Source: Kroc obituary in 1984 from The New York Times
Chester A. Arthur, the 21st president, was born on October 5th in 1829. Arthur became president when Garfield was assassinated.
And it’s the birthday of NewMexiKen’s mother, born in Laredo, Texas, 82 years ago today. In the month before she died in 1974, Mom made some cuttings of a spider plant (Chlorophytum comosum). Those cuttings (and their descendants) still grow at Casa NewMexiKen more than 33 years later. I’m not sure what I believe about an afterlife, but I know what I believe about the spirit in those plants.
During the process of helping trim and repot said spider plant at CasaNewMexiKen quite a few years ago, one itsy-bitsy spider baby fell off. It was so tiny, it didn’t even have a root ball on it. At first I tossed it in the trash. Buddhist by nature, though, I couldn’t stand discarding any lifeform, no matter how small, so I rescued it from the trash, created a small terrarium for it with a half-liter water bottle, and took it home to Oregon on the airplane. (It must have been pre-2001 when you still could take liquids on the plane.) I rooted it in my kitchen window, and eventually I potted it. Since that time, I have propagated more babies from it than I can count, and no doubt they have all grown babies of their own. The now-very-large plant has moved with me from OR to WV to NE to AZ, in no less than 9 moves. An amazing spirit, indeed.