Famous People Born In 1915 - It Was A Very Good Year

[1916 list is now up]

Billie Holiday was born 8 months before Frank Sinatra who was born a week before Edith Piaf.



It's always interesting to consider at all the folks who were born in the same year.  We don't normally think about famous people in terms of their birth year cohorts.    As kids, had they been in the same school, the months they were born in would have mattered quite a bit.  And it would be interesting to know which ones would have been friends.   How many actually got to meet each other?  How many were good friends?



Three of these folks born 100 years ago in 2015 appear to still be alive - Herman Wouk the novelist who wrote the WW II novel The Caine Mutiny, Nobel Prize winning Physicist Charles Townes who was part of the team that created laser beams, and banker David Rockefeller and could have their 100th birthdays in 2015.

[UPDATE Jan. 30, 2015:  Charles Townes died January 27, 2015]



Some of the best known are singers Frank Sinatra, Edith Piaf, and Billy Holiday.  Also best known are actors Orson Welles, Ingrid Bergman, and Anthony Quinn.  There's Moshe Dayan and guitarist Les Paul.





Sargent Shriver, as the first director of the Peace Corps, has special meaning for me.  And I actually got to meet Nobel Prize winning playwright Arthur Miller in the Anchorage museum when we were both waiting for our wives.  [UPDATE See Oct 17, 2015 post, Miller's 100th Birthday, with Alaska connections in Death of a Salesman.]

We've got some heavy thinkers like philosophers Roland Barthes and Thomas Merton.

*Picture sources at bottom of post

The women, not many, are all entertainers.

I cherry picked the names from NNDB which has a much longer list.  And most of the links go to NNDB.  I've sorted this table by the age they lived to.  It's always interesting (and a little creepy) to think about why some people live short lives and others long ones.  I know Thomas Merton was electrocuted in a hotel shower in Bangkok in 1968.  I was in Thailand at that time too, but didn't know anything about him then.




And there are some who are there simply because they were big names and their roles have had some influence on American culture like Barbara Billingsley -  June Cleaver, the mother on Leave It To Beaver - and Lorne Greene, the patriarch of Bonanza.

There are several Nobel Prize winners, no US presidents (but a Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart),  and at least one villain - Augusto Pinochet.

