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Today is The Wife’s birthday! As is my usual tradition, below is the post that I reuse every year and keep adding to in really ungainly fashion. This post actually first lived on the old BlogSpot incarnation of this site and now it’s over here on WordPress…and I’m not using the old-school WordPress interface anymore, I use the one with “blocks”, and this post, as Dr. Cox might say, ruh-heellly does not work well in blocks, so if the formatting here is a bit “janky”, as the kids say, that’s why. As I write this, she and I are approachingDown the rabbit hole….

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Regular posting still isn’t resuming (I just finished up an extremely busy work week, and now The Wife and I are getting out of town for a short getaway, and then next week has some other challenges forthcoming but we’ll get to those in good time), but hopefully next week we’ll start to settle down a bit…meantime, today we celebrate the anniversary of the birth of one of America’s greatest musical voices, George Gershwin, who was nice enough to be born exactly 73 years before I was, so that’s cool! Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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Yesterday was Freddie Mercury’s birthday; he would have been 79. Sheila O’Malley has a great post about him, and you should go read it: It’s his birthday today. It’s hard for me to talk about my feelings for Freddie Mercury. When Freddie Mercury moved, he cracked open the atmosphere. He’s almost frightening. When he walked across a stage, or threw his body into a note, or flung his head backwards, audiences were transfixed. In him, they saw freedom. Through him, they experienced catharsis. He went there FOR them. People talk about performers who go “into a zone.” Mercury’s zone wasDown the rabbit hole….

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Today is the generally-observed “birthday” of William Shakespeare. The actual date he entered the world is not known, but April 26, 1564 is the best we have: that was his baptismal date. As babies typically weren’t baptized right at birth, the assumption seems to be that he was actually born a few days prior, and since his death date is known to be April 26, 1616, we’ve just gone ahead and assigned that date to his birth as well. Shakespeare is an eternal “thing I need to learn more about”, no matter how much I learn about him and noDown the rabbit hole….

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The Lydster, if I am reading things correctly, is 20 now. “Who?!” you may ask. A reasonable question, so I shall provide a reasonable answer: The Lydster is Roger Owen Green’s daughter Lydia. Roger has been chronicling her growth and her adventures thereof pretty consistently (and always delightfully) on his blog, and I would be highly remiss if I didn’t offer up a post of my own congratulating her on A Momentous Birthday On Which She Achieved a Round Number. I don’t recall exactly when I found myself on The Lydster’s bandwagon, but it’s been a while…a “long and windingDown the rabbit hole….

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As I keep adding to this post every year, and with cross-posting it and importing it from my old blog to this one, I suppose it gets a bit more ungainly each year. Well, that’s just the way it is. Today is The Wife’s birthday, and I’m celebrating. As always, new stuff added at the end of the list; also as always, I don’t edit what I’ve written before or revise anything that’s out of date. Think of some of that stuff as growth rings on a tree…part of the reason of this post is to preserve memories.   HappyDown the rabbit hole….

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Born this date: Edward Van Halen, in 1955. This is what I wrote when he died, in 2020–but I’d rather honor him on the day on which he was born. It took me a while to start loving rock music. I heard a lot of it as a kid (benefits of having an older sister, which I did not appreciate at the time because there are things you need years to figure out, especially when you’re a not-terribly-smart nine-year-old), but for various reasons none of it really captured my attention until the early-to-mid 1980s. Part of it might have beenDown the rabbit hole….

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Eighty-nine years ago today, Carl Sagan was born. Sagan is one of the true giants of my life, the people whose work shaped me into who I am today. A very large part of how I view the world comes from him and his commitment to skeptical rationalism always leavened with captivated wonder. Listen to his words as he reflects on the image of Earth taken by one of the Voyager spacecraft, when it was so far away that it’s just another pinpoint of light in what looks like a starfield.   Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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Born this date, 125 years ago today: the great George Gershwin. I was actually going to post this piece last week before I suddenly head an “Oh!” moment, one of those cliche moments when the sitcom person slaps their own forehead as they remember the obvious: Why post about Gershwin today, when his birthday is coming up? So, here we are. Gershwin was, of course, probably the first truly great American composer, because he was likely the first to really start to branch beyond the European influences and incorporate truly American forms and American sounds into his music, by bringing jazz and theDown the rabbit hole….

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It’s July 4. A repost from one year ago: “Do you remember America?” the curious person will ask one night, in a darkened tavern as they nurse their second or third drink. “The country tried to codify freedom and democracy? I mean, sure, at first it was only for a few of their citizens, but it was a start, right? They got better at it. And sure, getting better took a whole lot of spilled blood over a couple hundred years, and even when they said ‘Sure, fine, you’re free now,’ they came up with ways to keep you fromDown the rabbit hole….