Category: Birthdays

Today is the birthday

… of Lee Iacocca. The former Ford executive and Chrysler chairman is 85.

… of Barry McGuire. The rock/folk singer is 74. His “Eve of Destruction” is even closer at hand.

… of Linda Lavin. Television’s “Alice” is 72.

… of Carole Penny Marshall. The actress turned director is 67.

… of Jim Palmer. The baseball hall-of-famer is 64. We don’t see him in those underwear ads as often anymore. Palmer won World Series games in three decades (1966, 1970 and 1971, 1983).

… of Richard Carpenter. Karen’s brother is 63.

… of Emeril Lagasse. The TV chef is 50.

… of Sarah Ferguson. She’s 50.

… of Dominic West, foremost of The Wire, 40.

The economist John Kenneth Galbraith was born 101 years ago today. Galbraith once wrote a speech for President Lyndon Johnson. Galbraith was a very prominent economist and not a speech writer, but he worked diligently on the draft and was impressed with what he produced. It was given to LBJ who, out of respect for the economist, told him personally what he thought. “Ken,” LBJ said. “Writing a speech is a lot like wetting your pants. What feels warm and comforting to you can just seem cold and sticky to everyone else.” Galbraith died in 2006.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. was born 92 years ago today. By the time of his death in 2006 Schlesinger had become a celebrity — a person known mostly for being well-known — but he was the winner of two Pulitizer Prizes in history — The Age of Jackson and A Thousand Days.

Before Schlesinger, historians thought of American democracy as the product of an almost mystical frontier or agrarian egalitarianism. The Age of Jackson toppled that interpretation by placing democracy’s origins firmly in the context of the founding generation’s ideas about the few and the many, and by seeing democracy’s expansion as an outcome of struggles between classes, not sections. More than any previous account, Schlesinger’s examined the activities and ideas of obscure, ordinary Americans, as well as towering political leaders. While he identified most of the key political events and changes of the era, Schlesinger also located the origins of modern liberal politics in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, and in their belief, as he wrote, that future challenges “will best be met by a society in which no single group is able to sacrifice democracy and liberty to its interests.”

Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln

Mario Puzo was born on October 15th in 1920. The Writer’s Almanac told us this in 2004:

[Puzo is] best known as the author of the novel The Godfather (1969), which was made into a movie in 1972. People had written novels and made movies about the mafia before, but the mafia characters had always been the villains. Puzo was the first person to write about members of the mafia as the sympathetic main characters of a story. The son of Italian immigrants, he started out trying to write serious literary fiction. He published two novels that barely sold any copies. He fell into debt, trying to support his family as a freelance writer. One Christmas Eve, he had a severe gall bladder attack and took a cab to the hospital. When he got out of the cab, he was in so much pain that he fell into the gutter. Lying there, he said to himself, “Here I am, a published writer, and I am dying like a dog.” He vowed that he would devote the rest of his writing life to becoming rich and famous. The Godfather became the best-selling novel of the 1970s, and many critics credit Puzo with inventing the mafia as a serious literary and cinematic subject. He went on to publish many other books, including The Sicilian (1984) and The Last Don (1996), but he always felt that his best book was the last book he wrote before he became a success – The Fortunate Pilgrim (1964), about an ordinary Italian immigrant family.

Puzo died in 1999.

Edith Bolling Galt Wilson was born on October 15, 1872. The 59-year-old president and widower Woodrow Wilson married the 43-year-old widow Mrs. Galt in 1915. (Michael Douglas was 51 and Annette Benning 37 when they played a fictional “first couple” in the 1995 film The American President.)

[President Wilson’s] health failed in September 1919; a stroke left him partly paralyzed. His constant attendant, Mrs. Wilson took over many routine duties and details of government. But she did not initiate programs or make major decisions, and she did not try to control the executive branch. She selected matters for her husband’s attention and let everything else go to the heads of departments or remain in abeyance. Her “stewardship,” she called this. And in My Memoir, published in 1939, she stated emphatically that her husband’s doctors had urged this course upon her.

The White House

Mrs. Wilson lived until 1961.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe during World War II and the 34th president of the United States, was born in Denison, Texas, on this date in 1890. His family moved to Abilene, Kansas, in 1892 and he graduated from Abilene High School in 1909.

Eisenhower attended the U.S. Military Academy, class of 1915, the class the stars fell on — of 164 graduates, 59 attained the rank of general, led by Eisenhower and Omar Bradley. Eisenhower never saw combat first hand during his 37 year army career.

Military leadership of the victorious Allied forces in Western Europe during World War II invested Dwight David Eisenhower with an immense popularity, almost amounting to devotion, that twice elected him President of the United States. His enormous political success was largely personal, for he was not basically a politician dealing in partisan issues and party maneuvers. What he possessed was a superb talent for gaining the respect and affection of the voters as the man suited to guide the nation through cold war confrontations with Soviet power around the world and to lead the country to domestic prosperity.

Eisenhower’s gift for inspiring confidence in himself perplexed some analysts because he was not a dashing battlefield general nor a masterly military tactician; apparently what counted most in his generalship also impressed the voters most: an ability to harmonize diverse groups and disparate personalities into a smoothly functioning coalition.

Obituary, The New York Times, 1969

Today is the birthday

… of John Wooden. The Wizard of Westwood is 99. Ten national championships in 12 years.

… of former surgeon general C. Everett Koop. Guess he knew what he was talking about because he’s 93 today.

… of Roger Moore. The oldest of the James Bonds is 82.

… of former Nixon White House Counsel and convicted multiple felon John Dean, 71 today.

… of Ralph Lauren. The founder of Polo is 70.

… of the judge of Night Court, Harry Anderson, who is 57 today.

