What was I going to do? Talk about geneticist James Watson? I’m trying to rid myself of people with really vile opinions. And his attitude toward the great geneticist Rosalind Franklin is totally unacceptable. And let’s face it, Watson and Crick were not that great. They were the first of many who were very close to doing the same thing. They also stood on the shoulders of many great scientists who went before them. So James Watson? No no no!

And could I give the day to Merle Haggard? He too has some vile ideas that are not limited to “Okie From Muskogee,” although that would be enough. I hate all that, “We’re the good ones because we drink booz unlike those hippies who smoke that marijuana!” And it is particularly bad because he was and probably still is a big cannabis smoker. So he is little more than Sarah Palin, pushes divisive politics for his own personal gain. But at least he has something to offer unlike Palin:

No, my hands were tied. Today we have to talk about Raphael who was born on this day ( or maybe 28 March) in 1483. He was following in the family business, being the son of Giovanni Santi. He was apprenticed at the age of eight with the great painter Pietro Perugino. But he was orphaned at the age of eleven. To give you some idea of his talent, check out his self-portrait from around that time.

It is remarkable to compare the work of Raphael from those who went before him. He adds so much naturalism to the High Renaissance style. It is not surprising that he is normally compared with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. To the list, I would add Fra Bartolomeo, who is generally underrated. But just look at Saint George and the Dragon:

Or Madonna in the Meadow:

Sadly, he died on his 37th birthday after a short illness. According to legend, the illness was caused by especially vigorous sex with Margherita Luti. But you know what they say: correlation does not imply causation. I doubt that was the real cause. It is quite likely that the doctors killed him, since that tended to be what doctors did in those days. Regardless, it’s sad. The currents of art were changing and it would have been interesting to see how it affected Raphael. Still, we have a lot of great art from him.

Happy birthday Raphael!

Last year, I focused on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, so I’ll be moving on. That’s kind of odd, because I’m not a huge fan of hers, although I do admire her work. But I am a big fan of Michelangelo who was born on this day in 1475. Last year, I wrote of him, “I still remember when I saw David for the first time in Florence. Up to that time, I had no idea that art could be that powerful.” Of course, I had seen pictures of it before. But as with most great art, representations of it are not the same. And for one thing, it is big—17 feet tall. It’s also quite clear where his sexual interests lay: with men. It is the ultimate representation of male beauty.

In fact, when he was 57, Michelangelo met Tommaso dei Cavalieri, who was 23 at the time. He wrote many explicit poems to the younger man and the two of them were friends until Michelangelo’s death 31 years later. Did they have a sexual relationship? We don’t know. Does it matter? Well, it has to a lot of people since then who have found it embarrassing. To me, it doesn’t matter in the least, except that I hope the great old man got a little in his golden years. But for those who hate the idea of homosexuality, it seems silly to care. I don’t care if artists I admire lived exemplary lives. It’s nice, of course. I prefer that “my” artists are decent people. But there is no indication that Michelangelo was anything but a nice guy. And even if Cavalieri wasn’t sexually interested, it still must have been flattering to be so admired by the great artist.

Happy birthday Michelangelo!

On this day in 1663, the English writer Pierre Antoine Motteux was born. He is most remembered today for his English translation of Don Quixote. It is generally regarded as terrible. When I first started studying the book, I wrote of this translation, “I originally thought that Peter Motteux’s translation dated from the Victorian period, because of its pomposity. In fact, it is the earliest translation that I looked at—dating back to 1712. Predating Jarvis by only three decades (When a decade meant something!), this translation seems like it comes from another world. I still find its writing style ‘sticky.'” My hero Samuel Putnam writes, “Peter Anthony Motteux was a tea merchant who dabbled in lterature, and it might have been better if he had confined himself to the China trade.” John Ormsby called it, “Worse than worthless.” Richard Ford called it “the very worst.” And Bertram Worlfe called it “the odious Motteux translation.” It has been, not surprisingly, the most popular in the United States until Putnam’s 1949 publication. Now, of course, really good translations seem to come out every couple of years.