Edith Piaf	Dec 19 1915	Oct 11 1963	38	Fantastic French Singer
Thomas Merton	Jan 31 1915	Dec 10 1968	43	Catholic Thinker
Billie Holiday	Apr 7 1915	Jul 17 1959	44	Jazz Singer
Philip L. Graham	Jul 30 1915	Aug 3 1963	48	Washington Post publisher, 1947 - - 63
Billy Strayhorn	Nov 29 1915	May 31 1967	51	Composer  Take The A Train
Alan Watts	Jan 6 1915	Nov 16 1973	58	Philosopher Zen
Bobby Hackett	Jan 30 1915	Jun 7 1976	61	Jazz Musician
Zero Mostel	Feb 28 1915	Sep 8 1977	62	Actor - Fiddler on the Roof
Roland Barthes	Nov 12, 1915	Mar 23  1980	64	Philosopher
Moshe Dayan	May 20 1915	Oct 16 1981	66	Israeli military leader, politician
Muddy Waters	Apr 4 1915	Apr 30 1983	68	Amazing Blues Musician
Ingrid Bergman	Aug 29 1915	Aug 29 1982	68	Actor
Potter Stewart	Jan 23 1915	Dec 7 1985	70	US Supreme Court
Orson Welles	May 6 1915	Oct 10 1985	70	Actor Citizen Kane
Theodore H. White	May 6 1915	May 15 1986	71	Historian
Robert Hofstadter	Feb 5 1915	Nov 17 1990	75	Nobel Prize Physics
Robert Motherwell	Jan 24 1915	Jul 16 1991	76	Abstract Expressionist Painter
Lorne Greene	Feb 12 1915	Sep 11 1987	77	Ben Cartwright on Bonanza
Fred Friendly	Oct 30 1915	Mar 3 1998	82	President of CBS News, Journalist
Frank Sinatra	Dec 12 1915	May 14 1998	82	The Boss
Ring Lardner, Jr.	Aug 19 1915	Oct 31 2000	85	Playwright
Anthony Quinn	Apr 21 1915	Jun 3 2001	86	Actor Zorba the Greek
John C. Lilly	Jan 6 1915	Sep 30 2001	86	Human/dolphin communication
Abba Eban	Feb 2 1915	Nov 17 2002	87	Foreign Minister of Israel
Alan Lomax	Jan 30 1915	Jul 19 2002	87	Musicologist - Saved folksongs
Saul Bellow	Jun 10 1915	Apr 5 2005	89	Nobel Prize Literature
Arthur Miller	Oct 17 1915	Feb 2005	89	Playwright - Death of a Salesman
William Proxmire	Nov 11 1915	Dec 15 2005	90	US Senator Wisconsin
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf	Sep 1915	Aug 2006	90	Opera Soprano
Augusto Pinochet	Nov 25 1915	Dec 2006	91	Chilean Dictator
Barbara Billingsley	Dec 22 1915	Oct 16 2010	94	Leave It To Beaver’s Mother
Les Paul	Jun 9 1915	Aug 13 2009	94	Electric guitar/multitrack recording pioneer
Paul Samuelson	May 15 1915	Dec 13 2009	94	Nobel Prize Economics
Sargent Shriver	Nov 9 1915	Jan 18 2011	95	1st Peace Corps Director
Charles H. Townes	Jul 28 1915		99	Nobel Prize Phyics Laser
David Rockefeller	Jun 15 1915		99	Trilateral Commission Founder
Herman Wouk	May 27 1915		99	Novelist The Caine Mutiny

*Sources for photos in the image

Orson Welles http://becuo.com/orson-welles-war-of-the-worlds Ingrid Bergman http://www.ncm.com/photos-casablanca Moshe Dayan http://www.bitwallpaper.net/moshe-dayan.html Les Paul http://www.lespaulonline.com Thomas Merton http://mertonfellowshipireland.wordpress.com Arthur Miller https://byu425crucible.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/the-early-life-of-arthur-miller/ Alan Lomax  (with Jerome Weisner)  https://jazzinphoto.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/alan-lomax-and-jerome-weisner-transcribing-folk.jpg   Charles Townsend  (with James Gordon) http://aip.org/history/exhibits/laser/sections/themaser.html  (image enhanced) Zero Mostel http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/photocredit/achievers/pri0-005 Barbara Billingsley  http://social.dol.gov/blog/june-cleaver-meet-juana-solis/

Mugged By LA Parking Authority

[UPDATE Jan 28:  There are two followup posts:
January 2, 2015 and January 28, 2015]




I felt like I'd been mugged.  I was happily minding my own business, when the LA Parking Authority snatched $58 from me.

"The best way to make money is not to spend it."  That's a basic tenet I picked up along the way.  It doesn't mean you have to be a miser, but just don't spend money you don't need to spend.  And parking tickets are a good example of money you shouldn't have to spend.

So, I'm reasonably careful about parking.  Biking helps a lot, but I do use a car too.

People who knowingly park without putting money in the meter or who take up two parking places or park in a handicapped zone when their ego handicap hasn't been diagnosed, all should pay for parking tickets.

But this one feels more like entrapment.



We went to see the movie Wild.  After I got past the silliness of the early scene where she struggles to pick up her heavy pack, but then manages to walk with it for 5 miles, it got good.

We checked out some sale items in the mall, then got the car from the mall parking lot (there are three free hours) and decided to find street parking while we ate dinner.


Here's the scene of the crime:

1 (the numbers match the numbers in the satellite view above) - far right of the picture, is where we came out of the mall parking lot.












