Happy Birthday, Jackie

Today in 1919 Jackie Robinson was born.

A stunning second baseman over ten seasons, he played in six World Series and contributed to the Dodgers' 1955 World Championship. He was selected for six consecutive All-Star Games from 1949 to 1954, was the recipient of the inaugural MLB Rookie of the Year Award in 1947, and won the National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1949 – the first black player so honored. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962 on the first ballot. In 1997, Major League Baseball retired his uniform number, 42, across all major league teams.

And of course, he was the first black major leaguer since 1880, breaking baseball's color barrier... and contributing massively to the advancement of civil rights.

The cake you imagine

So, in today's Mary Worth, the great cake-baking contest begins in the beautiful downtown Santa Royale Convention Center and local cable. Mary and her partner, the anxious hotelier John (who's working up to a heart attack from nervousness), are up against "younger and more experienced" cake-contest contestants, but they're sure their pink layer cake with lots of flowers in the icing will win.

I, however, am more intrigued by the pair of contestants at the last table there. They're clearly going for the minimalist cake - they don't even have any eggs or baking pans.

Happy Birthday, Gelett

Today in Boston in 1866 (Frank) Gelett Burgess was born.

He wrote more than 35 books of fiction and nonfiction, including Lady Méchante or Life As It Should Be (which is funny), as well as several plays, and he coined the word "blurb". But he is best known for this (which has a title I never knew till today):

Purple Cow: Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who's Quite Remarkable, at Least

I never Saw a Purple Cow;
I never Hope to See One;
But I can Tell you, Anyhow,
I'd rather See than Be One.

This poem haunted his life , eventually causing him to write this little sequel:

Confession: and a Portrait Too, Upon a Background that I Rue

Ah, yes, I wrote the Purple Cow;
I'm sorry now I wrote it;
But I can tell you, Anyhow,
I'll Kill you if you Quote it.

(But he's dead, so I'm not afraid.)

Young, hip, hot?

Go to The Josh Fruhlinger Experience for a photo of Alex Trebek at 23, on Canadian TV, in an amazing sweater.

Happy Birthday, Anton

Today in 1860 Антон Павлович Чехов (Anton Pavlovich Chekhov) was born. He was a doctor throughout his life, and probably contracted the tuberculosis that killed him while practicing medicine in the labor camps of Siberia - not as a prisoner, but as a volunteer medic, a logical conclusion to a career that began with free clinics and sliding-scale fees for Russia's working poor and included building schools and a fire station.

But if medicine was his lawful wife, literature, as he said once to Alexei Suvorin, was his mistress (Медицина — моя законная жена, а литература — любовница), and he wrote four classic plays (Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, The Seagull, and The Cherry Orchard) and many short stories - his masterpiece "The Lady with the Dog" was written in Yalta, where he'd gone to battle his tuberculosis. (The picture is Chekhov with a dog, in Yalta...) Many consider him the father of the modern short story, many of whose forms he pioneered. He also formulated what's often called "Chekhov's Law" of "economy in narrative": "Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass." Or, in a more famous formulation, often called Chekhov's Gun: Если в первом акте на стене висит ружье, то в последнем оно обязательно выстрелит - "If there's a gun on the wall in the first act, it has to be fired by the end of the third act."

In May 1904 he became so ill that he went to a German health spa, where he died two months later.

All 201 of his stories, in the Constance Garnett translations and in chronological order, can be found here, with notes. And here they are in Russian.


«Если ты кричишь "Вперед!", ты должен принять безошибочное решение, в каком направлении нужно идти. Разве ты не понимаешь, что, не сделав этого, ты взываешь как к монаху, так и к революционеру, и они будут двигаться в противоположных направлениях?»

"If you cry 'Forward!' you must make it absolutely plain which direction to go. Don't you see that if, without doing so, you call out the word to both a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite directions?"

Proverb?

I don't think that "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" is a proverb. I suppose so, if you have a sufficiently wide definition of proverb, but aren't they supposed to embody some universal truth? This seems more like a maxim to me - a guide to behavior.

Happy Birthday, José

José Martí was born today in Havana, Cuba, in 1853. He was exiled to ASpain at 17, later moving to Mexico, Guatemala, and back to Cuba, from which he was again deported to Spain; he fled to France and then the US, living in New York and working for Cuban independence. He joined the war in 1895 and died shortly after the invasion.

Yo que vivo, aunque me he muerto... (Verso XXVI)

Yo que vivo, aunque me he muerto,
Soy un gran descubridor,
Porque anoche he descubierto
La medicina de amor.

Cuando al peso de la cruz
El hombre morir resuelve,
Sale a hacer bien, lo hace, y vuelve
Como de un baño de luz.


translation by Manuel A. Tellechea:

I who live though I have died,
Claim a great discovery,
For last night I verified
Love is the best remedy.

When weighed by the cross, a man
Resolves to die for the right;
He does all the good he can,
And returns bathed in the light.






(More of his poems in Spanish and in English here)

The Week in Entertainment

Live: Beauty and the Beast at the Hippodrome, a very engaging production, nicely done with the effect and costuming.

TV: The usual Wednesday trio, all funny. With The Neighbors ABC has finally found the show to put in between The Middle and Modern Family. Phil's Godfather with Luke - hysterical. I really loved Sue's "cheer-off", too. The Mentalist - I have a bad feeling about that Red John symbol on the barn from 25 years ago. What, eventually - will he be a freaking god?

Read: José Saramago's All the Names, which was a fascinating character study in a strange situation (which can be said of most of his books). A couple of Savage Chickens collections, including the new one, very funny.

Happy Birthday, Charles aka Lewis

Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, was born today in 1832, near Daresbury, Cheshire, England.

Four years ago you got The Mad Gardener's Song; three years ago Bessie's Song to Her Doll, two years ago Tema Con Varizioni, last year A Sea Dirge, and this year A Valentine:

Sent to a friend who had complained that I was glad enough to see him when he came, but didn't seem to miss him if he stayed away.

And cannot pleasures, while they last,
Be actual unless, when past,
They leave us shuddering and aghast,
With anguish smarting?
And cannot friends be firm and fast,
And yet bear parting?