Singer-songwriter George Harrison was born in 1943. Like all the members of The Beatles, he’s overrated. But I still like his stuff. Here he is doing one of his best, “My Sweet Lord”:

Doug Yule is 67 today. He was John Cale’s replacement in The Velvet Underground. He added a lot to the band. And Lou Reed was a total dick to him. I know, Lou Reed was a dick to everyone. But Reed was able to be a much bigger dick to Yule. Reed prevented Yule from being inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That was actually the thing that really turned me against Reed. That was when Reed was 54, so I don’t think there is any excuse for it except, of course, that Reed is a dick. Here is “Who Loves the Sun” from Loaded with Yule on lead vocals:

Comedy writer Jack Handey is 65. I only know him from his Saturday Night Live bits “Deep Thoughts.” This is one of the best:

Other birthdays: actor Zeppo Marx (1901); playwright Mary Chase (1907); actor Jim Backus (1913); comedy writer Larry Gelbart (1928); film director Neil Jordan (64); musician John Doe (60); and comedian Carrot Top (49).

The day, however, belongs to the great impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir who was born on this day in 1841. A problem I have with a lot of the impressionists is that their work is too pat. Renoir combines incredible skill with a unique perspective. His ability to capture light was as great as Monet’s, but he took it much further. That is especially true in the latter part of his career when he took a turn toward classicism. This eventually led to his best work like Grandes Baigneuses:

Happy birthday Pierre-Auguste Renoir!

On this day in 1884 the great filmmaker Robert J Flaherty was born. He is best known for making the first kinda-sorta first feature length documentary, Nanook of the North. I get kind of tired of people claiming that it isn’t a documentary. It is clearly the film from which grew the rich documentary ecosystem we have today. I also think this attitude reflects a naivete regarding just how real are today’s documentaries. The reality is always at least distorted. The question is whether what is presented is truthful and I think that Nanook is. The full film is available online. It is well worth checking out. Flaherty went on to have an interesting and often controversial work life. Check out anything you come upon.

Anna Mae Hays is 94 today. She was the first female general in the United States military, having served in World War II and the Korean War. From 1967 until her retirement, she was chief of the Army Nurse Corps. She retired shortly after receiving the rank of general. This was also true of Elizabeth Hoisington, the second woman to reach that rank. I don’t doubt that these women deserved the rank. I suspect they deserved the rank ten years earlier. But giving out the rank to woman about to retire was probably the army trying to ease into the modern world. No one would scream too loudly, given they were retiring. And then the army could move on to giving the rank when it was deserved. Anyway, Hays and Hoisington were both trailblazers.

The excellent British film director John Schlesinger was born in 1926. He directed a wide variety of films such as Far From the Madding Crowd, Marathon Man, and the unfairly maligned Honky Tonk Freeway. But he is best remembered for Midnight Cowboy. It is essentially Waiting for Godot in New York. In the following ending to the film, see if you don’t see what I mean with regard to the interdependence of the characters. And when Joe Buck puts his arm around Ratso at the end, it still kills me.

Other birthdays: Japanese painter Kano Eitoku (1543); ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (1903); actor Hugh Beaumont (1909); songwriter Sonny Bono (1935); screenwriter Vincent Ward (58); actor Ice-T (56); tennis player John McEnroe (55); and screenwriter Eric Red (53).

The day, however, belongs to the illustrator Pamela Colman Smith who was born on this day in 1878. She was closely associated with photographer Alfred Stieglitz who felt her work had a synaesthetic (multi-sensory) sensibility. She was also friends with poet William Butler Yeats, for whom she illustrated some books. But she is best know for the Waite-Smith tarot cards. Arthur Edward Waite wrote the booklet that went along with the cards, but the cards themselves are all Smith’s. You have doubtless seen them. Pretty much all tarot cards either use her designs, or are recreations of her designs. I remember them from my childhood. (Because I was raised by Satanists!) They are wonderful. Here are some samples:

Happy birthday Pamela Colman Smith!

