Onward!

2024. 2023. 2022. 2021. 2020. 2019……

 

These days when I’m filling out those drop-down forms to get to the year you’re born, 1951 is feeling really far away! And it is. In the SF School preschool, there was a suspended paper- mâché solar system hung from the ceiling with a big sun at the center. When a kid had a birthday— 3-4-5- or 6 years old— they walked around that sun their number of years. That would be quite a long trip for me these days!

 

It was quite a different world into which I was born. TV was in its infancy, with I Love Lucy and Dragnet some of its early shows. Audrey Hepburn made her film debut (Laughter in Paradise), The King and I opened on Broadway and Showboat premiered in movie theaters. The Census Bureau used UNIVAC, one of the first official computers, to help do its work. People back then used to write letters by hand and novels on typewriters. Men wore hats and smoked like chimneys, women were expected to stay in the home, the “Leave It to Beaver” suburbs began to define both American mythology and housing. Thelonius Monk released an album, Sonny Rollins began playing with Miles Davis, Rock and Roll had yet to burst on the scene. 

 

Notable people born my same year include Indian tabla player Zakir Hussein, First Lady Jill Biden, actor Michael Keaton, musician Sting, jazz musician Bill Frisell, author Bill Bryson. Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish architect and engineer, shares my exact birthday. Notable deaths that year include Sinclair Lewis, Andre Gide, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Arnold Schoenberg, 

 

The political world was its usual catastrophe, with the Chinese invading Tibet, the Korean War heating up, the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a military coup in Bolivia, 4000 white people in Cicero, Illinois attacking an apartment building that housed a single black family. A couple in Sweden were fined for the obscene act of kissing in public. 

 

Like I said, a different time. In the 73 years that followed, no one could have predicted what would follow and who we would be now. But as Dickens spoke so eloquently, every time is the best of times and the worst of times. We have evolved in countless ways and backtracked to our worst selves in almost as many ways. With less excuses, as we should indeed know better by now. 

All I can do on the occasion of my birthday is remake my perpetual vows to bring as much love, joy, fun and good music to everyone I meet at the peak of my capacity, to continue to speak out against all the forces of evil that continue to plague us and hopefully, be blessed with the health and energy and determination to keep moving forward. Starting with today’s brunch with my comrades-in-arms, a cornhole tournament and perhaps a walk on the beach.

 

Onward!