The view from the parking lot exit of the block we're going to park on.





You can (almost) see that there are 6 parking spaces.  It's a really short block.  We turned left out of the parking lot and stopped in the red space on the right of the Starbucks (2 on the map) so we could read the parking sign.  Basically, we wanted to know if we had to put money in the meter or not.



2.  Here's where we stopped when we got out of the parking lot to check the parking sign (2a) to see if you still had to feed the meters or not.

The sign (2a) says:  No Parking from 4-7pm on top.  It was just after 7pm
Below it says 2 hour parking from 8am - 4pm.







(I took this picture that night after we found the ticket and drove back to the scene.  The others I took the next afternoon when I biked back to see if there was a white curb where I parked or any other warning.)




So, it said that we didn't have to pay for the meter because it was after 4pm and we could park there because it was after 7pm.  We pulled out of this space and looked for an empty space.  There was one.  It was the sixth and last parking space on the block.  All the others were full.




3.   We were parked where that gray car is - the last spot.  As you can see, the curb is just cement and it has a parking meter like all the other spots.






















Just to emphasize that the two spaces on the end look exactly like the other four on the block, this picture is from the middle of the block.  There are the three cars you can see in front and three behind.  There's also a truck parked on the corner beyond the metered spaces.

This picture is from 3 where we were parked.  You can see that in front of us it is painted red.  And there's enough room for about two cars and that truck.


We got out of the restaurant and as we walked back to the car, I noticed the car behind us had a note or something under the windshield wiper.  We got in the car and drove off.  But then I noticed there was something under our windshield wiper.  Some ad I assumed and we stopped the car to get rid of it.  It was an envelope with the ticket inside.

What the hell did we do wrong?  J read it - "Passenger loading only 7pm-2am"  Huh?

So we went back and looked.   The car behind us still had the ticket on the windshield.  There was also a car parked in the space we'd been in.   So they didn't see the sign either.   (By the way, did you notice the sign in the picture above by the truck?  This picture is during the day and we were there at night.)

This sign was behind the car behind us.  When we walked from the car we saw the back of this sign.  You can see this also two pictures above that says "Kitche" on it.  You probably didn't notice.

There's also a sign at the corner, next to the tree in the picture with the truck.  Its arrow points in the other direction.

So two spaces with meters and no white paint on the curbs are reserved in the evening for passenger loading.  We didn't see this sign.  We'd checked the sign at the other end of the block which had a convenient place to pull over and look at the sign without blocking traffic.  And there are only six parking spaces with meters on the whole block.


But even if we did see the sign at the corner - about the distance of three or four parking spaces away as you can see in the picture with the truck - I don't know that I would have realized that it meant my space.  First, the sign is very far from where I was parked.  Second, the arrow points to a long area of red pained curb.  There's room for three or four cars to stop and let off passengers.  Why would they  take two more metered parking spaces in addition?

Could I have figured this out before getting a parking ticket?  Well, if I had walked to the end of the block and checked the sign and then checked the sign behind where I parked, I might have figured it out.  Or at least been concerned and considered moving to another spot.  I like to walk so it wouldn't have mattered.  But I've never seen a no parking sign like this that took metered parking spaces away at night.  Passenger loading spaces I know about are painted red or white or yellow.  I'd looked at the sign to see when you had to use the meter.  It told me I didn't need to use it after 4pm and the sign also told me I could park there after 7pm.

This feels like entrapment.  The signs are so complicated and unexpected that an ordinary person wouldn't know he couldn't park there.  Even a reasonably careful person trying to obey the law and avoid a ticket.   The car behind us didn't know either.  Nor did the car that pulled into our space as soon as we left.

Am I whining or is this legitimate?  I checked on line and found  an October 2014 article that says parking signage is such an issue in LA that the  city council is trying to make the signs more consistent and less confusing.

Los Angeles officials pushed forward Wednesday with two programs that target one of the city's most ubiquitous problems: finding a place to park.