I just got word that Ralph Waite has died. You probably know him as the father on The Waltons. But more generally, he was a character actor—undoubtedly the most fulfilling kind of actor one can be on the screen. But I have long admired him for a film I’ve never seen. In 1980, he wrote and directed the film On the Nickel. It is the story of a ex-drunk who gets lonely for his old skid row drinking buddy. So he goes and finds him and stuff happens. Like I said, I haven’t seen the film, but it looks like an inspiring work. I do have mixed feelings about it. I’m not fond of people romanticizing drug addiction. On the other hand, the film clearly shows the drunks as more than the sum total of their problems. My hope for it is that it is as good as They Might Be Giants. And that is very good indeed. Here’s the trailer:

On this day in 1910, William Shockley was born. He is best remembered as the co-inventor of the transistor. So he is one of fathers of modern electronics. But he is most remembered for his beliefs in eugenics and racial differences in intelligence. The thing about all of this is that intelligence tests are a mess. I’ve discussed this a bit with regard to Jason Richwine and the Flynn effect. But regardless of the science, what we see with Shockley is racism dressed up as science. It just goes to show that you can easily be brilliant in one field and clueless in another.

And now, if you don’t mind, we are going to have a little musical interlude. There are a number of musicians with birthdays today. I don’t have a lot to say about any of them, so I’m mostly just going to present some songs. The first musician is Tennessee Ernie Ford who was born in 1919. Yesterday, I wrote about the Red Army Choir singing “Sixteen Tons.” That was a whole lot of fun, but it was Ford who had a mega-mega-mega-hit with the song. So get those fingers snapping, because here we go:

Peter Tork is 72 today. He was the member of The Monkeys who wasn’t all that cool with it. He was also the one with red hair. Here he is doing Goffin and King’s “Pleasant Valley Sunday”:

Peter Gabriel is 64 today. I used to be a huge fan of his, but I’ve been out of touch for some time. For now, let’s listen to his first solo single, “Solsbury Hill”:

And then the unique Henry Rollins is 53. He was, of course, the primary lead singer of Black Flag. It is interesting to see him now because he is so muscular. But he used to be a skinny little thing. He started working out because of all the violence at Black Flag concerts. Anyway, here he is with Rollins Band, doing a very good and funny song “Liar”:

Other birthdays: great Rococo painter Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (1682 or 1683); economist Thomas Malthus (1766); philosopher Lev Shestov (1866); economist Roy Harrod (1900); Burmese painter Aung Khin (1921); actor Kim Novak (81); actor George Segal (80); actor and personal man-crush Oliver Reed (1938); theologist Elaine Pagels (71); actor Donald Sumpter (71); actor Stockard Channing (70); and Jerry Springer (70).

The day, however, belongs to the great painter Grant Wood who was born on this day in 1891. He is best known for the painting American Gothic. I think it is a remarkable painting just because of its composition. Thematically, no one seems to really agree about it. Some have claimed that it is is satire about American repression and others think it is a celebration of American hard work. I side more with the satire crowd. Wood, of course, was satirizing nothing. But the painting does bring to mind the vacuousness of the American work ethic: we work a hard and long because that’s the way we are, and we get no special joy out of it. The father looks right at the observer, so one gets a sense of resolve from him. The daughter is looking away, providing a sense of acquiescence. For good and bad, it is a representation of America.

I haven’t seen a lot of other works by Wood, but nothing that I have seen is as powerful as American Gothic. But his work is quite impressive nonetheless. I see in his work a mature synthesis of a lot of different art trends. There is especially a lot of illustrative and “primitive” aspects to his landscapes. I would like to know more of his work. I’ve requested a number of books on him, so if he becomes another of my fascinations, I’m sure you’ll be hearing about it.

Happy birthday Grant Wood!

On this day in 1911, the physicist Polykarp Kusch was born. Along with Willis Lamb, he demonstrated the magnetic moment of the electron was greater than the theoretical value. This caused a whole bunch of changes in quantum electrodynamics. I have no idea how one would go about such a feat. But then, experimental anything has always amazed me. I was lucky if I could get through an afternoon in the lab without breaking something.

Paul Newman was born in 1925. He’s a good example of something we don’t talk about very much. Most of the great old stars got to where they were because they were born pretty. Don’t get me wrong: I think Newman was an excellent actor. But I think that is maybe a quarter of what it takes to be a star. Other film geeks and I may love Eli Wallach. And he is a better actor than Newman was and at least as charming on screen. But he wasn’t as pretty. Newman was pretty.

