Half Wisdom • Half Whimsy • Half Wit
Individuals born on this date with an emphasis on American history and culture, including pop culture.
Descriptive information about America’s national parks, monuments and memorials, often with a photo or two.
“But by now, we know how the Obama administration deals with those who would destroy it: it goes straight for the capillaries.”
“Have we all paid for our sins for the wardrobe malfunction in 2004?”
Toni Monkovic, The Fifth Down Blog.
McCartney (62), The Rolling Stones (Jagger and Richards were 62), Prince, Tom Petty (48), Bruce Springsteen (59), Half of The Who (64 and 65). Can’t we have someone younger? How about a marching band just for a change of pace?
But not Carrie Underwood who sang the single worst rendition of the “Star Spangled Banner” ever.
“I’m sure when Peyton Manning was growing up he always wanted to throw the TD pass that gave the Saints a Super Bowl win.
“Now he has.”
ESPN the Magazine’s Jorge Arangure quoted by Josh Levin – Slate Magazine. The pass he’s talking about is, of course, the interception by the Saints Tracy Porter.
“Tracy Porter: In the span of just three Sundays, the man has permanently blemished two of the greatest careers in football history. Do not cross him.”
Porter intercepted Favre and Manning.
Adam Gopnik has the best writing you’re likely to see about watching the Super Bowl.
According to reports, it was only the 13th time in 140 years — but second time this winter — that Washington got more than a foot of snow.
Power’s off.
Update: The electricity was off for an hour and forty minutes.
Northern Virginia —
I lived in the Virginia suburbs and worked in downtown Washington, D.C., for fifteen years and no one was ever quicker to laugh at the mass hysteria and weather wimpiness that frequents this area.
But today is not that day. This is a serious storm with as much as two-feet of snow already on the ground. A hangar roof at Dulles has collapsed. Power is out for tens of thousands. Neighborhood streets are impassable.
This area simply does not have the equipment to move that much snow. You can’t just plow (at least not at airports and on dense city streets). You also have to truck the snow away. Having the capacity to handle a 100-year blizzard would not be reasonable use of ever tighter funds (and like children we Americans all want less “government,” and lower taxes, and yet can’t understand when we have fewer services).
Yes, the snow will melt and the world will return to whatever normal is. But not soon.
TOKYO (The Borowitz Report) – Embattled automaker Toyota today said that despite problems with accelerators and brakes, the cup holders on its most popular car models were “perfectly safe to use.”
“You know who’s having a good week?
“Honda.”
Jill
Over at Dinner without Crayons Tanya is ready to think of her Gram and go another round if needed.
Isaac Donald Everly is 73 today (Phil Everly was 71 last month). The brothers broke up in 1973 and did not speak to each other until they reunited in 1983.
Garret Morris of “Saturday Night Live” is 73 today.
Sherman Hemsley of “The Jeffersons” is 72.
Lisa Marie Presley is 42.
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.
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.”
Victor Herbert was born Dublin on this date in 1859.
He studied music in Germany, where he became a cellist and composer for the court in Stuttgart and joined the faculty of the Stuttgart Conservatory of Music. In 1886, he and his wife, opera singer Therese Foerster, immigrated to New York where they worked for the Metropolitan Opera and became active in the musical life of the city.
Herbert, a composer of symphonic music and chamber string pieces, joined the faculty of the National Conservatory of Music. In 1893, he became leader of the 22nd Regiment Band of New York after the death of the celebrated Patrick S. Gilmore. Herbert wrote a number of marches while he was the leader of the band.
From 1898 to 1904 he directed the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and then formed the Victor Herbert Orchestra which performed lighter music. Herbert was most famous as a composer of light operetta. Between 1894 and 1924 he composed more than forty comic operettas which had lengthy runs on Broadway and on tour around the country. His best known remains Babes in Toyland, which opened in 1903, a fantasy inspired by Frank L. Baum’s popular The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
From PBS FEBRUARY ONE:
In one remarkable day, four college freshmen changed the course of American history. On February 1, 1960, Ezell Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil—later dubbed the Greensboro Four—began a sit-in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter in a small city in North Carolina. The act of simply sitting down to order food in a restaurant that refused service to anyone but whites is now widely regarded as one of the pivotal moments in the American Civil Rights Movement.
