July 23

image borrowed from bing

July 23

“He makes a July’s day short as December.”

--William Shakespeare

Today is July 23rd, on a day the Lord has made;

the 204th day of the Gregorian calendar,

and who knows what day on the Mayan tablets,

the first time it has landed on a Tuesday

in the last ten years, as summer 2013

has hit like a bellicose blast furnace

clear across this vast continent, coupled

to vicious flash flooding in the deep

arroyos of the Southwest.

How does any Day in History distinguish itself;

well, by the various & specific births, deaths,

& events that have occurred on it, of course.

It is a Leo astrological birth day,

and there were several interesting personalities

that made their debut on/during it--

a slew of entertainers,

Daniel Radcliffe in 1989,

Emil Jannings in 1884,

Ronny Cox in 1938,

Woody Harrelson in 1961,

Michael Wilding in 1917,

David Essex in 1947, and

Philip Seymour Hoffman in 1967;

A couple of baseball players,

Pee Wee Reese in 1918, and

Don Drysdale in 1936, with

the inclusion of one writer,

Raymond Chandler in 1888.

Perhaps it was not a good day to die;

Vic Morrow decapitated in 1982,

Montgomery Clift, with his drug-induced 

heart attack in 1960,

Ulysses S. Grant, checking out in 1888,

with a glass of bourbon in one hand

and a stogie in the other, D.W. Griffith

facing the going to black alone in 1948,

Leo McKern growling like Rumple in 2002,

Van Heflin finally finding Shane in 1971,

and Sally Ride astride an exploding

space shuttle.

The diverse events created counterpoints

to each other, composing a mad concerto;

the typographer, an early typewriter

was patented in 1829;

Fox Films bought the rights to record sound

onto film stock from Movietone in 1926;

Henry Ford sold his first automobile in 1903;

the Treblinka extermination camp was opened

in 1942, deepening the Holocaust;

the lucky Gimli Glider, Air Canada Flight 143,

ran out of fuel and made a perfect deadstick

landing in Gimli, Manitoba in 1983;

the 12th Street Riot happened in Cleveland

in 1967, starting off with a violent gun battle

between black militants and the police.

leaving 43 dead, 342 injured, & 1400 buildings burned;

Vanessa Williams, in 1984, became the first

Miss America to resign in the wake of the bad

press over her nude layout in Playboy. 

I have braved 69 of these July 23rd events,

and this one has already presented me with

the arrival of Kate & William’s baby prince,

the arrival of “Papa” Pope Francis in Brazil,

hours more of the Zimmerman coverage on CNN,

the continuing story of the search for more dead

women wrapped in plastic in Cleveland,

the answer as to what a “Beatles sandwich” was,

more dribble about the fate of Edward Snowden,

and how Billy Ray Cyrus saved his marriage;

another sterling day in the life,

short-sleeved weather, complete

with a couple more surprises,

and it’s not even noon yet. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets OLN

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