And must I then, at Friendship's call,
Calmly resign the little all
(Trifling, I grant, it is and small)
I have of gladness,
And lend my being to the thrall
Of gloom and sadness?

And think you that I should be dumb,
And full DOLORUM OMNIUM,
Excepting when YOU choose to come
And share my dinner?
At other times be sour and glum
And daily thinner?

Must he then only live to weep,
Who'd prove his friendship true and deep
By day a lonely shadow creep,
At night-time languish,
Oft raising in his broken sleep
The moan of anguish?

The lover, if for certain days
His fair one be denied his gaze,
Sinks not in grief and wild amaze,
But, wiser wooer,
He spends the time in writing lays,
And posts them to her.

And if the verse flow free and fast,
Till even the poet is aghast,
A touching Valentine at last
The post shall carry,
When thirteen days are gone and past
Of February.

Farewell, dear friend, and when we meet,
In desert waste or crowded street,
Perhaps before this week shall fleet,
Perhaps to-morrow.
I trust to find YOUR heart the seat
Of wasting sorrow.

Happy Birthday, Thomas

Today in 1621 Thomas Willis was born - the father of modern neurology. He discovered much about the way the brain is put together - nerves and cranial anatomy, including the Circle of Willis, and the circulation of the blood into and through the brain.

Carl Zimmer has written a (typically) brilliant book, Soul Made Flesh, that tells his story - and others (did you know Christopher Wren was more famous in his lifetime for his anatomical drawings than his architecture?) - highly recommended. I happened to read it shortly before visiting London, and it made me hunt out Willis's tomb in St Paul's.

Happy Birthday, Wolfgang

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born today in 1756 in Salzburg.

Symphony No 40

Happy Birthday, Jules

Today in the Bronx in 1929 Jules Feiffer was born.


Here's my annual offering of a classic... still (unfortunately) relevant.

Sabotaged!

So, this is not a great photo, but it's the best I got. This Arlo & Janis strip was meant - clearly - for a standard 'strip' presentation. Good luck making that card with the format chosen by the local rag!

Happy Birthday, Rab

Robert Burns was born today in 1759, two miles (3 km) south of Ayr, in Alloway, South Ayrshire, Scotland.

The Highland Widow's Lament

Oh I am come to the low Countrie,
Ochon, Ochon, Ochrie!
Without a penny in my purse. To buy a meal to me.

It was na sae in the Highland hills,
Ochon, Ochon, Ochrie!
Nae woman in the Country wide Sae happy was as me.

For then I had a score o' kye
Ochon, Ochon, Ochrie!
Feeding on you nill sae high, And giving milk to me.

And there I had three score o' yowes,
Ochon, Ochon, Ochrie!
Skipping on ou bonie knowes, And casting woo to me.

I was the happiest of a' the Clan,
Sair, sair may I repine;
For Donald was the brawest man, And Donald he was mine.

Till Charlie Stewart cam at last,
Sae far to set us free;
My Donald's arm was wanted then, For Scotland and for me.

Their waefu' fate what need I tell,
Right to wrang did yield;
My Donald and his Country fell Upon Culloden field.

Ochon! O Donald, oh!
Ochon, Ochon, Ochrie!
Nae woman in the warld wide, Sae wretched now as me.

Happy Birthday, Vasily

Born today in 1848 in Krasnoyarsk, Vasily Ivanovich Surikov (Василий Иванович Суриков).

He is probably the foremost Russian painter of large-scale historical subjects, which often focused on events that resonated with the ordinary person, though he also painted smaller events and portraits. His major pieces are among the best-known paintings in Russia.

Five years ago I showed you his portrait of the Bronze Horseman - Peter I (the Great) in St Petersburg - and depiction of the arrest of the Boyarina Feodosia Morozova, four years ago it was a light-hearted game, Taking of the Snow Fort, and one of his more intimate works, a portrait of Menshikov and his daughters in exile; three years ago, a moody picture of Stenka Razin in his boat, and a portrait of an old man in his vegetable garden, and two years ago, two of his landscapes, a herd of horses on the Barabin steppe and a seasonally-apt watercolor of the Kremlin, and last year, a water-color church in Dyakovo, and the Yenisey river.

This year, two portraits: a girl with braids and a woman from Khakassia.

You can find more of his pictures at this Russian-language site if you're interested.)

Happy Birthday, Sergei

Born today in Riga, Latvia, in the then Russian Empire, Sergei Eisenstein (Сергей Михайлович Эйзенштейн), one of the great pioneers of film directing, often called the "Father of Montage." He directed some of the early great movies - the silent films Strike [Стачка](1924), Battleship Potemkin [Броненосец Потёмкин] (1925) and October - Ten Days That Shook the World [Октябрь «Десять дней, которые потрясли мир»](1927), and the historical epic Alexander Nevsky [Александр Невский] (1938). Potemkin has some of the most famous sequences (or montages) in film - particularly the utterly brilliant Odessa Gates steps sequence.

Happy Birthday, Byron

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was born today in 1788.

So, we'll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a roving
By the light of the moon.

After the Inauguration in two worlds

Day after the Inauguration front page comparison - today both papers ran little teasers for inside stories in the middle of the page as well as at the bottom; I usually ignore the latter, but decided to include the former. I think my fave has to be the 'Obama uses the Constitution' one - the fiend!

WaTimes:

• A 'Limitless' Vision:  President lays out liberal agenda for second term
• Abortion battle rages 40 years after Roe decision: Protests planned in Washington
• Bipartisanship makes a brief Hill appearance
• Obama vows to protect gay rights, climate
• Obama uses the Constitution as basis for his aggressive plans
• Libya: Republicans expects Clinton's clarity on Benghazi
• Teasers: Skies over Capitol scanned; Is Biden prepping for '16?
• Big picture: The Mall during the Inauguration

WaPost:

• 'We must act': Second term begins with a sweeping agenda for equality
• Speech heralds a bolder style of leadership
• Obama invokes the words of the Founders
• Race in America: A more open, and complex, conversation
• The first lady adds substance to fashion style
• Teasers: When the couch just won't do; Bystanders for a day; An address and its broad themes; Stars, dancing and snacking
• Big picture: The president and Mrs Obama walking along Pennsylvania Avenue

Argh!

