This is my story, this is my song

Here is your open thread for March 24, 2020.

Fanny Crosby was born 200 years ago today.

Crosby wrote hymns. Most of them it sometimes seems. She wrote too many to keep track of, including hundreds that are still being sung, even in PowerPoint praise-band mega-churches that don’t have hymnals.

Our best guess is that Crosby wrote more than 8,000 hymns. A definitive list is difficult to compile because Crosby came to realize that publishers of hymnals were reluctant to include dozens of hymns written by a single woman, so she wrote under hundreds of pseudonyms. Crosby, who was blind from birth, also had tons of her lyrics stolen by other composers or by unscrupulous publishers, so the odds are pretty good that there are still dozens of beloved old songs that we don’t realize were written by her too.

Before she turned to hymns, Crosby wrote popular music and “parlor songs.” This was generations before radio or recording, so the measure of a song’s popularity was sheet-music sales, and she wrote several songs that sold more than 100,000 copies. Those were Stephen Foster-level hits. In 20th-century terms, those were Elvis/MJ/Garth Brooks numbers. She was robbed of royalties for most of those.

A few other Fanny-Crosby-was-a-badass-rockstar notes:

• In 1843, she was the first woman to ever speak before the joint houses of Congress, where she recited a poem (her own, of course) in support of education for the blind.
• In 1861, she wrote new lyrics to an old Southern song — “Dixie for the Union” included lyrics like “Go meet those Southern Traitors with iron will.”
• Crosby was commissioned as a missionary and lay preacher at the Sixth Avenue Baptist Church in Brooklyn. Yeah, in 2020, white American Christians are still arguing about whether or not women should be “allowed” to preach. She was preaching in the 1860s, with or without those patriarchal gatekeepers’ permission.
• This one’s especially pertinent: When the cholera pandemic struck New York City in 1849, she refused to flee and stayed at the New York Institution for the Blind to care for the sick.

On March 24, 1854, slavery was abolished in Venezuela.

The Tydings-McDuffie Act became American law on March 24, 1934. It relinquished the United States’ colonizing claim over the Philippines (a Good Thing) while imposing a ridiculously racist limit on Filipino immigration — 50 people a year (a Bad Thing).

The Great Escape — the real one the terrific movie is based on — began on March 24, 1944.

The most famous scene from that movie is probably Steve McQueen (born 90 years ago today) jumping the barbed wire on a motorcycle, but I think my favorite bit involved James Coburn just strolling away. (The French Resistance café scene with Coburn is pretty great too.)

The Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska on March 24, 1989, and the oil mega-company responded with the 1980s version of a shrug emoji. It’s been 31 years and I’m not the only one who’s avoided Exxon stations ever since.

Harry Houdini was born on March 24, 1874. He wasn’t just the greatest magician and escape artist of his time, he was also one of the greatest debunkers of “spiritualist” con-artists — because he knew how their tricks were done and he was better at those tricks than they were.

Malcolm Muggeridge was born 117 years ago today. He was a talented, engaging writer and a great wit, but I think of him mainly as a cautionary tale. Muggeridge was a socialist up until he became wealthy and he was a libertine up until he lost his libido. So.

Clyde Barrow, as in Bonnie and, was born 111 years ago today.

Celebrate Nick Lowe’s 71st birthday by listening to “Cruel to Be Kind” and “(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding.”

It’s the birthday of comics Louie Anderson (who turns 67) and Tig Notaro (who turns 49). Here’s Notaro pushing a stool around the stage on Conan.

Nena turns 60 today. Three years into Reaganism and MTV, America was facing a dismal shortage of protest songs, so we had to import them. Nena came through.

It’s also Anabella Sciorra’s 60th birthday. Harvey Weinstein has COVID-19 and he’s in prison. So.

Mark William Calaway, better known as The Undertaker, turns 55 today. I’m not a wrestling fan, but I admire this guy for creating a deeply strange and unsettling character, sticking to it, and still being able to do this at age 55.

Alyson Hannigan turns 46 today. My dog is named “Willow,” just so you have an idea of my regard for her work. Also, too, anyone just saying “This one time? At band camp?” is still funny.

Today is the feast day of St. Oscar Romero and it’s also World Tuberculosis Day. Both of those serve as reminders that once we’re all able to go outside and rebuild our lives, communities, and economies again, we’ll still have a lot of work to do on the old problems of authoritarian thuggery and disease and whatnot.

Talk amongst yourselves.