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September 20th
Anne Meara is 81 today. She’s been married to Jerry Stiller 56 years. They were a comedy team in the 1960s. Miss Meara was last seen in Sex and the City: The Movie. She’s the mom of Amy and Ben Stiller.
Sophia Loren is 76. 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 59.
Rick Nelson’s twin sons Gunnar and Matthew are 43 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.
Land of the free, mostly
The Congress of the United States abolished the slave trade in the District of Columbia on this date in 1850 as part of the so-called Compromise of 1850.
Slavery itself continued in the capital of the United States until April 1862.
Close Encounter
Been outside at midnight lately? There’s something you really need to see. Jupiter is approaching Earth for the closest encounter between the two planets in more than a decade–and it is dazzling.
The night of closest approach is Sept. 20-21st. This is also called “the night of opposition” because Jupiter will be opposite the sun, rising at sunset and soaring overhead at midnight. Among all denizens of the midnight sky, only the Moon itself will be brighter.
It’s the closest we’ll be to Jupiter (or Jupiter to us if you prefer) until 2022. Don’t miss it — and take the kids. Kids remember things like this. You don’t have to wait until midnight. Look east after sunset; higher in the sky as the night progresses.
Thanks to Ah, Wilderness! for the link and the reminder.
UPDATE: Jupiter is really quite brilliant, even with moonlight filling the sky.
Hypothetical update
The hypothetical cake problem has been half solved.
September 19th
In addition to Aidan turning seven …
Bill Medley is 70 today. Medley was the Righteous Brother with the deep voice. It was he who sang the opening verse in the great, great classic “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’.” It was the late Bobby Hatfield, the tenor, who generally took the lead on Righteous Brother songs.
Hall of Fame ballplayers Duke Snider and Joe Morgan were born on this date — Snider is 84, Morgan 67. When I think of Morgan I think of an interview during a World Series in the early 1970s. Howard Cossell asked Morgan, “What does it feel like to know you are the best person in the world at what you do?”
Unfortunately for Joe — and us — he’s not the best person in the world at what he does now, which is comment during baseball broadcasts.
A graceful center fielder with a picture-perfect swing, Duke Snider was the biggest bat in the Brooklyn Dodgers’ potent lineup of the 1950s. He hit 40 or more homers five consecutive times and led all batters in home runs and RBIs during the ’50s. The Duke of Flatbush hit four homers in two different World Series (1952 and ’55), clouting a total of 11 Series home runs and 26 Series RBIs.
A fierce competitor renowned for his baseball smarts, Joe Morgan could single-handedly beat opposing teams with his multifaceted skills. A two-time National League MVP in 1975 and ’76, he was a terror on the basepaths, topping the 40-steal plateau nine times during his career. His skilled batting eye enabled him to lead the National League in on-base percentage and walks four times each. Morgan also packed considerable power into his compact frame, hitting 449 doubles and 268 home runs.
Roger Angell, the wonderful writer known foremost for his essays on baseball in The New Yorker — at which he too has often been the best in the world at what he did — is 90 today.
And [Angell] said: “The stuff about the connection between baseball and American life, the Field of Dreams thing, gives me a pain. I hated that movie. It’s mostly fake. You look back into the meaning of old-time baseball, and really in the early days it was full of roughnecks and drunks. They beat up the umpires and played near saloons. In Field of Dreams there’s a line at the end that says the game of baseball was good when America was good, and they’re talking about the time of the biggest race riots in the country and Prohibition. What is that? That dreaminess, I really hated that.”
Adam West, TV’s Batman, is 80. David McCallum, Man from U.N.C.L.E’s Illya Kuryakin and NCIS’s Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard, is 77. Randolph Mantooth of Emergency is 65.
Trisha Yearwood is 46.
Ellen Naomi Cohen was born on September 19th in 1941. Raised in Baltimore and Alexandria, Virginia, we came to know her as Cass Elliot. (Cohen attended the same Alexandria high school as Jim Morrison, Scott McKenzie and John Phillips, George Washington High School. GWHS became a middle school when Alexandria integrated its schools and TC Williams High School was opened — you know, the Titans, remember them?)
The first thing you noticed about Cass was her face. It was an amazing face: fast and funny and beautiful. She was a big, eat the world, pass the bourbon, soft kind of woman who came to New York to make it on Broadway, but to quote Cass: “There wasn’t much call for a three hundred pound ingenue”, and when Barbara Streisand started showing up at the same auditions, Cass started singing the blues.
[W]e’re all just lying around vegging out watching TV and discussing names for the group. “The New Journeymen” was not a handle that was going to hang on this outfit. John was pushing for “The Magic Cyrcle”. Eech, but none of us could come up with anything better, then we switch the channel and, hey, it’s the Hell’s Angels on this talk show . . .
