Yesterday was my mother's birthday, and today is my father's birthday. Today is also the day (at noon in 1492) that the Ensisheim meteorite landed in a wheat field outside the village of Ensisheim in Alsace, France; not to mention (in 1811) the anniversary of the Battle of Tippecanoe; the date (in 1837) of the murder of abolitionist newspaperman Elijah P. Lovejoy by a mob in Indiana; the day (in 1907) that brakeman Jesús García drove a fiery train loaded with dynamite away from the town of Nacozari de Garcia in Sonora, Mexico, saving the town but dying in the explosion; and the anniversary (in 1908) of the shootout with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in San Vicente, Bolivia. It seems, in my capsule retelling, that there was nothing but death and destruction on this date. In fact, most of what seemed to happen was that people got elected for various public offices.

However, my favorite thing that happened on November 7, 1940 (besides the birth of my father) is memorialized in the album Duke Ellington, Fargo 1940. On that evening, in the Crystal Ballroom, the Duke and his orchestra performed at a dance, and two South Dakota State College students got permission to record the show. They set up their recording turntable beside Ellington's piano and created a rough but wonderful memento. It makes me happy think of this band performing so far away in Fargo, on that chilly November night--playing "The Sheik of Araby" and "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," the Duke at his piano, and Ivie Anderson singing, and Sonny Greer on the drums--while my father was first opening his brown eyes in an old farmhouse bedroom in New Jersey.