Tag Archives: birthday

Happy Birthday Ivan Parker

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ivan parker drums
Birth: Feb. 9, 1920
Death: May 18, 1988 (68)
Burial: Miller-Woodlawn Memorial Park Bremerton Washington, USA
Social Security Number (SSN):  537-03-8042

Today is my grandfather, Ivan Parker‘s birthday, he would have been 93.  A lot of people live to be 93 now, but he died at a far-too-young 68.  Seems unfair.

ivan parker doorI remember that he had this strange way of floating on his back in the lake, his feet sticking out of the water, his hands slowly moving back and forth. It was sort of like treading water, sort of like floating on his back, but very casual. I try to recreate that floating when I am in the lake each summer, but I don’t have it exactly right because his head was sort of sticking up out of the water and he could hold conversations. I remember once, when my sister and I were very young, he was tucking us into our sleeping bags out at the lake house and my sister wanted to sleep in her socks. He told her that if she wore her socks to bed that her toes would rot off, jokingly. We laughed and laughed. I wish I could write down every single thing I remember about him, I probably will over time. I want to write it all down so I remember it all, forever.

ivan graveI will keep looking for more information and adding it when I find it, but he has very little internet presence, no obituary or anything like that.  I guess if I joined that family tree website, I could find things…

Since I am adding things, I will add other things that happened on this day:

On this day in 1964, the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show for the first time, as teenage girls screamed hysterically in the audience and 73 million people watched from home — a record for American television at the time. Their appearance on the show is considered the beginning of the “British Invasion” of music in the United States. The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show the following two Sundays in a row, as well. On this first time, exactly 49 years ago today, they sang “All My Loving,” “Till There Was You,” “She Loves You,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” and finally “I Want to Hold Your Hand” — which had just hit No. 1 on the charts.

It was on this day in 1870 that the U.S. National Weather Service was established.

At first it was called the Weather Bureau and it was part of the War Department because, it was said, “military discipline would probably secure the greatest promptness, regularity, and accuracy in the required observations.” It became a civilian agency 20 years later, under the Department of Agriculture, and then was switched to the Commerce Department in 1940. These days, the National Weather Service is based out of Silver Spring, Maryland. It plays a very big role in making sure that American air travel is safe, providing up-to-minute weather updates to air traffic controller centers across the nation.

 

SPA v43.0 Launch.

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Every birthday, I drag out this old nugget, read it over, add/delete/edit anything that needs changing to match how I feel now and post it as my birthday gift to you. Since today is my 43rd birthday, here it is.

taken 1/19/2013

taken 1/19/2013

“What I Have Learned So Far”

I’ve learned that it’s taking me a long time to become the person I want to be. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I want to continue to grow and change and progress until I die. I do not ever want to rest on my laurels, get set in my ways, do something a specific way for no other reason that I have always done it that way. I want to be routinely evaluating my choices to see if they still match with the person I am and the person I am on my way to becoming. We can all do that, think about what is important to you and then reflect at the end of the day, as you drift off to sleep, to see if you accomplished it. It is really less of a score card and more of a reminder for the next day. Did you possess compassion whenever possible and applicable? Did you express gratitude to your friends and family for being able to share each other’s life?

I’ve learned that our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become. The past is nothing we can control and it can color who we are, but we can make the decision to be anything we set our minds to. Create your identity, do not let it be assigned to you. The traumas of our childhoods can easily make us into “victims” or “survivors” and we can hide behind that identity for the rest of our life if we desire. That trauma happened a long time ago and is over, your choice to continue the trauma is your choice, but it does not give you a free pass to poor behavior. It is a long struggle to be able to recognize you are worth good things happening to you, once you allow that thought to enter your consciousness, you start to let go of the past.

I’ve learned that we don’t have to change friends if we understand that friends change. Sometimes, our paths run right along each other at the same speed, seeing the same sights. Then our paths may separate, but that does not erase our history and the reasons why we first became friends. We all understand that we change, so thinking that our friends should not is unreasonable.

I’ve learned that money is a horrible way of keeping score. Money does not make you better or worse than anyone, it is an instrument. Like any other instrument, it can be used in a million different ways. The most beautiful concerto can be played on an old piano just as easily as the keys of a Steinway can be smashed with a mallet. Find something you are passionate about and devote your extra money to it’s promotion. Make your money work for you as hard as you worked for it. Keep the circle of energy flowing.

I’ve learned that two people can look at the exact same thing and see something totally different. “I say tomato, you say tomato. Let’s call the whole thing off. But oh! If we call the whole thing off, then we must part. And oh! If we ever part, then that might break my heart!” The Gershwins were on to something. Learning to not be so arrogant that your way is the right and only way will take you far in love and life.

I’ve learned that you can get by on charm and looks for only so long. After that, you’d better know something. This does not always seem true and maybe the length can stretch out for years, but in the end the boys and girls will stop turning their heads when you pass, so you better at least have some good stories of your youth to retell. There is nothing wrong with physical charm, but giving it any weight and worth as a way to judge yourself or others is a mistake. It is just a roll of the DNA dice. It does not matter how attractive a person is if they are ugly on the inside. Everyone has a unique talent or gift in life. Personally, I have always been drawn to people that have an ability to tell a story, that have a talent of finding humor everywhere, and people that know that life is an ongoing journey of exploration. It is a physical attraction, an attraction to a glow or fire or something that people possess inside. Have you ever tried having a conversation with nice biceps and teeth? Exactly.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t compare yourself to the best others can do. We all have our talents, we all have our accomplishments, and for the most part, they are unique to us. Comparing yourself to the best parts of others will of course cause you to feel inferior. The exercise in being proud of and happy for your friend’s success is a hard one. It is hard to remove your jealousy or envy. When you are able to do it, however, you become a better friend and a better person. If you still cannot remove yourself from the equation, think about how awesome you are for choosing such talented and successful friends. We can be happy when our friend’s are successful, no matter what Morrissey says.

