NewMexiKen

Today is not the birthday

… of Chris Noth. He hit the double-nickel yesterday.

But today is the birthday

… of Buckwheat Zydeco. He’s 62.

Contemporary zydeco’s most popular performer, accordionist Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural was the natural successor to the throne vacated by the death of his mentor Clifton Chenier; infusing his propulsive party music with strains of rock and R&B, his urbanized sound — complete with touches of synthesizer and trumpet — married traditional and contemporary zydeco with uncommon flair, in the process reaching a wider mainstream audience than any artist before him. (allmusic)

… of Prince Charles. He’s 61. I thought it was “ladies-in-waiting,” not princes-in-waiting.

… of Condoleezza Rice. She’s 55.

… of Yanni (Yawn-ee). He’s 55.

… of Laura San Giacomo. She’s 48.

Today is the birthday of Astrid Lindgren, born Astrid Ericsson in Sweden in 1907.

She’s the creator of Pippi Longstocking, a nine-year-old girl with no parents who lives in a red house at the edge of a Swedish village with her horse and her pet monkey, Mr. Nilsson. She has red pigtails, and she wears one black stocking and one brown, with black shoes twice as long as her feet. She eats whole chocolate cakes and sleeps with her feet on the pillow, and she’s the strongest girl in the world.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media (2006)

Composer Aaron Copland was born on November 14, 1900, in Brooklyn to Russian-Jewish immigrants.

In 1942, Copland began working with Martha Graham on Appalachian Spring, a ballet that eventually won the 1944 Pulitzer Prize in music. The Library of Congress’s Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation commissioned the work from Graham and Copland. Between July 1942 and July 1943, Graham sent three scripts to Copland. On receiving the third script, Copland wrote the music we know as Appalachian Spring.

Hearing the music, Graham revised the action yet again:

I have been working on your music. It is so beautiful and so wonderfully made. I have become obsessed by it. But I have also been doing a little cursing, too, as you probably did earlier over that not-so-good script. But what you did from that has made me change in many places. Naturally that will not do anything to the music, it is simply that the music made me change. It is so knit and of a completeness that it takes you into very strong hands and leads you into its own world. And there I am.

In the end, no script accompanied what Copland called “Ballet for Martha” and Graham retitled, Appalachian Spring. A splendid collaboration between American masters of music and dance, the ballet premiered at the Library of Congress’s Coolidge Auditorium in 1944.

Library of Congress

First Lady Mamie Eisenhower was born on this date in 1896. She died in 1979.

Joseph McCarthy was born on this date in 1908. Fortunately he died in 1957.

Claude Monet was born on this date in 1840. He died in 1926.

The term “impressionist” is derived from Monet’s painting Impression, soleil levant.

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Mary Travers, Mary of Peter, Paul & Mary, would have been 73 today.

Cardinals hall-of-fame pitcher Bob Gibson is 74.

Over 17 seasons with the Cardinals, Bob Gibson won 20 games five times and established himself as the very definition of intimidation, competitiveness, and dignity. One of the best athletes to ever play the game, the ex-Harlem Globetrotter posted a 1.12 ERA in 1968, the lowest figure since 1914, and was named the National League Cy Young Award winner and Most Valuable Player. Known as a premier big-game pitcher, Gibson posted World Series records of seven consecutive wins and 17 strikeouts in a game, and was named World Series MVP in 1964 and 1967.

National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum

The Incredible Hulk, Lou Ferrigno, is 58.

Benjamin Banneker was born on November 9, 1731, in Ellicott’s Mills, Maryland.

Largely self-taught, Banneker was one of the the first African Americans to gain distinction in science. His significant accomplishments and correspondence with prominent political figures profoundly influenced how African Americans were viewed during the Federal period.

Banneker spent most of his life on his family’s 100-acre farm outside Baltimore. There, he taught himself astronomy by watching the stars and learned advanced mathematics from borrowed textbooks. In 1752, Banneker garnered public acclaim by building a clock entirely out of wood. The clock, believed to be the first built in America, kept precise time for decades. Twenty years later, Banneker began making astronomical calculations that enabled him to successfully forecast a 1789 solar eclipse. His estimate, made well in advance of the celestial event, contradicted predictions of better-known mathematicians and astronomers.