The city is Харків, or as the Russians spell it Харьков. If you're going to spell it Kharkiv, you must pronounce it 'Harkyoo [ˈxɑrkiw] Alex, not Har-kuv. Or possibly 'Harkeef [ˈxɑrkiːf] if you're using an eastern pronunciation. It's Ukrainian, not Russian.

For that matter, if you're using the Russian spelling of Kharkov, it's still not Kar-kuv; it's 'Harkoff [ˈxarʲkəf].

That H is really a voiceless velar fricative that we don't have as an initial consonant in English (think the CH in loch or Bach). But H is closer than K. And -uv is just wrong.

Stop saying you speak Russian, Alex.

Topsy meets Mr Darcy while Eliza crosses the New River

Category: Table of Contents. Daily Double Clue: Eliza's Escape and Topsy.

She had no idea. A desperate guess, as time ran out, was Pride and Prejudice but she knew it wasn't right.

Eliza and Topsy.

Wow. If nothing else, hasn't she seen The King and I and that hilarious Thai adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Fool me once...

Sen. John McCain wasn't happy with the president's speech.

“It was a fine speech, but I didn’t hear any conciliatory remarks,” McCain told the [NY} Times. “I didn’t see any specific reference like, ‘I reach out my hand to the other side of the aisle.’”

Gosh, I didn't either. I wonder why that was? I mean, the new Congress is already in session. Just how do you think he'd draw back that reached-out hand? Merely bloody, or actually bitten off?

New Favorite Sentence

”We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.”

Barack Obama, Jan 21, 2013

Albert Camus?

Okay, this is great. Nehemiah Scudder at Comics Curmudgeon commenting on the quotes used in Mary Worth:

I would respect Moy more if she actually used Bartlett’s for her quotations. Then they would at least be accurate and properly attributed. In fact, she just trolls up crap from the Internet, and never checks it. I think of the last ten “quotes” I’ve seen of her since I’ve been looking (since I’ve been at CC, that is) only two of them passed muster.

Brainyquotes.com delenda est! — Albert “Cato” Camus, the Elder

We the People don't pray the same way

I am a grump, fine. But you should not ask the whole country to pray "in Jesus' name" at the Inauguration of the President of the US. This is not a country which has an established religion. "In Jesus' name I pray", okay. But not "we".

On the other hand, I suppose he's trying to be Christian for the birthers...

Happy Birthday, Louis

Today in 1952, Louis Menand was born in Syracuse, New York.

I confess that my favorite thing by him was his book review of Eats, Shoots & Leaves, which begins:

The first punctuation mistake in “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation” (Gotham; $17.50), by Lynne Truss, a British writer, appears in the dedication, where a nonrestrictive clause is not preceded by a comma. It is a wild ride downhill from there. “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” presents itself as a call to arms, in a world spinning rapidly into subliteracy, by a hip yet unapologetic curmudgeon, a stickler for the rules of writing. But it’s hard to fend off the suspicion that the whole thing might be a hoax.

You can read the whole review here, and you should, and not just because his take-down of Truss is masterful and humorous. There's more, as the saying goes; the second half begins with this question:

Why would a person who is not just vague about the rules but disinclined to follow them bother to produce a guide to punctuation?

Menand has an answer, and it's an examination of writing itself :

Though she has persuaded herself otherwise, Truss doesn’t want people to care about correctness. She wants them to care about writing and about using the full resources of the language. “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” is really a “decline of print culture” book disguised as a style manual (poorly disguised). Truss has got things mixed up because she has confused two aspects of writing: the technological and the aesthetic. Writing is an instrument that was invented for recording, storing, and communicating. Using the relatively small number of symbols on the keyboard, you can record, store, and communicate a virtually infinite range of information, and encode meanings with virtually any degree of complexity. The system works entirely by relationships—the relationship of one symbol to another, of one word to another, of one sentence to another. The function of most punctuation—commas, colons and semicolons, dashes, and so on—is to help organize the relationships among the parts of a sentence. Its role is semantic: to add precision and complexity to meaning. It increases the information potential of strings of words.

What most punctuation does not do is add color, texture, or flavor to the writing. Those are all things that belong to the aesthetics, and literary aesthetics are weirdly intangible. You can’t taste writing. It has no color and makes no sound. Its shape has no significance. But people say that someone’s prose is “colorful” or “pungent” or “shapeless” or “lyrical.” When written language is decoded, it seems to trigger sensations that are unique to writing but that usually have to be described by analogy to some other activity. When deli owners put up signs that read “ ‘Iced’ Tea,” the single quotation marks are intended to add extraliterary significance to the message, as if they were the grammatical equivalent of red ink. Truss is quite clear about the role played by punctuation in making words mean something. But she also—it is part of her general inconsistency—suggests that semicolons, for example, signal readers to pause. She likes to animate her punctuation marks, to talk about the apostrophe and the dash as though they were little cartoon characters livening up the page. She is anthropomorphizing a technology. It’s a natural thing to do. As she points out, in earlier times punctuation did a lot more work than it does today, and some of the work involved adjusting the timing in sentences. But this is no longer the norm, and trying to punctuate in that spirit now only makes for ambiguity and annoyance.

One of the most mysterious of writing’s immaterial properties is what people call “voice.” Editors sometimes refer to it, in a phrase that underscores the paradox at the heart of the idea, as “the voice on the page.” Prose can show many virtues, including originality, without having a voice. It may avoid cliché, radiate conviction, be grammatically so clean that your grandmother could eat off it. But none of this has anything to do with this elusive entity the “voice.” There are probably all kinds of literary sins that prevent a piece of writing from having a voice, but there seems to be no guaranteed technique for creating one. Grammatical correctness doesn’t insure it. Calculated incorrectness doesn’t, either. Ingenuity, wit, sarcasm, euphony, frequent outbreaks of the first-person singular—any of these can enliven prose without giving it a voice. You can set the stage as elaborately as you like, but either the phantom appears or it doesn’t.

He goes on, and like most of Menand, it is well worth your time.

