Happy Birthday! August 5

Guy de Maupassant; French writer 8-5-1850

Conrad Aiken American Poet 8-5-1889

John Huston Film Actor 8-5-1906

Robert Taylor Film Actor 8-5-1911

Sydney Omarr Astrologer 8-5-1926

Neil Armstrong Astronaut 8-5-1930-1985

August 5, 1583: Sir Humphrey Gilbert annexed Newfoundland (issued 12-30-1933)

August 5, 1858: Julia A. Holmes is first woman to climb the top of Pikes Peak

August 5, 1864: Admiral Farragut wins Battle of Mobile Bay "Damn the torpedoes— full speed ahead!" U.S. 792 (issued 2-18-1937)

August 5, 1884: Statue of Liberty Cornerstone Laid U.S. 566 (11-11-1922)

August 5, 1924: Liitle Orphan Annie by Harold Gray debuts

August 5, 1962: Marilyn Monroe found dead at age 36

August 5, 1966: Beatles' "Yellow Submarine" song released in London

August 5, 1984: Joan Benoit wins 1st Women Olympics Marathon

August 5, 1997: U.S. 3145: Vince Lombardi First Day of Issue: Postmarked Green Bay, Wisconsin

August 5, 1932: U.S. 707: 2¢ carmine George Washington Park, IN Cancel

August 5, 1868: U.S. 76: 5¢ Jefferson postmarks Honolulu, July 11, 1868 & San Francisco, August 5, 1868

Ralph W. Emerson (1803-1882)

If you read much at a time you have a better sight of the plan & connexion of the book but you have less lively attention. If you read little, fine things catch your eye and you read accurately but all proportion and ulterior purpose are at an end. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal, August 5, 1835 A man should behave himself as a guest of Nature but not as a drone. God never cants. And the charm of Plutarch & Plato & Thucydides for me I believe, is that there I get ethics without cant. I am struck with the splendor of the sentences I meet in books, especially in Plutarch taken from Pindar, Plato, & Heraclitus, these three. — Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journal, August 5, 1837

Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863)

Paris, August 5, 1854: It is to be noted that every original talent shows the same phases in its development as art in general goes through in its various evolutions, to wit: timidity and dryness at the beginning, and breadth or negligence as to details at the end... How singular this law is! What occurs here, occurs in everything. I might be lead to infer that every object is in itself a complete world. Man, it has been said, is a little world. Not only is he in his unity a complete whole, with an ensemble of laws consistent with those of the great whole, but even a part of an object is a species of complete unity; thus a branch detached from a tree presents the conditions of the tree in its entirety... Plant the branch of a poplar tree, and soon it will become a poplar... At this moment, I am writing alongside a big anthill, partly the result of small accidents in the surface of the ground at the foot of a tree, and partly due to the patient work of the ants; there are slopes, and parts that overhang and form little gorges, through which the inhabitants go back and forth with a busy air, like the little people of a little country, which the imagination can magnify in a moment. At Dieppe I noticed the same thing in the rocks at the water level which the sea covers at every tide; among them I saw gulfs, arms of the sea, frowning peaks suspended above abysses, valleys which by their windings divided up a whole country that showed the accidents we observe about us. The same thing is true as to the waves of the sea, which are divided, themselves, into little waves, again subdividing, and individually presenting the same accidents of light and the same drawing... Just after this observation, in the same sketchbook, are notes on certain phenomena which repeat themselves in extremely different objects, such as the designs that the sea engraves in the sand and that recall the stripes on tigers. — Eugene Delacroix, Journal, August 5, 1854

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Walden, Massachusetts, August 5, 1838: Sphere Music— Some sounds seem to reverberate along the plain, and then settle to earth again like dust; such are Noise, Discord, Jargon. But such only as spring heavenward, and I may catch from steeples and hilltops in their upward course, which are the more refined parts of the former, are the true sphere music— pure, unmixed music— in which no wail mingles. — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, August 5, 1838 (p. 53) Concord, Massachusetts, August 5, 1851: Moon half full. I sit beside Hubbard's Grove... When the moon is on the increase and half full, it is already in mid-heavens at sunset, so that there is no marked twilight intervening. I hear the whip-poor-will at a distance, but they are few of late... As the twilight deepens and the moonlight is more and more bright, I begin to distinguish myself, who I am and where; as my walls contract, I become more collected and composed, and sensible of my own existence, as when a lamp is brought into a dark apartment and I see who the company are. With the coolness and the mild silvery light, I recover some sanity, my thoughts are more distinct, moderated, and tempered. Reflection is more possible while the day goes by. The intense light of the sun unfits me for meditation, makes me wander in my thought; my life is too diffuse and dissipated; routine succeeds and prevails over us; the trivial has greater power then, and most at noonday, the most trivial hour of the twenty-four. I am sobered by the moonlight. I bethink myself. It is like a cup of cold water to a thirsty man. The moonlight is more favorable to meditation than sunlight. The sun lights this world from without, shines in at a window, but the moon is like a lamp within an apartment. It shines for us. The stars themselves make a more visible, and hence a nearer and more domestic roof at night. Nature broods us, and has not left our germs of thought to be hatched by the sun. We feel her heat and see her body darkening over us. Our thoughts are not dissipated, but come back to us like an echo. The different kinds of moonlight are infinite. This is not a night for contrasts of light and shade, but a faint diffused light in which there is light enough to travel, and that is all. What an entertainment for the traveller, this incessant motion apparently of the moon traversing the clouds! Whether you sit or stand, it is always preparing new developments for you... You all alone, the moon all alone, overcoming with incessant victory whole squadrons of clouds above the forests and the lakes and rivers and the mountains. You cannot always calculate which one the moon will undertake next. I see a solitary firefly over the woods. The moon wading through clouds; though she is eclipsed by this one, I see her shining on a more distant but lower one. The entrance into Hubbard's Wood above the spring, coming from the hill, is like the entrance to a cave; but when you are within, there are some streaks of light on the edge of the path. All these leaves so still, none whispering, no birds in motion,— how can I be else than still and thoughtful? — Henry David Thoreau, Journal, August 5, 1851 pp. 370-375

