And then they were gone

As I've read about the early days of America's independence, one name that keeps popping up is Benjamin Franklin Bache. He was the grandson of Benjamin Franklin and the grandfather of another Benjamin Franklin Bache. He was also the editor of the Philadelphia Aurora, one of the fiercest sources of criticism of George Washington and, later, John Adams. Bache was once caned (not being a gentleman, so not worthy of calling out to duel) and was charged under the Federalists' great blunder, the Alien and Sedition Acts.

He was critical of adminstrations, but he wasn't quite as proactive about it as John Wilkes Booth. The guy had a great acting career, was famous, and then he shot Lincoln in the back of the head. In the Ford Theater on a Friday in the presence of his wife. Oddly enough, JFK was shot in the back of the head while riding in a Lincoln. Made by Ford. On a Friday. Lee Harvey Oswald has 15 letters in his name, just like John Wilkes Booth. Spooooky.

I guess spooky stuff happens sometimes. Like when I thought I was gonna have to go to the doctor the other day after trying to kick the top of a doorway.

Fortunately I didn't have to go to the doctor, but the most spooked I've ever been at the doctor was when I tested positive for tuberculosis some years back. I had my lungs x-rayed and there was no damage, but I had to take medicine for like nine months and I have been sensitive to people in history that have died from good ol' consumption. John Keats, the great British poet, was one of them. He also lost his mother to TB, but he was able to do some very influential work (which, to be honest, I've read precious little of) before showing signs of it himself in 1918, during a trip to Scotland and Ireland.

Maybe there's something tragic about Celtics. Larry Bird was going to be 30. McHale was gonna be 29, and Robert Parrish was 33... in an era where not many players were effective into their 30's. The Celtics were kind of banking on Len Bias to keep their team near the top of the NBA in 1986-87. Boston was still celebrating their NBA title when they lucked into the second overall pick from the Seattle Supersonics (remember them?) in a deal they'd made a couple of years earlier. Reggie Lewis picked up the mantle a couple of years later, averaging over 18 points per game for five straight years, although the Celtics only made it to the second round twice in that period.

Julius Caesar led the first foray into Keats's future homeland when he landed in 55 and then in 54 BC. It amazes me the distance Rome projected its power, but it's reported that Caesar wept at a statue of Alexander the Great in Spain because he knew he would not achieve the same level of success (Alexander built on the conquests of his father, securing Greece and traveling east all the way to India). Caligula was another Roman ruler who was impressed by Alexander... he wore armor that had belonged to the Macedonian 350 years after the man's death. Caligula was, of course, a bit messed up in the head...

Not the same way Kennedy or Lincoln got messed up in the head, of course. Or Kurt Cobain.

I remember the first time I heard Nirvana. I was in college and I wasn't cool enough to hear them before Nevermind because I was in Illinois, rather than Seattle. (Although I might not have been cool enough to see them in their Subpop days, in any event. Because I'm not that cool.) That same year, I heard Teenage Fanclub for the first time... they seemed a bit wussy for me (I was into Metallica, and especially the older stuff with Cliff Burton on bass).

Now, though? If you listen to the music that I listen to most often (karaoke notwithstanding) it all sounds like Teenage Fanclub, which sounds like Big Star (fronted by Alex Chilton and Chris Bell).

Maybe it's a sign of me maturing. We all get older, right?

I mean, we get older until we don't.