Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it.” - Tina Fey
Born: May 18, 1970
(via e-pic)
Welcome to Ronkville. Established: 2007 Population: 1 (though we get a lot of visitors passing through)
Click the timestamp to go to the full post or source. And read The Ronkville Morning Bugle to keep up on what news is buzzing around our little hamlet today.
The spring day lasts
visitors Go ahead, ask me a question.
Click the timestamp to go to the full post or source. And read The Ronkville Morning Bugle to keep up on what news is buzzing around our little hamlet today.
The spring day lasts
a little longer
around water
~ Issa
visitors Go ahead, ask me a question.
May 18, 2013
May 16, 2013
"There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors."
—
Born: May 16, 1929, Baltimore Died: March 27, 2012,
Poet, activist, and MacArthur “genius.” Adrienne Rich was born in 84 years ago today. In 1997 she turned down the National Medal for the Arts in a protest against the disparity of justice in America.
May 6, 2013
Happy Birthday, Orson
It’s the birthday of Orson Welles.
At age 20, he staged Macbeth (1936) as part of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Theatre Project. He set the scene in Haiti. The weird sisters became witch doctors. They said he was a prodigy.
He did radio plays and scared the shit out of listeners with his War of the Worlds that created widespread panic, especially in New Jersey where he had set the story.
He made a film. he was going to call it The American but it was released in 1941 as Citizen Kane. Didn’t do that well at the box office then, but it later became discovered by critics and is considered one of the greatest films in history. He was 25.
He made other good films as a director and actor - The Magnificent Ambersons, Journey Into Fear, The Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil - all worth watching.
He loved magic (member of both the International Brotherhood of Magicians and the Society of American Magicians).
A man of many appetites, he died, not surprisingly, of a heart attack in 1985.
Here’s to hoping that he is somewhere tonight enjoying his favorite meal - two rare steaks and a pint of scotch.
April 23, 2013
Happy birthday, Willy.
Today is traditionally held to be the birthday of William Shakespeare. There is no birth certificate because in that plague time families waited 3 days to baptize the child and his was on April 26, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avo, Warwickshire, England.
Everyone “knows” of Shakes peare, but he left behind no personal papers; so much of what we know, or think we know, about him comes to us from public and court documents, with a fair measure of inference and speculation.
April 16, 2013
"Life is a beautiful magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish,"
—
Charles Chaplin
April 16, 1889: Legendary performer and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin was born in London, England. Ever a perfectionist, Chaplin wrote, directed, produced, and starred in all of his own films, and, once sound was introduced, wrote all of his own scores as well.
April 5, 2013
Today is the birthday of Thomas Hobbes, born in Westport, Wiltshire, England (1588) who witnessed a chaotic time in English politics, with two civil wars and the execution of the king.
He wrote his most famous book, Leviathan, in the midst of it, in which he argues that people need a strong central authority to keep them from collapsing into war and chaos, a world with “no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
He believed that because we don’t share the same ideas about what’s right and wrong, we need a sovereign to enforce a set of laws.
Of course, many people today only know his name as it appears with Calvin, a precocious and adventurous six-year-old boy, and his sardonic stuffed tiger, Hobbes. The pair are thought to be named after John Calvin, a 16th-century French Reformation theologian, and Thomas Hobbes,
“I’ve been thinking Hobbes”
“On a weekend?”
“Well, it wasn’t on purpose”
(Source: ck1205)
April 2, 2013
"But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more."
—
Hans Christian Andersen
Born April 2, 1805: Dutch writer Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tales are so beloved that his birthday is celebrated as International Children’s Book Day.
He wrote six novels and several travel books, thirty-five plays and a hundred and seventy-five fairy tales including “The Little Mermaid,” “The Princess and the Pea,” “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” “Thumbelina,” and “The Ugly Duckling.” He remained forever true to his humble background and believed status should be the right of everyone and not the privilege of the aristocracy.
March 31, 2013
"I think, therefore I am."
—
It’s the birthday of philosopher and big doubter René Descartes, born in La Haye en Touraine, France (1596).
He is called the father of modern philosophy, but he considered himself a mathematician and scientist.
He became interested in philosophy when he heard that the church persecuted Galileo for his scientific theories. Descartes realized some of his own theories were also controversial, so he wrote a book called Discourse on Method(1637), about the necessity of doubt in scientific inquiry.
He also wrote about beginning to doubt everything about his life, even the fact of his own existence. But in the process of doing so, he realized that he couldn’t doubt the existence of his own thoughts, and he produced his most famous line: “I think, therefore I am.”
March 30, 2013
Fishing in Spring, Pont de Clichy by Vincent Van Gogh
Today is Vincent Van Gogh’s birthday. He was born in Zundert, Holland in 1853. His paintings and letter reflect on his passions and also his struggles with probable bipolar disorder.
March 26, 2013
"
Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life.
It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.
"—
Joseph Campbell
Campbell was an American author and teacher best known for his work in the field of comparative mythology.
He had an impact on my thinking with The Hero with a Thousand Faces and The Power of Myth
He also had a powerful influence on George Lucas’ vision of the original Star Wars trilogy.
I later learned that his own personal beliefs were less than admirable, but his work still stayed with me.
And he was the first person I ever heard use the phrase “Follow your bliss” which became a motto for a new age.
March 24, 2013
It’s the birthday of poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, born in Yonkers, New York (1919). Ferlinghetti went to college at the University of North Carolina, and then joined the Navy during World War II. After the war, he went to the Sorbonne, and then settled in San Francisco. He loved the North Beach neighborhoo, full of Italian immigrants, and he decided to open a bookstore there. In 1953, he opened City Lights, a bookstore and publishing house, which made its name printing Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” Ferlinghetti did not publish his own book, 
has received the Robert Frost Memorial Medal and the first Literarian Award of the National Book Foundation. He is the subject of Christopher Felver’s new film documentary, Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder.
March 22, 2013
"I don’t think people read poetry because they’re interested in the poet. I think they’re read poetry because they’re interested in themselves."
— Billy Collins, whose 72nd birthday is today, March 22
March 20, 2013
March 18, 2013
Jersey boy (Newark) Philip Roth turns 80 tomorrow, March 19, 2013.
The Philip Roth Society has organized a two-day conference, “Roth@80,” at the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark that started today and continues Tuesday. It will include writers, tributes, and a tour of Roth’s Newark.
“Roth’s Newark” is centered on his child home - a small clapboard house at 81 Summit Ave. I went there a few years ago when there was a dedication - a plaque inscribed “Historic Site: Philip Roth Home” and the corner of Summit and Keer avenues bears a third street sign that says “Philip Roth Plaza.”
There will be an upcoming PBS American Masters episode on him: Philip Roth Unmasked.
via Literary Caucus
(via nprfreshair)
March 17, 2013
"The future is there… looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become."
— William Gibson is 65. (B:March 17, 1948) ,cyberpunk grand master who predicted the rise of the Web and reality TV.
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