Political activist and writer Angela Davis is 70 today. She was a convenient bogeyman for conservatives in the 1970s. An admitted communist! I don’t know much about that. She general makes rather good points that one is unlikely to hear in normal discourse. I know her mostly from the excellent book, Are Prisons Obsolete? I highly recommend it!

The great celloist Jacqueline du Pre was born in 1945. She died of multiple sclerosis at only 42. Even more sad, she gave her final public performance at the age of 28. Nonetheless, she is still considered one of the greats. Here she is at 17 doing the Intermezzo from Enrique Granados’ opera Goyescas:

Other birthdays: singer Maria von Trapp (1905); sportscaster Bob Uecker (79); actor Scott Glenn (73); playwright Christopher Hampton (68); film critic Gene Siskel (1946); David Strathairn (65); singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams (61); guitarist Eddie Van Halen (59); singer-songwriter Anita Baker (56); and comedian Ellen DeGeneres (56).

The day, however, belongs to the great cartoonist Jules Feiffer who is 85 today. He is most associated with The Village Voice and I love his work. He was one of the most distinct editorial cartoonists of my lifetime, and he has a wonderfully twisted wit, as you can see in the following cartoon:

Happy birthday Jules Feiffer!

Four years ago today was the 7.0 M earthquake in Haiti that killed over 200,000 people. The death toll was so high because it struck the most populated area of the country. In all, over three million people were affected by it. I think Haiti is an embarrassment to the west. There is no reason for us to allow its people to live in such poverty and suffer so much. But of course, that’s the modern American way: people are divided into the winners and the losers—the producers and the moochers. If someone was a winner, they would be smart enough not to be born in Haiti. The country is still suffering as a result of that earthquake four years ago. But you won’t see it covered much in America. Al Jazeera America did a pretty good job of covering it the last couple of days, as far as I could tell. For more information see CEPR’s Haiti Relief and Reconstruction Watch.

On this day in 1729, the conservative icon Edmund Burke was born. Actually, he was fairly liberal until the French Revolution. And then he saw that some people we behaving badly and so he ran back to the womb of conservatism: faith in aristocracy. In other words, he was a reactionary. But it’s important to remember that although people like David Brooks and George Will like to quote Burke, there is little that connects him to the modern conservative movement. Regardless, if you ever feel the need to read Burke, read William Hazlitt instead.

Other birthdays: sculptor Francois Duquesnoy (1597); novelist and playwright Frances Brooke (1724); French painter Jean Beraud (1849); writer Jack London (1876); singer Tex Ritter (1905); philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (1906); singer-songwriter Ray Price (1926); screenwriter Alan Sharp (1934); boxer Joe Frazier (1944); actor Kirstie Alley (63); one of the worst people in the world and a substantial reason our politics is so bad, Rush Limbaugh (63); crime fiction novelist Walter Mosley (62); radio personality Howard Stern (60); actor Oliver Platt (54); probably evil businessman Jeff Bezos (50); and multi-media artist Rob Zombie (49).

The day, however, belongs to the great painter John Singer Sargent who was born on this day in 1856. He was primarily a portrait painter, and an extremely successful one. Those are mostly what you see when you see him in a museum, because that’s what people paid him for. But his landscapes and city paintings are quite different, and I think much more compelling. A good example of this is the following Street in Venice, that I think is just wonderful:

Happy birthday John Singer Sargent!

It turns out that Paul Revere was really born on this day and not on 21 December, as I noted before. It’s that stupid Old Style and New Style date thing that screws me up all the time. Whatever. It’s not like he’s an important guy. If it weren’t for Longfellow’s poem, he wouldn’t even be in Wikipedia!

Speaking of founding “fathers,” on this day in 1752, Betsy Ross was born. I find her interesting for a number of reasons. First, she was married three times. Two of her husbands died in the Revolutionary War. Her third husband was in bad health and eventually died for whatever reasons. She knew George Washington because at the age of 21, she eloped with an Episcopalian (Ross was raised as a Quaker), who went to the same church as Washington. Anyway, the main thing she did with the flag was to change the stars from six points to the easier to create 5 point stars we know and love today. She and her husbands were very successful in the upholstering business. But what’s most interesting about her is how she has been used as a symbol in American life. See girls: you can be part of history too! Look, I think sewing and needle work and all that is very important. But the truth is that we had a terribly sexist society that stopped women from making the kinds of public contributions to society that they were capable of. (They made many, most untold, private contributions.) And the fact that we made a big deal of Betsy Ross when I was in school 200 years later is just pathetic.

