A one anna two anna let me blow my brains out

Lawrence Welk died on this day in 1992. He was the cause of the slow death of millions of kids growing up in the 'fifties. Seeing his show now, one can look on it with amusement, but to a kid seeing it live every week, his parents looking on enthralled, it was an inkling that there is something malevolent at the heart of life.

While reading about Welk on the Web, I came across This great site

The tolling Belle of Amherst

Emily Dickinson died on this day in 1886. Here is a poem she wrote about her nephew, Gilbert, who died of rheumatic fever at age 8:

Pass to thy Rendezvous of Light,
Pangless except for us --
Who slowly ford the Mystery
Which thou hast leaped across!

For more, visit Today in Cynic's Almanac

No dreams to come?

Russian anarchist Emma Goldman died on this day in 1940. She wrote:

"When we can't dream any longer, we die."

Also on this day, in 1912, Swedish playwright August Strindberg died. He wrote:

"Death doesn't bargain."

And also:

"The world, life and human beings are only an illusion, a phantom, a dream image."

Leave 'em laughing

English poet John Masefield died on this day in 1967. He wrote:

"In this life he laughs longest who laughs last."

This is the last stanza of I Must Go Down to the Sea:

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

Hoots and Howells

Author William Dean Howells died on this day in 1920. He was a friend of Mark Twain. He wrote:

"The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all."

Also on this day, in 1916, German composer Max Reger died. The following, written in a letter in reply to a critic, doesn't have anything to do with mortality, but we love it nonetheless:

"I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment, it will be behind me."

Being a goddess, I'll ask him myself

Actress Joan Crawford died on this day in 1977. Her last words, spoken to her housekeeper, who had begun to pray aloud:

"Damn it . . . Don’t you dare ask God to help me."

Also on this day, in 1863, General Stonewall Jackson died. He was mortally wounded by his own men at the Battle of Chancellorsville. His last words:

"Let us cross over the river and sit under the shade of the trees."

They missed the elephant, though

General John Sedgwick was a corps commander in the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War. At the Battle of the Wilderness, while inspecting his troops, he approached a parapet and peered out over the surrounding countryside. His officers and men urged him to take cover, but Sedgwick scoffed.

"They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance," he said.

A moment later Sedgwick went down, blood spurting "in a little fountain" from a hole in his cheek.

Well, the buck did stop there

Harry S Truman was born on this day in 1884.

"My villain is a perfectly nice little man called Harry S (for nothing) Truman. He created the national security state. He institutionalized the Cold War. He placed us on a permanent wartime footing. He started that vast hemorrhaging of debt...


"Deliberately (he) set in train an imperial expansion that has cost the lives of many millions of people all over the world." -- Gore Vidal.

To read Truman's own modest take on the matter, see Today in The Cynic's Almanac

Or the thought of murder

The French novelist Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), author of The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma, died on this day in 1842.

"True love makes the thought of death frequent, easy, without terrors;" Stendhal wrote, "it merely becomes the standard of comparison, the price one would pay for many things."

Our favorite quotation by Stendhal:

"The only excuse for God is that he does not exist."

Last words, famous and infamous

Irish dramatist Brendan Behan (shown in picture with pal Jackie Gleason) died on this day in 1964. His last words, to a nun taking his pulse:

"Bless you, Sister. May all your sons be bishops."

Also on this day, convicted murderer Thomas Grasso uttered these last words before his execution:

"I did not get my Spaghetti-Os. I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this."

Maxim 'em, Francois, baby

Francois de la Rochefoucauld, the French writer, aphorist and exemplar of the learned nobility (he was a duke, and bore the title of Prince de Marcillac until the age of 38), died on this day in 1680.

These are from his Maximes:

"Good advice is something a man gives when he is too old to set a bad example."

"He who lives without folly isn't so wise as he thinks."

"We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others."

And:

"We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves."

That's a wrap

George Eastman, the American inventor who developed a process that not only simplified the method of making photographic plates, but also allowed them to be mass produced with relative ease, died on this day in 1932.

Eastman introduced flexible film in 1884 and the first mass produced camera for amateurs, the Kodak box camera, in 1888.

Eastman made a fortune and donated vast sums to universities, dental clinics, and musical institutions. At the age of 77 and plagued by a painfully debilitating spinal disease, Eastman put his affairs in order, wrote a note, and committed suicide. His last words:

"My work is done, why wait?"

Is he making a monkey out of us?

American trial lawyer Clarence died on this day in 1938. He was most famous for his defense of schoolteacher John T. Scopes (for his teaching of evolution) in the so-called Monkey Trial of 1925, in Dayton, TN.

"I am an agnostic;" Darrow said. "I do not pretend to know what many ignorant men are sure of."

His first son was a disappointment

Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, died on this day in 1971.  In January of 2011, Australian researchers published a study of 8,800 subjects that found that watching TV led to an earlier death.

“There’s nothing on it worthwhile, and we’re not going to watch it in this household.” -- Philo T. Farnsworth, to his son.

Today’s deathless Verse:

TV or not TV,

  That is the question;

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind

  To suffer the soaps and sitcoms

Of outrageous dumbness,

  Or to turn off the frothing sea of bubbles,

And by ignoring, burst them.

  To watch, to sleep…

We hope the boat's not Charon's

Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, died on this day in 1948, in a fire in Highland Mental Hospital in Asheville, NC, where she was a patient.

She suffered her first mental breakdown in 1930, and was diagnosed with schizophrenia shortly afterwards.

Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940.

Scott and Zelda had been originally buried in the Rockville (Md.) Union Cemetery. In 1975, their son Scottie successfully campaigned for them to be buried with the other Fitzgeralds at Saint Mary's Catholic Cemetery.

Inscribed on their tombstone is the final sentence of The Great Gatsby:

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."