Edgar Degas (1834-1917)

Paris, August 5, 1882: I can neither play piquet nor billiards nor do I know how to pay attentions to people nor how to work after nature nor simply how to be agreeable to society. I think I weighed a bit heavily on them and that they had thought I was more resourceful. — Edgar Degas, Letter to Bartholomé,      Paris, August 5, 1882      Degas' Paintings; Sculptures: Albert Bartholomé

Mme Bartholomé

Paul Klee (1879-1940)

Bern, Switzerland, August 5, 1901: Retrospect on the artistic beginnings of the past three years. Whatever in these diaries is unclear, confused, and undeveloped seems hardly as repellent, or as ridiculous even, as the first attempts to translate these circumstances into art. A diary is simply not art, but a temporal accomplishment. One thing, however, I must grant myself: the will to attain the authentic was there. Else I might have been content, as a tolerable sketcher of nudes... The very fact that the whole man at times fell very low in the course of these three years made him eager for and capable of purification. Many projects are witnesses to this. In the end, the need for absolute form is not lacking either. Herewith equilibrium begins to establish itself. That my bethrothal should coincide in time with this state is perfectly logical. — Paul Klee, Diaries of Paul Klee: 1898-1918, Bern, August 5, 1901

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

Rocky Mount, North Carolina, August 5, 1952: I wish I could make felt the thousands of hours of anxiety and hard work that have gone into the past year since our contractual association began. Multiply that by 12 years, when I started writing; and always without enough money to live like other people, never sufficient clothes, and on the road actual starvation... You might as well ask Michelangelo to cut David down to livingroom size for all you're going to get out of me in this "revision" when I have a thousand books to write... Without the first installment of the advance it is a physical impossibility to do any revising work on this controversial manuscript. Please let me know what you intend to do as quickly as possible. I should like to get "On the Road" on the road to its eventual publisher. Yours bitterly, — Jack Kerouac, Letter to Carl Solomon,       August 5, 1952 (Rocky Mount, N.C.)       Selected Letters: 1940-1956,       Ed. Ann Charters, Viking, NY, 1995, pp. 376-377

George Oppen (1908-1984)

San Francisco, California, August 5, 1970: I don't know how to measure happiness. The issue is happiness, there is no other issue, or no other issue one has a right to think about for other people, to think about politically, but I don't know how to measure happiness. — George Oppen,     Letter to June Oppen Degnan,     August 5, 1970

Collected Poems (1976) by George Oppen

Ken Wilber (born 1949)

Boulder, Colorado, August 5, 1998: Just this greets me this morning; just this, its own remark; just this, there is no other; just this, the sound of one hand clapping— the sound, that is, of One Taste. The subtle and casual can be so overwhelmingly numinous and holy; One Taste is so pitifully obvious and simple. — Ken Wilber,      One Taste: The Journals of Ken Wilber, August 5, 1998      Shambhala, Boston, 1999, pp. 186-187

T. C. Chou (1902-2000)

San Jose, California, August 5, 2000: You are dearest to my heart. I can't tell you all the love I have for you. You are my treasure, my shining star. My love for you is true love. Your residence is at the Homestead Care Home, but my residence is in your heart. — Tsien Chung Chou,      Letter to Yvonne Liu Chou, August 5, 2000      (Dad wrote to Mom a week after his 98th birthday)      Poem "Diamond Wedding Anniversary" (2-24-1994)

Yonne Liu Chou (1908-2005)

Birth Flower: Poppy Peace, sleep, imagination, beauty, courage, luxury Birthstone: Moonstone Intuition, balance, love, god fortune for healing Zodiac Sign: Leo Passion, romance, drama, courage, enthusiastic, loyal

© Peter Y. Chou, Wisdom Portal P.O. Box 390707, Mountain View, CA 94039 email: (7-4-2022)