Age Appropriate

Five things to share from the week

Time moves in one direction, memory in another. –William Gibson

Friends,

It’s back to school for my wife and daughter—my wife to teach, my daughter for the final year of middle school. Here are five things I’ve been doing/exploring/thinking about this week:

1. Thinking of historical birthday coincidences, and ran across this: Martin Luther King, Anne Frank, Eric Carle (the Very Hungry Caterpillar), Max Von Sydow, James Hong, Barbara Walters, Christopher Plummer, Audrey Hepburn, Bob Newhart, Yasser Arafat, Jackie Kennedy, and Grace Kelly were all born in the same year (1929). And one of these (Hong) is still alive.

2. Happy birthday to Barry Gibb, the last living member of the Bee Gees. The Bee Gees need no introduction, but I’m often surprised by how many younger people don’t know them. One of my favorite things it to watch videos of young people hearing of a famous band/song for the first time. Here’s a beautiful one of a young girl brought to tears when she first hears Too Much Heaven.

3. Keanu Reeves turned 60 this week. We’re of similar age; I saw him once in the late 80s, filming a scene from Drugstore Cowboy on a sidewalk in Portland. Here’s a great behind-the-scenes story about that movie, including a quote about the Portland-that-doesn’t exist anymore: “There was always this side of Portland that attracted and encouraged Bohemia,” he [John Reed] says. “It was a comfortable place to go if you didn’t have enough money to live in your city. You could always find cheap places in Portland.” Ha. That affordable, bohemian, hipster-free Portland is long gone.

4. Speaking of 80s Portland, I was reminded of another celebrity encounter I had there: Dennis Quaid.

5. Once upon a time, computer design had more…soul, an inviting mystery about them. Before the dawn of beige PC boxes, that is, when computers transitioned from arcane devices to business commodities. Long ago, my favorite thing about Apple was its humane industrial design. Check out these designs from the legendary Hartmut Esslinger.

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/james