Library of Congress

Gail Borden, the inventor of condensed milk, was born on this date in 1801. His timing was perfect. He patented the milk just before the civil war when it’s use as part of the field ration made it a success. Borden was also instrumental in requiring dairy farmers to maintain clean facilities if they wanted to sell their milk to his company — Eagle Brand.

The first of seven African-Americans to be nominated for a best actress Oscar, Dorothy Dandridge was born on this date in 1922. She was nominated for Carmen Jones in 1955.

And 70 years ago the Holocaust began:

Today is the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night in 1938 when Hitler ordered a series of supposedly spontaneous attacks on Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues. The idea was to make the attacks look random, and then accuse the Jews of inciting the violence. In all, more than 1,000 synagogues were burned or destroyed. Rioters looted about 7,500 Jewish businesses and vandalized Jewish hospitals, homes, schools, and cemeteries. The event was used to justify barring Jews from schools and most public places, and forcing them to adhere to new curfews. In the days following, thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps. The event was called Kristallnacht, which means, “Night of Broken Glass.” It’s generally considered the official beginning of the Holocaust. Before that night, the Nazis had killed people secretly and individually. After Kristallnacht, the Nazis felt free to persecute the Jews openly, because they knew no one would stop them.

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

Mike Nichols is 78 today. Nichols has been nominated for four best director Oscars, winning for “The Graduate.”

Sally Field is 63. Field has won two best actress Oscars (because the Academy really likes her); one for “Norma Rae” and the other for “Places in the Heart.”

Glenn Frey of The Eagles is 61.

Blues singer Rory Block is 60. So is jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval.

California’s first lady, Maria Shriver, is 54.

Ethan Hawke is 39. Hawke has been nominated for two Oscars, one for supporting actor, “Training Day,” and one for co-writing, “Before Sunset.” Hawke has also published novels, including The Hottest State and Ash Wednesday.

Thandie Newton is 37. Miss Newton’s mother is Zimbawbean, her father English.

James Jones was born on November 6th in 1921.

He’s best known as the author of the military novel From Here to Eternity (1951). At the urging of his father, he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1939. He was stationed in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He went on to fight in the battle of Guadalcanal, where he was wounded, earning the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star. He kept a journal while he was in the Army, and when he got home from the war, he wrote a novel about the experience of disillusioned veterans. It was rejected by all the major publishing houses, but the editor Maxwell Perkins liked a particular scene from the novel and told him to expand it. He spent five years expanding that scene, and it became the novel From Here to Eternity (1951), the story of a soldier’s life in the years leading up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The novel was a huge international best-seller, in part because Jones tried to portray military life as realistically as possible, using dirty language in the dialogue and describing soldiers’ reckless sex lives.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

New Yorker founder Harold Ross was born in Aspen, Colorado, on November 6, 1892.

Walter “Big Train” Johnson was born 122 years ago today. Johnson was one of the first five players elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame — along with Cobb, Ruth, Mathewson and Wagner.

There were no sophisticated measuring devices in the early 1900s, but Walter Johnson’s fastball was considered to be in a class by itself. Using a sweeping sidearm delivery, the Big Train fanned 3,508 over a brilliant 21-year career with the Washington Senators, and his 110 shutouts are more than any pitcher. Despite hurling for losing teams most of his career, he won 417 games – second only to Cy Young on the all-time list – and enjoyed 10 successive seasons of 20 or more victories.

National Baseball Hall of Fame

James Naismith was born on this date in 1861. He’s the guy that created basketball and for whom the basketball hall-of-fame is named — and basketball’s most prestigious trophies. Dr. James Naismith’s 13 Original Rules of Basketball.

John Philip Sousa was born on November 6, 1854.

Sousa said a march ‘should make a man with a wooden leg step out’, and his surely did. However, he was no mere maker of marches, but an exceptionally inventive composer of over two hundred works, including symphonic poems, suites, songs and operettas created for both orchestra and for band. John Philip Sousa personified the innocent energy of turn-of-the-century America and he represented America across the globe. His American tours first brought classical music to hundreds of towns.

Naxos.com

Abraham Lincoln was elected president on this date in 1860.