The Week in Entertainment

somehow I missed this last week, so here are two weeks' worth
 
DVD: Billu with the great Irrfan Khan starring along with Shahrukh Khan. Yes. They put those two into the same movie ... and it works. Irrfan plays a poverty-stricken barber who has always told his wife and kids that he knows the mega-Bollywood-star played by Shahrukh - and when the latter comes to film his new blockbuster in the former's village, the question becomes: Has Billu been lying? All the shine and song is Shahrukh's, and all the heart is Irrfan's - or so you might think. This one's wonderful.

TV: The usual Wednesday lineup - The Neighbors is settling in nicely: silly but in a very funny way. Axl cracks me up on The Middle; kid's got master-level life skills. Several episodes of The Mentalist which have been piling up on the dvr; the Lisbon-has-a-nemesis-too arc actually played out very well; I'm sorry it's over. This has been about the amount of Red John (ie, one mention) I like.

Read: The First Rule of Ten and its sequel The Second Rule of Ten, which are very well written mysteries about a Tibetan ex-monk practicing as a PI in Los Angeles. Ten's an engaging character with a strong narrative voice. Looking forward to the next one, whenever it comes out. There's a Head on the Beach, Grandad, a light-hearted mystery set in Thailand, dealing with some heavy topics - very entertaining read. About Alice, Calvin Trillin's memoir of his late wife. Servant of the Muses, a noirish book about a private eye who discovers that his secretary Clio is in fact Clio the Muse of History. He doesn't discover this until she's kidnapped and her sister Erato shows up - at which point he's waaaay over his head.

Happy Birthday, Buzz

Today in 1930 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, Buzz Aldrin was born (as "Edwin", but he legally changed it to Buzz, his childhood nickname, later). One of the first men to land on the moon, he was the second to set foot on it. He made many crucial contributions to the space program, including the use of water for neutral-buoyancy training, and coordinate rendezvous.

And when moon hoaxer, conspiracy nut, and stalker Bart Sibrel ambushed him, poking him in the chest with a Bible and calling him "a coward, a liar, and a thief", Buzz Aldrin, 72 at the time, punched him in the face. Sometimes, that's what it takes.

Happy Birthday, Edgar

Today in 1809, in Boston, Edgar Allan Poe was born. Wikipedia notes

Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective-fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

Oh, that Wikipedia and its wacky understatements!

He died in Baltimore, probably as a result of drug- and alcohol-poisoning due to cooping (the practice of kidnapping someone and forcing them to vote often in many precincts), though there have been many theories of his death, all records being lost. Until a couple of years ago, three roses and a bottle of cognac, half empty, were left on his grave every year for more than 60 years. Three years ago was the first time the anonymous visitor didn't come, and he hasn't come since, meaning it's likely that he died and left no-one to carry on the tradition.

Here's one of Poe's shorter, less macabre works (with a lovely dangling participle in the second verse!):


To Helen

Helen, thy beauty is to me
    Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
    The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
    To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
    Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
    To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
    How statue-like I see thee stand,
    The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
    Are Holy Land!

More can be found here

Seriously?

This is a thousand dollar question?

With a leg span of up to 12 inches, T. blondi, the goliath this-eating spider,  can capture & eat small avian prey.

"What is bird?"

Really?

Same City...

And it's time once again for "Same City, Different Worlds"

WaTimes:

• CABINET: After long wait, Kerry finally gets chance to head State: Confirmation seems certain
• OIL: Environmentalists versus workers: Keystone pipeline decision will shape Obama's legacy
• TERRORISM: Bloodshed in Algeria shows reach of terrorists: Fate of American hostages unknown
• HEALTH CARE: Contraception mandate hits legal hurdles: Conflicting rulings set course for high court
• WHITE HOUSE: Gun control advocates say Obama is too late
• MILITARY: Close deployments, divided families: 'Indescribable emotions' as a shrinking fleet takes toll
• The big photo: work near Winona, Texas on the Keystone XL Pipeline, also a map

WaPost:

• 15 D.C. public schools to close: Move, spurred partly by underenrollment, could save $8.5 million
• In hostage crisis, a deadly rescue: Foreign allies criticize Algerian raid: Fate of American captives is unclear
• Health care propels region's job growth
• Armstrong confesses to doping
• Obit: Pauline Phillips 1918-2013 'Dear Abby' became a confessor and a friend
• A fake girlfriend and a credulous Web: Did Manti Te'o want to believe in Lennay Kekua? Did we need to?
• The big photo: A girl and her brother playing in the snow in Mississippi

Today, the single shared story, with its differing stresses, is in the same place - upper right corner.

Happy Birthday, Peter Mark

Peter Mark Roget was born today in 1779, in London.

His Thesaurus has been an invaluable tool for many writers - a work of genius. More people need lessons in how to use it, but that's not his fault. For one thing, he didn't intend it to be a dictionary of synonyms, but rather a classification of English's lexicon - "of the words it contains and of the idiomatic combinations peculiar to it, arranged, not in alphabetical order as they are in a dictionary, but according to the ideas which they express."

And then there's this shirt I got for my birthday last year!


(lol image from loltheorists)

Happy Birthday, Elvis

That's the Elvis.

Happy Birthday, Genndy

Today in Moscow, Russia (then USSR), in 1970 Genndy Tartakovsky was born.

Happy Birthday, Ben

Born today 302 years ago in Boston - yes, Boston - Benjamin Franklin, "inventor of the stove" — which he never patented because he created it for the good of society. Also, inventor of the fire company, fire insurance, bifocals, a flexible urinary catheter, swim fins, the glass harmonica, the odometer, the lightning rod, and - boon to all us vertically challenged readers - the "long arm" — a long wooden pole with a grasping claw at the end — to reach the books we want to read. Also, a very quotable man, one way or another. Here's Adams on Franklin:

“Franklin did this, Franklin did that, Franklin did some other damned thing. . . . Franklin smote the ground and out sprang George Washington, full grown and on his horse. . . . Franklin then electrified him with his miraculous lightning rod and the three of them--Franklin, Washington, and the horse--conducted the entire Revolution by themselves.”

And here's Franklin himself:

If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write something worth reading or do things worth the writing.

