Ruthless

‎"Pan me, don't give me the part, publish everybody's book but this one and I will still make it!...Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, face the facts" Ruth Gordon 1896-1985

So, because I wrote a couple of books about our 2nd President and his family and because these sorts of facts seem to stick in my head, I knew perfectly well [if not the names of people I knew in high school] that today's John Adams's birthday, by way of the 'new' calendar, adopted by the Brit. Empire in 1752, when John was 17, seeing as he was born in Braintree [later incorporated into Quincy, Mass, in 1735, a very different America. But I didn't know until I googled about this morning that this is the anniversary of the day that Ruth Gordon was born in 1896. May I only note two things, maybe three - certainly no more than four:

1. Well I remember, will always remember, how I loved Ruth Gordon's performance in "Harold & Maude.'

2. I'll remember her, too, in that bit o' silly-terrific Clint Eastwood movie, 'every which way but loose' and her gossiping about poor old Dorothy Parker in that swellegant documentary about the Algonquin Hotel gathering: The Ten Year Lunch' http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094119/

3. Today's also the birthday of poet Ezra Pound, [I very much like the cake named after him.] who once wrote that "A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." That's for damned sure.

4. "A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man." John Adams 1735-1826 Amen to that! http://www.nps.gov/adam Splendid books there are about THE Adams Family, but my introduction to them was Irving Stone's fine Those Who Love. I'd surely recommend it. [I.S.'s Agony & the Ecstasy is a treat, too, absolutamenté ]