… of Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks. She’s 35.

… of Usher. He’s 31.

Edward Estlin Cummings was born October 14, 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We know him as e.e. cummings.

In his verse, Cummings tended to substitute verbs for nouns, he used patently eccentric punctuation, and he disregarded norms of capitalization. But despite unconventional style, he wrote about traditional themes, stuff like love and nature.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

my girl’s tall with hard long eyes
as she stands, with her long hard hands keeping
silence on her dress, good for sleeping
is her long hard body filled with surprise
like a white shocking wire, when she smiles
a hard long smile it sometimes makes
gaily go clean through me tickling aches,
and the weak noise of her eyes easily files
my impatience to an edge–my girl’s tall
and taut, with thin legs just like a vine
that’s spent all of its life on a garden-wall,
and is going to die. When we grimly go to bed
with these legs she begins to heave and twine
about me, and to kiss my face and head.

This Kenneth is the third in a line of four Kenneths. The first Kenneth, my eponymous grandfather, was born on this date in 1899.

Sweetie Sofie is six today, a Colorado girl with a seasoning of northern California. That’s her above with her Daddy at the Maroon Bells in August. Below we see Sofie in the art room at school and, on the right, with Coco, her first real puppy. Coco is a Tibetan Terrier; I’m thinking Coco will soon pass Snuggle Puppy as number one.

Today is the birthday

… of Borat. Sacha Baron Cohen is 38. “At first, Kazakh censors wouldn’t let me release this movie because of anti-Semitism. But then they decided that there was just enough.”

… of Margaret Thatcher, 84.

… of Melinda Dillon. That’s the mom in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. She’s 70. Dillon was nominated for the best supporting actress Oscar for that role and for her part in Absence of Malice.

… of Paul Simon. He’s “Still Crazy After All These Years” at 68.

Paul Simon is among the most erudite and daring songsmiths in popular music. After the breakup of Simon and Garfunkel in 1970, Simon embarked on a fruitful solo career that’s been notable for lyrical acuity, impeccable musicianship and stylistic daring. While Simon and Garfunkel worked largely (but not exclusively) in the folk idiom, Simon the solo artist has roamed wherever his muse has taken him – and that has literally meant around the world. His is not so much a conventional career in music as an odyssey of discovery using “intuitive flashes, synaptic leaps and shorthand logic” (in Simon’s own words) to help him on his way.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

… of Demond Wilson. Sanford’s son is 63.

… of Sammy Hagar, 62.

However, Van Halen bounced back strong following Roth’s departure. The group recruited Sammy Hagar, who sang and played guitar. Hagar had started out with the hard-rock group Montrose and had a highly successful solo career. He fit well with Van Halen, with whom he was more personally compatible than his predecessor. In fact, the newly harmonious group scored its first Number One album with 5150, on which Hagar handles lead vocals.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

… of Marie Osmond. She’s 50!

… of Jerry Rice. He’s 47.

… of Kate Walsh, 42. And yes, that’s her in the Cadillac ads. “The real question is, when you turn your car on, does it return the favor?”

… of skater Nancy Kerrigan. She’s 40.

The woman known as Molly Pitcher was born on October 13, 1754.

An Artillery wife, Mary Hays McCauly (better known as Molly Pitcher) shared the rigors of Valley Forge with her husband, William Hays. Her actions during the battle of Monmouth on June 28, 1778 became legendary. That day at Monmouth was as hot as Valley Forge was cold. Someone had to cool the hot guns and bathe parched throats with water.

Across that bullet-swept ground, a striped skirt fluttered. Mary Hays McCauly was earning her nickname “Molly Pitcher” by bringing pitcher after pitcher of cool spring water to the exhausted and thirsty men. She also tended to the wounded and once, heaving a crippled Continental soldier up on her strong young back, carried him out of reach of hard-charging Britishers. On her next trip with water, she found her artilleryman husband back with the guns again, replacing a casualty. While she watched, Hays fell wounded. The piece, its crew too depleted to serve it, was about to be withdrawn. Without hesitation, Molly stepped forward and took the rammer staff from her fallen husband’s hands. For the second time on an American battlefield, a woman manned a gun. (The first was Margaret Corbin during the defense of Fort Washington in 1776.) Resolutely, she stayed at her post in the face of heavy enemy fire, ably acting as a matross (gunner).

For her heroic role, General Washington himself issued her a warrant as a noncommissioned officer. Thereafter, she was widely hailed as “Sergeant Molly.” A flagstaff and cannon stand at her gravesite at Carlisle, Pennsylvania. A sculpture on the battle monument commemorates her courageous deed.

Fort Sill History

Art Tatum was born on October 13th in 1909.

It’s hard to summon enough superlatives for Tatum’s piano playing: his harmonic invention, his technical virtuosity, his rhythmic daring. The great stride pianist Fats Waller famously announced one night when Tatum walked into the club where Waller was playing, “I only play the piano, but tonight God is in the house.”

NPR : Art Tatum

Leonard Alfred Schneider was born on this date in 1925. We know him as Lenny Bruce.

On April 1, 1964, four New York City vice squad officers attended Bruce’s performance at the Cafe Au Go Go in Greenwich Village. The officers arrested Bruce and owner Howard Solomon following Bruce’s 10:00 P.M. show. Assistant District Attorney Richard Kuh presented a grand jury with a typed partial script of Bruce’s performance including references to Jackie Kennedy trying to “save her ass” after her husband’s assassination, Eleanor Roosevelt’s “nice tits,” sexual intimacy with a chicken, “pissing in the sink,” the Lone Ranger sodomizing Tonto, and St. Paul giving up “fucking” for Lent. The jury indicted Bruce on the obscenity charge. The trial before a three-judge court in New York City that followed stands as a remarkable moment in the history of free speech. Both the prosecution and defense presented parades of well-known witnesses to either denounce Bruce’s performance as the worst sort of gutter humor or celebrate it as a powerful and insightful social commentary. Among the witnesses testifying in support of Bruce were What’s My Line? panelist Dorothy Kilgallen, sociologist Herbert Gans, and cartoonist Jules Feiffer. In the end, the censors won. Voting 2 to 1, the court found Bruce guilty of violating New York’s obscenity laws and sentenced him to “four months in the workhouse.”

