Forty Four Birthday Quotes

In this family, we always celebrate each other's birthdays. I don't care if you're four or fourteen or forty and scattered around the world. We gotta stick by each other, okay? And meals- as long as you live under the same roof, you have at least one meal a day together. I don't care if it's a dreaded hot dog in front of the dastardly TV as long as you're all there. -Maeve Bennett

Grandfather died a few days after his hundredth birthday. Both Father and I were there at the end, in the room where I'd been born, forty-four years ago. It was not unlike that day, with sunlight streaming through the windows, and hummingbirds hovering outside, iridescent sun-glittering flashes of jewels. A dove was calling, back in the cool shade. Grandfather's hand was cool, as cool as the river. He tried to sit up to look out at the sunlight. "Sycamores grow by running water," he sang, "cottonwoods by still water," and then he died, and I felt a century slip away.

Art is dead. Art is dead. Art is dead. Art is dead. Entertainers like to seem complicated But we're not complicated I can explain it pretty easily Have you ever been to a birthday Party for children? And one of the children won't stop screaming 'Cause he's just a little Attention attractor When he grows up To be a comic or actor He'll be rewarded for never maturing For never under- Standing or learning That every day Can't be about him There's other people You selfish asshole I must be psychotic I must be demented To think that I'm worthy Of all this attention Of all of this money, you worked really hard for I slept in late while you worked at the drug store My drug's attention, I am an addict But I get paid to indulge in my habit It's all an illusion, I'm wearing make-up, I'm wearing make-up Make-up, make-up, make-up, make... Art is dead So people think you're funny, how do we get those people's money? I said art is dead We're rolling in dough, while Carlin rolls in his grave His grave, his grave The show has got a budget The show has got a budget And all the poor people way more deserving of the money Won't budge it 'Cause I wanted my name in lights When I could have fed a family of four For forty fucking fortnights Forty fucking fortnights I am an artist, please God forgive me I am an artist, please don't revere me I am an artist, please don't respect me I am an artist, you're free to correct me A self-centred artist Self-obsessed artist I am an artist I am an artist But I'm just a kid I'm just a kid I'm just a kid Kid And maybe I'll grow out of it.

Cixi’s lack of formal education was more than made up for by her intuitive intelligence, which she liked to use from her earliest years. In 1843, when she was seven, the empire had just finished its first war with the West, the Opium War, which had been started by Britain in reaction to Beijing clamping down on the illegal opium trade conducted by British merchants. China was defeated and had to pay a hefty indemnity. Desperate for funds, Emperor Daoguang (father of Cixi’s future husband) held back the traditional presents for his sons’ brides – gold necklaces with corals and pearls – and vetoed elaborate banquets for their weddings. New Year and birthday celebrations were scaled down, even cancelled, and minor royal concubines had to subsidise their reduced allowances by selling their embroidery on the market through eunuchs. The emperor himself even went on surprise raids of his concubines’ wardrobes, to check whether they were hiding extravagant clothes against his orders. As part of a determined drive to stamp out theft by officials, an investigation was conducted of the state coffer, which revealed that more “than nine million taels of silver had gone missing. Furious, the emperor ordered all the senior keepers and inspectors of the silver reserve for the previous forty-four years to pay fines to make up the loss – whether or not they were guilty. Cixi’s great-grandfather had served as one of the keepers and his share of the fine amounted to 43,200 taels – a colossal sum, next to which his official salary had been a pittance. As he had died a long time ago, his son, Cixi’s grandfather, was obliged to pay half the sum, even though he worked in the Ministry of Punishments and had nothing to do with the state coffer. After three years of futile struggle to raise money, he only managed to hand over 1,800 taels, and an edict signed by the emperor confined him to prison, only to be released if and when his son, Cixi’s father, delivered the balance. The life of the family was turned upside down. Cixi, then eleven years old, had to take in sewing jobs to earn extra money – which she would remember all her life and would later talk about to her ladies-in-waiting in the court. “As she was the eldest of two daughters and three sons, her father discussed the matter with her, and she rose to the occasion. Her ideas were carefully considered and practical: what possessions to sell, what valuables to pawn, whom to turn to for loans and how to approach them. Finally, the family raised 60 per cent of the sum, enough to get her grandfather out of prison. The young Cixi’s contribution to solving the crisis became a family legend, and her father paid her the ultimate compliment: ‘This daughter of mine is really more like a son!’ Treated like a son, Cixi was able to talk to her father about things that were normally closed areas for women. Inevitably their conversations touched on official business and state affairs, which helped form Cixi’s lifelong interest. Being consulted and having her views acted on, she acquired self-confidence and never accepted the com“common assumption that women’s brains were inferior to men’s. The crisis also helped shape her future method of rule. Having tasted the bitterness of arbitrary punishment, she would make an effort to be fair to her officials.

By three months old, 40 percent of infants watch screen media regularly; by two years, 90 percent do. By her third birthday, the average American child recognizes one hundred brand logos. The typical child is exposed to forty thousand screen ads per year. Children know the names of more branded characters than of real animals. By her tenth birthday, the average American child knows three hundred to four hundred brands. Research shows over and over that preschoolers will overwhelmingly think advertised products, branded products, are superior even when the actual contents are identical.

Push up some mountains. Cut them down. Drown the land under the sea. Push up some more mountains. Cut them down. Push up a third set of mountains, and let the river cut through them. “Unconformity” is the geologic term for an old, eroded land surface buried under younger rock layers. Put your outspread hand over the Carlin Canyon, Nevada unconformity and your fingers span roughly forty million years- the time that it took to bevel down the first set of mountains and deposit the younger layers on top. What is forty million years? Enough time for a small predatory dinosaur to evolve into a bird. Enough time for a four-legged, deer-like mammal to evolve into a whale. And far more than enough time to turn an ape-like creature in eastern Africa into a big-brained biped who can marvel at such things. The Grand Canyon’s Great Unconformity divides 1.7 billion-year-old rock from 550 million-year-old rock, a gap of more than one billion years. One billion years. I earn my salary studying the Earth and teaching its history, but I admit utter helplessness in comprehending such a span. A billion pages like those of this book would stack up more than forty miles. I had lived one bullion seconds a few days before my thirty-second birthday. A tape measure one billion inches long would stretch two-thirds of the way around the Earth. Such analogies hint at what deep time means- but they don’t get us there. “The human mind may not have evolved enough to be able to comprehend deep time," John McPhee once observed, “it may only be able to measure it.

After Arvid had learned in fall 2018 the cancer had returned, he devoted two months crafting letters to each of his children that he instructed be read on their twenty-first, twenty-eighth, thirty-fifth, and forty-fifth birthdays. He chose each year because those years were significant in his own life: official adulthood, the age he got married, the age he became vice principal, and the age he learned the cancer had returned. The letters were personalized to each Shastri-Persson for each milestone. The twenty-first-birthday letter was an assortment of memories and anecdotes about each child; the twenty-eighth letter was advice on love, friendships, and relationships; the thirty-fifth letter was Arvid's thoughts on the importance of kindness and generosity, on both a grand scale and small; and the forty-fifth was simply a list of songs Arvid asked that they listen to on their birthdays at a location of great significance to them. He signed off with the same sentence in all four letters: "Celebrate each remaining birthday in a way that is meaningful to you. Each one is precious and extraordinary, and so you are to me. I love you, and I am with you always. Take care of each other. Love, Dad.