birthday and fame

It's great to get email birthday wishes from so many friends. But what I find interesting and quite unexpected is how many organizations have me on their list. I've gotten 'happy birthday' messages from conservative think tanks (I can't blame the liberal organizations for leaving me off their list), religious orders, advocates for amnesty for unknown poets, catalog companies, automobile insurance agencies, dating sites that I do not use, and so on. You get the awfully mistaken notion that you must have become famous overnight.