Famous Trials: The Lenny Bruce Trial

Bruce died of a drug overdose in 1966.

Hugh Jackman is 41 today.

Comedian, activist Dick Gregory is 77.

Mike Wallace’s son Chris is 62.

Martha Elenor Erwin is 40. That’s Martie Maguire of the Dixie Chicks (with her sister Emily Erwin Robison and Natalie Maines).

Luciano Pavarotti was born on October 13, 1935. He died in 2007.

John Lennon should have been 69-years-old today.

Jackson Browne is 61, Robert Wuhl is 58. Tony Shalhoub is 56. Guillermo del Toro is 45. Annika Sorenstam is 39. (I saw what may have been her yacht in Michigan. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, she’s rich.)

Time marches on.

Today Crocodile Dundee, Paul Hogan, is 70; Jesse Jackson 68; Chevy Chase 66; Sigourney Weaver 60; and Stephanie Zimbalist 53. Even Matt Damon is 39.

Author R.L. Stine is 66.

When someone asked him how he first knew that Goosebumps was going to be a big success, he said: “I was in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, driving to a bookstore for a book signing. I remember I was stuck in a huge traffic jam and I was really worried I would be late and was growing more and more annoyed at all the traffic. When we finally approached the bookstore, I realized that the traffic jam was caused by all the people who were coming to see me.” For several years in a row in the 1990s, he was voted not just the best-selling children’s author in the country, but the best-selling author. He has written more than 100 books and sold more than 400 million copies.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Frank Herbert, author of Dune, was born on this date in 1920. He died in 1986.

Eddie Rickenbacker was born on this date in 1890.

Edward Vernon Rickenbacker was a man whose delight in turning the tables on seemingly hopeless odds took him to the top in three distinct fields.

In the daredevil pre-World War I days of automobile racing he became one of this country’s leading drivers, although he had a profound dislike for taking unnecessary risks. He had entered the auto industry as a trainee mechanic and made his first mark servicing the cranky machines of that day.

In World War I he became the nation’s “Ace of Aces” as a military aviator despite the fact that he had joined the Army as a sergeant-driver on Gen. John J. Pershing’s staff.

He was named by Gen. William Mitchell to be chief engineering officer of the fledgling Army Air Corps. His transfer to actual combat flying–in which he shot down 22 German planes and four observation balloons–was complicated not only by his being two years over the pilot age limit of 25, but also because he was neither a college man nor a “gentleman” such as then made up the aristocratic fighter squadrons of the air service.

In the highly competitive airline business, Mr. Rickenbacker was the first man to prove that airlines could be made profitable, and then the first to prove that they could be run without a Government subsidy and kept profitable.

New York Times

Seems like he might have been the last man to prove that airlines could be made profitable too.

Mary Badham is 57 today. You know her as Jean Louise ‘Scout’ Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. She was nine going-on 10 when they made the film and she received a best supporting actress Oscar nomination. Badham has just five other film and TV credits.

Yo-Yo Ma is 54.

Simon Cowell is 50.

Sherman Alexie was born 43 years ago today on the Spokane Indian Reservation.

He has written many novels, books of poetry, short stories, and screenplays, including The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993), Reservation Blues (1995), and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (2007). His most recent books are Face, a book of poems published earlier this year, and War Dances, a book of short stories that just came out this week.

He wrote, “He loved her, of course, but better than that, he chose her, day after day. Choice: that was the thing.”

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

Alexie’s books and stories are good stuff, and the movie Alexie adapted from Lone Ranger and Tonto, Smoke Signals, is delightful.

Desmond Tutu is 78.

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.

It’s the birthday

… of Gothic author Anne Rice, 68. She is said to have sold 100 million books.

… of Susan Sarandon. The five-time nominee for best actress (she won for Dead Man Walking) is 63 today.

… of Alicia Silverstone, probably not as clueless at 33.

John Charles Carter was born on October 4, 1923. As Charlton Heston he won the best actor Oscar for Ben-Hur (1959), his only nomination.

It’s the birthday of Buster Keaton, born on this date in 1895.

Buster Keaton is considered one of the greatest comic actors of all time. His influence on physical comedy is rivaled only by Charlie Chaplin. Like many of the great actors of the silent era, Keaton’s work was cast into near obscurity for many years. Only toward the end of his life was there a renewed interest in his films. An acrobatically skillful and psychologically insightful actor, Keaton made dozens of short films and fourteen major silent features, attesting to one of the most talented and innovative artists of his time. …

It was this “stone face,” however, that came to represent a sense of optimism and everlasting inquisitiveness.

In films such as THE NAVIGATOR (1924), THE GENERAL (1926), AND THE CAMERAMAN (1928), Keaton portrayed characters whose physical abilities seemed completely contingent on their surroundings. Considered one of the greatest acrobatic actors, Keaton could step on or off a moving train with the smoothness of getting out of bed. Often at odds with the physical world, his ability to naively adapt brought a melancholy sweetness to the films.

American Masters | PBS

Frederic Remington was born on October 4th in 1861.

