NewMexiKen

It’s the birthday

… of Maya Lin. The designer of the Vietnam Memorial is 51.

… of Bill Keane. The artist and creator of Family Circus is 88.

… of comedian Bill Dana, born William Szathmary 86 years ago today. He was once a famed astronaut, José Jiménez.

… of Steve Miller. Miller was encouraged as a child by family friend Les Paul. Fly Like and Eagle today Steve, you’re 67.

… of Edward P. Jones. The author of the Pulitizer Prize winning novel The Known World is 59. A great book.

… 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 (with Paul Newman in photo). Diane Cilento was married to Sean Connery 1962-1973. She’s 77 today.

… of Karen Allen, 59.

… of Michael Andretti, 48.

… of Mario Lemieux, 45.

… of Grant Hill. The basketball player and high school classmate of Emily, official daughter of NewMexiKen, is 38.

… of Kate Winslet. The actress is 35. She’s been nominated for the best leading actress Oscar four times and the best supporting actress Oscar twice. She won for The Reader in 2009.

… 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 my mother, born in Laredo, Texas, 85 years ago today. Dad always called Mom “Peter Pan,” never wanting to grow up. And she didn’t; she died at 48. I wonder what she’d be like as an octogenarian.

It’s the birthday

… of Sam Huff. He’s 76.

… of Gothic author Anne Rice, 69. She is said to have sold 100 million books.

[B]orn Howard Allen O’Brien in New Orleans (1941). Her parents were Irish Catholics, and also free spirits, and they thought it would be great fun to name their daughter after her father, whose name was Howard. But she hated it so much that she changed her name to Anne when she was in first grade.

Anne was one of four girls, and she said that they were all a little weird, grew up isolated and strange like the Brontë sisters. They created fantasy worlds and made up horror stories together, and they liked to wander through cemeteries for fun. And while they walked through the streets of New Orleans, past falling-down mansions, their mom would tell them stories of horrible things that had happened inside. Even though Anne was fascinated by ghosts and violence, she was also a devout Catholic, so devout that she wanted to be a nun for a while. But when she was 14, her mother died from alcoholism, and her dad moved the family to Texas. Here Anne became a normal teenager, had friends, and edited her school’s paper. She gave up Catholicism, inspired by the defiance of 1960s counterculture. She went to college and ended up marrying her high school sweetheart.

Excerpt from The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

… of Susan Sarandon. The five-time nominee for best actress (she won for Dead Man Walking) is 64 today.

… of Alicia Silverstone, probably not as clueless at 34.

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

Damon Runyan, the author of Guys and Dolls, from which the movie came, was born on October 4th in 1880. “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong — but that is the way to bet.” The Writer’s Almanac has more.

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 85 today.

Steve Reich is 74. 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.”

Ernest Evans is 69; 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

Senator Jeff Bingaman is 67 today.

Roy is 66.

Siegfried & Roy met in 1957. Siegfried took a job on an ocean liner, first working as a steward. Roy got a job on the same ship as a waiter. While working one night, Roy heard people applauding and looked over to see Siegfried on a makeshift stage, taking a rabbit out of a hat. The two young men became friends and Roy began to serve as Siegfried’s assistant.

One night Siegfried asked Roy what he thought of the show. Roy got up the nerve to tell Siegfried that he found the magic a little too predictable. Astounded at Roy’s candor, especially considering he was five years Siegfried’s junior, Siegfried asked him how the show might be made better. “If you can make a rabbit and a dove appear and disappear, can you do the same with a cheetah?” Roy inquired. “In magic, anything is possible,” Siegfried responded.

As fate would have it, Roy had smuggled Chico the cheetah onboard, liberating him from the zoo. So Siegfried & Roy began to develop the magic that would become their trademark. Though the next five years were tough, traveling around Europe, playing small, unsophisticated clubs for little pay, they refused to become discouraged. Instead they focused on their magic and presentation.

A Magical Partnership

Lindsey Buckingham is 61.

Keb’ Mo’ is 59.

Dave Winfield is 59.

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 6-foot-6, 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.

Baseball Hall of Fame

Dennis Eckersley is 56.

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 1988-93, in which he struck out 458 while walking just 51.

Baseball Hall of Fame

Al Sharpton is 56.

Janel Moloney of The West Wing is 41.

Gwen Stefani is 41, 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.)

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.

John Ross was born on October 3, 1790.

John Ross, a man with the legend touch, walked tall upon the earth and cast a long shadow.  He set a precedent in democratic political history that will never be broken.  By free ballot, he was elected to ten successive terms of four years each as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.

He died in office as chief executive of a government fashioned after that of the United States of America.
Intellectually, he was the greatest chief in the history of the Cherokee people.

. . .

John Ross stood so high in the eyes of his people that they called him Guwisguwi, the name of a rare migratory bird of large size and white or grayish plumage that had one time appeared at long intervals in the old Cherokee country.

He was only one-eighth Cherokee and seven-eighths Scot.  He was as much a Scotsman as his great opponent, Andrew Jackson, and fought just as tenaciously.  But he was forever Cherokee-minded.

Georgia Tribe of Eastern Cherokee

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 78 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 65.

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 61.

In 1980 Rolling Stone sent Leibovitz to photograph John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who had recently released their album “Double Fantasy.” For the portrait Leibovitz imagined that the two would pose together nude. Lennon disrobed, but Ono refused to take off her pants. Leibovitz “was kinda disappointed,” according to Rolling Stone, and so she told Ono to leave her clothes on. “We took one Polaroid,” said Leibovitz, “and the three of us knew it was profound right away.” The resulting portrait shows Lennon nude and curled around a fully clothed Ono. Several hours later, Lennon was shot dead in front of his apartment. The photograph ran on the cover of the Rolling Stone Lennon commemorative issue. In 2005 the American Society of Magazine Editors named it the best magazine cover from the past 40 years.

Annie Leibovitz – Life Through A Lens | American Masters

Gordon Sumner is 59. You know? Sting.

Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I’ll be watching you

Every single day
Every word you say
Every game you play
Every night you stay
I’ll be watching you

O can’t you see
You belong to me
How my poor heart aches with every step you take

Lorraine Bracco is 56.

Gillian Welch is 43.

And the great barge sank.
And the Okies fled.
And the great emancipater
took a bullet in the head.

in the head…
took a bullet in the back of the head.

It was not December.
Was not in May.
Was the 14th of April.
That is ruination day.

That’s the day…
The day that is ruination day.

Graham Greene was born on October 2nd in 1904.

He had bipolar disorder, and he once told his wife, Vivien, that it gave him “a character profoundly antagonistic to ordinary domestic life” and that “unfortunately, the disease is also one’s material.” He attempted suicide several times as a teenager. When he was 16, he had a nervous breakdown and became a patient of one of Freud’s students. He fell in love with his therapist’s wife.

He joined the Communist Party in 1925 for six weeks, and the next year he converted to Catholicism so that his girlfriend would marry him. He also converted because, he said, “I had to find a religion … to measure my evil against.” In one of his novels, he wrote: “I believe there’s a God — I believe the whole bag of tricks; there’s nothing I don’t believe; they could subdivide the Trinity into a dozen parts and I’d believe.” He became known as a “Catholic novelist,” though didn’t himself like the label.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

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