`A Life Diversified by Misery': And a Happy Birthday to You

As a birthday present to my brother, please visit his blog, the cleverly named Mr. Ken Kurp, known formerly, before the acclaim went to his head, as Ken Kurp. We work in different media but our blogs share a predilection for making connections across time, space and, in my brother’s case, all standards of decency. Here’s Samuel Johnson on the subject of birthdays, from a letter he wrote to Hester Thrale on Sept. 21, 1773:

“Boswell, with some of his troublesome kindness, has informed this family, and reminded me that the eighteenth of September is my birthday. The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape. I can now look back upon threescore and four years, in which little has been done, and little has been enjoyed, a life diversified by misery, spent part in the sluggishness of penury, and part under the violence of pain, in gloomy discontent, or importunate distress. But perhaps I am better than I should have been, if I had been less afflicted. With this I will try to be content.”

Hardly Hallmark sentiments, but you get the idea: Happy birthday, Ken!