With his dynamic representations of cowboys and cavalrymen, bronco busters and braves, 19th-century artist Frederic Remington created a mythic image of the American West that continues to inspire America today. His technical ability to reproduce the physical beauty of the Western landscape made him a sought-after illustrator, but it was his insight into the heroic nature of American settlers that made him great. This painter, sculptor, author, and illustrator, who was so often identified with the American West, surprisingly spent most of his life in the East. More than anything, in fact, it was Remington’s connection with the eastern fantasy of the West, and not a true knowledge of its history and people, that his admirers responded to.

American Masters | PBS

Photo of sculpture from Amon Carter Museum.

And it’s the birthday of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, 19th President of the United States. Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, on this date in 1822.

As the Library of Congress tells it:

Rutherford B. Hayes became…president in 1877 after a bitterly-contested election against Democrat Samuel J. Tilden of New York. Tilden won the popular vote, but disputed electoral ballots from four states prompted Congress to create a special electoral commission to decide the election’s result. The fifteen-man commission of congressmen and Supreme Court justices, eight of whom were Republicans, voted along party lines deciding the election in Hayes’s favor.

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.

National Baseball Hall of Fame

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.

National Baseball Hall of Fame

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.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media (2007)

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.

The New York Times

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.

Mahatma Gandhi was born on October 2nd in 1869. Groucho Marx was born on October 2nd in 1890. Coincidence? I think not.

Maury Wills is 77 today. Wills stole 104 bases in 1962 to break Ty Cobb’s 47-year-old record. So far, that hasn’t been enough to get him into the Hall of Fame.

Don McLean is 64.

A long, long time ago…
I can still remember
How that music used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those people dance
And, maybe, they’d be happy for a while.

But February made me shiver
With every paper I’d deliver.
Bad news on the doorstep;
I couldn’t take one more step.

I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride,
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died.

Photographer Annie Leibovitz is 60.

Gordon Sumner is 58. You know? Sting.

You’ll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
You’ll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we walk in the fields of gold

So she took her love
For to gaze awhile
Upon the fields of barley
In his arms she fell as her hair came down
Among the fields of gold

Will you stay with me, will you be my love
Among the fields of barley
We’ll forget the sun in his jealous sky
As we lie in the fields of gold

Lorraine Bracco is 55.

Gillian Welch is 42.

Elvis Presley Blues

Ruination Day Pt. 2 [links open iTunes]

Graham Greene was born on October 2nd in 1904.

Graham Greene realized early in his writing career that if he wrote just 500 words a day, he would have written several million words in just a few decades. So he developed a routine of writing for exactly two hours every day, and he was so strict about stopping after exactly two hours that he often stopped writing in the middle of a sentence. And at that pace, he managed to publish 26 novels, as well as numerous short stories, plays, screenplays, memoirs, and travel books. He said, “We are all of us resigned to death: it’s life we aren’t resigned to.”

The Writer’s Almanac (2007)

Bud Abbott was born on this date in 1897. He was the thin one of Abbott and Costello.

… is the birthday

… of Bonnie Parker, the Bonnie of Bonnie and Clyde, born on this date in 1910. She died 23 years and 7⅔ months later.

… of Jimmy Carter. The 39th President is 85 today.

… of Tom Bosley. Richie Cunningham’s father is 82.

… of Julie Andrews. Mary Poppins is 74. Ms. Andrews won the Best Actress Oscar for Mary Poppins; she was nominated for The Sound of Music and Victor/Victoria. Of course, her claim to fame really was as Eliza Doolittle in the stage version of My Fair Lady.

… of Rod Carew. The baseball hall of fame player is 64.

Rod Carew lined, chopped and bunted his way to 3,053 career hits. His seven batting titles are surpassed only by Ty Cobb, Tony Gwynn and Honus Wagner, and equaled only by Rogers Hornsby and Stan Musial. He used a variety of relaxed, crouched batting stances to hit over .300 in 15 consecutive seasons with the Twins and Angels, achieving a .328 lifetime average. He was honored as American League Rookie of the Year in 1967, won the league MVP 10 years later and was named to 18 straight All-Star teams. He remains a national hero in Panama.

National Baseball Hall of Fame

… of Tim O’Brien. The novelist is 63. O’Brien is the author of Going After Cacciato, winner of the 1979 National Book Award in fiction, and The Things They Carried, which was named by The New York Times as one of the ten best books of 1990, received the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award in fiction, and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In the Lake of the Woods was named by Time as the best novel of 1994. The book also received the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians and was selected as one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times.

… of Randy Quaid, 59.

… of Mark McGwire, 46.

Vladimir Horowitz was born on this date in 1903.

Vladimir Horowitz, the eccentric virtuoso of the piano whose extraordinary personality and skill overwhelmed six decades of concert audiences, died suddenly early yesterday afternoon [November 5, 1989] at his home in Manhattan, apparently of a heart attack. Though standard biographies list his birth date as Oct. 1, 1904, Mr. Horowitz recently celebrated what he called his 86th birthday.

Held in awe by aficionados of the instrument, Mr. Horowitz virtually cornered the market on celebrity among 20th-century pianists. His presence hovered over several generations of pianists who followed him.

The New York Times

The actor Stanley Holloway was born on October 1, 1890. Holloway is known foremost as Alfred P. Doolittle in the stage and film productions of My Fair Lady. He was nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar for the role and he was the only lead actor to do his own singing. This story was found at Wikipedia:

Holloway appeared with Rex Harrison in the stage production of “My Fair Lady”. Harrison had a reputation for being very abrupt with his fans. One night after a performance of the show, Holloway and Harrison left by the stage door. It was late, cold and pouring rain and there was an old woman standing alone outside the door. When she saw Harrison, she asked him for his autograph. He told her to “Sod off”, and she was so enraged at this that she rolled up her program and hit Harrison with it. Holloway congratulated him on not only making theater history, but, for the first time in world history, “the fan has hit the shit.”