The Greensboro Woolworth’s lunch counter was integrated in July 1960.
… from the Roman republican calendar month Februarius, named for Februa, the festival of purification held on the 15th. The name is taken from a Latin word, februare, meaning “to make pure”.
“He was so narrow minded he could see through a keyhole with both eyes.”
“If he was any stupider, he’d have to be watered once a day.”
Ms. Ivins died three years ago yesterday.
A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day. “In English,” he said, “A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative.”
A voice from the back of the room piped up, “Yeah, right.”
First posted three years ago today.
Things you learn when you take your grandson to pre-school: “our flag is rojo, blanco y azul.”
“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.
Today is the birthday
… of Carol Channing. Broadway’s Dolly Gallagher Levi is 89.
… of Ernie Banks. The baseball hall-of-famer is 79. Let’s play two.
… of composer Philip Glass. He’s 73.
The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed “minimalism.” Glass himself never liked the term and preferred to speak of himself as a composer of “music with repetitive structures.” Much of his early work was based on the extended reiteration of brief, elegant melodic fragments that wove in and out of an aural tapestry. Or, to put it another way, it immersed a listener in a sort of sonic weather that twists, turns, surrounds, develops.
… of Queen Beatrix. She’s 72. Do you know what country is she queen of?
… of Nolan Ryan. The baseball hall-of-famer is 63.
… of KC. He’s 59. And his band was?
Minnie Driver is 40. Justin Timberlake is 29.
Suzanne Pleshette, Emily on the ”The Bob Newhart Show” and Annie (the teacher) in The Birds, would have been 73 today. She died two years ago.
Jean Simmons would have been 81 today; she died nine days ago. The actress was in such classic films as The Robe, Spartacus, Elmer Gantry and was twice nominated for an Oscar — Hamlet (supporting) and The Happy Ending (leading).
Norman Mailer was born 87 years ago today. He died in November 2007. Here’s a previous NewMexiKen entry on Mailer.
Jack Roosevelt Robinson was born on this date in 1919.
As a competitor, Robinson was the Dodgers’ leader. In his 10 seasons, they won six National League pennants–1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955 and 1956. They lost another in the 1951 playoff with the New York Giants, and another to the Philadelphia Phillies on the last day of the 1950 season.
In 1949, when he batted .342 to win the league title and drove in 124 runs, he was voted the league’s Most Valuable Player Award. In 1947, he had been voted the rookie of the year.
“The only way to beat the Dodgers,” said Warren Giles, then the president of the Cincinnati Reds, later the National League president, “is to keep Robinson off the bases.”
He had a career batting average of .311. Primarily a line drive hitter, he accumulated only 137 home runs, with a high of 19 in both 1951 and 1952.
But on a team with such famous sluggers as Duke Snider, Gil Hodges and Roy Campanella, who was also black, he was the cleanup hitter, fourth in the batting order, a tribute to his ability to mover along teammates on base.
But his personality flared best as a baserunner. He had a total of 197 stolen bases. He stole home 11 times, the most by any player in the post-World War II era.
Thomas Merton was born on this date in 1915. Here’s a previous NewMexiKen entry on Merton.
John O’Hara was born on this date in 1905.
[O'Hara] went on to become one of the most popular serious writers of his lifetime, writing many best-selling novels, including Appointment in Samarra (1934) and A Rage to Live (1949). Most critics consider his best work to be his short stories, which were published as the Collected Stories of John O’Hara (1984). He holds the record for the greatest number of short stories published by a single author in The New Yorker magazine.
And Pearl Zane Grey, the first American millionaire author, was born on this date in 1872. Here’s a previous NewMexiKen entry on Grey.
When I am at home and check some websites there are ads saying Albuquerque mom make $567 (or some such figure) a week working at home. I am on the road tonight, far from home, and on the web there’s a photo of a woman making money working at home and she looks identical to the Albuquerque woman.
Must be her twin sister.
