The Dead Poet Bar Gives You Free Drinks on Your Birthday — With a Brilliant Catch
(New York) The Dead Poet Bar at 450 Amsterdam
Avenue near 82nd Street likes to celebrate birthdays, and will happily
celebrate yours by pouring you some free booze. It’s one of the rare remaining
local spots that gives freebies to people celebrating their special day, the
Wall Street Journal recently found.
But there’s a catch. To receive free drinks —
excluding shots, premium beers and liquors and some cocktails — you have to
share a birthday with a famous writer. There’s a list of birth dates at the
bar. If you don’t have the rare luck of sharing a date with someone like Edgar
Allan Poe (January 19) or Virginia Woolf (January 25), you’ll have to find
another literary great who shares your birthday and then convince the bartender
that the person is worthy of the liquor (no your Uncle Barney who sends around
emails with dirty limericks doesn’t count). So enjoy your birthday, and
dedicate your next cold one to a great dead poet.
The wonderful Carmen McRae
Carmen
Mercedes McRae (April 8, 1922 – November 10, 1994) was a jazz singer who is
considered one of the most influential jazz vocalists of the 20th century and
is remembered for her behind-the-beat phrasing and ironic interpretation of
lyrics. McRae was inspired by Billie Holiday but she
established her own voice. She recorded over sixty albums and performed
worldwide.
The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna (1817) Charles Wolfe
Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O’er the grave where our hero we buried.
We buried him darkly at dead of night,
The sods with our bayonets turning;
By the struggling moonbeam’s misty light
And the lantern dimly burning.
No useless coffin enclosed his breast,
Nor in sheet nor in shroud we wound him,
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest
With his martial cloak around him.
Few and short were the prayers we said,
And we spoke not a word of sorrow;
But we steadfastly gazed on the face that was
dead,
And we bitterly thought of the morrow.
We thought, as we hollowed his narrow bed
And smoothed down his lonely pillow,
That the foe and the stranger would tread o’er
his head,
And we far away on the billow!
Lightly they’ll talk of the spirit that’s gone
And o’er his cold ashes upbraid him,
But little he’ll reck, if they let him sleep
on
In the grave where a Briton has laid him.
But half of our heavy task was done
When the clock struck the hour for retiring;
And we heard the distant and random gun
That the foe was sullenly firing.
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
We carved not a line, and we raised not a
stone,
But left him alone with his glory.
Look at the expression on his face
May 1930 (Chicago) Seven children at the Harvard school were
scratched and nipped about the arms yesterday by a stray dog with which they
had been playing. one was seriously Injured. The dog, described by' witnesses an
overgrown pup, was believed to have become excited when the children started
mauling it. 'Policemen IL J. Cavanaugh and Walter Howard of a, Gresham flivver
squad chased it for an hour before capturing it. The owner was identified as
Henry Trenton.
Cannonball Adderley
Julian
Edwin Adderley (September 15, 1928 – August 8, 1975) was a jazz alto
saxophonist of the hard bop era of the 1950s and 1960s. Adderley is remembered
for his 1966 soul jazz single "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy",a crossover hit
on the pop charts (it was also covered by the Buckinghams). He worked with
trumpeter Miles Davis, on his own 1958 Somethin' Else album, and on the seminal
Davis records Milestones (1958) and Kind of Blue (1959). He was the older
brother of jazz trumpeter Nat Adderley, a longtime member of his band.
and now, a nod to the Beats...
“On soft
Spring nights I’ll stand in the yard under the stars - Something good will come
out of all things yet - And it will be golden and eternal just like that -
There’s no need to say another word.” Jack Kerouac
”I hope
it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them
life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.” Jack Kerouac
“Grinding
my teeth for lack of love, walking into a cathedral is like walking into a cold
stove, like into a glove.”— Writing Poems is a Saintly Thing, Peter Orlovsky
The writer and the author
Sit down
and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But
an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy
most of it.
William Somerset Maugham
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.
We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.