Goodness gracious, great balls of fire, Jerry Lee Lewis is 74 today.

Jerry Lee Lewis is the wild man of rock and roll, embodying its most reckless and high-spirited impulses. On such piano-pounding rockers from the late Fifties as “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Great Balls of Fire,” Lewis combined a ferocious, boogie-style instrumental style with rowdy, uninhibited vocals.
. . .

Through a life marked by controversy and personal tragedy, Lewis has remained a defiant and indefatigable figure who refuses to be contained by politesse or pigeonholes. As he declared from the stage of the Grand Ole Opry in 1973, “I am a rock and rollin’, country & western, rhythm & blues singing [expletive deleted]!”

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Ian McShane is 67. Big party at the Gem. (McShane played that c***s**k** Al Swearengen on Deadwood.)

Bryant Gumbel is 61.

Gwen Ifill — interruption here for non sequitur question — is 54.

Gene Autry was born in Tioga, Texas, on this date 102 years ago today. The following is from the biography at the Official Website for Gene Autry:

Discovered by humorist Will Rogers, in 1929 Autry was billed as “Oklahoma’s Yodeling Cowboy” at KVOO in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He gained a popular following, a recording contract with Columbia Records in 1929, and soon after, performed on the “National Barn Dance” for radio station WLS in Chicago. Autry first appeared on screen in 1934 and up to 1953 popularized the musical Western and starred in 93 feature films. In 1940 theater exhibitors of America voted Autry the fourth biggest box office attraction, behind Mickey Rooney, Clark Gable, and Spencer Tracy.

Autry made 635 recordings, including more than 300 songs written or co-written by him. His records sold more than 100 million copies and he has more than a dozen gold and platinum records, including the first record ever certified gold [That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine]. His Christmas and children’s records Here Comes Santa Claus and Peter Cottontail are among his platinum recordings. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the second all-time best selling Christmas single, boasts in excess of 30 million in sales.

… Autry’s great love for baseball prompted him to acquire the American League California Angels in 1961. Active in Major League Baseball, Autry held the title of Vice President of the American League until his death [1998].

… Autry is the only entertainer to have five stars on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, one each for radio, records, movies, television, and live performance including rodeo and theater appearances.

Autry’s Melody Ranch radio show aired from 1940 to 1956. His television program from 1950 through 1955 (91 episodes), and long after in syndication.

Enrico Fermi was born in Rome 108 years ago today.

More than any other man of his time, Enrico Fermi could properly be named “the father of the atomic bomb.”

It was his epoch-making experiments at the University of Rome in 1934 that led directly to the discovery of uranium fission, the basic principle underlying the atomic bomb as well as the atomic power plant. And eight years later, on Dec. 2, 1942, he was the leader of that famous team of scientists who lighted the first atomic fire on earth, on that gloomy squash court underneath the west stands of the University of Chicago’s abandoned football stadium.

That day has been officially recognized as the birthday of the atomic age. Man at last had succeeded in operating an atomic furnace, the energy of which came from the vast cosmic reservoir supplying the sun and the stars with their radiant heat and light–the nucleus of the atoms of which the material universe is constituted.

Enrico Fermi was the chief architect of that atomic furnace, which he named “pile,” but has since become better known as a nuclear reactor, the technical name for an atomic power plant.

Enrico Fermi Dead at 53 — New York Times

And, according to many sources, Miguel de Cervantes may have been born on this date in 1547.

In 2002, one hundred writers polled overwhelmingly chose Don Quixote as the World’s Best Work of Fiction. Votes for Cervantes’ novel came from Salman Rushdie, John le Carré, Milan Kundera, Nadine Gordimer, Carlos Fuentes, and Norman Mailer.

Dostoyevsky wrote in his diary that Don Quixote was “the saddest book ever written … the story of disillusionment.” American novelist William Faulkner reportedly read Don Quixote every year.
. . .

When Edith Grossman published her translation of Don Quixote in October 2003, it was hailed as the “most transparent and least impeded among more than a dozen English translations going back to the 17th century.”

Grossman has translated many living Latin American authors, and has done every one of Gabriel García Márquez’s books since Love in the Time of Cholera. When García Márquez learned that Grossman was translating Cervantes, he joked to her: “I hear you’re two-timing me with Miguel.”

The Writer’s Almanac

Actor William Windom is 86. Windom continues his career; IMDb lists nearly 250 credits for him. He was the congressman in The Farmer’s Daughter and Dr. Seth Hazlitt on Murder She Wrote. IMDb says Windom’s kindergarten teacher was Margaret Hamilton.

Comic actor Arnold Stang is 84. Stang was a comic foil — a “second banana” — for Cantor, Benny, Allen, Berle, etc.

Brigitte Bardot is 75.

Ben K. King — “Stand by Me,” “Spanish Harlem” — is 71.

Jeffrey Jones is 63. Ed Rooney, Ferris’s nemesis. And great as A.W. Merrick, the gasbag newspaperman, on Deadwood.

Two-time Oscar nominee for writing, John Sayles is 59. He was nominated for Passion Fish and Lone Star.

Sylvia Kristel, Emmanuelle, is 57. Kristel and Ian MacShane (Deadwood’s Al Swearengen) were a couple once upon a time.

Oscar winner Mira Sorvino is 42. She won the best supporting actress award for Mighty Aphrodite.

The Valley Girl, Moon Unit Zappa is 42.

Oscar nominee Naomi Watts is 41. She was nominated for best actress in a leading role for 21 Grams.

