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- “But man has always succeeded in rising again.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- June 28, 1914: “But if ever a man went anywhere of his own free will, Franz Ferdinand went to Sarajevo.”
- “I know why the caged bird sings, ah me…” — poet Paul Laurence Dunbar
- “[Poetry is] a way of trying to come to peace with the world.” — poet Lucille Clifton
- “The films that I love are very straightforward stories, like really old-fashioned stuff.” — Paul Thomas Anderson
- A Personal Memory: or: What Dog Day Afternoon Means to Me
- Happy Birthday, Hediyeh Tehrani
- “All I actually wanted was for my work to be useful.”–Claudius Afolabi Siffre
- “I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.” — George Orwell
- “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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- Dan on Physical Media Booklet Essay: Being scholarly about movies that don’t exist
- Mike Molloy on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
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- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Twelfth Night: or, What You Will
- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Twelfth Night: or, What You Will
- sheila on Physical Media Booklet Essay: Being scholarly about movies that don’t exist
- sheila on Physical Media Booklet Essay: Being scholarly about movies that don’t exist
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- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
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- Bryan Summers on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Twelfth Night: or, What You Will
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Category Archives: On This Day
Happy Birthday, “Blind” Lemon Jefferson
“Although he was supposed to be completely blind, I still believe he could see a little bit. If he couldn’t, he darn sure could feel his way ’round — the old wolf!” – blues singer Victoria Spivey on Texas bluesman … Continue reading
Posted in Music, On This Day
4 Comments
“I couldn’t accept the possibility that the life of the woman would not, or could not, be named in the poetry of my own nation.” — Eavan Boland
“I began to know that I had to bring the poem I’d learned to write near to the life I was starting to live. And that if anything had to yield in that process, it was the poem not the … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Eavan Boland, Ireland, Irish poetry, Michael Schmidt, poetry
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“Who do you sound like?” — Marion Keisker to 18-year-old Elvis Presley, July 18, 1953
It’s her birthday. I finally wrote about her – and my theory about her “role” in “discovering” Elvis – for my column at Liberties! That was a long time coming! In the piece I mentioned her reunion with Elvis in … Continue reading
“I am the old story. L’histoire ancienne. But an old story can still be a good story, no?” — Anna Karina
It’s the birthday of French New Wave star Anna Karina, muse to many, fascinating onscreen persona, director of her own films. Anna Karina died in 2019, and you felt the loss in an almost palpable way, particularly in the New … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, Movies, On This Day
Tagged Agnes Varda, Anna Karina, France, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Paul Belmondo, women directors
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“People get surprised by my choices. But that comes from me looking for something new.” — Maggie Cheung
Maggie Cheung inspires a passionate – almost monastic – love and fascination in her devoted worldwide fanbase. Her fanbase has maintained itself for over three decades, even with her deciding not to work as much in the last 20 years. … Continue reading
“I rather like the idea of death.” — poet Stevie Smith
Born on this day in 1902, in Hull, Yorkshire England, Stevie Smith was christened Florence Margaret, but was called “Stevie” by her friends. (She was very petite and “Stevie” was the name of a famous jockey of the time.) Her … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged England, Michael Schmidt, Norton Anthology of Poetry, poetry, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Stevie Smith
3 Comments
“I didn’t think then, and I still don’t, that I was actually sick.” — Frances Farmer
“She’ll come back as fire To burn all the liars And leave a blanket of ash on the ground.” — Nirvana, “Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle” It’s her birthday today. When Nirvana’s album In Utero came out … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, Movies, On This Day, Theatre
Tagged Clifford Odets, Frances Farmer, Group Theatre
22 Comments
“I think I’m a character actress in a leading lady’s body, but the industry doesn’t really see me that way.” — Sanaa Lathan
It’s her birthday today. Sanaa Lathan is most definitely a “character actress in a leading lady’s body.” It’s what makes her work so strong. She is very beautiful, and she is also fluid, funny, unconventional in her responses (this makes … Continue reading
“I never said, ‘I want to be alone.’ I only said, ‘I want to be left alone.’ There is all the difference.” — Greta Garbo
It’s her birthday today. She is a difficult subject, not just because she was a private woman, but because her onscreen persona was so fluid, mercurial, hard to grasp. Her gestures could be operatic and swanlike (watch Grand Hotel), but … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, Movies, On This Day
Tagged drama, Greta Garbo, H.D., historical drama, silent films, Sweden
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“I refuse to have what is known in the trade as a ‘coherent metaphysic.'” — Mícheál Ó hAirtnéide
“I’ll never forget reading his first short poems in the early sixties; they had a kind of hypnotic power, as if a new Orpheus had emerged from Newcastle West. He was Limerick’s Lorca.” — Seamus Heaney on Mícheál Ó hAirtnéide … Continue reading