Notes, Notings, and Common Refrains

Today would have been my father's 91st birthday.

It feels strange to see that date on my computer's toolbar and know it's not connected to him, anymore.

(I feel the same twinge when my mother's birthday comes around).

...Just saying...

To celebrate, here are a few things that tickled my fancy, today:

1. I learned that Brian May, guitarist for Queen, has a Ph.D in astrophysics. That was a casual aside, btw, in a science story on NPR about a mysterious glob of giant glowy gas in Space.
   
   
2. This YouTube vid of Old School Seseme Street with Bert and Ernie singing a litany of "L" words (See what I did, there?). And I agree with Bert. His words are just as lovely as Ernie's; even if the objects the words refer to might be pedestrian (might), the words themselves are nifty. Just saying.
   
   
3. Another Youtube Vid: Outakes from Season 2 of New Who (especailly the bit from 7:40 to 7:53, when K-9 meets a real dog, walking in the park)
   
   
4. My kitty, Trixie, standing in front of my monitor and very purposely putting her paw on my chest.
   
   
5. The Thomas Jefferson Hour on the radio, today, learning about efforts to save the Lakhota language from extinction... especially the bits where I got to hear the sound of that language.

Both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on February 12, 1809, within hours of each other.

Both contributed to changing our way of speaking and thinking about the world. Abraham Lincoln helped change the way we (Americans) few our nation, and our individual relationship within it. Charles Darwin changed the way all of us think about our relationship to the natural world, and our relationship within it.

They never met in their mortal lives, but if I had a TARDIS, I'd scoop each of them up for a mutual birthday party, because I think they'd probably enjoy conversing.

"The Official Family Story" is that my father, Lincoln, was named for a great uncle who was named for the president. But on a visit to the American Museum of Natural History, my mother noticed that the name of one of the people associated with Admiral Byrd's 1926 North Pole flight was named Lincoln (something) [I'd check, if I were within walking distance of that exhibit diarama], and she was always tickled that Dad was born shortly after, and went into aeronautics. She always suspected that that other Lincoln was the inspiration for Father's name, and that Josaphine sort of guided my dad into the profession.

But in any case, I kind of feel a certain closeness to President Lincoln in part because my dad shared his name, and had a very close birthday, too.

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For the record, I think of Abraham Lincoln as among the greatest presidents not because he was the Great White Emancipator, but because he started as a typical, 19th Century white racist, but within the few years of the Civil War, his views came to change, and in his last public speach, he said that black people should not only be freed from slavery, but also be given the rights to vote and citizenship. And it was that public statement that blacks should be equal to whites that finally provoked Booth to change his kidnapping plot into a murder plot.

He was a great president because he had the courage to learn from the history he was a part of. And that, finally, cost him his life.

The fact that I share a birthday week with MLK makes up (in spades) for the fact that I share the day itself with Rush Limbaugh.

I just heard on NPR (All Things Considered) that a recording of a previously unknown speech by him has just been found in India, from when he toured that country in honor of Gandhi, in 1959.

The NPR site does not have the audio up, yet, so I can't relisten and get an exact quote right. But in the clip that they played, Mr. King said that in this age of rockets and missles, the choice for nations isn't "Between Non-violence and violence" but "between nonviolence and nonexistence."

Can anyone blame me for seeing that as a poignant commentary on current events, 50 years later?

Also, while his birthday itself was yesterday, the national celebration of his birthday is Monday (we are, in this country, addicted to the three-day weekend). And on Tuesday, Barack Hussein Obama takes the oath of office and becomes President.

...Wow.

The teacher asked her when her birthday was.

My mother answered: "April April" (Her birthday was April Eighth-- the words kinda sound the same).

When she was a little older (Third grade, maybe?), the teacher asked the class what the first sign of spring was. While other kids answered: "Robins," or "Flowers," my mother answered "Mud."

She was, if I recall correctly, the only girl in her class in the 1950s attending the Bronx High School of Science, one of the earrly, specialty "magnet" schools (The school in the TV show Fame was the Bronx High School of the Performing Arts -- same system, different specialty).

When she was a teenager, she dreamt of becoming a test pilot.

When she was in her junior year of college, she got an offer from Eastern Airlines to be a stewardess, and settled for that, instead, leaving school.]

Several years later, she attended a party hosted by one of the Eastern pilots, with her boyfriend, and there, she met my father, a mutual friend of the host.

Their casual friendship turned into a courtship (if I recall correctly) when they realized a) that they both loved Gilbert and Sullivan, and b) could both outdrink everyone else in the bar.

It was my mother who proposed marriage to my father, on the grounds that if they were married they could move out of their own apartments, and buy a house together where they would be allowed to own cats.

Back in the day, airline stewardesses were not allowed to be married, so mother was forced to quit her job with Eastern.

When I failed completely at my first attempt at college, I started taking college classes part time at a community college, to get my GPA back up, so I could transfer, and Mother decided that she'd like to take a journalism course that was being offered, so she could use the knowledge in her volunteer work. Even though she joined the class six weeks late, she caught up on all the work, got an 'A,' and was offered an internship by her proffessor. She then rematriculated in college, starting with the junior year she'd interupted years before, and earned her degree in journalism from the State University of New York at New Paltz. She worked as a reporter for several local newspapers from 1986 until 1990, when her breast breast cancer made it too difficult for her to work. She said it was the most fun she'd ever had.

Happy Birthday, Mom...