Oscar winner for best actor, Peter Finch was born on this date in 1916. Finch won for Network, the first posthumous winner. Finch was also nominated for the best acting Oscar for Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Three time Oscar nominee for best actor, Marcello Mastroianni was born on this date in 1924. Mastroianni died in 1996.

Ed Sullivan was born on this date in 1901. This from his Times obituary in 1974.

Ed Sullivan, a rock-faced Irishman with a hot temper, painful shyness and a disdain for phonies, had been a successful and well-known part of the Broadway scene since the Twenties.

But writing a gossip column, shuttling about the fringes of the entertainment world and being master of ceremonies for a succession of variety shows never gave him what he wanted most out of life–national recognition.

He didn’t achieve that until he moved into the whirlwind world of television in 1948, and his weekly show became an essential part of Sunday evening for millions of Americans.

Between 45,000,000 and 50,000,000 persons tuned in every week to watch the show–a vaudeville-like parade of top talent that cost $8,000,000 a year to produce and for which Mr. Sullivan received $164,000 a year.

The show was worth every penny of that to its sponsors, Lincoln-Mercury automobile dealers, who made Mr. Sullivan their salesman in chief through numerous trips around the country. And he was the proudest possession of the Columbia Broadcasting System, which found he could outdraw almost any competition from the other networks.

The basis of his appeal was an ephemeral thing that baffled those who tried to analyze it. He was not witty, he had no formal talents, he could not consciously entertain anyone. He was bashful, clumsy, self-conscious, forgetful and tongue-tied. And there were times he was painfully, excruciatingly sentimental.

William S. Paley was born on that same day in 1901. This from The Museum of Broadcast Communications:

Paley’s insights helped to define commercial network operations. At the start of his CBS stewardship, he transformed the network’s financial relationship with its affiliates so that the latter agreed to carry sustaining programs free, receiving network payments only for commercially-supported programs. Paley enjoyed socializing and negotiating with broadcast stars. In the late 1940s, his “talent raids” hired top radio stars (chiefly away from NBC) by offering huge prices for rights to their programs and giving them, in return, lucrative capital gains tax options. The talent pool thus developed helped to boost CBS radio ratings just as network television was beginning. At the same time, he encouraged development of CBS News before and during the war as it developed a stable of stars soon headed by Edward R. Murrow.
. . .

Paley is important for having assembled the brilliant team that built and expanded the CBS “Tiffany Network” image over several decades. For many years he had an innate programming touch which helped keep the network on top in annual ratings wars. He blew hot and cold on network news, helping to found and develop it, but willing to cast much of that work aside to avoid controversy or to increase profits. Like many founders, however, he stayed too long and unwittingly helped weaken his company.

Paley was very active in New York art and social circles throughout his life. He was a key figure in the Museum of Modern Art from its founding in 1929.

It is said Paley kept a pair of shoes in his office desk drawer so he could put his feet up on his desk and the soles had never touched anything but carpet. He was that fastidious.

The cartoonist Al Capp, creator of Li’l Abner, was born 100 years ago today.

Seymour Cray, the developer of the super-computer was born in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, on this date in 1925.

The first Cray-1™ system was installed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1976 for $8.8 million. It boasted a world-record speed of 160 million floating-point operations per second (160 megaflops) and an 8 megabyte (1 million word) main memory.

Cray Inc.

Eight whole megabytes of main memory.

Cray died 1996, the result of injuries from a collision on I-25 at North Academy Boulevard near Colorado Springs.

It’s the birthday of

… Jayne Meadows, Steve Allen’s widow. She’s 89. It was her sister Audrey Meadows that played Ralph Kramden’s wife Alice on The Jackie Gleason Show.

… Arthur Penn, 87. The director was nominated for three best direction Oscars, but never won. The three were The Miracle Worker, Bonnie and Clyde, and Alice’s Restaurant.

… Wilford Brimley. He’s 75 today. Wilford, you’ve got to cut out the old man commercials. I thought you were at least 10 years older. (Brimley was 53-54 when he played the old guy in Cocoon.)

… Baseball Hall-of-Famer Mike Schmidt. He’s 60. NewMexiKen had to admire Schmidt when, during an interview, he said he “would have” used steroids if they were around when he played — whatever it took. Wrong, but refreshing candor.

… Gwyneth Paltrow. She’s 37.

… Avril Lavigne, 25.

William Conrad, one of the great voices of radio, was born on this date in 1920.

Conrad estimated that he appeared in over 7,500 roles on radio. He was regularly heard inviting listeners to “get away from it all” on CBS’ Escape. Conrad’s other radio credits include appearances on The Damon Runyon Theater, The Lux Radio Theater, Nightbeat, Fibber McGee and Molly and Suspense. For “The Wax Works,” a 1956 episode of Suspense, Conrad demonstrated his versatility by performing all the roles.

Conrad’s longest-running role was that of U.S. marshal Matt Dillon on the groundbreaking radio western Gunsmoke, which aired on CBS radio from 1952 to 1961.

When the golden age of radio was over, Conrad could be heard delivering the urgent narration for Jay Ward’s classic Bullwinkle Show. He later starred on the television series Cannon and Jake and the Fatman.

Radio Hall of Fame

Samuel Adams Beers are named for Sam Adams the brewer of beer and revolution, who was born on this date in 1722.

