Today's Reading: "Susanna Fontanarossa" by Thomas Lux from SPLIT HORIZON, published by Houghton Mifflin.
It's COLUMBUS DAY. Christopher Columbus made landfall on the morning of October 12, 1492, in the Bahamas. His mission had been to find a quick route to China, and a few days later he went ashore in Cuba searching for the Chinese emperor. When he returned to Spain in March, 1493, he reported to Queen Isabella that the islands he'd found were just off the Chinese coast. The U.S. began observing Columbus Day on October 12, 1792, with a celebration in New York.
Soviet premier NIKITA KRUSHCHEV took off his shoe at the United Nations in New York on this day in 1960, and pounded his desk with it. This was during a debate about the colonization of African and Asian countries. From the front podium Krushchev had earlier called the Philippine delegate a "jerk" and a "lackey of imperialism," then went back to his desk to listen to that delegate rail about Soviet colonization of East Europe. Krushchev then took off his shoe, waved it at the speaker and began pounding his desk.
It's LUCIANO PAVAROTTI's birthday, born in Modena, Italy, 1935. He went to college to become a teacher, and for two years taught elementary school. Then he started singing and winning competitions and made his debut in Italy in 1961.
It's the birthday of writer and actor ALICE CHILDRESS, born in Charleston, South Carolina, 1916, author in 1973 of the young-adult novel A Hero Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich, the story of a 13-year-old heroin addict; in which she wrote: "We think of poverty as a condition simply meaning a lack of funds, no money, but when one sees fifth, sixth, and seventh generation poor, it is clear that poverty is as complicated as high finance." Childress was brought up in Harlem, and wrote and starred in her first play, Florence, with the American Negro Theater during the late 1940s.
It's the birthday of ANN PETRY, born in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, 1908, author of the 1946 novel The Street.
Anton Chekov finished his final play, THE CHERRY ORCHARD, on this day in 1903 — the story of Madame Ranevskaya and her family's estate in Russia, part of which holds a beautiful orchard of cherry trees. She's forced to sell the estate to a developer, and the play ends with the sound of saws cutting down the trees.
It's the birthday of GEORGE WASHINGTON CABLE, the novelist of Creole life, born in 1844, New Orleans. He wrote about New Orleans in a pair of books that were popular in the late 19th century: the short story collection Old Creole Days (1879), and his novel, The Grandissimes (1880). His parents had been slaveholders, and Cable fought in the Confederate cavalry during the Civil War, but when he got out of the service he changed his mind about slavery. His books written in the late 1880s, The Silent South and The Negro Question, championed black rights and attacked discrimination. His fellow Southerners sharply criticized the books, causing Cable to move north and settle in Massachusetts.
It's the birthday in Paris, 1844, of ANATOLE FRANCE, author of the novels Penguin Island (1908), and The Gods Are Athirst (1912), and winner of the 1921 Nobel Prize for Literature.
Today's Reading: "Happiness Makes Up in Height for What It Lacks in Length" by Robert Frost from THE POETRY OF ROBERT FROST, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
It's jazz pianist ART TATUM's birthday, born in Toledo, Ohio, 1910. He was blind from birth, and started out playing violin when he was a boy, then got hired as a teenager to be the staff pianist at WSPD in Toledo. NBC picked up the show and aired it nationwide, and Tatum became famous particularly for how fast he could play.
It's the birthday of novelist ERNEST KELLOGG GANN, born in 1910, Lincoln, Nebraska, author of a number of popular naval and aviation novels that came out in the 1940s and '50s, like Island in the Sky, Soldier of Fortune, and The High and Mighty, most of which were made into movies. He flew in the Army Air Corps during WWII, and his books were based on his military experiences.
The editorial cartoonist HERBLOCK's birthday is today, born in Chicago, 1909, as Herbert Lawrence Block. He started cartooning professionally when he was 20 years old, drawing for the Chicago Daily News. In 1946 he joined the Washington Post and made his name lampooning Senator Joseph McCarthy in the early 1950s.