And the first thing we hear is: “Now hold on there, Hoss. Some people call our women cheap, but we just call them our Mamas.” Cass jumped up: “Yeah ! I want to be a Mama.” And Michelle is going: “We’re the Mamas! We’re the Mamas!” OK. I look at John. He’s looking at me going : “The Papas ?” Problem solved. A toast ! To The Mamas and The Papas. Well, after many, many toasts …
Above two quotes from Denny Doherty, Dream A Little Dream.
Mama Casa died in 1974. Keith Moon of The Who died in the same flat four years later.
(Been listening to Mama Cass sing while writing this. She was a wonderful singer. Try Dream a Little Dream of Me.)
The Mary Tyler Show debuted on this date 40 years ago.
213 years ago today (1777) Continental soldiers under General Horatio Gates defeated the British at Saratoga, New York. A second battle was fought at Saratoga on October 17, 1777. American victory in the battles turned the war in the colonists favor and helped persuade the French to recognize American independence and provide military assistance.
Today’s Photo
Aidan is 7 today. His mom took this photo at Virginia Beach last month — Aidan frolicking in, as he calls it, the “sea.”
Happy Birthday, Aidan!
You think you have it bad?
How’d you like to have been Jesus’s brother James?
How many times do you think he heard his mother say “Why can’t you be more like your brother?”
Seasonal update
In case you want to synchronize your calendars — the equinox isn’t until the 22nd, Wednesday at 9:09 PM MDT. That’s the fall equinox in the northern hemisphere; spring in the southern.
His Last Pass
Against arch-rival Jasper, the work paid off. Garrett dropped back to pass and in the words of his head coach Dan Hooks, a 72-year-old East Texas coaching legend with over 250 career wins, “just threw a perfect post-corner route for a touchdown. It was a beautiful pass.”
The crowd of 6,500 exulted. Garrett’s second touchdown pass of the game, midway through the second quarter, put his team up 21-0. Hooks remembers locking eyes with his quarterback as Garrett ran off the field. “He was smiling, the biggest smile you’d ever seen, just happy at what he’d done,” Hooks told FanHouse on Saturday
As Coach Hooks, a 48-year coaching veteran who has been head coach at West Orange-Stark for the past 30 years, turned to ensure that his special teams were ready to attempt the extra point, Garrett collapsed on the sideline.
“It happened so quick none of us knew what to think,” Hooks said.
The 17-year-old quarterback died at the hospital before the game was over.
September 18th
Robert Blake is 77 today.
James Gandolfini is 49.
Frankie Avalon is 70. (Annette will be 68 next month.)
Coach Rick Pitino is 58.
Baseball hall-of-famer Ryne Sandberg is 51.
Dazzling defensive flair and a tremendous knack for power enabled Ryne Sandberg to join the list of greats at second base. As the National League’s Most Valuable Player in 1984, Sandberg led the Chicago Cubs to their first postseason appearance since 1945. His amazing range and strong, accurate throwing arm, led to nine consecutive Gold Glove Awards at the keystone position, and helped him pace NL second basemen in assists seven times, and in fielding average and total chances four times each. With the bat, Sandberg launched 282 career home runs, and in 1990 he become the first second baseman since Rogers Hornsby in 1922 to hit 40 homers in a single-season.
Jada Pinkett Smith is 39.
Lance Armstrong is 39 today, too.
Greta Garbo was born on September 18, 1905. This is from her New York Times obituary in 1990:
The finest element in a Garbo film was Garbo. She invariably played a disillusioned woman of the world who falls hopelessly and giddily in love. Tragedy is often imminent, and her tarnished-lady roles usually required her to die or otherwise give up her lover. No one could suffer like Garbo.
Mysterious and aloof, she appealed to both men and women, and she exerted a major influence on women’s fashions, hair styles and makeup. On screen and off, she was a remote figure of loveliness.
Garbo’s career spanned only 19 years. In 1941, at the age of 36, she made the last of her 27 movies, a slight comedy called ”Two Faced Woman.” She went into what was to be temporary retirement, but she never returned to the screen.
Actor Jack Warden was born on this date in 1920. Warden was nominated twice for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar — for Shampoo and Heaven Can Wait. NewMexiKen liked him best as juror # 7 in 12 Angry Men.
Eighty years ago today the Columbia Phonograph Broadcasting System went on the air with 16 stations. 27-year-old William S. Paley bought it a week later, dropped Phonograph from the name, and the rest, as they say, is history.
The first edition of The New York Times was published on September 18, 1851.
President George Washington laid the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol on September 18 in 1793.