I’ve learned that you can keep going long after you can’t. It applies to running, it applies to life. It is always darkest before the dawn for a reason, so you appreciate the dawn all the more. Heartbreak and disappointment are horrible and painful, they can tear you into pieces from which you think you can never reassemble. You can, and in time, you will. That ability is one of the most exciting and unique parts of being human: resilience. Knowing that life right now is hard, but having the memory and perspective that none of it is permanent and situations will change. “Don’t give up, I know you can make it good.”

I’ve learned that just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to doesn’t mean they don’t love you with all they have. Learning to understand their language may make the difference between feeling loved and feeling neglected. Getting mad because someone doesn’t love you the way you want to be loved is like getting mad because the IKEA furniture assembly instructions are only in German. You can either try to translate and understand the IKEA instructions or you can shop somewhere with different instruction inserts. Complaining will not bring you any closer to having a chair.

I’ve learned that either you control your attitude or it controls you. Every second of every day, we have the choice on how we are going to behave. We can fly off the handle at the slightest things or we can choose to not let them ruin our day. How we react and behave to every day situations is completely in our control. Our past experiences may point us in a knee-jerk direction, but they have no actual power over us today. Choose an attitude that would make you proud of the person you are. If it does not feel natural to behave that way, fake it, eventually, it will become part of you. I am a strong believer in the school of “Fake it ’till you make it.” I am a result of that philosophy. I didn’t like something about me or recognized something about me that didn’t work, thought about how I could do it differently, and consciously did it that way going forward. It did not immediately feel natural, but eventually, it became a part of me. It is like diet and exercise for your character, it is hard and strenuous, but eventually, it becomes who you are. Anger is ego, we all know this. That person that cut you off in traffic did not do it to you because of who you are, they just did it. It didn’t happen to you, it just happened, don’t take it so personally that it changes your mood. Don’t hold onto it, that energy is undirected and wasted.

I’ve learned that heroes are the people who do what has to be done when it needs to be done, regardless of the consequences. The title of “Hero” has been been attributed to so many people in so many ways that it’s meaning has been diluted. For this, I mean a person whose courage and strength I admire. Heroes are quite often not popular or even liked at the time, usually because their actions cause discomfort and disruption. Heroes see how the world can be a better place and do their best to change it. For the most part, actors, athletes, popular musicians, and politicians are bad choices as personal heroes, there are plenty of examples why.

I’ve learned that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is be someone who can be loved. The rest is up to them. Learning and accepting that you cannot control how other people feel or react to your feelings is freeing. I have learned to not withhold my feelings due to fear of them not being matched with equal strength from the other person. Feelings are not discounted just because they are not returned. Love and affection require expression to attain it’s full potential, they need air around them to grow. It is crucial that you allow the organic nature of your feeling to exist and not squelch or play down them in any way. Washington Irving wrote, “Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.” Take a chance, take a leap, the air rushing under your feet will do you good.

I’ve learned that it’s not what you have in your life but who you have in your life that counts. Everyone knows this. Your job and your stuff you love will never give you a ride to the airport or love you back. Your things you have will not bring you love. That BMW will get you attention that at first may seem a lot like love, but it is probably more like envy. The people you touch in your life may not sit impressively on your mantle or fill up your checking account, but they will hold your hand when you cry and bring you soup when you are sick. In life, the immeasurable out-values all. There are no price tickets attached to love, devotion, friendship, and loyalty.

I’ve learned that no matter how much I care, some people just don’t care back. None of this changes how I should feel. Zelda Fitzgerald is quoted as saying, “I don’t want to live — I want to love first, and live incidentally.” I find myself thinking of this quote often and understanding it to mean that we need love to live, that we should approach life as a series of opportunities to love. Everyone has been on both sides of this coin at one point in life: the lover and the loved. It sucks and I hate it, but at the same time, there is a real rawness to heartbreak that is the purest of emotions. That emotion has no ulterior motives, no hidden agendas that it hopes by creating one, another will follow. It is pure loss, pure ache, and purely human. No matter how horrible it is, you feel so alive and wonderful knowing that you possess such capacity for feeling.

I’ve learned that you should always leave loved ones with loving words. It may be the last time you see them. Bring everyone you meet a gift. This obviously does not mean a physical item wrapped with a bow, it could be a compliment, a touch, a smile. Do not leave things unsaid for fear of over exposing your heart. Your heart functions best when exposed raw to the air, it expands and produces more than ever imaginable. This applies too even if you were thinking about someone during the day, send them a text or email to tell them. Keep communications open, don’t let too much time pass.


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You’ve Got to Sell Your Heart

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Today is the Birthday of F. Scott Fitzgerald.  He is an oft-chronicled obsession here at waldina.com and for good reason:  his writing is crisp and style makes you feel glamorous and witty while you read it.  I have read everything by and about him that I can find, I even loved “Midnight in Paris” because of him.  I noticed recently that NetFlix has the 1973 “The Great Gatsby” on streaming, I will watch it tonight.
There are a few authors wh0se writing people will connect with, I think it is lucky to have “found” him early and have been able to think of his novels as close personal friends.
Raise a glass of champagne everyone, Happy Birthday, old sport.
Late-1938, eager to gain some feedback on her work, aspiring young author and Radcliffe sophomore Frances Turnbull sent a copy of her latest story to celebrated novelist and friend of the family, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Before long the feedback arrived, in the form of the somewhat harsh but admirably honest reply seen below.