It's the birthday of writer ARNA BONTEMPS in Alexandria, Louisiana, 1902, author of God Sends Sunday (1931) and Black Thunder (1935). Bontemps broke in as a poet in the 1920s, then after writing novels turned to children's books. One of them, The Pasteboard Bandit, though written in 1935, just came out last year, 25 years after Bontemps' death.
It's the birthday of CONRAD RICHTER, in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania, 1890, author of the trilogy The Awakening Land, about American pioneer life. He got his first job when he was 19 years old editing the Patton, Pennsylvania newspaper, then left journalism when he was in his late 30s and moved out to Albuquerque, New Mexico to research pioneer life. The first book in his trilogy came out in 1940, The Trees; The Fields followed six years later; and The Town — the story of Sayward Luckett Wheeler and her life as an early 19th-century Ohio River Valley pioneer — won Richter the 1951 Pulitzer Prize.
George Washington laid the cornerstone of the WHITE HOUSE on this day in 1792, which makes it the oldest building in Washington. It took eight years to finish, and John Adams and his family were the first to move in, in November, 1800.
It's the anniversary in 1775 of the U.S. NAVY. The Continental Congress authorized construction of two cruisers, one with 10 guns, the other with 14.
It's the birthday of Mary McCauly, better known by her nickname, MOLLY PITCHER, born in the south-central Pennsylvania town of Carlisle, 1753. Her husband enlisted in 1777 as a gunner in the Pennsylvania artillery, and she followed him into the Revolutionary War. The legend goes that, a year later, in June of 1778, at the Battle of Monmouth, New Jersey, she carried a pitcher of water back and forth from a well to the frontline soldiers. When her husband collapsed from the heat, she took his place at the cannon, helping load and fire it until the battle was over. After the war she worked as a nurse, and in her old age the state of Pennsylvania awarded her a pension of $40 for her heroism at Monmouth.
Today's Reading:
#87 "o by the by" by E.E. Cummings from 100 SELECTED POEMS published by Grove Weidenfeld.
The REVEREND MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. was awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize on this day. In his acceptance speech in Oslo he said, "Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence."
It's the anniversary of the breaking of the SOUND BARRIER, 670 m.p.h., done in 1947 by Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager, over Edwards Air Force Base in California. He was piloting a Bell X-1 rocket plane the day after falling off his horse and breaking several ribs.
It was on this day in 1944 that German Field Marshal ERWIN ROMMEL took his own life. Even though Rommel was Nazi Germany's most famous general, and had had huge successes fighting the war in Africa, he became convinced that the Allied offensive on D-Day spelled the end for the Third Reich, and he was implicated in the July 20th assassination attempt against Hitler. Two of Hitler's staff came to his house and accused him of complicity. The men gave Rommel the choice of a public trial for treason, or suicide. He swallowed cyanide.
It's the anniversary of the 1912 assassination attempt on THEODORE ROOSEVELT. Roosevelt had been out of the White House three years at that point, but was campaigning for a third term as president, this time against Woodrow Wilson. He was at a Milwaukee political rally and an assassin fired at him. It was a cold fall day in Milwaukee and Roosevelt had on a heavy woolen coat, inside of which he'd rolled the pages of a speech he was about to give. The coat and the paper slowed the bullet. Roosevelt was wounded, but he gave his speech anyway, then went to the hospital where he was treated and released. (Wilson won the election.)
It's EUGENE FODOR's birthday, who originated the Fodor Travel Guides, born in Leva, Hungary, 1905. He was working for a French shipping line in the 1930s, and in his spare time wrote travel articles. His first guidebook to Europe was a best-seller, and in 1938 he came here to the States to promote it. But World War II broke out while he was here, so he stayed and became a citizen. After the war he set up shop in Paris, and began publishing guides in English to France, Switzerland, and Italy. Eventually the guides included 140 countries, and they now sell about 200 million copies a year. He came back to the U.S. in the early '60s to live, and began writing travel books about the States.
It's poet E.E. CUMMINGS' birthday today, born in 1894, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He came from a long line of Boston Congregational ministers and professors, and after getting out of college he took off for France, where he drove ambulance in WWI just before America came into the war. The French threw him in prison for three months on suspicion of criticizing their war effort; his first book, The Enormous Room, was about the time he spent in jail. During the 1920s and '30s he turned to poetry, with collections like Tulips and Chimneys, No Thanks, and others, all of which caught on slowly with the public and which either he or his parents paid to have published.