Hypothetical
Let’s just suppose someone buys a cake from a bakery — and let’s just suppose it’s a pineapple upside down cake. And let’s further suppose that the person buying the pineapple upside down cake lives by himself, and expects no company this week or next.
Then (1) what portion of the cake would be appropriate for me — I mean that person — to eat? And (2) what time frame would be acceptable for eating that portion?
Mexico’s Bicentennial
This week, Mexico commemorated the 200th anniversary of the beginning of its War of Independence. In September of 1810, a Mexican priest named Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla uttered a call to arms against the Spanish, later known as the Grito de Dolores (“Cry of Dolores”). Soon after began a series of battles with the Spanish that would build into a war that lasted over a decade, eventually resulting in independence. This bicentennial year, tens of thousands of Mexicans thronged the streets of Mexico City to celebrate. The celebrations took place under a somewhat subdued light though, amid the violence of a brutal nationwide drug war and vocal criticism of government spending on the lavish ceremonies. Collected here are photos of this week’s celebration of 200 years of Mexican independence. (42 photos total)
Best line for this date
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Constitutional Convention, September 17, 1787
Today’s Painting
Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States by Howard Chandler Christy (1940). The original is in the House of Representatives Wing of the U.S. Capitol. 39 of the 55 delegates are pictured — but not the three who did not sign or the 13 who had left the convention. Washington is standing; Franklin seated, turned to face us; Hamilton is directly behind Franklin; Madison is seated to Franklin’s left. The person credited with writing the preamble, Gouverneur Morris, is standing behind and just a little to the left of Hamilton, facing us.
Click image for a much larger version.
September 17th really should be a national holiday
… because it’s the birthday of the Constitution and Hank Williams. And also these folks.
Football hall-of-fame inductee George Blanda is 83 today. I’m surprised he doesn’t suit up. Blanda played his last game on January 4, 1976, the 1975 AFC Championship. He was 48.
Retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter is 71.
Coach Phil Jackson is 65. Lots of good people born in 1945 (and we are not Baby Boomers, we are War Babies).
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark is 59. That’s Cassandra Peterson.
Rita Rudner is 57. Some Rudner-isms:
- “Before I met my husband, I’d never fallen in love. I’d stepped in it a few times.”
- “I got kicked out of ballet class because I pulled a groin muscle. It wasn’t mine.”
- “I know I want to have children while my parents are still young enough to take care of them.”
- “I love to shop after a bad relationship. I don’t know. I buy a new outfit and it makes me feel better. It just does. Sometimes I see a really great outfit, I’ll break up with someone on purpose.”
- “We’ve begun to long for the pitter-patter of little feet — so we bought a dog. Well, it’s cheaper, and you get more feet.”
Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, was born on September 17, 1935. The Writer’s Almanac had a good little essay a few years ago that you could just go read. It begins:
Ken Kesey … was born on this day in La Junta, Colorado (1935). He was a champion wrestler in high school and voted most likely to succeed. He married his high school sweetheart and almost went to Hollywood to be an actor and then accepted a fellowship in creative writing at Stanford, where, as part of a VA experiment, for $75 a day, which was good money, he became one of the first Americans to be exposed to a new drug called LSD.
Maureen Connolly was born on this date in 1934. Connolly was the first woman to win the tennis grand slam (1953). She died of cancer at age 34.
The 15th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Warren Burger, was born 103 years ago today.
William Carlos Williams was born on this date in 1883. Williams was a physician and poet.
He thought that poetry shouldn’t be full of fancy allusions and abstract ideas, and that there should be “no ideas but in things.” His poems were inspired by the townspeople of Rutherford, especially his patients. A lot of his patients didn’t even know that their hardworking doctor — who delivered more than 2,000 babies — spent his nights and weekends writing poems. Those poems were published in books that include Spring and All (1923), Pictures from Brueghel and Other Poems (1962), and the epic five-volume poem Paterson (1946, 1948, 1949, 1951, 1958) about Paterson, New Jersey, the nearest city to his hometown of Rutherford.
The Writer’s Almanac (2008)
David Dunbar Buick was born on September 17th in 1854. Didn’t know Buick was someone’s name, did you?
Takin’ it to the streets (but only the crosswalks)
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The National Mall — October 30, 2010
I’ll be there. You?
Seriously, why do we have holidays for Columbus and Washington, but none for Hank Williams?
Hiram Williams was born on this date 87 years ago. We know him as Hank. Arguably he is one of the two or three most important individuals in American music history. Hank Williams is an inductee of both the Country Music (the first inductee) and Rock and Roll (its second year) halls of fame.