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Best Picture AND Best Song

Slumdog Millionaire won Best Song?? Seriously? What I most remember about that movie (which I loved) was that there was only one dance, and that was under the end credits. Did that song win? Wow. I clearly do not pay enough attention to the Oscars™!

Happy Birthday, Robert

Robert W. Service was born today in Preston, England, in 1874. At the age of 23 he moved to Canada, which become his home (though he died in France at the age of 84). And, no; I'm not going to give you a bunch of the boys whooping it up in the Malemute Saloon - you can find that anywhere. Instead, here are two things from his Ballads of a Bohemian, written in the lead-up and early days of WWI, in which Service was an ambulance driver, two prose poems interludes between the poems themselves:

Near Albert,
February 1915.

Over the spine of the ridge a horned moon of reddish hue peers through the splintered, hag-like trees. Where the trenches are, rockets are rising, green and red. I hear the coughing of the Maxims, the peevish nagging of the rifles, the boom of a "heavy" and the hollow sound of its exploding shell.

Running the car into the shadow of a ruined house, I try to sleep. But a battery starts to blaze away close by, and the flame lights up my shelter. Near me some soldiers are in deep slumber; one stirs in his sleep as a big rat runs over him, and I know by experience that when one is sleeping a rat feels as heavy as a sheep.

But how ~can~ one possibly sleep? Out there in the dark there is the wild tattoo of a thousand rifles; and hark! that dull roar is the explosion of a mine. There! the purring of the rapid firers. Desperate things are doing. There will be lots of work for me before this night is over.

In Picardy,
January 1915.

The road lies amid a malevolent heath. It seems to lead us right into the clutch of the enemy; for the star-shells, that at first were bursting overhead, gradually encircle us. The fields are strangely sinister; the splintered trees are like giant toothpicks. There is a lisping and a twanging overhead.

As we wait at the door of the dugout that serves as a first-aid dressing station, I gaze up into that mysterious dark, so alive with musical vibrations. Then a small shadow detaches itself from the greater shadow, and a gray-bearded sentry says to me: "You'd better come in out of the bullets."

So I keep under cover, and presently they bring my load. Two men drip with sweat as they carry their comrade. I can see that they all three belong to the Foreign Legion. I think for a moment of Saxon Dane. How strange if some day I should carry him! Half fearfully I look at my passenger, but he is a black man. Such things only happen in fiction.

.............

We have just had one of our men killed, a young sculptor of immense promise.

When one thinks of all the fine work he might have accomplished, it seems a shame. But, after all, to-morrow it may be the turn of any of us. If it should be mine, my chief regret will be for work undone.

Ah! I often think of how I will go back to the Quarter and take up the old life again. How sweet it will all seem. But first I must earn the right. And if ever I do go back, how I will find Bohemia changed! Missing how many a face!

Daventry, the sculptor, is buried in a little graveyard near one of our posts. Just now our section of the line is quiet, so I often go and sit there. Stretching myself on a flat stone, I dream for hours.

Silence and solitude! How good the peace of it all seems! Around me the grasses weave a pattern, and half hide the hundreds of little wooden crosses. Here is one with a single name:

AUBREY.Who was Aubrey I wonder? Then another:

~To Our Beloved Comrade.~
Then one which has attached to it, in the cheapest of little frames, the crude water-color daub of a child, three purple flowers standing in a yellow vase. Below it, painfully printed, I read:

~To My Darling Papa -- Thy Little Odette.~
And beyond the crosses many fresh graves have been dug. With hungry open mouths they wait. Even now I can hear the guns that are going to feed them. Soon there will be more crosses, and more and more. Then they will cease, and wives and mothers will come here to weep.

Ah! Peace so precious must be bought with blood and tears. Let us honor and bless the men who pay, and envy them the manner of their dying; for not all the jeweled orders on the breasts of the living can vie in glory with the little wooden cross the humblest of these has won. . . .


all his works

Nice try, Facebook

Hahahahaha No.

Disco??

Hey.

Whoopie Goldberg's character in Sister Act was not "a disco singer". She was a lounge singer who had a 60s act.When we see it, she does a medley of "(Love Is Like a) Heat Wave"/"My Guy"/"I Will Follow Him". She also does "Shout", which is from 1959.

60s isn't disco!

A Man and His Dog

Neil Gaiman writes about the death of his dog. It's beautiful. It will break your heart.

Happy Birthday, Noel

Today in 1899 Noel Coward was born, in Teddington, Middlesex, England.

He chose his own epitaph: A Talent to Amuse.

And how perfectly fitting it is.

Happy Birthday, Martin

January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law.

Happy Birthday, Clark

Clark Ashton Smith was born today in Auburn, California, in 1893. Mostly self-educated (he had only an 8th-grade formal education), he was one of the the member of the great triumvirate who wrote for Weird Tales (the other two being, of course, HP Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard). Although he outlived them by more than twenty years, after their deaths - in quick succession, Lovecraft from cancer in '37 and Howard by suicide in '36 - he ceased writing, ending the Golden Age of fantasy. He's certainly best known for his fantastic fiction, but his artistic career had three parts: in his later years he was a sculptor, and he had written poetry before fiction. In fact, he had been called "the Keats of the Pacific". Though most are long, here are two of those poems:

September

Slumberously burns the sun
Over slopes adust and dun,
Leaning southward through September. . . .
I forget and I remember,
Life is half oblivion. . . .
Somnolently burns the sun.

Close and dim the horizons creep,
Earthward lapse the heavens in sleep;
Woodlands faint with azure air
Seem but bourns of Otherwhere:
Swooning with ensorcelled sleep,
Close and dim the horizons creep.

Embers from a dreamland hearth,
Glow the leaves in croft and garth;
Vines within the willows drawn
Relume the gold of visions gone;
Darkly burn, in croft and garth,
Embers from a dreamland hearth.

Sleepy like an airless fire,
Smoulders my supreme desire:
Throeless, in the tranquil sun,
Hearts could melt and merge as one
In forgetful soft desire
Drowsy like an airless fire.

Snowfall on Acacia

I

Drooping low,
Acacia-branches bear their double
Burden of flowers and snow.

