Friday, April 6

Welcome to the Wannaskan Almanac for Friday.

    It's the birthday today in 1483 in Urbino, Italy of the great Renaissance painter,  Raphael. Raphael's father was a painter in the court of Urbino and Raphael started as an apprentice at the age of 11. He was considered a master painter by the age of 17.
    He moved around northern Italy for a few years then settled in Rome in 1508, where he spent the last 11 years of his life working for Popes Julius II and Leo X. The painter Michelangelo was in Rome at the same time. He was a touchy sort and said "Everything Raphael did, he got from me."
    Raphael's greatest works were done on the walls of the pope's library in the Vatican palace. Raphael's friend Castiglione invented the word "sprezzatura" to describe his paintings. 
The term indicates "a certain nonchalance which conceals all artistry and makes whatever one says or does seem uncontrived and effortless ..."

  
         
     It's also the birthday in 1937 in Bakersfield, California of Merle Haggard. He was born in a converted boxcar just after his parents had moved west from Oklahoma. His father died when he was nine, and with his mother busy working, he got himself into trouble with the law, working his way up from juvenile detention centers to San Quentin prison. he decided to turn his life around when one of his friends was executed for shooting a cop. He says Johnny Cash's performance at the prison in 1959 inspired him to join the prison county band.
    Once out of prison, Haggard performed with local bands helping develop the Bakersfield sound in reaction to the over-produced Nashville songs. He dug ditches by day and played the honky-tonks by night until his first hit "(My Friends Are Gonna Be) Strangers" in 1964.
    He went on to have 38 number one hits on the country music charts and received many honors. In 1972, Governor Ronald Reagan granted him a full pardon. He died at his California ranch on his birthday in 2016. He was 79.


Today's poem is the lyrics of the song, "Nobody knows you when you're down and out."

Once I lived the life of a millionaire
Spending my money, I didn't care
Taking my friends out for a mighty fine time
Buying high priced liquor, champagne and wine.
Then I began to fall so low.
I didn't have a friend, and no place to go.
If I ever get my hand on a dollar again
I'm gonna hold on to it till the eagle's green.
Nobody knows you when you down and out.
In your pocket, not a penny.
And your friends, you haven't any.
But as soon as you get on your feet again
Everybody wants to be your long lost friend.
It's mighty strange, without a doubt,
Nobody knows you when you down and out.