The great writer E M Forster was born in 1879. He is best known for writing A Room with a View and A Passage to India. But most people know him for having written the book that every Merchant-Ivory film was based on. Oh, I’m kidding! But sometimes it does seem that way. What I find most interesting about him is his short story “The Machine Stops.” One doesn’t much think of Forster was a science fiction writer, but there you go. The whole story is online, and I highly recommend reading it. It’s about 10,000 words long—so something even I could read in bed before going to sleep. And what is perhaps more interesting about it is that it really isn’t that different from A Room With a View in terms of its theme. Fundamentally, he was always writing about people trying to connect with each other. He may have been pessimistic about that much of the time, but he always held out the hope. Anyway, you can also watch a BBC production of “The Machine Stops,” although it will actually take less time to read:

The great theoretical physicist Satyendra Nath Bose was born in 1894. He is best known for his early work in quantum mechanics, especially Bose–Einstein statistics, which has to do with the ways in which a set of non-interacting bosons can arrange themselves in different energy states. Now what are bosons? They are one of the two classes of elementary particles that act according to Bose-Einstein statistics. The other kind of elementary particles are the fermions. It is probably easiest to think of fermions as the “stuff” of matter and bosons as the “glue” of matter. And before you ask, yes: at that level, our whole intuition of what matter is breaks down. Regardless, Bose was one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century and almost no one would even know his name except that another great physicist Paul Dirac coined the term “boson.” Bose, like the elementary particles named after him, was a kind of glue. He did the work that linked the earliest quantum mechanics of people like Planck with the “new” quantum mechanics of people like Heisenberg.

J Edgar Hoover was born in 1895. More or less a villain of history, I have no real interest in his day job. I’m interested in his sexual proclivities. It is commonly assumed that he was a closet transvestite. I seriously doubt that. In fact, I think that is about as likely to be the case as it is that 9/11 was a government conspiracy. The claim is based only on the say so of one very unreliable person. And people continue to believe it because it is delicious. But that doesn’t make it true. What is almost certainly the case is that Hoover was gay. I don’t necessarily think he ever even acted on it. The man might well have died a virgin. But there is no doubt that he had a very special relationship with Clyde Tolson. Regardless of the details of that relationship, it was sweet. After Hoover’s death, Tolson’s health immediately deteriorated, and he was dead within three years. Hoover left his entire estate to Tolson and the two are buried together. Whatever their relationship, we need more like it. Above on the left is a picture of the two of them together, probably from the late 50s or early 60s.

The great writer J D Salinger was born in 1919. Look, I’ve had some very harsh words to say about the man. And if it turns out that he was working very hard all these years and he produced great stuff, I will take much of it back. I still find the whole thing obnoxious, however. The trolling for young English grad students is creepy. And I don’t buy the whole spiritual element of avoiding celebrity. For one thing, he certainly wasn’t against using his celebrity to get himself laid. What’s more, part of being a public writer is having a conversation with your readers. By cutting off all contact with his readers, he was snubbing the communal aspects of writing. And it is for this reason that I suspect when his work comes out we are going to find that it’s going to be some kind of bad Faulkner. But I’ll be happy to be surprised.

Other birthdays: actor Dana Andrews (1909); “Stymie” actor, Matthew Beard (1925); playwright Larry L King (1929); fine actor Frank Langella (75); comedian Don Novello (70); rapper Grandmaster Flash (55); and actor Verne Troyer (44).

The day, however, belongs to the great Baroque painter Bartolome Esteban Murillo who was born on this day in 1618. He is best known for his religious painting. And rightly so; it’s great. And that was where the money was in Catholic Spain of the 17th century. But in many ways, he is the successor of Diego Velazquez, another painter I greatly admire. And so I think we see Murillo at his best when he was painting the street life of Seville and Madrid. For example, here is The Little Fruit Seller, which he painted in 1670 in Seville:

Happy birthday Bartolome Esteban Murillo!