November 9, 1938

Dear Frances:

I’ve read the story carefully and, Frances, I’m afraid the price for doing professional work is a good deal higher than you are prepared to pay at present. You’ve got to sell your heart, your strongest reactions, not the little minor things that only touch you lightly, the little experiences that you might tell at dinner. This is especially true when you begin to write, when you have not yet developed the tricks of interesting people on paper, when you have none of the technique which it takes time to learn. When, in short, you have only your emotions to sell.

This is the experience of all writers. It was necessary for Dickens to put into Oliver Twist the child’s passionate resentment at being abused and starved that had haunted his whole childhood. Ernest Hemingway’s first stories “In Our Time” went right down to the bottom of all that he had ever felt and known. In “This Side of Paradise” I wrote about a love affair that was still bleeding as fresh as the skin wound on a haemophile.

The amateur, seeing how the professional having learned all that he’ll ever learn about writing can take a trivial thing such as the most superficial reactions of three uncharacterized girls and make it witty and charming—the amateur thinks he or she can do the same. But the amateur can only realize his ability to transfer his emotions to another person by some such desperate and radical expedient as tearing your first tragic love story out of your heart and putting it on pages for people to see.

That, anyhow, is the price of admission. Whether you are prepared to pay it or, whether it coincides or conflicts with your attitude on what is “nice” is something for you to decide. But literature, even light literature, will accept nothing less from the neophyte. It is one of those professions that wants the “works.” You wouldn’t be interested in a soldier who was only a little brave.

In the light of this, it doesn’t seem worth while to analyze why this story isn’t saleable but I am too fond of you to kid you along about it, as one tends to do at my age. If you ever decide to tell your stories, no one would be more interested than,

Your old friend,

F. Scott Fitzgerald

P.S. I might say that the writing is smooth and agreeable and some of the pages very apt and charming. You have talent—which is the equivalent of a soldier having the right physical qualifications for entering West Point.

via Letters of Note: You’ve got to sell your heart.

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Isadora Duncan – Style Icon

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Today is Isadora Duncan’s Birthday.  Ever since a winter scarf I was wearing was briefly caught in the handrail of the transit tunnel escalator, I have felt a connection to her.

NAME: Isadora Duncan
OCCUPATION: Choreographer
BIRTH DATE: c. May 27, 1877
DEATH DATE: September 14, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH: San Francisco, California
PLACE OF DEATH: Nice, France
ORIGINALLY: Angela Duncan

BEST KNOWN FOR:  Isadora Duncan was a dancer who taught and performed in a new and less restrictive form. Many regard her as the mother of modern dance.

Although Duncan’s birth date is generally believed to have been May 27, 1878, her baptismal certificate, discovered in San Francisco in 1976, records the date of May 26, 1877. Duncan was one of four children brought up in genteel poverty by their mother, a music teacher. As a child she rejected the rigidity of the classic ballet and based her dancing on more natural rhythms and movements, an approach she later used consciously in her interpretations of the works of such great composers as Brahms, Wagner, and Beethoven. Her earliest public appearances, in Chicago and New York City, met with little success, and at the age of 21 she left the United States to seek recognition abroad. With her meagre savings she sailed on a cattle boat for England.

At the British Museum her study of the sculptures of ancient Greece confirmed the classical use of those dance movements and gestures that hitherto instinct alone had caused her to practice and upon a revival of which her method was largely founded. Through the patronage of the celebrated actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, she was invited to appear at the private receptions of London’s leading hostesses, where her dancing, distinguished by a complete freedom of movement, enraptured those who were familiar only with the conventional forms of the ballet, which was then in a period of decay. It was not long before the phenomenon of a young woman dancing barefoot, as scantily clad as a woodland nymph, crowded theatres and concert halls throughout Europe. During her controversial first tour of Russia in 1905, Duncan made a deep impression on the choreographer Michel Fokine and on the art critic Serge Diaghilev, who as impresario was soon to lead a resurgence of ballet throughout western Europe. Duncan toured widely, and at one time or another she founded dance schools in Germany, Russia, and the United States, though none of these survived.

Her private life, quite as much as her art, kept her name in the headlines owing to her constant defiance of social taboos. The father of her first child, Deirdre, was the stage designer Gordon Craig, who shared her abhorrence of marriage; the father of her second child, Patrick, was Paris Singer, the heir to a sewing machine fortune and a prominent art patron. In 1913 a tragedy occurred from which Duncan never really recovered: the car in which her two children and their nurse were riding in Paris rolled into the Seine River and all three were drowned. In an effort to sublimate her grief she was about to open another school when the advent of World War I put an end to her plans. Her subsequent tours in South America, Germany, and France were less successful than before, but in 1920 she was invited to establish a school of her own in Moscow. To her revolutionary temperament, the Soviet Union seemed the land of promise. There she met Sergey Aleksandrovich Yesenin, a poet 17 years younger than she, whose work had won him a considerable reputation. She married him in 1922, sacrificing her scruples against marriage in order to take him with her on a tour of the United States. She could not have chosen a worse time for their arrival. Fear of the “Red Menace” was at its height, and she and her husband were unjustly labeled as Bolshevik agents. Leaving her native country once more, a bitter Duncan told reporters: “Good-bye America, I shall never see you again!” She never did. There followed an unhappy period with Yesenin in Europe, where his increasing mental instability turned him against her. He returned alone to the Soviet Union and, in 1925, committed suicide.

