My Heart Belongs to Daddy

Rabbi Albert H Friedlander z"l

85 isn't so old these days. If my father were alive, he would be 85 today. So would his brother Charles. Sadly neither of them are with us any more. There is some comfort in knowing that he was loved and is remembered by many people across the world. Would rather be able to give him a birthday kiss.

So I looked online to see who else shares this day as a birthday and found the following:

Rabbis Kaufmann Kohler and Joachim Prinz

Athletes Dennis Bergkamp (interviewed by the lovely David Winner), Jonathan Edwards and Merlene Ottey.

Bad guys John Wilkes Booth and Mark David Chapman (Rick Santorum is not as bad as them but does share the birthday)

Music heroes Sid Vicious, Donovan, Max Steiner and Bono

not to forget Thomas Lipton, Karl Barth, Fred Astaire, Milton Babbitt and Maureen Lipman.

There are loads more, but I'm supposed to be working ;-)

eleanor powell

my california friend's favourite photo at the exhibition yesterday was of fred astaire. i thought i'd find a lovely youtube clip of him for her. i watched him with ginger, with judy, with rita, with paulette goddard. then i came to this excerpt from 'broadway melody of 1940' (the clip is not faulty, after a few mins it runs normally) and remembered how much i loved eleanor powell. why? because she was not his dance partner, they were peers and she matched him step for step

o dear - warner brothers are claiming copyright infringement so this video is no longer available. i am so sorry (10th march)

here is her official fan site
here is the imdb bio

finally, a note from wiki:
"Together, Astaire and Powell danced to Porter's "Begin The Beguine", which is considered by many to be one of the greatest tap sequences in film history. According to accounts of the making of this film, including a documentary included on the DVD release, Astaire was somewhat intimidated by Powell, who was considered at the time the only female dancer capable of out-dancing Astaire. In his autobiography Steps in Time, Astaire remarked: "She 'put 'em down like a man', no ricky-ticky-sissy stuff with Ellie. She really knocked out a tap dance in a class by herself.""

unfulfilled dream #17 - learn to tap dance