This is the last birthday post of the year. But it is not the last birthday post. For one thing, I’m not sure what I would do without my birthday posts. Yes, I complain about them all the time. Yet they give my life a certainty that I just don’t get anywhere else. It’s like the old stories of Winchester Mystery House, that the owner, Sarah Winchester, thought she would die if she stopped building it. Except in my case, if I knew I would die if I stopped writing these things, I wouldn’t even be writing this one. That’s not because I especially want to die. It’s just that I don’t much care. And since not writing this series will not go along with losing the responsibility of continued existence, I might as well keep writing. A man has to work, you know.

The second reason this isn’t my last birthday post is that it hasn’t been a year. This series started just by chance on 26 February 2013, with Fats Domino at 85. It wasn’t much of a post: just the mention of his birthday and a video of him doing “Blueberry Hill.” The next day, I did Irwin Shaw, because it was his 100th birthday. That was a hard one, because John Steinbeck was born that same day 11 years earlier. Both authors have been enormously important to me. Over the year, based in part on reader comments, I’ve changed the format of the series. At one time I just listed people, going into depth when I felt like it. Now I pick a few people to talk about in a bit of depth and then dump the rest of them into my “other birthdays” paragraph.

I do think that on the 26th of February, I will change things. But I suspect that I will give it about as much thought as I gave the series when I started it. Anyway, onward. Today’s a big day, which is unfortunate, because I’m exhausted.

On this day in 1714, the mathematician Arima Yoriyuki was born. I don’t know much about him except that at the age of 51, he was able to find a rational number that approximated π to 29 digits. I have no idea how he did it. But it reminds of what I used to force my physics students to do. I gave them strings and rulers and and made them measure (as best they could) the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Now that’s very simple. Everyone knows that c = 2πr. But until they did it, they really didn’t understand what π was. It was just some number.

John Denver was born in 1943. What most people don’t know about him is that he was a big proponent of civilians in space. In fact, he was supposed to go up on the space shuttle. But he was prevented, because the government wanted a school teacher to go up instead. So Christa McAuliffe went and she died. But after that Denver still seemed to be kind of angry that he had been bumped. So I wasn’t surprised when 12 years later, he crashed into the Pacific Ocean and died. He was living on borrowed time. Not a great musician, but he had his moments and he was a great live performer. His extreme vibrato offends me to this day. But he did an excellent job of picking other people’s music to do. That included especially John Prine, but it extended to his own people like John Martin Sommers who wrote “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” and Mike Taylor who co-wrote “Rocky Mountain High” with him. And like many artists, he really did get better as his popularity waned. Anyway, here he is doing “Rocky Mountain High” live:

Ben Kingsley is 70 today. He is absolutely one of my favorite actors. He was the only thing that made Iron Man 3 even slightly watchable. And I’d love to provide you with a nice video clip of Kingsley doing his thing. But with an actor like him, how can you pick a single thing? So I’ll provide you with the trailer of a really good movie that you probably haven’t seen, Turtle Diary (typically not available on DVD):

Other birthdays: German expressionist painter Max Pechstein (1881); songwriter Jule Styne (1905); actor Anthony Hopkins (76); guitarist Andy Summers (71); and gymnast Gabby Douglas (18).

The day, however, belongs to the great painter Henri Matisse who was born in 1869. Unlike many painters, Matisse was truly creative. That isn’t to put other painters down. Think of Vincent van Gogh: he had a vision—a single vision. And he repeated it again and again in different contexts. And we need that. But Matisse was constantly changing. I know that a lot of people think this isn’t so. They think of Red Room and that is what Matisse is for them. Well, if that is all Matisse were to me, he’d hardly make the “other birthdays” list. He’s hard to pin down stylistically. Some of his stuff seems downright neoclassical to me. Other seems to verge on the primitivism. Regardless, it is more expansive and compelling than anything by Picasso.

The following is one of his last paintings, Annelies, White Tulips and Anemones. He painted it while in poor health and that perhaps explains its simplicity. But I think it works, especially the way the colors work together:

Happy birthday Henri Matisse!