During a downtown committee meeting, City Council members asked transportation officials to test a simplified street parking sign that could replace the classic red, white and green placards, saying that the current, sometimes towering stacks of notices can confuse drivers and unintentionally result in parking tickets.

And there are a number of online stories about confusing parking signs in LA.  Here are a few:

• 13 Of Los Angeles' Most Ridiculous Parking Signs

 
• L.A.'s signs of madness
  Confusing and contradictory signage almost seems designed to result in parking tickets — not to mention extreme frustration. There's got to be a better way.
• There Is Now An App To Decode LA's Insane Parking Signage

Does this mean I won't have to pay the ticket?  I doubt it.  After all, they're still ticketing people at this tricky no parking spot.  And my ticket was at 7:32pm which means they are checking it right after it stops becoming a "no parking from 4-7pm" zone.


My son turned me onto a book long ago called  "Turn Signals Are The Facial Expressions of Automobiles" by Donald A. Norman.  A Kirkusreivew of the book notes:

"It's coping with the technology of quotidian life that wears us down, of course. Norman (Cognitive Psychology/UC San Diego) reassures us that it's not our fault: It's design flaws. If it's broke, Norman knows how to fix it."

The book gives lots of examples of bad design, where the message and the use conflict.  I remember particularly the example of a door with a handle to pull, but the sign says push.

I doubt the sign designers and the people who place them on the street are trying to entrap us. They are simply making signs that reflect laws or regulations that someone has passed and now the sign folks are required to implement the rules with signs.  And because they are so immersed in the making of the signs, they think it's all obvious and people should understand.  We all, generally know what we intend and it's clear to us, even though it may not be clear to others.  But part of me wonders whether this is the parking equivalent to a speed trap.  A way for LA to get needed revenue.  At $58 a pop (and that seems to be the minimum level ticket) they can ring up a lot of money.  100 tickets would be $5800.  And they got two tickets right there in a couple of minutes.  And I saw two parking enforcement vehicles when I biked over there to take the pictures.

The "Turn Signals" book points out numerous situations where this sort of rote filling out of orders results in bad design and poor instructions.

[UPDATE Jan 28:  There are two followup posts:  January 2, 2015 and January 28, 2015]

ADN Edits Out Crucial Part Of Article

Reading the Alaska Dispatch News online, I noticed an article about the British trying to get the Americans to return the original Winnie The Pooh who's been in the US since the author gave the stuffed animal to his publisher.  Who, according to the article, gave it to the New York Power Authority, who gave it to the New York public library.  The article cites a Times of London editorial:

“Winnie-the-Pooh is not just a reference to a fictional bear, but to a national concept of a childhood Eden – an identifiable woodland in which stuffed animals, belonging to an archetypal nursery, roam in gentle complacency.”
And, the editorial went on to note, “It is obvious then that Winnie-the-Pooh, whatever else he is, is not an American.” 

 My immediate reaction, reading the headline, was "You've Gotta Be Kidding!"  The Brits have long refused the Greek government's requests (or maybe even demands) that the Brits return the Elgin marbles to Greece, which were stolen from Greece long ago.  The insult was increased recently when the British Museum agreed to loan the marbles to, of all countries, Russia.

How could they have an article on this without mentioning the Elgin marbles?

I can't put up links to the online version I read (that is a facsimile of the newspaper) because you need a password to get in.  So I googled for a copy of the article and found it at McClatchy DC.

But this article had a whole paragraph on the irony of this request:

Still, there is irony in the Times’ position, as the arguments are a mirror image of a case made recently for why the British Museum, and not Athens, was the rightful resting place for the so-called Elgin Marbles, statues that used to adorn the Parthenon but were transferred to Britain in the early years of the 19th century. Greece has wanted the statues back for 200 years, almost as long as they’ve been gone, and the arguments are the same: They weren’t sold by the Greeks but plundered by occupiers, who gave them to the British ambassador, Lord Elgin; a special museum has been built for their return, and the statues are much more than simply works of art but symbols of the greatness that was Greece.