During the last years of her life Duncan was a somewhat pathetic figure, living precariously in Nice on the French Riviera, where she met with a fatal accident: her long scarf became entangled in the rear wheel of the car in which she was riding, and she was strangled. Her autobiography, My Life, was published in 1927 (reissued 1972).

Isadora Duncan was acclaimed by the foremost musicians, artists, and writers of her day, but she was often an object of attack by the less broad-minded. Her ideas were too much in advance of their time, and she flouted social conventions too flamboyantly to be regarded by the wider public as anything but an advocate of “free love.” Certainly her place as a great innovator in dance is secure: her repudiation of artificial technical restrictions and reliance on the grace of natural movement helped to liberate the dance from its dependence on rigid formulas and on displays of brilliant but empty technical virtuosity, paving the way for the later acceptance of modern dance as it was developed by Mary Wigman, Martha Graham, and others.

Isadora Duncan’s life has been portrayed most notably in the 1968 film, Isadora, starring Vanessa Redgrave. Vivian Pickles played her in Ken Russell’s 1966 biopic for the BBC, which was subtitled ‘The Biggest Dancer in the World’ and introduced by Duncan’s biographer, Sewell Stokes.

Most notably, Duncan was the subject of a ballet, Isadora, written and choreographed in 1981 by the Royal Ballet‘s Kenneth MacMillan, and performed at Covent Garden.[17] When She Danced, a stage play about Duncan’s later years by Martin Sherman, won the 1991 Evening Standard Award (best actress) for Vanessa Redgrave. A Hungarian musical based on this play was produced in Budapest in 2008.

Robert Calvert recorded a song about Duncan on his Revenge LP. The song is called “Isadora”. Salsa diva Celia Cruz sang a song titled “Isadora” in Duncan’s honor. Finnish musician Juice Leskinen recorded a song called “Isadora Duncan”. Russian singer Alexander Malinin recorded a song about the death of Isadora Duncan. Russian band Leningradhave a song about her on their Pulya (Bullet) album. American post-hardcore group Burden of a Day has a song titled, “Isadora Duncan” on their 2009 album OneOneThousand.

The children’s gothic book series, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, includes a set of fraternal triplets named Isadora, Duncan, and Quigley Quagmire.

And Then There’s Maude, the theme song to the 1970s American TV sitcom Maude contains a reference to Duncan with the line “Isadora was a bra burner.”

In his song Salome, British singer Pete Doherty makes a reference to Isadora Duncan by saying: “As she dances and demands, the head of Isadora Duncan on a plate”.

2003 in “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days”, the necklace Andie wears is named after Isadora Duncan

In a deleted scene of Titanic (1997), Rose talks about her dreams, saying “I don’t know what it is, whether I should be an artist or a sculpter or a, I don’t know, a dancer like Isadora Duncan, or wild pagan spirit!”

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Happy Birthday Ivan Parker

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Ivan Parker.

Today is my grandfather, Ivan Parker‘s birthday, he would have been 92, but he died 24 years ago. Gosh, 24 years ago, is that correct? He died when I was 18, a month before my high school graduation. I have known him longer dead than I knew him alive. It is strange to think. How can that be? I feel so close to him and my grandmother, I think about them every day. Was it Ernest Hemmingway that once wrote “No on ever really dies”? or was that N.E.R.D.? Sometimes, I feel that I had just had a conversation with him and he, along with my grandmother, definitely keep me focused when I am working on things out at the lake house. I am a task oriented white tornado of fixing, cleaning, raking, trimming, mending, etc out there and I always feel like I am doing it for them. They built the house up from a brush-covered lot and it has become my duty to keep it in good condition. So, how could I miss someone so much that has been gone for so long? I remember that he had this strange way of floating on his back in the lake, his feet sticking out of the water, his hands slowly moving back and forth. It was sort of like treading water, sort of like floating on his back, but very casual. I try to recreate that floating when I am in the lake each summer, but I don’t have it exactly right because his head was sort of sticking up out of the water and he could hold conversations. I remember once, when my sister and I were very young, he was tucking us into our sleeping bags out at the lake house and my sister wanted to sleep in her socks. He told her that if she wore her socks to bed that her toes would rot off, jokingly. We laughed and laughed. I wish I could write down every single thing I remember about him, I probably will over time. I want to write it all down so I remember it all, forever.

I wish I could find his obituary, it happened before the internet

The word ‘hurricane’

The word ‘Hurricane‘ is the name given to nature’s strongest storm. A hurricane occurs when high pressure and low pressure masses of air come in contact with one another.

There is often a significant difference in temperature between the two masses. One mass is warm, while the other is cold. The warmer air rises, and the cooler air falls. Likewise, the low pressure area slides down the sides of the high pressure area.

They swirl in and around one another, creating the beginnings of the storm.

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SPA v42.0 is LIVE, fool!

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Every birthday, I drag out this old nugget, read it over, add/delete/edit anything that needs changing to match how I feel now and post it as my birthday gift to you.  Since today is my 42nd birthday, here it is.

