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.
Category: birthdays
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 WoodsLook, 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?)