12.12.12

Happy birthday to my sister-in-law Altair today! She's a gardener, a reader, a runner, a breadwinner, a hard worker, and a great mama to Skyler.

Her namesake!

Writerly Birthdays

Today is the birthday of both Madeleine L'Engle (A Wrinkle In Time), Louisa May Alcott (Little Women), and my buddy Clive, aka C.S. Lewis (Narnia!).

Happy Birthday, Carl Sagan

Today is the birthday of my science boyfriend Carl Sagan. It's hard to narrow down what I want to say about him, or pick a favorite quote, because how can you say that this:

There was a time when the stars seemed an impenetrable mystery, but today we have begun to understand them. In our personal lives, also, we journey from ignorance to knowledge. Our individual growth reflects the advancement of the species. The exploration of the cosmos is a voyage of self-discovery.

is more inspiring than this?

Even The Writer's Almanac gave him a mention today:

Because he had done extensive research on nearby planets, NASA hired him as an advisor for a mission to send remote-controlled spacecrafts to Venus..In preparation for the mission, Sagan was shocked to learn that there would be no cameras on the robotic spacecrafts, called Mariner I and Mariner II. The other scientists thought cameras would be a waste of valuable space and equipment...Sagan couldn't believe they would give up the chance to see an alien planet up close[...]

Sagan lost the argument that time, but he won over NASA eventually. The Mariners were the last exploratory spacecraft ever launched by NASA without cameras. He contributed to the Viking, Voyager, and Galileo planetary exploration missions, and his insistence on the use of cameras helped us get the first close-up photographs of the outer planets and their moons.

I think that this latest image from Curiosity--on THE SURFACE OF MARS, fer crissake--reflects his legacy.  

Happy Belated Birthday, Camille

Tuesday was the birthday of composer Camille Saint-Saens, the Frenchman who wrote such pieces as "The Carnival of the Animals" and the "Organ Sympony" (#3). Even though I played the Organ Symphony back in the day, I can never hear the last movement now without thinking of the movie Babe.

Happy Birthday, Tom Eliot

The Writer's Almanac tells me it's the birthday of T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot today, Anglicized American poet extraordinaire and writer of what I think I would like on a gravestone if I end up on a ranch and get to be buried there:

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance. 

(From "Ash Wednesday," of course.) 

Happy Birthday To My Brother!

It's my only sibling's birthday today and I hope he has a great one. From pulling me around on the sled (age 5) to threatening to kick some boy's ass for me (ages 15 - present), he's always been there for me if I  needed him--and now that he's a daddy I get to see that all over again.

So many people depend on him for stuff ranging from any mechanical repair to snow removal to making delicious dinners, so I know I'm not alone when I say: Thanks for all you do and happy birthday!

Happy Birthday, Mary Oliver

The Writer's Almanac tells us it's Mary Oliver's birthday today and features this poem from her. I don't think she wrote anything I don't like (she is the hippie poet extraordinaire, after all,) but I think this one is extra nice.

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Happy Birthday To My Dad!

It's my dad's 65th birthday today. He is riding 100 miles on his bike and then we will eat pie. I'll let the video do the talking this year, except to say, "Happy birthday and don't fall off your bike!"

Look Who's One!

The Smartest Baby in the World* is one years old today! He had a big party Saturday afternoon to celebrate.  There were cupcakes:

 

There were so! many! colors! on the gift bags:

And there was the toy piano to try out: 

It's incredible to think that in 36 weeks you can grow a brand new human, and that in 52 more you can go from this: 

To this (yes, he's walking):

Happy birthday, Skyler!

*Totally un-biased auntie opinion.

Friday Unrelated Information

1. My mom will be 64 this Sunday, so pre-emptive happy birthday! I know I posted this same video a few years ago for her, but it's extra-appropriate now that she is 64 and has a "grandchild on her knee":




2. I don't like eels, not one bit. But eel puns are almost OK:

Happy Birthday Mark Strand

I still like your poem in the Gallivan Center downtown the best:

Visions of the end may secretly seduce
our thoughts like water sinking
into water, air drifting into air;
clouds may form, when least expected,
darkening the glass of self,
canceling resemblances to what we are.