“What I Have Learned So Far”

I’ve learned that it’s taking me a long time to become the person I want to be. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I want to continue to grow and change and progress until I die. I do not ever want to rest on my laurels, get set in my ways, do something a specific way for no other reason that I have always done it that way. I want to be constantly evaluating my choices to see if they still match with the person I am and the person I am on my way to becoming. We can all do that, think about what is important to you and then reflect at the end of the day, as you drift off to sleep, to see if you accomplished it. It is really less of a score card and more of a reminder for the next day. Did you possess compassion whenever possible and applicable? Did you express gratitude to your friends and family for being able to share each other’s life?

I’ve learned that our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become. The past is nothing we can control and it can color who we are, but we can make the decision to be anything we set our minds to. Create your identity, do not let it be assigned to you. The traumas of our childhoods can easily make us into “victims” or “survivors” and we can hide behind that identity for the rest of our life if we desire. That trauma happened a long time ago and is over, your choice to continue the trauma is your choice, but it does not give you a free pass to poor behavior.

I’ve learned that we don’t have to change friends if we understand that friends change. Sometimes, our paths run right along each other at the same speed, seeing the same sights. Then our paths may separate, but that does not erase our history and the reasons why we first became friends. We all understand that we change, so thinking that our friends should not is unreasonable.

I’ve learned that money is a horrible way of keeping score. Money does not make you better or worse than anyone, it is an instrument. Like any other instrument, it can be used in a million different ways. The most beautiful concerto can be played on an old piano just as easily as the keys of a Steinway can be smashed with a mallet. Find something you are passionate about and devote your extra money to it’s promotion. Make your money work for you as hard as you worked for it. Keep the circle of energy flowing.

I’ve learned that two people can look at the exact same thing and see something totally different. ”I say tomato, you say tomato. Let’s call the whole thing off. But oh! If we call the whole thing off, then we must part. And oh! If we ever part, then that might break my heart!” The Gershwins were on to something. Learning to not be so arrogant that your way is the right and only way will take you far in love and life.

I’ve learned that you can get by on charm and looks for only so long.  After that, you’d better know something. This does not always seem true and maybe the length can stretch out for years, but in the end the boys and girls will stop turning their heads when you pass, so you better at least have some good stories of your youth to retell. There is nothing wrong with physical charm, but giving it any weight and worth as a way to judge yourself or others is a mistake. It is just a roll of the DNA dice. It does not matter how attractive a person is if they are ugly on the inside. Everyone has a unique talent or gift in life. Personally, I have always been attracted to people that have an ability to tell a story, that have a talent of finding humor everywhere, and people that know that life is an ongoing journey of exploration. It is a physical attraction, an attraction to a glow or fire or something that people possess inside. Have you ever tried having a conversation with nice biceps and teeth? Exactly.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t compare yourself to the best others can do. We all have our talents, we all have our accomplishments, and for the most part, they are unique to us. Comparing yourself to the best parts of others will of course cause you to feel inferior. The exercise in being proud of and happy for your friend’s success is a hard one. It is hard to remove your jealousy or envy. When you are able to do it, however, you become a better friend and a better person. If you still cannot remove yourself from the equation, think about how awesome you are for choosing such talented and successful friends. We can be happy when our friend’s are successful, no matter what Morrissey says.

I’ve learned that you can keep going long after you can’t. It applies to running, it applies to life. It is always darkest before the dawn for a reason, so you appreciate the dawn all the more. Heartbreak and disappointment are horrible and painful, they can tear you into pieces from which you think you can never reassemble. You can, and in time, you will. That ability is one of the most exciting and unique parts of being human: resilience. Knowing that life right now is hard, but having the memory and perspective that none of it is permanent and situations will change. “Don’t give up, I know you can make it good.”

I’ve learned that just because someone doesn’t love you the way you want them to doesn’t mean they don’t love you with all they have. Learning to understand their language may make the difference between feeling loved and feeling neglected. Getting mad because someone doesn’t love you the way you want to be loved is like getting mad because the IKEA furniture assembly instructions are only in German. You can either try to translate and understand the IKEA instructions or you can shop somewhere with different instruction inserts. Complaining will not bring you any closer to having a chair.

I’ve learned that either you control your attitude or it controls you. Every second of every day, we have the choice on how we are going to behave. We can fly off the handle at the slightest things or we can choose to not let them ruin our day. How we react and behave to every day situations is completely in our control. Our past experiences may point us in a knee-jerk direction, but they have no actual power over us today. Choose an attitude that would make you proud of the person you are. If it does not feel natural to behave that way, fake it, eventually, it will become part of you. I am a strong believer in the school of “Fake it ’till you make it.” I am a result of that philosophy. I didn’t like something about me or recognized something about me that didn’t work, thought about how I could do it differently, and consciously did it that way going forward. It did not immediately feel natural, but eventually, it became a part of me. It is like diet and exercise for your character, it is hard and strenuous, but eventually, it becomes who you are. Anger is ego, we all know this. That person that cut you off in traffic did not do it to you because of who you are, they just did it. It didn’t happen to you, it just happened, don’t take it so personally that it changes your mood. Don’t hold onto it, that energy is undirected and wasted.

I’ve learned that heroes are the people who do what has to be done when it needs to be done, regardless of the consequences. The title of “Hero” has been been attributed to so many people in so many ways that it’s meaning has been diluted. For this, I mean a person whose courage and strength I admire. Heroes are quite often not popular or even liked at the time, usually because their actions cause discomfort and disruption. Heroes see how the world can be a better place and do their best to change it.