II

Humped with snow, the golden
Sprays careen, lifting free
Suddenly.

You can find his works (and more) at the Eldritch Dark.

Happy Birthday, Berth

Berthe Morisot was born today in Bourges, Cher, France, in 1841. One of the Impressionists, she exhibited in the Salon and then, along with the other "rejected Impressionists" (Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley), in their own exhibitions.

The Dining Room

Summer Day

On the Balcony


(More here)

Happy Birthday, Salmon

Salmon P Chase was born today in Cornish, New Hampshire, in 1808. He used to be best known - in fact, only known - to me as the odd man out in American currency: Hamilton and Franklin were Founding Fathers, if not presidents, but who was this Salmon P Chase and why did he rate the $10,000 dollar bill?

Well, he was Senator from Ohio and Governor of Ohio; Treasury Secretary under President Abraham Lincoln; and Chief Justice of the United States. He was an Abolitionist, and he coined the slogan of the Free Soil Party, "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men." The whole of his political life was dedicated to destroying slavery and its threat to the America's republican government.

Not bad.

Chase was first a Whig, then a member of the Liberty Party, then a founding member of the Free Soil Party (ah, yes; the US's multi-party days). And he founded the modern Republican Party - oh, how things have changed! - by uniting Whigs and liberal Democrats within a party dedicated to fighting slavery. He ran for President but ended up supporting Lincoln, and while Treasury Secretary he established the modern banking system - including the first federal treasury notes, which is why he's on the money.

In 1868 he wrote in a private letter:

"Congress was right in not limiting, by its reconstruction acts, the right of suffrage to whites; but wrong in the exclusion from suffrage of certain classes of citizens and all unable to take its prescribed retrospective oath, and wrong also in the establishment of despotic military governments for the States and in authorizing military commissions for the trial of civilians in time of peace. There should have been as little military government as possible; no military commissions; no classes excluded from suffrage; and no oath except one of faithful obedience and support to the Constitution and laws, and of sincere attachment to the constitutional Government of the United States."

He was appointed to the Supreme Court by Lincoln, as Chief Justice, and one of his first acts was to appoint John Rock, the first black attorney to argue cases before the Supreme Court.

Chase dearly wished to be president, but his unflinching support for equality for black Americans meant he couldn't find a party which would back him. He even founded the Liberal Republican Party to combat Grant and the Radical Republicans, and although that party didn't last much beyond the election of 1872, most of its leaders didn't return to the Republicans but instead became Democrats, beginning the swap of positions that finds the "party of Lincoln" where it is today.

Happy Birthday, Ira

Born today in 1923, Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian who was one of the men who raised the flag on Iwo Jima - of the six, one of the three who survived the battle. After the war, almost certainly suffering from PTSD as well as survivor guilt, Hayes was unable to handle the public adulation on one hand and reservation life on the other, and he slowly drank himself to death. He's buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

"Let's say he had a little dream in his heart that someday the Indian would be like the white man — be able to walk all over the United States." (Rene Gagnon, fellow flag-raiser, at Hayes's funeral)

Call him 'drunken Ira Hayes',
He won't answer any more,
Not the whiskey-drinking Indian
Or the Marine who went to war.
           -Peter LaFarge

What does THAT even mean?

Lemont (of the comic strip Candorville) has an unfortunate habit of accosting perfect strangers and correcting their grammar. Today he pays the price.

But the fact is, he didn't correct her grammar. He rudely and snidely objected to a well-established American idiom in fact, two idioms:

Frankly, he deserved to be beaten up. Anybody who goes around demanding that idioms make sense and pretending not to understand conventional phrases is just a jerk.

And anyway,"beat the spit out of"? What does that even mean, Lemont?

close doesn't count

The longest river that empties into an inland body of water. I thought of the Enisey (Lake Baikal). The contestants thought of nothing, the Limpopo, and the Zambezi. We were all wrong. It's the Volga (the Caspian Sea).

I'm embarrassed not to have gotten that right.

Happy Birthday, Haruki

Today is the birthday of one of our great living writers (our = humanity's), Haruki Murakami. He was born in Kyoto and grew up in Kobe, Japan, and has taught at Princeton and Tufts in the US, where he now lives. In 2006 he won the Kafka Award. His writing is humorous, nostalgic, magical, and often fierce, dealing with loss and the question of who we are, and it is sprinkled with sharp social observations. 1Q84, his latest and most ambitious - and fascinating - novel, as well as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. and Kafka on the Shore, two of his best novels, and Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, a collection of shorter fiction, are available in English (many others are, too, including Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World, a brilliant novel so confusing I'm still not entirely certain what happened). He's one of my favorite authors.

WUI?

I   _A_ _ THE _INE  BY J_HNNY CASH

The contestant guessed "I have the wine by Johnny Cash".

I would love to hear that song!

(I Walk The Line, in case you couldn't think of it).

Happy Birthday, Robinson

Today in 1887 Robinson Jeffers was born. Here are three of his works:

To the House

I am heaping the bones of the old mother
To build us a hold against the host of the air;
Granite the blood-heat of her youth
Held molten in hot darkness against the heart
Hardened to temper under the feet
Of the ocean cavalry that are maned with snow
And march from the remotest west.
This is the primitive rock, here in the wet
Quarry under the shadow of waves
Whose hollows mouthed the dawn; little house each stone
Baptized from that abysmal font
The sea and the secret earth gave bonds to affirm you.


The Bird With the Dark Plumes

The bird with the dark plumes in my blood,
That never for one moment however I patched my truces
Consented to make peace with the people,
It is pitiful now to watch her pleasure In a breath of tempest
Breaking the sad promise of spring.
Are these that morose hawk's wings, vaulting, a mere mad swallow's,
The snow-shed peak, the violent precipice?
Poor outlaw that would not value their praise do you prize their blame?
"Their liking" she said "was a long creance,
But let them be kind enough to hate me that opens the sky."
It is almost as foolish my poor falcon
To want hatred as to want love; and harder to win.


