The great Ukrainian painter Marie Bashkirtseff was born in 1858. She died of tuberculosis at only 25. It is amazing to think what she would have done had she lived a reasonably long life. As it is, she was a master. Check out the link for a few of her works.
The great ragtime composer Scott Joplin might have been born on this day in 1867. For a long time, people thought so. Now they don’t. But no one knows when he was born, so we might as well celebrate his birthday today. Ragtime is one of the most distinctive musical forms ever and no one was greater at it than Joplin. It is like having a whole band on the piano. As a result, playing ragtime is really hard—that left hand has to do a lot of work. Anyway, here is Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” played by Joplin himself (on a piano roll anyway):
One of the greatest basketball players ever, Oscar Robertson is 75 today. He was a hero to me when I was a kid. But I was really disappointed to hear him talk about the movie Hoosiers. Robertson was a sophomore on the losing team and I guess he took particular offense to it. He noted that the team was not all black. But he was wrong to say that was how the film portrayed the team, because it didn’t. What’s more, on the commentary for the film, the writers discuss how because of Robertson, the Hickory (Milan in real life) team would never have been able to beat the team the next year. Robertson alone was that great—as a high school junior. It’s not that I don’t understand, it’s just unfortunate that he even talks about it. He’s one of the greatest basketball players ever, for Christ’s sake!
Other birthdays: Spanish painter Juan Martinez de Jauregui y Aguilar (1583); novelist Laurence Sterne (1713); children’s writer Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849); painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864); architect Walter Burley Griffin (1876); ridiculous writer Dale Carnegie (1888); famed conservative bigot William F Buckley Jr (1925); the original Ringo, Pete Best (72); the great bass player Donald “Duck” Dunn (1941); actor Billy Connolly (71); serial killer Ted Bundy (1946); and actor Thierry Lhermitte (61).
The day, however, belongs to the great philosopher Baruch Spinoza who was born on this day in 1632. What can I possibly say about Spinoza that will not trivialize him? He was in many ways the father of the Enlightenment thinkers who would come after him. But what is most important to me is his writing and thinking on religious matters. Spinoza argued for pantheism—the idea that all of the universe is a manifistation of God, or parts anyway. But not in the simplistic way that people tend to think about it, “We are all one, dude!” In my discussions with theists, I’m usually struck by how tightly they hold to Descartes’ idea that the body and the soul are different. Spinoza countered this by arguing that physics and metaphysics must be one and the same. The problem, from my perspective, is that we are parochial. So we cannot “see” God any more than we can see our eyes. Of course, regardless of how you define pantheism, from a traditional standpoint, it becomes atheism. If everything is God then nothing is. One thing is certain, such a God does not love us. Spinoza understood that.
Happy birthday Baruch Spinoza!
