Fannie Lou Hamer Day

Today's the birthday of Fannie Lou Hamer. She was one brave woman. And I hope we can continue to remember her and her contributions to struggle for equality and an end to racism in the United States.

On August 23, 1962, Rev. James Bevel, an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and an associate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave a sermon in Ruleville, Mississippi and followed it with an appeal to those assembled to register to vote. Black people who registered to vote in the South faced serious hardships at that time due to institutionalized racism, including harassment, the loss of their jobs, physical beatings, and lynchings; nonetheless, Hamer was the first volunteer. She later said,

"I guess if I'd had any sense, I'd have been a little scared - but what was the point of being scared? The only thing they could do was kill me, and it kinda seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time since I could remember."

Ruleville, MS, is east of Cleveland, Mississippi, in Sunflower County. It was a very scary, dangerous place in 1962. It was still scary when I visited there in the early '70's. It was scary enough that I haven't been back in decades.

And then there's this:

In the summer of 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, or "Freedom Democrats" for short, was organized with the purpose of challenging Mississippi's all-white and anti-civil rights delegation to the Democratic National Convention of that year as not representative of all Mississippians. Hamer was elected Vice-Chair.

The Freedom Democrats efforts drew national attention to the plight of African-Americans in Mississippi, and represented a challenge to President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was seeking the Democratic Party's nomination for reelection; their success would mean that other Southern delegations, who were already leaning toward Republican challenger Barry Goldwater, would publicly break from the convention's decision to nominate Johnson — meaning in turn that he would almost certainly lose those states' electoral votes in the election. Hamer, singing her signature hymns, drew a great deal of attention from the media, enraging Johnson, who referred to her in speaking to his advisors as "that illiterate woman".

Hamer was invited, along with the rest of the MFDP officers, to address the Convention's Credentials Committee. She recounted the problems she had encountered in registration, and the ordeal of the jail in Winona, and, near tears, concluded:

"All of this is on account we want to register [sic], to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings - in America?"

In Washington, D.C., President Johnson called an emergency press conference in an effort to divert press coverage away from Hamer's testimony; but many television networks ran the speech unedited on their late news programs. The Credentials Committee received thousands of calls and letters in support of the Freedom Democrats.

Johnson then dispatched several trusted Democratic Party operatives to attempt to negotiate with the Freedom Democrats, including Senator Hubert Humphrey (who was campaigning for the Vice-Presidential nomination), Walter Mondale, and Walter Reuther, as well as J. Edgar Hoover. They suggested a compromise which would give the MFDP two non-voting seats in exchange for other concessions, and secured the endorsement of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for the plan. But when Humphrey outlined the compromise, saying that his position on the ticket was at stake, Hamer, invoking her Christian beliefs, sharply rebuked him:

"Do you mean to tell me that your position is more important than four hundred thousand black people's lives? Senator Humphrey, I know lots of people in Mississippi who have lost their jobs trying to register to vote. I had to leave the plantation where I worked in Sunflower County, Mississippi. Now if you lose this job of Vice-President because you do what is right, because you help the MFDP, everything will be all right. God will take care of you. But if you take [the nomination] this way, why, you will never be able to do any good for civil rights, for poor people, for peace, or any of those things you talk about. Senator Humphrey, I'm going to pray to Jesus for you."

Future negotiations were conducted without Hamer, and the compromise was modified such that the Convention would select the two delegates to be seated, for fear the MFDP would appoint Hamer. In the end, the MFDP rejected the compromise, but had changed the debate to the point that the Democratic Party adopted a clause which demanded equality of representation from their states' delegations in 1968. [edit]

And then there's this video by 7th Grade Students:

March 19 Is Philip Roth's Birthday

Garrison Keillor writes:

It's the birthday of novelist Philip Roth, born in Newark, New Jersey (1933). His father was an insurance salesman, and both his parents were the children of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. He majored in English and taught it, and he became friends with Saul Bellow, who told him that he was talented and should keep writing. In 1959, when he was 26 years old and teaching at the University of Chicago, he published his first book, a novella and short stories titled Goodbye, Columbus,and it won the National Book Award. He wrote two novels, which got mixed reviews, and then for five years, he didn't publish anything at all. Then he published Portnoy's Complaint (1969), which is entirely made up of a monologue delivered by a patient, Alexander Portnoy, to his analyst. It got rave reviews from critics, and its sexual content made it controversial and also extremely popular — it was the best-selling book of 1969.

