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- “I know why the caged bird sings, ah me…” — poet Paul Laurence Dunbar
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- “All I actually wanted was for my work to be useful.”–Claudius Afolabi Siffre
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- “People are always asking me if I thought Elvis was a handsome man and my answer is ‘I am not blind you know’!” — Millie Kirkham
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- “And the role of the fatal chorus / I agree to take on” — Anna Akhmatova
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Category Archives: On This Day
“I’m not very popular here with those inside the system, as you might guess. I never wanted to be.” — Waylon Jennings
It’s his birthday today. Like a lot of artists whose music I own (I still like to own music: will never give it up), Waylon Jennings is on almost constant rotation. He’s always there. In playlists, first of all, but … Continue reading
Posted in Music, On This Day
Tagged Buddy Holly, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Eric Church, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson
7 Comments
“I’d love to play someone who is extremely charming, but first I’ll have to learn how to be charming.”” — Kate Lyn Sheil
I’ve written enough about Kate Lyn Sheil’s projects I figured she’s due her own post. It’s her birthday today. Sheil is ubiquitous in the American indie scene – and there is still an indie scene, although distribution has changed. If … Continue reading
“That is no country for old men.” — William Butler Yeats
“I thought we might bring the halves together if we had a national literature that made Ireland beautiful in the memory, and yet had been freed of provincialism by an exacting criticism, a European pose.” — W.B. Yeats William Butler … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Algernon Charles Swinburne, Camille Paglia, Edmund Spenser, Elizabeth Bishop, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Harold Bloom, Ireland, Irish poetry, Jeanette Winterson, John Millington Synge, Jonathan Swift, Louis MacNeice, Maud Gonne, Michael Schmidt, Philip Larkin, poetry, Rebecca West, Richard Ellmann, Seamus Heaney, T.S. Eliot, Ted Hughes, Ulysses, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden
15 Comments
“I am the most famous unknown of the century.” — Djuna Barnes
When Barnes called herself a “famous unknown” she may have been being elliptical or ironic, or she may have been just telling it like it is. Her writing didn’t have literal chronological through-lines and some readers found it challenging. So … Continue reading
“People always think of me as Maria and I think of me as Maria all the time.” –Sonia Manzano
“I realized that I was going to end up being my own role model. I became what I myself needed to see growing up as a kid, and I think I succeeded as Maria by never forgetting that there was … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, On This Day, Television
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“I really genuinely look forward to coming to work every day.” — Treat Williams
It’s his birthday today. His death is such a loss! In Sydney Lumet’s Making Movies, he talked about the choice to cast Treat Williams in Prince of the City: I wasn’t sure whether we were in drama or tragedy territory … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, Movies, On This Day
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Happy Birthday, Chips Moman
Elvis Presley and producer Chips Moman, American Sound Studio, Memphis, 1969 Great music producer, songwriter, and American Sound studio owner Chips Moman was an essential part of the thrilling warp-and-weft of the Memphis music scene from the 1960s on. His … Continue reading
“Language most shows a man. Speak that I may see thee.” — Ben Jonson
“O rare Benn Johnson.” — Jonson’s incorrectly-spelled epitaph in Westminster Abbey It’s his birthday today. Ben Jonson did everything. Plays, poems, satires, elegies, epigrams. His talent was wide and flexible. Everything he wrote feels inevitable. However, as Michael Schmidt writes … Continue reading
“What good is a character who’s always winking at the audience to let them in on the secret?” –Gene Wilder
It’s his birthday today. Where does the humor lie? Can this moment be broken down to discover its secret? Is it the eye pan to the right? Is it the delayed eyebrow raise? Is it what’s happening with his mouth? … Continue reading
“I couldn’t do no yodelin’, so I turned to howlin’ and it’s done me just fine.”– Howlin’ Wolf
Chester Burnett, who would eventually become the legendary Howlin’ Wolf, was born on this day in 1901. He is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the “early influences” category. He is in the Memphis Music Hall of … Continue reading
Posted in Music, On This Day
Tagged Howlin' Wolf, James Burton, Sam Phillips, Sun Records, The Rolling Stones
3 Comments