The Vulture

I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside
Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling high up in heaven,
And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit narrowing,
I understood then
That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight- feathers
Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer.
I could see the naked red head between the great wings
Bear downward staring. I said, 'My dear bird, we are wasting time here.
These old bones will still work; they are not for you.' But how beautiful
he looked, gliding down
On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the sea-light
over the precipice. I tell you solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten by that beak and
become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes--
What a sublime end of one's body, what an enskyment; what a life after death.

Nothing can be better

Just found this quote from Jonas Kaufmann (in The New York Review of Books from last April:

I’ve seen semistaged or concert performances of operas that were more thrilling than staged ones. Why? Because it’s better to have nothing than to have something so disturbing that it distracts you from enjoying the music and that doesn’t allow the music to create its magic.

Wow, do I agree with that. I've seen some weird stagings (plays as well as operas - the worst was a Much Ado About Nothing set in the 1920s on a cruise ship; it was really hard to believe those crazy rich people would notice, much less care if Hero was a virgin) and when the staging distracts you so much ... It can be a perpetual irritation.

Go with the first thing you think of

President who lived the longest after leaving office.

My first thought was Carter. Then I started thinking about it. TR died young(ish) but was young when he became president. Adams, maybe? How old was he when he was elected? Reagan - no, he was an old president, forget him.

Man, I have no freaking idea.

And it turns out to be Carter.

How did I know that?

Happy Birthday, Alfred

Today in 1823, in Usk in Wales, Alfred Russel Wallace was born. He was profoundly influenced by Robert Chambers' Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, a work of popular science published in 1844 that advocated an evolutionary origin for the solar system, the earth, and living things. Wallace began his work hoping to find evidence that supported the ideas found in that extremely controversial book. After field work in the Amazon basin and in Sarawak, he wrote several papers that were preludes to the one he sent to Charles Darwin: On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely From the Original Type.

While Wallace's essay did not employ Darwin's term natural selection, it did outline the mechanics of an evolutionary divergence of species from similar ones due to environmental pressures. In this sense, it was essentially the same as the theory that Darwin had worked on for twenty years, but had yet to publish. Darwin wrote in a letter to Charles Lyell: "he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters!" Although Wallace had not requested that his essay be published, Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker decided to present the essay, together with excerpts from a paper that Darwin had written in 1844, and kept confidential, to the Linnean Society of London on 1 July 1858, highlighting Darwin's priority. Wallace accepted the arrangement after the fact, grateful that he had been included at all. Darwin's social and scientific status was at that time far greater than Wallace's, and it was unlikely that Wallace's views on evolution would have been taken as seriously.

Many today regard Wallace as merely the catalyst that made Darwin publish, but he was regarded in his own time by his peers - including Darwin - as a great man in his own right. His chief contribution is perhaps biogeography, but he also contributed to the fields of animal coloration, reproductive isolation, and natural selection. True, he fell for Spiritualism, but nobody's perfect.



Much info and some sentences from Wikipedia

Happy Birthday, Stephen

On January 8th, 1942, Stephen Hawking was born in Oxford, England. Black holes, A Brief History of Time, mathematics and cosmology - and all in his head.
(Yeah. Technology is dehumanizing.)


"We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special."

(ps - check out him and Captain Pike reviewing movies at The New Adventures of Queen Victoria from last year.)

Happy Birthday, Charles

January 7, 1912, was the birthday of Charles Addams, master of macabre humor.

The Addams Family - 'nuff said (and check the Googel Doodle for today) ... except there's so much more. Here's his most famous, and also one of my favorites.





















"Death ray, fiddlesticks! Why, it doesn't even slow them up."

Happy Birthday, Zora

Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, probably 1891 and most probably in Notasulga, Alabama - though she grew up in Eatonsville, Florida, an all-black incorporated township. She attended Howard University but couldn't afford to finish her studies. Later she received a scholarship to Barnard College where she received her B.A. in anthropology in 1927. While at Barnard, she conducted ethnographic research under her advisor, the noted anthropologist Franz Boas of Columbia University. She also worked with Ruth Benedict as well as fellow anthropology student Margaret Mead. Her best work, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was written in just seven weeks and published in 1937. A novelist and anthropologist, member of the Harlem Renaissance yet conservative libertarian in her politics, disengaged from the civil rights movement and concerned with representing blacks as they were, she wrote many excellent books yet died in penniless obscurity.

The Week in Entertainment

Live: An absolutely splendidly sung Les Troyens. It was long (they did the whole thing, all five acts), and a woman on the subway afterwards was complaining it was too long. I hope she's not going to Parsifal - I am, Jonas Kaufman, yum. Of course, unlike Wagner, Berlioz is French, and you can't help but think things like "Man, Hector, another ballet?" Also, dress it up all you like, Dido in act five is basically "I'll kill myself! Then you'll be sorry!" Still, such wonderful music.

Read: A couple of Meg Landons, including one I hadn't read before - Some Like It Hawk. I enjoy that series a lot.

Happy Birthday, Carl

Today in Galesburg, Illinois, in 1878 Carl Sandburg was born.

A couple of his shorter works:

Subway

Down between the walls of shadow
Where the iron laws insist,
     The hunger voices mock.

The worn wayfaring men
With the hunched and humble shoulders,
     Throw their laughter into toil.


Kin

Brother, I am fire
Surging under the ocean floor.
I shall never meet you, brother--
Not for years, anyhow;
Maybe thousands of years, brother.
Then I will warm you,
Hold you close, wrap you in circles,
Use you and change you--
Maybe thousands of years, brother.


NOCTURNE IN A DESERTED BRICKYARD

Stuff of the moon
Runs on the lapping sand
Out to the longest shadows.
Under the curving willows,
And round the creep of the wave line,
Fluxions of yellow and dusk on the waters
Make a wide dreaming pansy of an old pond in the night.




(Many more of Sandburg's poems here)

Happy Birthday, Earl

Earl Scruggs is 87 today.

He was born and grew up near Shelby, North Carolina, in the heart of banjo country, and he is one of the two most important figures in bluegrass - the other, of course, being Bill Monroe.

It was the fiddler John Hartford who put it best: “Here’s the way I feel about it. Everybody’s all worried about who invented the style and it’s obvious that three-finger banjo pickers have been around a long time -- maybe since 1840. But my feeling about it is that if it wasn’t for Earl Scruggs, you wouldn’t be worried about who invented it.”