I’ve learned that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is be someone who can be loved. The rest is up to them. Learning and accepting that you cannot control how other people feel or react to your feelings is freeing. I have learned to not withhold my feelings due to fear of them not being matched with equal strength from the other person. Feelings are not discounted just because they are not returned. Love and affection require expression to attain it’s full potential, they need air around them to grow. It is crucial that you allow the organic nature of your feeling to exist and not squelch or play down them in any way. Washington Irving wrote, “Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.”  Take a chance, take a leap, the air rushing under your feet will do you good.

I’ve learned that it’s not what you have in your life but who you have in your life that counts. Everyone knows this. Your job and your stuff you love will never love you back. Your things you have will not bring you love. That BMW will get you attention that at first may seem a lot like love, but it is probably more like envy.  The people you touch in your life may not sit impressively on your mantle or fill up your checking account, but they will hold your hand when you cry and bring you soup when you are sick. In life, the immeasurable out-values all. There are no price tickets attached to love, devotion, friendship, and loyalty.

I’ve learned that no matter how much I care, some people just don’t care back. None of this changes how I should feel. Zelda Fitzgerald is quoted as saying, “I don’t want to live — I want to love first, and live incidentally.” I find myself thinking of this quote often and understanding it to mean that we need love to live, that we should approach life as a series of opportunities to love. Everyone has been on both sides of this coin at one point in life: the lover and the loved. It sucks and I hate it, but at the same time, there is a real rawness to heartbreak that is the purest of emotions. That emotion has no ulterior motives, no hidden agendas that it hopes by creating one, another will follow. It is pure loss, pure ache, and purely human. No matter how horrible it is, you feel so alive and wonderful knowing that you possess such capacity for feeling.

I’ve learned that you should always leave loved ones with loving words. It may be the last time you see them. Bring everyone you meet a gift. This obviously does not mean a physical item wrapped with a bow, it could be a compliment, a touch, a smile. Do not leave things unsaid for fear of over exposing your heart. Your heart functions best when exposed raw to the air, it expands and produces more than ever imaginable. This applies too even if you were thinking about someone during the day, send them a short note to tell them. Keep communications open, don’t let too much time pass.


Truman Capote Would Be 86 Today.

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Today is the birthday of the writer Truman Capote, best known for the short novel “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and the groundbreaking work “In Cold Blood,” with which he single-handedly created a new literary genre — the nonfiction novel. Capote was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1924, his parents divorced when he was four, and he was sent to live a mostly lonely and solitary existence with some elderly aunts in Alabama. In his mid-teens, he went to live with his mother and her new husband in New York City but didn’t adjust well to city life and ended up dropping out of school when he was 17 to take a job with The New Yorker. This was effectively the start of his professional writing life, and within a few years Capote was writing for a number of publications.

Capote and his Monroeville neighbor, Harper Lee, remained lifelong friends. He based the character of Idabel in “Other Voices, Other Rooms” on her, and was in turn the inspiration for the character Dill Harris in Lee’s 1960 bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Capote once acknowledged this: “Mr. and Mrs. Lee, Harper Lee’s mother and father, lived very near. Harper Lee was my best friend. Did you ever read her book, “To Kill a Mockingbird?” I’m a character in that book, which takes place in the same small town in Alabama where we lived. Her father was a lawyer, and she and I used to go to trials all the time as children. We went to the trials instead of going to the movies.”  Later, Lee was his crucial research partner for “In Cold Blood.”

With his literary success came social celebrity, and the young writer’s talents were often overshadowed by his now-famous flamboyance and eccentricities. Capote’s artistic genius was well matched by his penchant for glittering high society, which lionized him in return, and he was seen at all the best parties, restaurants, clubs, and social circles.

While Capote was a society darling before the publication of In “Cold Blood,” it was really that book that cemented his place among society’s elite. “In Cold Blood” was an instant success, selling out immediately, becoming one of the most talked-about books of its time and bringing its author millions of dollars and a level of fame rarely experienced by a literary author. In Capote’s own words, “In Cold Blood” was “a solution to what had always been my greatest creative quandary. I wanted to produce a journalistic novel, something on a large scale that would have the credibility of fact, the immediacy of film, the depth and freedom of prose, and the precision of poetry.”

Capote had apparently attempted something similar as a child. In a 1957 interview with the Paris Review, he discussed his first foray into nonfiction, when he had been a member of the Mobile Press Register‘s Sunshine Club, originally lured in by the free Nehi and Coca-Cola and also by the short-story writing contest with the prize of a pony or a dog. As he said, “I had been noticing the activities of some neighbors who were up to no good, so I wrote a kind of roman à clef called ‘Old Mr. Busybody’ and entered it into the contest. The first installment appeared one Sunday, under my real name of Truman Streckfus Persons. Only somebody suddenly realized that I was serving up a local scandal as fiction, and the second installment never appeared. Naturally, I didn’t win a thing.”

When Capote was around 12, the principal at his school announced to his family that the boy was “subnormal,” and that it would be only humane to send him to a special school “equipped to handle backward brats.” Understandably, Capote’s family took umbrage at this, and in an effort to prove the principal unequivocally wrong, they “pronto packed me off to a psychiatric study clinic at a university in the East where I had my IQ inspected. I enjoyed it thoroughly and — guess what? — came home a genius, so proclaimed by science. I don’t know who was more appalled: my former teachers, who refused to believe it, or my family, who didn’t want to believe it — they’d just hoped to be told I was a nice normal boy. Ha ha!” For his part, his genius scientifically proven, Capote took to staring in mirrors, sucking in his cheeks and naming himself Proust, or Chekhov, or Wolfe — whoever was his idol of the moment. It was around this time that the boy started writing in earnest. His mind “zoomed all night every night,” and he felt it must have been several years before he slept properly again.

