Mightier Acorns

And other anniversaries

Today’s date, April 23rd, turns up a lot in my research.

I mean, sure, it happens every year, but sometimes I am overwhelmed by how often a specific date intrudes itself into whatever I happen to be reading on a given day. For example, I don’t know why I remember this, but these two people happened to have been born on the same day:

One of my least-favorite U.S. Presidents, James Buchanan, was born on this date in 1791, and considering his role in advocating for “states’ rights” leading to the Civil War, I have to confront his legacy regularly in my research.

Great-Grandma Rosa

On a far more pleasant topic, my 2nd Great-grandmother, Rosa Edith (Murray) Huff (1861-1943) was born on April 23rd. I heard from my cousin, Pat Witter, recently that he found a cassette tape from a time when my grandmother (his aunt Nancy Callin) recorded her mother (Rosa’s daughter, Hannah Merle Witter) talking about their family’s journey to Arizona from Kansas in 1907. I’m looking forward to making digital copies and a transcript of that tape. I suspect it will give me a lot of interesting things to share with you all in the coming year.

Historical Rhymes

I’m not a person who puts a lot of stock in the mystical, but sometimes the way history “rhymes” leads one to think about things less linearly. The recurrence of dates shouldn’t feel so mysterious, since, as I mentioned, they happen every year. But our brains also evolved to make connections between seemingly unrelated data points to arrive at conclusions that we can’t easily explain.

For example, William Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616 at age 52. By tradition, he is supposed to have died on his birthday. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t—but Roy Orbison was also born on 23 April (1936) and died at age 52 in December 1988. I happened to be writing about Orbison as part of an upcoming post over at All Kinds Musick, and I realized that I am 52 years old this year, too. That doesn’t mean anything, but it is unsettling—either it is a portent of doom, or the universe is pointing out that since I haven’t accomplished anything nearly as enduring as either artist, I should be safe.

The universe is kind of a jerk.