February 1st is the birthday

Don Everly and Garret Morris (of “Saturday Night Live”) are 70 today. Sherman Hemsley (of “The Jeffersons”) is 69.

Lisa Marie Presley is 39.

Four-time Oscar winner for best director John Ford was born on this date.

It’s the birthday of American movie director John Ford, born Sean Aloysius O’Fearna, in Cape Elizabeth, Maine (1895), the youngest of 13 children. He made more than 120 films, most of them Westerns. On the sets of his movies he wore old khaki pants, tennis shoes with holes in the toes, a worn-out fedora, and a dirty scarf around his neck. He always had poor eyesight. He started wearing an eye patch like a pirate after he went blind in one eye. He usually worked with a glass of brandy in his hand and was always smoking a cigar. (The Writer’s Almanac)

Clark Gable was born on this date in 1901. He won the Best Actor award in 1935 for It Happened One Night. He was nominated for Best Actor for Mutiny of the Bounty and Gone With the Wind.

Langston Hughes was born on this date in 1902. This from his obituary in 1967.

Mr. Hughes was sometimes characterized as the “O. Henry of Harlem.” He was an extremely versatile and productive author who was particularly well known for his folksy humor.

In a description of himself written for “Twentieth Century Authors, a biographical dictionary, Mr. Hughes wrote:

“My chief literary influences have been Paul Laurence Dunbar, Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman. My favorite public figures include Jimmy Durante, Marlene Dietrich, Mary McLeod Bethune, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Marian Anderson and Henry Armstrong.”

“I live in Harlem, New York City,” his autobiographical sketch continued. “I am unmarried. I like ‘Tristan,’ goat’s milk, short novels, lyric poems, heat, simple folk, boats and bullfights; I dislike ‘Aida,’ parsnips, long novels, narrative poems, cold, pretentious folk, buses and bridges.”

The New York Times

Best line of a cold day, so far

“I believe in the Church of Baseball. I’ve tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I’ve worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance. . . .”

Annie Savoy

Pitchers and catchers begin reporting in two weeks.

More Molly Ivins

From her final column:

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war.

Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we’re for them and are trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush’s proposed surge.

If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, “Stop it, now.”

Thanks to Avelino for the idea.

January 31st is the birthday

Ernie Banks plaque… of Carol Channing. Broadway’s Dolly Gallagher Levi is 86.

… of Norman Mailer. He’s 84. Here’s what NewMexiKen posted before on Mailer’s birthday.

… of Jean Simmons. The actress (The Robe, Spartacus, Elmer Gantry) is 78. Miss Simmons was twice nominated for an Oscar; Hamlet (supporting) and The Happy Ending (leading).

… of Ernie Banks. The baseball hall-of-famer is 76. Let’s play two.

… of composer Philip Glass. He’s 70.

Nolan Ryan plaqueAs is, Suzanne Pleshette, Emily on the ”The Bob Newhart Show” and Annie (the teacher) in The Birds.

… of Nolan Ryan. The baseball hall-of-famer is 60.

Minnie Driver is 37. Justin Timberlake is 26.

Thomas Merton was born on this date in 1915. Here’s a previous entry for Merton.

And Pearl Zane Grey, the first American millionaire author, was born on this date in 1872. Here’s a previous entry on Grey.

Best paragraph of the day, so far

[President Bush] concluded with the traditional (since Reagan) introduction of model citizens up in the gallery, including Julie Aigner-Clark, the founder (with her husband, a generous donor to Republican campaigns) of the Baby Einstein Company. The President did not explain how Aigner-Clark, whose business sells “developmental” videos for infants, which the American Academy of Pediatrics has dismissed as at best valueless, exemplifies what he called “the heroic kindness, courage, and self-sacrifice of the American people.” Maybe it was just another Bush SOTU puzzler, like last year’s warning against “human-animal hybrids.” (To be fair, America remains proudly centaur-free.)

Hendrik Hertzberg, The New Yorker

Star gazing update

NewMexiKen’s readers, especially Tom and SnoLepard, have just about seen everybody famous ever. SnoLepard spotting Tonya Harding at K-Mart still takes the honors of what seeing celebrities outside their natural habitat is all about. (Tonya Harding’s natural habitat would, after all, be the skating rink, the court room or the boxing ring.)

32 comments and counting, a NewMexiKen record. And Jill and Emily, the originators of this idea, are traveling. We haven’t even heard from them yet.

How about you. What famous persons have you seen?

For NewMexiKen’s part, I’ve seen Santa Claus many, many times.

Credit where credit is due

Took my Verizon Motorola cell phone to a Verizon store today. The connection for the charger had failed and I couldn’t get the battery to charge, wiggle the connector as I might (and I tried four different chargers). It was irksome because I am just seven weeks from a new free phone.

So I was pleasantly surprised when they replaced my 20-month-old phone with a nice new phone, albeit a refurb. No charge. Didn’t want me to have to buy a phone now and miss out on my freebie, she said.

