On the day that I was born... international history was made by the Russian launch of Sputnik I and the beginning of the “space age”. Sputnik I was the first artificial satellite to be put into geocentric orbit. Sputnik I traveled 60 million kilometers before burning up on re-entry on January 4, 1958. Not bad for a little fella!!
On the day that I was born... Arkansas was embroiled in a great civil rights conflict over the integration of Central High School in nearby Little Rock. In early September of 1957 Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus deployed the Arkansas National guard to prevent nine African American high school students from attending Central High. President Dwight Eisenhower subsequently “federalized” the National Guard and deployed the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army to escort the students, now known as the “Little Rock Nine”, to their classes. 
The desegregation of Central High was one of the pivotal battles in the American Civil Rights Movement. Opposition to desegregation was so strong in Arkansas that the State Legislature cancelled the whole 58/59 school year at Little Rock High Schools. I guess they figured that
“no school” was preferable to “integrated schools”.On the day that I was born... the very first episode of “Leave it to Beaver” aired on CBS Television. Baby Boomer kids are now well identified as a TV “market” by the major networks. Wow! How cool is that!
Wow… what a wonderful world!! And what a wonderful life I’ve had… so far…
Turning 50… Rob; in Vancouver
“And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.” Abe Lincoln
3 comments:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROB!!!!! Have a wonderful day!! Thinking of you always!!!
xoxoxox
Bethie
Wow, lots of really cool things happened on your birthday. It is hard to believe that less than 50 years ago there was still segregation in schools....how awful. But at least there is good to go with the bad!
Many Happy Returns
Love Robyn
Rob, I was born 10-3-57 and every year I celebrate my birthday with a return to one of my fav poems by Dylan Thomas. Congrats on YOUR 52nd year to heaven! Much love, Jen
"It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbor and neighbor wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.
My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In a rainy autumn
And walked abroad in shower of all my days
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.
A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.
Pale rain over the dwindling harbor
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.
It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sunlight
And the legends of the green chapels
And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and the sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singing birds.
And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning."
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