Even here, while summer sunlight
falling through the golden
folds of afternoon
brightens up the air, we mark
our progress by how much
we leave behind. And yet,
this vanishing is burnished
by a slow, melodious light,
as if our passage here
were beautiful because
no turning back is possible.

It is our knowledge of the end
that speaks for us, that has us weave,
as slowly as we can, an elegy
to all our walks. It is our way
of bending to the world's will
and giving thanks.

Happy Birthday, Johann Sebastian

It's Bach's birthday today, in 1685. Here's a happy little piece from the sonatas and partitas for unaccompanied violin: the Prelude from the E Major Partita.



I love the ending, starting about 2:40.

The E Major Partita has always sounded like spring to me, which is appropriate since yesterday was the equinox.

3.14

Happy Pi Day and happy birthday to Albert Einstein. (How perfect is that?)

Birthdays

It's the sixth "birthday" of this blog today, which took me by surprise. (I have big plans in the works to give the blog a facelift and get a new portfolio site up, and I wanted to have it done by the blog birthday. Obviously, I thought it was later in the month.) But 1,565 posts, 3 jobs, several relationships, and one cat later, here we are.

It's also the birthday of my oldest friend, who I think has been reading for all six years and has helped with the technical end of things for the same amount of time. Happy birthday, Amber!

Happy Birthday, Edna

It's the birthday of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay today. You have to love a woman who wrote sonnets and built an artists' colony.


IV

I shall forget you presently, my dear,
So make the most of this, your little day,
Your little month, your little half a year,
Ere I forget, or die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by
I shall forget you, as I said, but now,
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie
I will protest you with my favorite vow.
I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
And vows were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far,–
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.

(From from A Few Figs from Thistles (1922).

Hooray For Winter Birthdays

Happy birthday to my sister-in-law today! Not only does she win the bread for the family, she finds time to make homemade baby food--and she's put up with her crazy in-laws for nearly a decade. I hope she has a fantastic birthday!

Big Day

Some big historical events happening today, courtesy of The Writer's Almanac:

1. The 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
2. Willa Cather's birthday.
3. The anniversary of the first fully clear photograph of the Earth from space, taken by the Apollo 17 crew in 1972, and known as "The Blue Marble."

I Declare It Carl Sagan Day

Happy birthday to Carl Sagan today! To celebrate Carl Sagan Day, you could watch the introduction to the Cosmos series, which is still the most popular science program ever produced for television*:



Or you could read this from Ann Druyan, which is simultaneously heartbreaking and joyful:

Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again...But the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is...We knew we were beneficiaries of chance. That pure chance could be so generous and so kind; that we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, "in the vastness of space and the immensity of time"; that we could be together for twenty years; that is something which sustains me...That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don’t think I’ll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.

Happy birthday, Carl. I like to picture you somewhere in that "ship of the imagination" from Cosmos.

*You've all heard that a sequel to Cosmos is in the works for 2013, right? Ann Druyan is helping to write/produce and Neil DeGrasse Tyson will host. I can't wait.

Happy Birthday, Beryl

It's the birthday of Beryl Markham today. She was a horse trainer, pilot, and author (probably) of the memoir West With the Night, which I should read again and you should read too, if you haven't. (It impressed the hell out of Hemingway.)

She was friends with Karen Blixen, lovers with Antoine de Saint-Exupery, and was the first woman to fly solo from east to west across the Atlantic. Beryl was fierce! Let's all be more like her.

Look, A Poem

Happy birthday to English poet Denise Levertov. I don't know a lot of her work but what I do know, I like. Like this one:

O Taste and See

The world is
not with us enough
O taste and see

the subway Bible poster said,
meaning The Lord, meaning
if anything all that lives
to the imagination’s tongue,

grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform

into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being

hungry, and plucking
the fruit.


(The opening lines play on Wordsworth's poem, "The World is Too Much with Us.")