Happy Birthday, you ol' banjo-picker!

Watch - and listen to - Cumberland Gap with Lester Flatt:

and Foggy Mountain Breakdown with an all-star lineup (Steve Martin, Albert Lee, Jerry Douglas, Vince Gill, Marty Stuart):

Happy Birthday, Hayao-sensei

Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎 駿, Miyazaki Hayao) was born today in 1941, in one of the special wards (municipalities) of Tokyo, Bunkyō-ku, in Akebono-cho district. He has given us some of the most beautiful and enjoyable animated films of all time: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (Kaze no Tani no Naushika, Princess Mononoke (Mononoke-Hime), Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, Howl's Moving Castle (Hauru no Ugoku Shiro), even My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro).

Ponyo was his last, and it was a delight. The Borrower Arrietty (借りぐらしのアリエッティ, Karigurashi no Arietti) is Studio Ghibli's most recent, though I haven't seen it yet. They have two more lined up - Kokurikozaka kara (コクリコ坂から, From Kokuriko Hill) is slated for 2011. I for one can't wait, even though Miyazaki is no longer directing.

In the 'making of' feature on the DVD of Spirited Away he is shown with some junior animators, describing to them the look he wants for the dragon as it falls. Like an eel, he says, you've all seen eels. No, they confess, they haven't; they've never watched eels being killed in a restaurant. Theatrically he exclaims: "Japanese culture is doomed!"

Happy Birthday, JRR

107 years ago in Bloemfontein, South Africa, JRR Tolkien was born.

I like LOTR much better than The Hobbit, to be honest, and I enjoy the poetry collections and like to browse the Silmarillon... I read the novel yearly, and have it in several translations - I particularly like the Ukrainian translation I have.

Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?


(Also, try here for more)

Boo!

At least Alex had the grace to admit that there was something fundamentally different about the $1000 "palindromic word". The others were a three-letter word I have forgotten, and dud, level, and reviver. The last one?

Put-up.

I could have had five minutes and I wouldn't have come up with that (a carefully constructed con is this type of job). Hyphens are letters; the word's misspelled without it!

Boo!

Happy Birthday, Isaac

Isaac Asimov was born today in 1920, in Petrovichi, Russia. He was one of the first science-fiction writers I ever read, and his science fact books were staples of my childhood.

Mae Mari Lwyd yma

In Wales, the Mari Lwyd (the Gray Mari) is brought from door to door on New Year's. Those bringing her sing a song at each house, which is usually followed by a "pwnco" or versifying contest with an opponent within the house, describing each other's singing, drunkenness, stinginess, etc - this back-and-forth challenge culminates in those outside coming in for drinks. Then the Mari's troop bid their hosts farewell and move on.

The Mari Lwyd is sometimes thought to be a tribute to Mary, but it's one of those customs which long predates Christianity... The horse's skull is likely a death-of-the-old-year avatar instead, and "mari" is most likely the English word "mare" borrowed as a later name.

Here's one version of the Mari's song as she arrives (with a literal translation; and traditional English below).

Wel dyma ni'n dwad (Well, here we are coming)
Gyfeillion diniwed (a harmless company)
I ofyn cawn gennad
I ofyn cawn gennad
I ofyn cawn gennad i ganu. (to ask your permission / to sing)

Mae Mari Lwyd yma (The Mari Lwyd is here)
A sêr a ribanau (and a star and ribbons)
Yn werth i rhoi goleu
Yn werth i rhoi goleu
Yn werth i rhoi goleu nos heno. (worthy to give light / on this night)

Mae Mari Lwyd lawen (The Mari Lwyd is happy)
Yn dod yn y dafarn (going to the tavern)
I ofyn am arian
I ofyn am arian
I ofyn am arian a chwrw. (to ask for money / and beer)

Wel, tapwch y faril (Well, tap the barrel)
Gyllongwch yn rhugl (pour it fluently)
A rhenwch e'n gynil
A rhenwch e'n gynil
A rhenwch e'n gynil Y Gwyliau. (and serve it / in the Holiday season)


This is the Mari's farewell to her current hosts.

Wel dyma'r enw feinwen (Well, this is the name of the maid)
Sy'n codi gyda'r seren (who rises with the stars)
Wel dyma'r enw feinwen
Sy'n codi gyda'r seren
A hon yw'r washael fawr ei chlod (and here is the wassail of great praise)
Sy'n caru bod yn llawen. (which loves to be merry)
A hon yw'r washael fawr ei chlod
Sy'n caru bod yn llawen.

Dymunwn i'ch lawenydd (I wish you all joy)
I gynal blwyddyn newydd (in having a new year)
Tra paro'r gwr i dincian cloch (while the man is ready to ring the bell)
Well, well yn boch chwi beunydd. (better and better may you be daily)

Ffarweliwch, foneddigion, (farewell, gentlemen)
Ni gawsom croeso digon. (we have had welcome enough)
Bendith Duw f'o ar eich tai (god's blessing be on your house)
A phob rhyw rhai o'ch dynion. (and on everyone of your men)

(Greeting:)

Well here we come,
Innocent friends
To ask for permission (x 3)
To sing

If we don’t get permission,
Let us hear out the song.
What kind of leaving (x 3)
Tonight.

We bruised our shins
Crossing over the style.
To come here (x 3)
Tonight.

If there are men
Who can write poetry,
Let us hear them now (x 3)
Tonight.

If you went too early
To bed in an angry mood,
Oh, get up nicely (x 3)
Tonight.

The fat, sweet dish
And all sorts of spices
O cut it in portions
(For) the holidays.

Oh, tap the barrel
[Which the lads deserve] (?)
Don’t divide it so miserly (x 3)
(On) the holidays.

and

Oh, here’s the name of the maiden
Who gets up with the star
And this is the Wassail, greatly to be praised,
Who loves to be merry.

I wish you joy
In having a New Year.
As long as the man rings the bell
May it keep getting better for you.

Farewell to you, gentlemen,
We had welcome enough.
God’s blessing on your houses
And to every one of your men.

Iona's Nutmeg & Ginger is a wonderful album of Celtic holiday music.