Jennifer Jones, Actress, #BornOnThisDay in 1919, in Tulsa, Oklahoma

Orrin Keepnews, Record Producer, Writer, Founder of Riverside, Milestone, & Landmark Records, #BornOnThisDay in 1923, in The Bronx (Evans’s ‘Re: Person I Knew’ is a tribute to him)

Martin Ritt, Director, Actor, #BornOnThisDay in 1914, in New York City

Felix Bressart, Actor, #BornOnThisDay in 1892, in Eydtkuhnen, East Prussia (now Chernyshevskoye, Russia)

#NowPlaying #TMCC™ ‘Young and Foolish’: youtu.be/3Qp_-dVR-Q0?...

Jack Clayton, Director, Producer, #BornOnThisDay in 1921, in Brighton, England

Robert Lowell, Poet, #BornOnThisDay in 1917, in Boston “Pray for the grace of accuracy Vermeer gave to the sun’s illumination stealing like the tide across a map to his girl solid with yearning. We are poor passing facts, warned by that to give each figure in the photograph his living name.”

I have played this on repeat all day today. Because the world is going to hell & I still choose to believe in beauty & wonder.

It’s David’s birthday tomorrow.

Sergio Bustamante, late 1960s or early 1970s.

go on - have a bit of slo mo the slowed-down call at the end makes it sound like I'm in some exotic jungle

Michèle Morgan, Actress, #BornOnThisDay* in 1920, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France (*it’s really February 29th)

Stephen Spender, Poet, Essayist, Novelist, #BornOnThisDay in 1909, in London From ‘The Houses Fronting Railway Lines’: “To rise up and step out Of the lurid shrieking cinder Traveling more miles than minutes to the hour Iron on iron through the iron night. And its iron full of fire”

John Montague, Poet, #BornOnThisDay in 1929, in Brooklyn, New York From ‘A Flowering Absence’: “And not for two stumbling decades Would I manage to speak straight again. Grounded for the second time my tongue became a rusted hinge until the sweet oils of poetry eased it and grace flooded in”

Dexter Gordon, Jazz Tenor Saxophonist, Composer, #BornOnThisDay in 1923, in Los Angeles 📸 Herman Leonard (New York, 1948)

It’s Franchot’s birthday tomorrow.

Haunted by Hamlet: Frank McNally on the sad story of Ireland’s greatest Shakespearean scholar

Madeleine Carroll, Actress, #BornOnThisDay in 1906, in West Bromwich, England

It’s Margaret’s birthday tomorrow.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Painter, #BornOnThisDay in 1841, in Limoges, France ‘The Garden at the Chateau des Brouillards, Montmartre’, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

Tom Courtenay, Actor, #BornOnThisDay in 1937, in Hull, England

Richard Wattis, Actor, #BornOnThisDay in 1912, in Wednesbury, Staffordshire, England

Tonight on ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC etc.: The SotU address. Tonight on TCM (🙂):

Listening to the Backlisted on C.S. Lewis. They play a snippet of a wartime BBC talk where, brilliantly, Lewis says that “God has infinity to listen to the split second prayer of a airman in his plane” And I wonder if both that idea, and Lewis’ all-seeing voice, influenced A Matter of Life & Death?

Marjorie Main, Actress, Singer, #BornOnThisDay in 1890, in Acton, Indiana

My three favourite Elizabeths ❤️ “Her face . . . was as overbearingly blank as the face of a figure-head; her black eyebrows were ruled level, and her eyes, pupils dilated, did little more than reflect the slow burn of daylight along horizons, the luminous shades of the half-dark.” (‘Summer Night’)

Dublin Bay as seen from Howth Head, as the late February sun makes a shy appearance.

Best friends.

Today is Victor Fleming’s birthday.

George Frideric Handel, Composer, #BornOnThisDay (O.S.) in 1685, in Halle, then Brandenburg–Prussia (‘Messiah’ was first performed in the Great Music Hall, Fishamble Street, Dublin, in April, 1742) youtu.be/IUZEtVbJT5c?...

Shepherd’s purse, Cut-leaved dead nettle, Lesser celandine, Blackthorn, Annual mercury, Sweet violets, Petty spurge, White dead nettle, Common chickweed, Sweet violet again and Daisy. #TheWinter10 #WildflowerHour

A history of Ireland in descriptions of rain - part 2 www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

Giulietta Masina, Actress, #BornOnThisDay in 1921, in San Giorgio di Piano, Bologna, Italy

John Mills, Actor, #BornOnThisDay in 1908, in North Elmham, Norfolk, England

Edward Gorey, Artist, Writer, Designer, #BornOnThisDay in 1925, in Chicago

It’s Kenneth’s 100th birthday tomorrow. Maggie Smith & Kenneth Williams reading Betjeman’s ‘Death in Leamington’:

It is a little after 6. Happy Saturday.

I don’t know this gentleman, but he is followed by several people I respect. I don’t want to tag anyone—I was recently told that I was rude for so doing—but maybe one or two that follow me, & love AP as much as I do, could persuade him that ADttMoT is one of the singular pleasures of a reading life.

From my sister Kate (who is not on Bluesky). She left the Dublin rain behind for a few days.

Felix Aylmer, Actor, #BornOnThisDay in 1889, in Corsham, Wiltshire, England

A History of Ireland in Quotations about Rain. (Part 1) www.irishtimes.com/opinion/an-i...

It’s W. H.’s birthday tomorrow. From ‘Lullaby’: “Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find the mortal world enough” 📸 James Soame (1926)

Today is Sidney Poitier’s birthday.

(And I *am* a prince.)

Ivan Albright, Painter, Sculptor, Printmaker, #BornOnThisDay in 1897, in Harvey, Illinois ‘That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do (The Door)’, Art Institute of Chicago

Russel Crouse, Playwright, Librettist, #BornOnThisDay in 1893, in Findlay, Ohio