Entering local talent talent contests soon after moving to Montgomery in 1937, Hank had served a ten-year apprenticeship by the time he scored his first hit, “Move It on Over,” in 1947. He was twenty-three then, and twenty-five when the success of “Lovesick Blues” (a minstrel era song he did not write) earned him an invitation to join the preeminent radio barndance, Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry. His star rose rapidly. He wrote songs compulsively, and his producer/music publisher, Fred Rose, helped him isolate and refine those that held promise. The result was an unbroken string of hits that included “Honky Tonkin’,” “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Mansion on the Hill,” “Cold, Cold Heart,” “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You),” “Honky Tonk Blues,” “Jambalaya,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” and “You Win Again.” He was a recording artist for six years, and, during that time, recorded just 66 songs under his own name (together with a few more as part of a husband-and-wife act, Hank & Audrey, and a more still under his moralistic alter ego, Luke the Drifter). Of the 66 songs recorded under his own name, an astonishing 37 were hits. More than once, he cut three songs that became standards in one afternoon.
The words and music of Hank Williams echo across the decades with a timelessness that transcends genre. He brought country music into the modern era, and his influence spilled over into the folk and rock arenas as well. Artists ranging from Gram Parsons and John Fogerty (who recorded an entire album of Williams’ songs after leaving Creedence Clearwater Revival) to the Georgia Satellites and Uncle Tupelo have adapted elements of Williams’ persona, especially the aura of emotional forthrightness and bruised idealism communicated in his songs. Some of Williams’ more upbeat country and blues-flavored numbers, on the other hand, anticipated the playful abandon of rockabilly.
Hank Williams’s legend has long overtaken the rather frail and painfully introverted man who spawned it. Almost singlehandedly, Williams set the agenda for contemporary country songcraft, but his appeal rests as much in the myth that even now surrounds his short life. His is the standard by which success is measured in country music on every level, even self-destruction.
Again from American Masters:
It all fell apart remarkably quickly. Hank Williams grew disillusioned with success, and the unending travel compounded his back problem. A spinal operation in December 1951 only worsened the condition. Career pressures and almost ceaseless pain led to recurrent bouts of alcoholism. He missed an increasing number of showdates, frustrating those who attempted to manage or help him. His wife, Audrey, ordered him out of their house in January 1952, and he was dismissed from the Grand Ole Opry in August that year for failing to appear on Opry-sponsored showdates. Returning to Shreveport, Louisiana, where he’d been an up-and-coming star in 1948, he took a second wife, Billie Jean Jones, and hired a bogus doctor who compounded his already serious physical problems with potentially lethal drugs.
Hank Williams died in the back seat of his Cadillac. He was found and declared dead on New Year’s Day 1953. He was 29.
Yes, that is June Carter in the video.
Line for this date
“Of all the days on all the fields where American soldiers have fought, the most terrible by almost any measure was September 17, 1862. The battle waged on that date, close by Antietam Creek at Sharpsburg in western Maryland, took a human toll never exceeded on any other single day in the nation’s history. So intense and sustained was the violence, a man recalled, that for a moment in his mind’s eye the very landscape around him turned red.”
Stephen W. Sears, Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam
There were 22,720 casualties that day, about a third of them dead or dying.
Headline of the day
The World University Rankings 2010
From the Times of London, Top 200.
Our rankings of the top universities across the globe employ 13 separate performance indicators designed to capture the full range of university activities, from teaching to research to knowledge transfer. These 13 elements are brought together into five headline categories, which are:
- Teaching — the learning environment (worth 30 per cent of the overall ranking score)
- Research — volume, income and reputation (worth 30 per cent)
- Citations — research influence (worth 32.5 per cent)
- Industry income — innovation (worth 2.5 per cent)
- International mix — staff and students (worth 5 per cent).
72 are in the United States.
Today’s Photo
Italy, taken by astronaut Douglas H. Wheelock aboard the International Space Station on August 22. One the 30 photos from space at The Big Picture – Boston.com.
Did you know?
I think I knew this somewhere deep in the recesses of an old and ossifying brain, but it only re-dawned on me today.
Roma is the term we use now for what were called Gypsies when I was a kid.
(The term Gypsy probably originated with the Greek word for Egyptian, though the Roma/Romani/Gypsies most likely came from India into Europe 1000± years ago.)
Good acting or cheating or both, you decide
And come to think of it, why did the ball hitting a wooden bat ping like that?
BTW the Rays fielded the ball and Jeter was out at first (unless it brushed his hip, then it was a foul ball).
But the umpire got it wrong and Jeter was given first — and scored. (He’s batting just .262.)
Best line of the day
“[T]he new, empowered Tea Party Republicans preach their national agenda, which seems to involve not spending federal money on anything George Washington didn’t personally shop for.”
Go read at least the last line.