[Adams] was a failed businessman and a not-very-effective tax collector when the British passed the Sugar Act of 1764, and Adams finally found his purpose in life. He was one of the first members of the colonies to speak out against taxation without representation and one of the first people to argue for the colonies’ independence from Great Britain. He had a genius for agitating people. He organized riots and wrote propaganda, describing the British as murderers and slave drivers. He went on to become one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and participated in the Continental Congress. It was Samuel Adams, who said, “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”

The Writer’s Almanac (2007)

Jonathan Chapman, born in Massachusetts on September 26, 1775, came to be known as “Johnny Appleseed.” Chapman earned his nickname because he planted small orchards and individual apple trees across 100,000 square miles of Midwestern wilderness and prairie.
…

Chapman, sometimes referred to as an American St. Francis of Assisi, was an ambulant man. As a member of the first New-Church (Swedenborgian), his work resembled that of a missionary. Each year he traveled hundreds of miles on foot, wearing clothing made from sacks, and carrying a cooking pot which he is said to have worn like a cap. His travels took him through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois and Indiana.

Library of Congress

But here’s what makes Johnny Appleseed interesting:

MICHAEL POLLAN: It turns out Johnny Appleseed, John Chapman, was a real historical figure who played a very important role in the frontier in the Northwest territory. And I also found out that the version of Johnny Appleseed I learned in kindergarten was completely wrong, had been Disney-fied, cleaned up and made very benign. He’s a much more interesting character. The way I figured this out was I learned this one botanical fact about apples, which is, if you plant the seeds of an apple, like a red delicious or a golden delicious, the offspring will look nothing like the parent, will be a completely different variety and will be inedible. You cannot eat apples planted from seeds. They must be grafted, cloned.

GWEN IFILL: And they’re not American fruit.

MICHAEL POLLAN: They’re not, no. I learned it comes from Kazakhstan and has made its way here and changed a lot along the way. And so the fact that Johnny Appleseed was planting apples from seed, which he insisted on– he thought grafting was wicked– meant they were not edible apples, and it meant they were for hard cider because you can use any kind of apple for making cider. Really, what Johnny Appleseed was doing and the reason he was welcome in every cabin in Ohio and Indiana was he was bringing the gift of alcohol to the frontier. He was our American Dionysus.

Online NewsHour interview for Pollan’s Botany of Desire, June 29, 2001

… of Barbara Walters. She’s 80. Damn, that’s old enough to be on 60 Minutes.

… of SecDef Robert Gates. He’s 66.

… of Michael Douglas. He’s 65. And of Mrs. Douglas. Catherine Zeta-Jones is 40 today.

… of Cheryl Tiegs. She’s 62.

… Anson Williams of “Happy Days.” He’s 60.

… of Mark Hamill. Luke is 58.

… of Heather Locklear. She’s 48.

… of Scottie Pippen. He’s 44.

… of Will Smith. The Man-in-Black is 41.

… of Matt Hasselbeck, 34. Hasselbeck’s broken rib probably cost me a loss in Fantasy Football last weekend.

The Shakespeare of sportswriters was born on this date 104 years ago. That’s Red Smith. Here he is on the 1951 World Series (after the Giants’ miraculous playoff win to be there):

Magic and sorcery and incantation and spells had taken the Giants to the championship of the National League and put them into the World Series … But you don’t beat the Yankees with a witch’s broomstick. Not the Yankees, when there’s hard money to be won.

And on sports fans:

I’ve always had the notion that people go to spectator sports to have fun and then they grab the paper to read about it and have fun again.

And: “Writing is easy. All you have to do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein.”

William Faulkner was born on this date 112 years ago.

He liked to get up early, eat a breakfast of eggs and broiled steak and lots of coffee, and then take his tobacco and pipe and go to his study. He took off the doorknob and carried it inside with him. There he wrote his novels by hand on large sheets of paper, and then typed them out with two fingers on an old Underwood portable. He was prolific this way — in a four-year span, he published some of his best novels: Sartoris (1929), The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), Sanctuary (1931), and Light in August (1932). In 1949, he won the Nobel Prize in literature.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor (There’s more.)

Shel Silverstein was born on September 25th in 1930. He died in 1999. Glenn Gould was born on September 25th in 1932. He died in 1982.

It’s the birthday of John Coltrane (1926), Ray Charles (1930) and Bruce Springsteen (1949).

It ought to be a damn holiday.

Not to mention, four-time Oscar nominee Mickey Rooney is 89, Julio Iglesias is 66, Emmy winner Mary Kay Place is 62, and seven-time Emmy nominee Jason Alexander is 50.

Further, many-time winner of an ALMA Award, Elizabeth Pena is 48. I liked her best in Lone Star.

And Melanie Oudin is 18.

---

Trane.

“My music,” John Coltrane said, “is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being…” The grandson of ministers, he began his career in the blues clubs of Philadelphia, and throughout his career combined the sacred and the secular in the intense, earnest sound of his saxophone. His musical sermons, by turns somber and ecstatic, radiated his undying faith in music’s power to heal.

Coltrane fell under the spell of Charlie Parker at age 18 and dedicated himself to a practice regime that sometimes found him asleep, fingers still ghosting the keys. He first gained fame as a member of Miles Davis’s classic quintet in 1955, worked with Thelonious Monk, then took the lessons he’d learned from those masters and became a leader in his own right — and the most admired, most influential and most adventurous saxophonist of the 1960s.

“There is never any end,” Coltrane said. “There are always new sounds to imagine; new feelings to get at. And always, there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that … we can give … the best of what we are.” (Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame)

The Genius.

Many musicians possess elements of genius, but only one — the great Ray Charles — so completely embodies the term that it’s been bestowed upon him as a nickname. Charles displayed his genius by combining elements of gospel and blues into a fervid, exuberant style that would come to be known as soul music. While recording for Atlantic Records during the Fifties, the innovative singer, pianist and bandleader broke down the barriers between sacred and secular music. The gospel sound he’d heard growing up in the church found its way into the music he made as an adult. In his own words, he fostered “a crossover between gospel music and the rhythm patterns of the blues.” But he didn’t stop there: over the decades, elements of country & western and big-band jazz have infused his music as well. He is as complete and well-rounded a musical talent as this century has produced. (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)

The Boss.