So does someone in the ADN editing room think that Alaskans are only interested in a stuffed teddy bear, but not the theft of cultural treasures?  That the hypocrisy of wanting Winnie the Pooh while rejecting Greek claims would be lost on Alaskans?

This is Alaska where Alaska Native tribes are still working to repatriate artifacts taken from them.  

Or perhaps there's even more to the story that wasn't reported in the original McClatchy article.  Was the Times editorial a satire of the Brits' refusal to return the Elgin Marbles?  Or of the Greeks demands to get back the Marbles?


I did try to read the original London Times editorial.  What I found looked more like an article than an editorial, and when I finally found a way to get around The Times block on seeing the whole article, the quote was not from that article.  I finally found my way to  the original editorial.  I do think it is a satire - hopefully on the British refusal to return the Elgin Marbles.  It ends:

So today enlightened Americans who can imagine what it would be like if the original Moby Dick were to be displayed in, say, a Chinese museum, will surely want to join us in calling for the return of Pooh. They understand that for English people it would be almost as good as a balloon.

Maybe one of our British readers can fill us in on this story.

 

Pope Francis Taking On Climate Change

An article in the Guardian  yesterday discusses Pope Francis' interest in the movement to deal with climate change.  

". . . But can Francis achieve a feat that has so far eluded secular powers and inspire decisive action on climate change?
It looks as if he will give it a go. In 2015, the pope will issue a lengthy message on the subject to the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, give an address to the UN general assembly and call a summit of the world’s main religions.
The reason for such frenetic activity, says Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, chancellor of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, is the pope’s wish to directly influence next year’s crucial UN climate meeting in Paris, when countries will try to conclude 20 years of fraught negotiations with a universal commitment to reduce emissions.
“Our academics supported the pope’s initiative to influence next year’s crucial decisions,” Sorondo told Cafod, the Catholic development agency, at a meeting in London. “The idea is to convene a meeting with leaders of the main religions to make all people aware of the state of our climate and the tragedy of social exclusion.”

I learned of the Pope's interest in this topic earlier this year or last year at a Citizens Climate Lobby meeting when it was reported that one of the members had written the Pope on the topic and had been invited to a climate change meeting the Pope was hosting.

The Guardian article covers a number of activities the Pope has undertaken, but mainly focuses on climate change.

Following a visit in March to Tacloban, the Philippine city devastated in 2012 by typhoon Haiyan, the pope will publish a rare encyclical on climate change and human ecology. Urging all Catholics to take action on moral and scientific grounds, the document will be sent to the world’s 5,000 Catholic bishops and 400,000 priests, who will distribute it to parishioners.

His language is pretty strong:

In October he told a meeting of Latin American and Asian landless peasants and other social movements: “An economic system centred on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it. 

“The system continues unchanged, since what dominates are the dynamics of an economy and a finance that are lacking in ethics. It is no longer man who commands, but money. Cash commands. 

“The monopolising of lands, deforestation, the appropriation of water, inadequate agro-toxics are some of the evils that tear man from the land of his birth. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness,” he said. 

But I think even the Guardian is misled in its choice of the term 'radical'  to describe  Pope's stand on climate change.

However, Francis’s environmental radicalism is likely to attract resistance from Vatican conservatives and in rightwing church circles, particularly in the US – where Catholic climate sceptics also include John Boehner, Republican leader of the House of Representatives and Rick Santorum, the former Republican presidential candidate. [emphasis added]

The overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that climate change is happening and humans are causing it.  The majority of the people in the US believe that climate change is real and needs to be addressed.  And the Citizens Climate Lobby's proposal for a revenue neutral carbon fee is supported by an array of prominent people including prominent conservatives.   His position is only radical if the opinions of Koch brothers and their ilk are given far more weight than the rest of us.