...

Philip Roth said: "Writing turns you into somebody who's always wrong. The illusion that you may get it right someday is the perversity that draws you on. What else could? As pathological phenomena go, it doesn't completely wreck your life."

As to the last phrase, the jury is still out and research continues.

David Foster Wallace

We're reminded by Garrison Keillor that today is David Foster Wallace's birthday. DFW said:

"Postmodern irony and cynicism's become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what's wrong, because they'll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony's gone from liberating to enslaving. ... The postmodern founders' patricidal work was great, but patricide produces orphans, and no amount of revelry can make up for the fact that writers my age have been literary orphans throughout our formative years."

Edgar Allen Poe's Birthday

Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)

Today is Edgar Allen Poe's birthday. The Writer's Almanac gives us this macabre story of the end of his life:

Poe died two years later, after he was found delirious in a Baltimore gutter.

Poe's cause of death was never determined, but most people have assumed it had to do with his alcoholism, or his drug addiction. But many of the assumptions people have long held about Poe can be traced back to one of his rivals, anthologist Rufus Wilmot Griswold. The two men had had an ongoing feud since 1842, when Poe was critical of Griswold's choice of poets for an anthology. Griswold, under the name "Ludwig," wrote a lengthy obituary for The New York Tribune, which began: "Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday. The announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it."

Muhammad Ali's 70th Birthday

I am the greatest, I said that even before I knew I was.

Happy Birthday, Champ!

MIles Davis's Birthday

Today is Miles Davis's birthday. He passed away in 1991. He was 65.

On November 5, 2009, Rep. John Conyers of Michigan sponsored a measure in the US House of Representatives to recognize and commemorate the album Kind of Blue on its 50th anniversary. The measure also affirms jazz as a national treasure and "encourages the United States government to preserve and advance the art form of jazz music." It passed, unanimously, with a vote of 409–0 on December 15, 2009.

In Celebration, the original "All Blues":



"All Blues," recorded more than fifty years ago, featured these giants:

Miles Davis – trumpet, band leader
Julian "Cannonball" Adderley – alto saxophone
Paul Chambers – double bass
Jimmy Cobb – drums
John Coltrane – tenor saxophone
Bill Evans – piano

Happy Birthday, Bob!

And then there's the Seventieth Birthday Playlist.

Bob Marley's Birthday: He'd Be 65

Nesta Robert "Bob" Marley, OM was born on February 6, 1945, in the village of Nine Mile in Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica. He'd be 65, if he hadn't died at age 36 in 1981.

In honor of Bob Marley, one of the most influential musicians of our era:

When I'm 64

Actually, I'll be 64 on Saturday. Believe me, this is a surprise to me. I mean: I do not think of myself as 63 (at this minute). When I look in the mirror, sometimes I think I'm looking at my dad, but, as I said, then I realize it's me. I didn't know what 64 would feel like, so of course, it's a surprise of sorts, how I am, and it's not really what I expected. Truth be told, my coming birthday seems surprisingly normal to me. Surprisingly uneventful.

Knowing that this particular event was arriving shortly, and thinking that things that appear "normal," require a great deal of thought and contemplation, more than other events, I have been thinking about that Beatles tune. The one sung by Ringo. You know what I'm talking about:

When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now.
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine.

If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.

You'll be older too,
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you.

I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride.

Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.

Every summer we can rent a cottage,
In the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera, Chuck & Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away

Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.

When I was initially enjoying that song, back when it was released on Sgt. Pepper, way back in 1967, I didn't really contemplate that the time would arrive when I myself would actually reach 64. That seemed very far away in the invisible, distant future, far beyond the horizon. And then there was a shark and squid and stinging jelly fish infested ocean of circumstance and chance and uncertainty between where I was then standing and there. Mortality, mine and everyone else's, was out there, just beyond the shore. And it was that enormous, unforeseeable distance that made the song so very romantic. Who could imagine anything or anyone lasting so long? Who could continue to stand in the face of all powerful impermanence? Who would actually make it that far into the future and somehow arrive at the other shore and contemplate the voyage?

And then, seemingly all of a sudden, now, here I am. What a long strange trip it's been. Yes, I have far, far less hair. Staying out till a quarter to 3 is infrequent. But enjoyable. And the rest of it? The rest of it? Yes. It's there, or something approximating it. The surprise, if there really is one, is that I didn't really expect to get here, and I had no idea that once being here I would feel as I do now. I still feel remarkably like me. I guess I expected that somehow I wouldn't. Please don't ask me who I would feel like if I didn't feel like me.

