"Manifestly, dying is nothing to a really great and brave man."
Mark Twain wrote that in a letter to his wife Olivia in reference to Ulysses S. Grant but it could just as easily be applied to Bob Marley today.
Today would have been Bob Marley's 67th birthday. Marley who died of cancer in 1981 at age 36 was and still is the icon of reggae music. His hits: "Get Up, Stand Up," "No Woman, No Cry," "Jamming," and "One Love." are timeless anthems of justice, unity and love that are still relevant today-- thirty+ years after his death.
Bob Marley truly was a great and brave man whose faith allowed him the strength to not to see death as a negative but as a positive... a step closer to God.
To quote another Twain quote on the topic:
"Death is the starlit strip between the companionship of yesterday and the reunion of tomorrow."
One would hope that many of the reunited are "Jamming" up in Heaven today.
Happy Birthday Mr. Bob Marley, may you rest in peace.
Monday, February 6
Bob Marley
Wednesday, November 30
Happy Birthday Mark Twain
November 30th, 2011 is Sam Clemens' (aka Mark Twain) birthday. For fun I looked up the last person to write him on his birthday using the Mark Twain Project website.
The answer is...
Margery Hamilton Clinton
Margery (a.k.a. "the plumber") visited Clemens at Stormfield at least three times -- in July 1908, October 1908 and February 1909.
"The plumber is coming Feb. 23d; a girl you would greatly like. She isn't a M.A. [angel-fish], but is not without good qualities, nevertheless. She is official plumber of Stormfield, by her own request, but doesn't know how to plumb. Name, Margery Clinton (Cooley, p. 249)."
Margery Hamilton Clinton was the daughter of renown New York architect Charles William Clinton and his wife Emily de Silver Gorsuch.
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So who did Twain write to on his birthday from Stormfield?
1909:
Nobody
1908:
Elizabeth Wallace, Frederick A. Duneka, Jean Clemens, H. P.
Wood, F. N. Otremba