Happy Birthday to me!

Today's post is all about me. It's my birthday!

If you go to Brainy History, you'll see that nothing too spectacular seems to have happened on this date in history.

Well, Joe DiMaggio announced his retirement from baseball on this date in 1951. I imagine that Jack Kerouac paid attention to that news, given his love of baseball.

From Douglas Brinkley's Windblown World, below is Jack's journal entry from December 11, 1947 (referencing his work on The Town and the City):

At 5 A.M. wrote 1500-words. Spent most of the night typing and re-working 3,000 words in the manuscript, and thinking of the structures. The world is a structure of souls, nein? And so on --

I have now officially outlived Jack by 6 years. However, life expectancy when Jack was born was around 57 years. For my birth year - 1955 - it was about 69. So Jack fell short of his life expectancy by about 10 years. I'm not trying to emulate Jack in this regard! That would only give me about 6 more years this go-around.

Oh-kay, enough morbid talk.

What do I want for my birthday? Well, Jack Kerouac books are always a winner. Books of any kind, in fact, as The Beat Handbook points out, make excellent gifts.

Speaking of my book, a fantastic gift would be for you to go to Amazon today and purchase one (or several)! Or, if you already own my book, a 5-star review on Amazon would be Kerouac-tastic! Or, give this blog a thumbs-up on Stumble (and a positive review). Or, I'd be equally thrilled with a happy birthday posting right here on Blogger. Your choice!

Happy Birthday to me! 53 years young today.