Genius or no, Capote understood the only way to improve was to do the work and keep doing it, again and again, because “Work is the only device I know of. Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade, just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.”

Capote died in Los Angeles on August 25, 1984, aged 59 from liver cancer. According to the coroner’s report the cause of death was “liver disease complicated by phlebitis and multiple drug intoxication”. He died at the home of his old friend Joanne Carson, ex-wife of late-night TV host Johnny Carson, on whose program Capote had been a frequent guest. He was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, leaving behind his longtime companion, author Jack Dunphy. Dunphy died in 1992, and in 1994 both his and Capote’s ashes were scattered at Crooked Pond, between Bridgehampton, New York and Sag Harbor, New York on Long Island, close to where the two had maintained a property with individual houses for many years. Capote also maintained the property in Palm Springs, a condominium in Switzerland that was mostly occupied by Dunphy seasonally, and a primary residence at the United Nations Plaza in New York City. Capote’s will provided that after Dunphy’s death a literary trust would be established, sustained by revenues from Capote’s works, to fund various literary prizes and grants including the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin, commemorating not only Capote but also his friend Newton Arvin, the Smith College professor and critic, who lost his job after his homosexuality was exposed.

After his death, fellow writer and perpetual nemesis Gore Vidal described Capote’s demise as “a good career move”.

Max Perkins. Upton Sinclair.

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It’s the birthday of the legendary editor Maxwell Perkins, born in New York City (1884). A Harvard grad, Perkins started his publishing career in the advertising department at Scribners, the venerable — and distinctly Princeton — publishing house. In 1914, Perkins joined the editorial staff, where he quickly shook things up at the staid, highly traditional company by seeking out new, young writers. His first major — and controversial — acquisition came five years later with the manuscript of an unknown St. Paul man. Originally titled “The Romantic Egoist,” an earlier draft had been roundly dismissed and rejected by the other editors in the house, but Perkins saw promise. When F. Scott Fitzgerald revised and resubmitted the book as encouraged, Perkins accepted it against the judgment of his colleagues. The book, now titled “This Side of Paradise,” was a smash success, as was the follow-up, “The Beautiful and the Damned.”

Perkins’ editorial eye, however, wasn’t yet fully trusted by his co-workers. Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” was a commercial disappointment, and still Perkins had the temerity to pay attention when the novelist recommended the work of an American writer he’d met in Paris: Ernest Hemingway. Again, Perkins had to fight his firm to publish Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” considered profane for the time. Eventually, Scribners conceded that Perkins seemed to have a knack for his job. He became the editorial director.

The third author with whom Perkins is most associated, and the one for whom he did the most editing, rather than just advising and encouraging, is Thomas Wolfe. Although the manuscript of “Look Homeward, Angel” was discovered by another reader at Scribners, Perkins took on the sprawling novel and its sensitive author. He ultimately convinced Wolfe to cut 66,000 words, which they did together with painstaking care. Wolfe later described their first meeting about his 1,100-page draft: “I saw now that Perkins had a great batch of notes in his hand and that on the desk was a great stack of handwritten paper — a complete summary of my whole enormous book. I was so moved and touched to think that someone at length had thought enough of my work to sweat over it in this way that I almost wept.”

Wolfe’s own praise of his editor helped contribute to an impression that the book was practically co-written. Both of them denied this charge; Wolfe, perhaps, grew to resent it. He eventually left Scribners, a move that friends claimed broke Perkins’ heart. But they remained close friends, as did Perkins with Fitzgerald and Hemingway, via frequent correspondence.

When Perkins fell fatally ill with pneumonia in 1947, his wife called an ambulance to their home. As an attendant carried the stretcher up to his bedroom, Perkins instructed his daughter to take the two manuscripts from his nightstand — “Cry, The Beloved Country” and “From Here to Eternity” — and deliver them to his secretary for safekeeping.

Perkins said, “An editor does not add to a book. At best he serves as handmaiden to an author. A writer’s best work comes entirely from himself.”

On this day in 1932, at the strike of noon in a prison yard near Bombay, India, Mahatma Gandhi began a hunger strike to protest the British government’s support of a new, and grossly unjust, Indian constitution. The plan would institutionalize the traditional mistreatment of India’s lowest caste, the people known as “untouchables,” giving them separate political representation.

Already followed by millions of people, Gandhi was famous for his campaigns of civil disobedience against discriminatory British laws. He’d been in jail for eight months when he announced he would “fast unto death” to resist the proposed constitution, writing to Britain’s prime minister that he would “offer [his] life as a final sacrifice to the downtrodden.”

The British government did not withdraw its support for the constitution, but it took just six days and five hours for Indian leaders to buckle under public pressure, signing a pact that agreed to a joint electorate.

Gandhi resorted to hunger strikes many times over the course of his life in protest of British colonialism and in opposition to violence between Hindus and Muslims. In 2006, the declassification of government records revealed that Winston Churchill recommended allowing Gandhi to starve himself to death while held in British custody in 1942. Other government officials prevailed that such an outcome would be “an embarrassment.”

