AMERICANA

This from our “Calling Donald Trump” Manhattan bureau: The song everyone simultaneously hates and loves to hear--”Happy Birthday to You”--can now be bought by whoever purchases Birchtree Ltd., the company that owns its copyright. The Sengstack family of Princeton, N.J., which for half a century has owned Birchtree, has decided to sell the company, it was announced Thursday. The price tag: $12 million plus. The rights to the song expire in 2010, after which it enters the public domain. Sisters Patty Smith Hill and Mildred J. Hill, two kindergarten and Sunday school teachers from Louisville, Ky., wrote the song in 1893.