We’re on the March now

THIS is the week. Hallelujah Praise the Lord — Don GodBlessUs Lemon got born.

Also. Same month a while back — like in 44 BC, give or take a week — Julius Caesar was somehow knocked off and we got us the birth of the Roman Empire plus lasagna and risotto.

A soothsayer named Spurinna — one of those crystal ball types who lives with a sign in the window — told Julius to beware the ides of March — this very glorious date, the Roman calendar’s 74th day — whatever it is. Smartass didn’t pay attention and we all know what happened to Julie. Unbelievable, since the guy wasn’t even on CNN.

I asked a friend, born this month, what means the “ides of March”? Her answer? “How should I know — where you want to have dinner?”

Being a full service reporter, I bring news that the month was big with writers: 1859 Sholem Aleichem got born. 1922 F. Scott Fitzgerald published “The Beautiful and Damned.” 1806 brought Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 1918 in Brooklyn, Mickey Spillane. Edward Albee appeared the 12th of 1928. John Updike arrived in whereverthe hell is Shillington.

Baby Tennessee Williams arrived in Columbus, Miss., later landing inside the rectory of his Episcopal minister grampa’s church. Those days no TV so nothing much to do so the month was heavy on arrivals. 1933 Philip Roth. 1828 Ibsen. 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, Aleksei Maximovich Peshkov who got renamed Maxim Gorky.

’Tis the month of Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Tom Arnold, Christopher Walken, Ewan McGregor, Rhea Perlman, Lupita Nyong’o, Javier Bardem, Daniel Craig and his missus Rachel Weisz, Ron Howard and daughter Bryce Dallas Howard, Rebel Wilson, Rob Reiner.

Also: 1767, our seventh president, Andrew Jackson. This doesn’t come up a lot in conversation but 1917 it’s when Czar Nicholas abdicated.