Gandhi said, “There are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”

He said, “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”

It’s the birthday of muckraking pioneer Upton Sinclair, born in Baltimore, Maryland (1878). A precocious child, Sinclair entered City College of New York at the age of 14, which he paid for himself, since his father’s alcoholism had left his family in dire straits. He funded his education by publishing stories in newspapers and magazines. And by the time he was 17, Sinclair was doing well enough to pay for his own apartment, as well as send his destitute parents a regular income. Before long, though, Sinclair married, had a son, and found that he could not support his family.

Sinclair’s extended family was as rich as his immediate one was poor, and a loan from his uncle bankrolled his first, self-published novel when he was 21. But the disparity between this great poverty and wealth within his own family troubled Sinclair. He became a member of the Socialist Party and committed himself to writing fiction about injustice. When the editor of a Socialist journal commissioned him to write about the plight of immigrants working in Chicago meatpacking houses — and the publishing house Macmillan gave him an advance for the book rights — Sinclair moved to the stockyards district for seven weeks. He took copious notes on the miserable working conditions there, and then returned to the East Coast to transform his investigative journalism into fiction.

“The Jungle” was serialized in the journal, as planned, but Macmillan wanted nothing to do with the book, urging Sinclair to lose the “blood and guts,” which he declined. Four other publishers followed suit, rejecting the book for its graphic imagery. Sinclair decided to self-publish once again, and he began taking advance orders. Encouraged by his brisk sales, Doubleday swooped in at the last minute and agreed to publish the book on the condition that its claims could be verified. The publisher’s lawyer traveled to the Chicago stockyards to witness for himself the miserable state of affairs, and “The Jungle” caused an almost instant sensation when it was published in 1906.

Although Sinclair had intended to highlight the mistreatment of the workers in the meatpacking industry, readers reacted instead to his descriptions of the mistreatment of the animals — that is to say, the readers’ food. The outcry over the unsanitary preparation of meat helped pass the Pure Food and Drugs Act. Although they denounced his Socialist preaching, both Winston Churchill and President Teddy Roosevelt praised the book.

Sinclair went on to publish more than 90 books in his lifetime. He also very nearly won the governorship of California after his publication of a booklet titled “I, Governor of California And How I Ended Poverty: A True Story of the Future.” His radical plan to end poverty met with enough support to land him on the Democratic Party’s ticket, which caused an absolute uproar. His candidacy proved to do very well, but when he ultimately lost to the Republican candidate in 1934, he published a follow-up booklet: “I, Candidate for Governor and How I Got Licked.”

Happy Birthday Hemingway

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Today is the birthday of Ernest Hemingway, born in Oak Park, Illinois (1899), the Nobel- and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of such books as The Sun Also Rises (1926), A Farewell to Arms (1929), and The Old Man and the Sea (1952).

Both U.S. presidential candidates of 2008 cited Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) as one of their favorite books. It’s about an American teacher, Robert Jordan, who volunteers to go fight in the Spanish Civil War against Franco’s Fascists. Robert Jordan is wounded in battle and contemplates shooting himself with his submachine gun to end the intense pain, but when the enemy comes into sight, Jordan does his duty and delays the approaching Fascist soldiers so that his own comrades can escape to safety. And then he dies.

John McCain wrote a book in 2002 called Worth Fighting For, a phrase taken from Robert Jordan’s dying monologue. McCain writes about how the character of Robert Jordan has always been dear to him, from boyhood through the time he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. McCain said about Hemingway’s fictional character: “I knew that if he were in the cell next to mine, he would be stoic, he would be strong, he would be tough, he wouldn’t give up. And Robert would expect me to do the same thing.” During the campaign, Obama told Rolling Stone magazine that For Whom the Bell Tollswas “one of the three books that most inspired him.”

Hemingway committed suicide in 1961, shooting himself in the head with a double-barreled, 12-gauge shotgun, while wearing a robe and pajamas in the foyer of his Blaine County house.

He had a turbulent personal life. He told people that he despised his mother. He had been married four times and involved with many other women. He was often unkind to other writers whom he knew, and wrote vicious portraits of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein, which were published in his memoir A Moveable Feast.

His memoir was actually published posthumously by his widow, Mary Hemingway, in 1964. She edited extensively the memoir manuscript, patching stuff together from various sources. She included things he’d explicitly stated that he didn’t want published, and excluded other parts of his unfinished memoir manuscript.

This month, July 2009, Scribner is releasing a “restored edition” of Hemingway’s memoir. The new edition is edited by Sean Hemingway, the grandson of Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline, a woman who was much maligned in the edition of the memoir edited by Mary, the fourth wife.

Sean Hemingway is a curator at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he has edited other anthologies of Hemingway’s writing. He is including parts of the original manuscript that Mary had cut out, passages that he says show his grandfather’s “remorse and some of the happiness he felt and his very conflicted views he had about the end of his marriage” to Pauline. The new edition, he says, is more inclusive and portrays his grandmother in a more sympathetic manner. Sixteen thousand copies of the new edition of A Moveable Feast are being printed in the first run, and Scribner is also releasing new editions of all of Hemingway’s novels with redesigned covers.

Hemingway said, “The writer’s job is to tell the truth.” In A Moveable Feast, he wrote: “I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, `Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’ So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say.”

There’s a legend that Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to create a six-word story, and he said, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Inspired by this, an online magazine invited readers to submit their own six-word memoirs, a collection of which was published by Harper Collins in 2008 as Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. Six-word memoirs include: “All I ever wanted was more” and “Moments of transcendence, intervals of yearning” and “They called. I answered. Wrong number.”