December Babies

So, phooey, I completely let yesterday go by w/o writing anything here. I was running errands. Delivering books to Scandinavia Place, the swellegant store up on the Independence Square where I'm having a signing on Saturday, 8 Dec. 11 ~ 2 PM. Drawing. I was completely captivated by the audio book [The Winter of the World, the 2nd in Ken Follett's Century Trilogy - oh my gosh: a Dickensian novelization of the history of the 20th century. I can't recommend it enough.]  I was listening to while I was drawing and driving around, then a little more driving around when I forgot one of the things I was supposed to do. Sheesh. 

Lillian Russell (1860? ~1922)

Anyway, yesterday was the birthday anniversary of lovely Lillian Russell.  Do pay a visit to this little link, see how beautiful she was, listen to her big hit, recorded a century ago, crackling out of a vanished past. 
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke, too. 1875. And brilliant writer, historian Thomas Carlyle. 1795. Write these words of his into your little book: 
     "Every day that is born into the world comes like a burst of music and rings the whole day through, and you make of it a dance, a dirge, or a life march, as you will."

     And today, Wednesday, 5 December, marks the 126th anniversary of the birth of Laura and Almanzo's Prairie Rose, hardheaded writer, traveler, journalist, editor, Rose Wilder Lane.  [It's the birthday today, too, of the "Sage of Kinderhook," U.S. President No. 8, Martin Van Buren (1782) and vainglorious Gen. George Armstrong Custer. (1839, b. on the 9th birthday of poet Christina Rossetti). Just for you to know. Jeeze, what a character Custer was. Did you ever see the PBS documentary about him and his "last stand"? Well worth checking out.] 

Rose Wilder Lane 1886 ~ 1968

     On Rose Wilder's 15th birthday, brilliant, ambitious, animator, film producer  Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was born. Reading this quote of his sure reminded me of J. K. Rowling's conception of Harry Potter: "Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad ...on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes ...were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner."
      Oh well. All these December babies have finished their work. I haven't and it won't get done if I keep sitting here typing about dead people.
   "Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness."  Thos. Carlyle, birthday dude.