My dad is 69 years old today! Not only is he smart and analytical and capable and witty and tough and dedicated and creative and artistic and living his life “the cowboy way,” he’s in better shape than most people half his age. He’s been riding road bikes for over 20 years and just officially rode 100,000 miles (over two frames) (!!!).
He’s a great dad and a great example of how I want to be at 69. Happy birthday!
My nephew had the best birthday of his life (until Tuesday, when the party with his preschool friends is happening….at the fire station!!!) and Doc and I saw how much was melted up in Big Cottonwood Canyon (still pretty snowy above about 7000 feet).
My nephew is turning FIVE tomorrow and it is blowing my mind. I mean, I’m still living in the same house, doing the same things, but he’s gone from a thumbs up like this:
To one like THIS:
Humans are pretty cool, y’all. And this human is one of my favorites. Happy birthday, Bubbs!
(Posting so late because I was sleeping in, finishing her present, and starting to rearrange the house for new carpeting.)
My lovely mother’s birthday is today. She retired last year and is now gardening and sewing and helping out her kids and going on vacations and generally living the dream. Here she is in Hawaii in 2007–maybe we need to go back in 2017! (And maybe my present to her next year should be some professional–and current–family photos…)
The Writer’s Almanac featured the tenor Caruso‘s birthday today, along with some trivia for your next Jeopardy game:
“When he was 15, he was performing at church one night when he received word that his mother had died. He left the church in the middle of the song, one of only two times in his life that he interrupted a performance. The only other time he didn’t finish a concert was his last.”
“Less than three months after his Metropolitan debut, Caruso made some recordings for the Victor Company. At the time, the gramophone was just a curiosity, but Caruso had become a household name, and people all over the country wanted to hear his voice. His records inspired thousands of people to buy their first gramophones, and his were the first records ever to sell more than a million copies. It can therefore be argued that Caruso’s voice was responsible for the beginning of the musical recording industry.”
Was he really such a big deal? I think so. Listen to this:
Yesterday was the 260th birthday of the delightful Wolfgang Mozart, who gave us many sources of delight, including this: twelve variations on what we know as “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”
She is 86 today and has some tough-love advice for us about writing:
“If you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you’re writing. And if this lack of motivation is a constant problem, perhaps writing is not your forte. I mean, what is the problem? If writing bores you, that is pretty fatal. If that is not the case, but you find that it is hard going and it just doesn’t flow, well, what did you expect? It is work; art is work.”
She also has some wonderful thoughts about getting old and being beautiful.
It’s my brother’s 39th birthday on Sunday. He’s my only sibling and we fight like all siblings but–he’s my brother. I think this Avett Brothers song sums it up: “Always remember there is nothing worth sharing like the love that lets us share our name.”