Thanks Verizon. I guess Verizon never does stop working for us.

(Lost my ringtones, though.)

Woods, Federer share pursuit of history

“He’ll text me and say he won over there,” Woods told ESPN on Sunday night after winning his seventh consecutive PGA Tour event, hours after Federer finished ripping through the field without losing a set to win the Australian Open, his 10th major championship. “Now, I’ve got to text him and say we’re all even.”

Seemingly locked in step as they stake their claims as the greatest to play their sports, neither a flamboyant personality but each a stylish competitor, Woods and Federer are chasing records that once seemed unattainable.

Woods’ seven-tournament PGA Tour winning streak is the longest in 62 years, since Byron Nelson won 11 in a row in 1945.

With four more Grand Slam titles, Federer would tie the record owned by Pete Sampras, who told ESPN last week that Federer surely will supplant him.

Los Angeles Times

Are Children Sounding the Global-Warming Alarm?

Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner wonders.

How did this happen? How has such a sweeping, complex, controversial issue become such a pressing concern — not overnight, certainly, but very rapidly as of late?

One theory came to mind the other day when I was looking over a list of the most profitable worldwide movie releases of 2006. No. 1 on the list was Ice Age 2: The Meltdown, an animated — and apocalyptic — kids’ movie, which took in just over $1 billion at the box office. And as you can see here, the animated kids’ movie Happy Feet has also been huge, with over $350 million worldwide, and counting. While Happy Feet isn’t quite about global warming, it is about mankind’s disastrous overreach into nature. (In order to appreciate the reach of these kids’ movies, consider that Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, a global warming jeremiad, has done $42 million worldwide, a huge figure for a documentary but a drop in the bucket compared to the animated blockbusters.)

We all know how influential kids can be. Newspaper editors and TV producers and even politicians have kids, and when those kids start obsessing about something, it’s amazing how fast the parents do, too. Just look at anti-smoking education in the U.S. My kids are so thoroughly indoctrinated against smoking that if they see someone in an old movie smoking a cigarette, they look at me, horrified, as if they’ve just seen someone slit a puppy’s throat. Similarly, I wonder if children may have been the ones who were scared straight about global warming — and have gone nipping at their parents’ heels.

Of course, then, it wouldn’t be children sounding the alarm but producers of animated films sounding it. Whatever, just so someone is.

Jefferson: ‘I cannot live without books.’

It was on this day in 1815 that the U.S. Congress accepted Thomas Jefferson’s offer to rebuild the Library of Congress with more than 6,000 books from his own library. The Library of Congress had been established in 1800 as a research library for congressional members, and it was located in the Capitol building. But in August of 1814, British troops had burned much of Washington, D.C., and the library had been destroyed.

At that time, Thomas Jefferson owned the largest private collection of books in the United States. He’d been a lifelong booklover and collector. He loved books so much that he gave up reading the newspaper so that he’d have more time to read the great philosophers, and he said, “I am much the happier.”

Within a month of hearing the news that the Library of Congress had been destroyed, Jefferson offered his own library as a replacement. Congress eventually agreed to purchase Jefferson’s library for $23,950.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

The Library at the U.S. Department of State has a few books in its holdings acquired by the first secretary of state — and duly signed by him, Thomas Jefferson.

In the Rockies, Pines Die and Bears Feel It

From today’s New York Times:

Jesse Logan retired in July as head of the beetle research unit for the United States Forest Service at the Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Utah. He is an authority on the effects of temperature on insect life cycles. That expertise has landed him smack in the middle of a debate over protecting grizzly bears.

You just never know where the study of beetles will take you.

Dr. Logan seems, in fact, to be on a collision course with the federal government, in the debate over whether to lift Endangered Species Act protections from the grizzly bears in and around Yellowstone National Park.

January 30th is the birthday

… of Gene Hackman. The Oscar-winning actor is 77. He won Best Actor for The French Connection and Best Actor in a Supporting Role for The Unforgiven. He has received three other nominations.

… of Vanessa Redgrave. The six-time Oscar nominee, one-time winner, is 70.

… of Dick Cheney. The Vice President is 66. Past retirement age.

… of Phil Collins. Something in the Air Tonight is 56.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on this date in 1882.

First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

What, Me? Oldest Living Person? No, Not Me. Please . . .

This from The Lede:

But it’s true that Ms. Capovilla lasted only a little over six months, and the quick succession of title-holders after her makes one wonder if it wouldn’t be worth keeping one’s longevity a secret.

Ms. Bolden took the crown again with Ms. Capovilla’s passing, but held on to it for just three months before surrendering to the fates. That elevated Emiliano Mercado del Toro of Puerto Rico — for about a month and a half. He died last Wednesday.

Emma Tillman of East Hartford, Connecticut, then took up the baton. And today’s news: Ms. Tillman died on Sunday, at 114, after just four days as the oldest.

According to Guinness, that leaves 114-year-old Yone Minagawa of Fukuoka, Japan, as the new longevity leader.