June 19 Notable Birthdays
If today is your birthday, “Happy Birthday!”
Actor Louis Jourdan (Gigi, Three Coins in the Fountain, The VIPs) is 91.
Actress Gena Rowlands (Peyton Place, A Woman under the Influence, Night on Earth) is 82.
Actress Marisa Pavan (Diary of Anne Frank, The Rose Tattoo, What Price Glory?, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit ) is 80.
Singer Tommy DeVito (The Four Seasons) is 76.
Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar human rights activist and 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, is 67.
Author Salman Rushdie (The Jaguar Smile, Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses) is 65.
Actress Phylicia Allen Rashad (The Cosby Show, One Life to Live, Murder, She Wrote) is 64.
Singer Ann Wilson (Heart) is 61.
Keyboardist Larry Dunn (Earth, Wind & Fire) is 59.
Actress Kathleen Turner (Body Heat, Peggy Sue Got Married, Romancing the Stone, The Jewel of the Nile, Serial Mom, Naked in New York, House of Cards, Accidental Tourist) is 58.
Singer – dancer Paula Abdul (Forever Your Girl, Straight Up, Opposites Attract, Promises of a New Day) is 50.
Actress Mia Sara (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Timecop, Caroline at Midnight) is 45.
Actress Robin Tunney (The Craft, Encino Man, Empire Records) is 40.
Filed under Birthdays
On June 19…
1623 – Scientist – philosopher Blaise Pascal was born in Clermont-Ferrand, France.
1856 – Author Elbert Hubbard (A Message to Garcia, Little Journeys) was born in Bloomington, IL.
1865 – Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce that the Emancipation Proclamation was in effect, nearly 3 years after President Abraham Lincoln issued it, and all slaves in the state of Texas were free. The event is now recognized and celebrated in Texas as “Juneteenth.”
1867 – Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, installed as emperor of México by French Emperor Napoleon III in 1864, was executed on the orders of Benito Juarez, president of the Mexican Republic.
1910 – The first Father’s Day was celebrated in Spokane, Washington; an idea credited to Sonora Louise Smart Dodd.
1911 – The first motion-picture censorship board was established in Pennsylvania.
1934 – The U.S. Congress established the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
1953 – Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, NY, two years after being convicted of conspiring to pass U.S. atomic secrets to the Soviets.
Filed under History
Quote of the Day
“Let’s be clear. Not only are we digging out of a hole that is 9 million jobs deep; we are digging out of an entire decade where 6 million jobs left our shores.”
– President Obama, in a speech in Cleveland last week.
Well, I’ll be damned! Do I detect some back bone growing inside that man?
Filed under News
Picasso Vandalized in Houston Museum
Normally people who use their cell phones in a museum or any venue are too preoccupied with their devices to notice anything else. But, a visitor to a Houston museum caught a man vandalizing a painting by Pablo Picasso on June 13. The man has yet to be identified, but he managed to stencil over Picasso’s 1929 “Woman in Red,” before escaping. Museum officials immediately rushed the painting to their onsite conservation lab. Their quick response ensures the likelihood the artwork will be saved.
A 24-second video has appeared on YouTube. Houston police spokeswoman Jodi Silva said investigators are reviewing both surveillance video from the museum and the video posted on YouTube. When asked if police think the vandal and witness were working together, she said, “We’re taking all the information and we’re looking at all aspects of the incident.” She would not say whether police have spoken to the witness who shot the video.
This is not the first time one of Picasso’s works has been vandalized. In 1999, an escaped mental patient in Amsterdam cut a hole in the middle of his “Woman Nude Before Garden,” a 1956 painting.
Filed under Art Working
June 18 Notable Birthdays
If today is your birthday, “Happy Birthday!”
Singer – songwriter Paul McCartney (The Beatles; Wings) is 70.
Actress Carol Kane (Taxi, The Princess Bride, Hester Street, Addams Family Values, Carnal Knowledge, Dog Day Afternoon) is 60.
Model – actress Isabella Rossellini (Twin Peaks, Fearless, Blue Velvet, Crime of the Century, The Impostors) is 60.
Actor Brian Benben (The Brian Benben Show, Family Business, Radioland Murders) is 56.
Film producer Barbara Broccoli (GoldenEye, Crime of the Century, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World is Not Enough) is 52.
Actor Eddie Cibrian (Sunset Beach, The Bold and the Beautiful, The Young and the Restless, Beverly Hills: 90210) is 39.
Filed under Birthdays
On June 18…
1778 – After 9 months of occupation, 15,000 British troops evacuated Philadelphia, the former capital of the United States.
1812 – The War of 1812 began, as the U.S. declared war on Great Britain.
U.S. Capitol after the “Burning of Washington.”
1815 – In Waterloo, Belgium, Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by the Duke of Wellington.
1983 – Dr. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space, as she began her ride aboard the space shuttle Challenger.
Filed under History
Officials Seek Answers About Photos of Little Girls Found on Civil War Battlefield
Among all the personal effects that could survive a skirmish during the Civil War, a couple of tiny photographs seem unlikely candidates. But, that’s exactly what turned up amidst the carnage of the deadliest conflict in United States history. One picture of a young girl was found between the bodies of two soldiers following a battle in Port Royal, Virginia in June of 1862. The other photograph – also of a young girl – was located in a Virginia farm field in 1865, just before the war came to an end.
Photography was still in its infancy in the 1860’s, but it had become a rather common means of recording the events of people’s lives. Many Union and Confederate soldiers carried photos of loved ones into battle. Photographers were assigned to Northern divisions and traveling photographers were the early version of photo booths as they visited encamped troops between battles and photographed them.
Photography was evolving from daguerreotype to ambrotypes and other mediums in which images were produced through a wet emulsion on glass and were more accessible to a wider audience.
Now, the Museum of the Confederacy hopes to identify the girls in these two particular photographs. They admit their chances are remote. There is no writing on the backs of these photographs, nor were there any notes tucked inside their small frames.
“We don’t know who they are and the people who picked them up did not know who they were,” said Ann Drury Wellford, curator of 6,000 Civil War images at the Richmond museum that has the largest collection of artifacts of the Confederate states, both civilian and military. “They evoke an utter and complete sentimentality.”
Each photograph is in a hinged case with a leather or composite exterior. The cases protected the fragile images, which include early photographic processes such as tintypes and daguerreotypes.
Regardless of how one feels about the Civil War, these photographs – and the countless others collected by the Museum – speak of an intimacy among families and a sense of humanity that only comes to light after people see the horrors of a battlefield.
Filed under Classics
the nightingale glides across a twilight sky
a symbol of love and longing in flight
it exhales in a melodious love song
shattering the solitude of the night
~catnipoflife
Since ancient times birds have been considered a connection between heaven and earth. They are known to reach deep into the heart and the soul through symbolism and spirituality. For some cultures, their symbolism is one of immortality, while some myths declare every bird in the world representative of a departed soul. Birds have been immortalized in art throughout the world and in Christian art, birds often appear as saved souls. They also provide inspiration for remarkable stories written in both prose and poetic meter offering time for solitude within deep repose.
How many different birds can you match with their key word significance? Here are just a few. . .
The most renown bird in America is, of course, the Bald Eagle. As our national bird, it bestows freedom and…
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