So on Saturday I'm 64. Will you be sending me a Valentine, birthday greeting, bottle of wine? Will you lock the door? Will you still need me, will you still read me, when I'm 64.

Happy Birthday, James Joyce

It's the birthday of James Joyce, born in Dublin (1882), who said, "The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works." Joyce wrote Ulysses (1922) and Finnegan's Wake (1939); an autobiographical novel, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man (1916); and a short-story collection, Dubliners (1914), among other works.

He was educated by Jesuits, first visited a prostitute at the age of 14, dropped out of medical school and aspired to be an opera star. He met and fell in love with a Galway hotel maid named Nora Barnacle when he was 22 years old, and he set the action of Ulysses on the day he had his first date with Nora, June 16, 1904. It's now commemorated all over the world each year as Bloomsday, after the novel's protagonist, Leopold Bloom.

Shortly after meeting Nora, he convinced her to leave Ireland with him and elope to continental Europe. He thought he'd lined up a teaching job as a language instructor, but that fell through, and he ended up working at a bank in Rome for a while. They were forever impoverished and constantly relying on Joyce's brother Stanislaus for money.

They had a son, Giorgio, and after that James and Nora slept head to foot, an attempt at birth control. It didn't seem to be an effective form, though, and Nora became pregnant with Lucia about a year after giving birth to Giorgio. Joyce was a doting father, liked to spoil his kids, never punished either one and once told an interviewer, "Children must be educated by love, not punishment."

Nora was famously apathetic toward her husband's writing. Joyce worked at night and laughed so loudly at his own words that Nora would get up and tell him to stop writing and stop laughing so that she could get a bit of sleep. Shortly after Ulysses (Joyce pronounced it "Oolissays")was published, she remarked to a fan of his: "I've always told him he should give up writing and take up singing." Ulysses took seven years of unbroken labor, which translated into 20,000 hours of work.

source

Happy 90th Birthday!!!

Here's my dad. He was born on March 10, 1919, and tomorrow is his 90th birthday. This is a remarkable milestone. In writing about my Dad, I feel that I'm sifting a huge pile of diamonds and what I choose to include in my stories about him turns these stories through their being chosen while others are rejected, into a kind of fiction rather than historical fact. So be it. If it was good enough for Paul Bunyan, it's good enough for me.

My dad's mom, my grandmother, lived to be 96; his father, only 52. He's had a remarkable life of achievements. He's been a teacher, a school principal, an assistant superintendent, a writer, a musician, a composer, a tool and die maker, a father of 2, a loving husband of 61 years, a soldier, a maker of incredible fishing poles, a fisherman, a traveler, a philosopher, a gentleman, a Mensch. The more I add to the list, the more categories arise.

If I spent a minute describing each year of his life, it would take 90 minutes to complete the story. If I spent a second, it would take a minute and a half. That would reduce World War 2 to 4 seconds, and his marriage with my Mom would take just over a minute. But that approach would miss the depth of some of the epic stories: his being the first in his family to go to College, his masters degree, his doctorate; the depression, staying a step ahead of eviction, staying back in 7th grade, his father's working as a milk man, a tailor, in the shipyard; his time with the 76th Infantry Division in Germany; his courtship of my mom (a favorite story of his retold at his birthday party this past Saturday); a life of hard work, saving and investing; his still evolving politics; the family dinners in which it was continually emphasized that it was important to be of help to others, to be compassionate. But that's just the beginning.

That approach misses the ideas he has, his ideals. It misses his wonderful sense of humor, his patience, his ability to explain things, how easy going he is. It also misses his stories, his questions, his thinking, his concerns, his worries, his wishes for peace and prosperity and fairness. It misses his love of music and film and books. It misses his love of Halvah.

On Saturday the family gathered from far and wide to have a birthday meal and to toast my dad on his 90th birthday. His many friends from the Residence came, and so did his grandchildren. We all wished him a Happy 90th Birthday. He invited us to come to his 100th.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Bob Dylan's 66th Birthday

May 24, 2007 is the birthday of the man who in 1963 wrote and sang on The Freewheelin Bob Dylan Masters of War:

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain...

All these years later, 44 to be precise, it still holds up tragically well.