Bruce Springsteen ranks alongside such rock and roll figureheads as Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Bob Dylan. Just as those artists shaped popular music, Springsteen served as a pivotal figure in its evolution with his rise to prominence in the mid-Seventies. Early on, he was touted as one of several heirs to Bob Dylan’s mantle. All of these would-be “new Dylans”-who also included Loudon Wainwright, John Prine and Elliott Murphy-rose above the hype, but Springsteen soared highest, catapulting himself to fame on the unrestrained energy of his live shows, the evocative power of his songwriting, and the direct connection he forged with his listeners.

Springsteen lifted rock and roll from its early Seventies doldrums, providing continuity and renewal at a point when it was sorely in need of both. During a decade in which disco, glam-rock, heavy-metal and arena-rock provided different forms of escape into fantasy, Springsteen restored a note of urgency and realism to the rock and roll landscape. (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)

In the day we sweat it out on the streets of a runaway American dream
At night we ride through the mansions of glory in suicide machines
Sprung from cages out on highway 9,
Chrome wheeled, fuel injected,and steppin’ out over the line
Oh-Oh, Baby this town rips the bones from your back
It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we’re young
‘Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run

Caesar Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, was born on this date in 63 BCE.

Lewis and Clark arrived back in St. Louis from their saunter to the Pacific on September 23, 1806.

Tommy Lasorda, the former Dodgers manager, is 82 today.

Former University of Arizona basketball coach Lute Olson is 75.

Harry’s daughter Shari is 56 and Pat’s daughter Debby is 53. Belafonte and Boone, respectively.

Joan Jett is 51.

I saw him dancin’ there by the record machine
I knew he must a been about seventeen
The beat was goin’ strong
Playin’ my favorite song
An’ I could tell it wouldn’t be long
Till he was with me, yeah me, singin’

I love rock n’ roll
So put another dime in the jukebox, baby
I love rock n’ roll
So come an’ take your time an’ dance with me

Chachi is 48. That’s Scott Baio.

Ronaldo Luiz Nazario de Lima, the Brazilian football star, is 33.

John Houseman was born on this date in 1902. This from the Times obituary when Houseman died in 1988:

John Houseman, who spent more than half a century in the theater as an influential producer and director but who did not achieve fame until, at the age of 71, he portrayed a crusty law school professor in the film ”The Paper Chase” and its subsequent television series, died of spinal cancer yesterday at his home in Malibu, Calif. He was 86 years old and despite his failing health had been working on various projects until three days ago.

Professor Kingsfield, the role he played in ”The Paper Chase,” led to another well-known part, that of a haughty spokesman for a brokerage house in its television commercials, delivering the lines: ”They make money the old-fashioned way. They earn it.”

Houseman won a supporting actor Oscar for his portrayal of Professor Kingsfield.

Nathan Hale was hanged by the British as a spy on this date in 1776. Hale was in fact spying on the British for General Washington — he had volunteered for the duty.

A statue of Nathan Hale is located between the [CIA] Auditorium and the Original Headquarters Building. Hale was the first American executed for spying for his country. This statue is a copy of the original work created in 1914 for Yale University, Nathan Hale’s alma mater. The Agency’s statue was erected on the grounds in 1973, 200 years after his graduation from Yale.

There is no known portrait of Nathan Hale; this life-size statue portrays what little written description there is of him. The statue captures the spirit of the moment before his execution – a 21-year-old man prepared to meet his death for honor and country, hands and feet bound, face resolute, and his eyes on the horizon. His last words, “I regret that I have but one life to lose for my country,” circle the base around his feet.

He stands vigilant guard on the Agency and is a continuing reminder to its employees of the duties and sacrifices of an intelligence officer.

Central Intelligence Agency

No really, it’s OK. Take the day off. I insist.

If anyone asks, tell them you are celebrating with NewMexiKen’s brother John.

He’s having one of those really, really major birthdays today!

Happy birthday, John. We’ll all be over later with cake and ice cream.

But not candles. The fire danger is too great.

Here’s John, official baby brother of NewMexiKen, on the left, and Lee, aka SnoLepard, official middle brother of NewMexiKen. This was taken a few years ago.

Larry Hagman, who dreamt of Jeannie before moving to Dallas, is 78 today.

Leonard Cohen is 75.

Bill Murray is 59. Nominated for an Oscar for Lost in Translation, NewMexiKen still thinks Murray’s best effort was as Phil Connors in Groundhog Day.

Faith Hill is 42.

Owen and Andrew Wilson’s brother Luke is 38 today.

September 21st is an important date in fantasy literature. Stephen King is 62 today. He was born on H.G. Wells’ birthday (1866-1946) and on the 10th anniversary of the publication of J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit (1937). The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media had a little about each of the three in 2007.

413 years ago today (1596) Spain named Juan de Oñate governor of the colony of New Mexico. 223 years ago today (1784) the nation’s first daily newspaper, the Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser, began publication. The Library of Congress has a little more about each.

Anne Meara is 80 today. She’s been married to Jerry Stiller 55 years. Miss Meara was last seen in Sex and the City: The Movie. And Anne Meara is the mom of Amy and Ben Stiller.

Sophia Loren is 75. Miss Loren was nominated twice for the best actress Oscar, winning in 1962 for La ciociara. The film was called Two Women in the U.S.

Hockey hall-of-famer Guy LaFleur is 58.

Rick Nelson’s twin sons Gunnar and Matthew are 42 today. Their dad was 45 when he died in a plane crash.

Author and political activist Upton Sinclair was born on September 20th in 1878.

“The American People will take Socialism, but they won’t take the label.” — Upton Sinclair (1951)