It's the birthday of the short-story writer, KATHERINE MANSFIELD, born in Wellington, New Zealand, 1888, author of the 1922 collection The Garden Party, which came out just a few months before she died of tuberculosis at the age of 35. She grew up in New Zealand, but left it when she was in her late teens, to go to England and make herself a writer. In her early 20s her stories began getting published, and Virginia Woolf said that Mansfield's work was — quote — "the only writing I have ever been jealous of."
Today's Reading: "I cannot dance upon my Toes—" by Emily Dickinson.
The ARIZONA STATE FAIR starts today in Phoenix, and runs through the first of November. In Lumpkin, Georgia, the FAIR OF 1850 gets going and runs through mid-November, with demonstrations of cane grinding and syrup making, and where they run the last remaining pre-Civil War cotton gin. And through Monday, the MOUNTAIN STATE APPLE HARVEST FESTIVAL takes place in Martinsburg, West Virginia.
It's the anniversary of the CLAYTON ANTI-TRUST ACT of 1914. The American Federation of Labor (AFL) founder Samuel Gompers called it "labor's charter of freedom." The act exempted unions from anti- trust laws; strikes, picketing, and boycotting became legal; and price-setting to create monopolies became illegal.
It's the economist and writer JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH's birthday today, born in Iona Station, Ontario, 1908. He taught economics at Harvard for 30 years, 1945-75, and during that time also served as an advisor to two presidents, Kennedy and Johnson, and wrote his books espousing a liberal outlook toward economics: American Capitalism: the Concept of Countervailing Power (1952); The Age of Uncertainty (1977); and The Affluent Society (1958), in which he faulted the conventional wisdom of U.S. economics and called for more emphasis on public services than on production of goods.
It's the birthday in 1881, Surrey, of the British humorist P.G. WODEHOUSE, author of some 90 books and 20 screenplays, and best known as the creator of the fictional young bachelor, the likable but dim-witted Bertie Wooster, and his servant Jeeves. Wodehouse started the Jeeves series in a 1917 short story called The Man with Two Left Feet, and wrapped it up 54 years later in 1971 with Much Obliged, Jeeves. In The Luck of the Bodkins, Jeeves observes — quote — "that into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French."
Thirty-one-year old Thomas Edison founded the EDISON ELECTRIC LIGHT COMPANY on this day in 1878, his aim: to make a workable light bulb. A year and one week later, he demonstrated a lamp containing a carbonized cotton thread that glowed for 40 hours. Fourteen years later Edison merged his company with several other companies to form General Electric.
It's the birthday of poet and novelist HELEN HUNT JACKSON, 1830, Amherst, Massachusetts, one of the first writers to take the American government to task for its treatment of Native Americans. She grew up in the east, but after her husband and two sons died she moved west and began writing. She settled in Colorado Springs, and saw first-hand the life of reservation Indians. She came out in 1881 with the non-fiction book, A Century of Dishonor, an exposé about the plight of Indians; and three years later, the novel Ramona, which sold well and brought national attention to Native rights.
It's the anniversary of MANNED FLIGHT. On this day in 1783 Francois de Rozier made the first flight in a hot air balloon. It took place outside Paris, and the balloon was suspended on cables with a straw fire providing the hot air. The balloon was tethered to the ground, and it climbed to 82 feet. Over the next few days other flights got as high as 6,500 feet.
Today's Reading: "What the Plants Say" by Tom Hennen from CRAWLING OUT THE WINDOW, published by Black Hat Press.
The NORTH CAROLINA STATE FAIR opens up today and runs through the 25th. And several fall harvest festivals start: The CRANBERRY WEEKEND on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts.
It was on this day in 1978 that the college of cardinals elected KAROL CARDINAL WOJTYLA, from Poland, the first non-Italian Pope since 1523. Pope John Paul is the longest-serving pope chosen this century, and one of only 12 in the history of the Church with a papacy lasting at least two decades. He's scheduled to travel to Mexico and St. Louis in January next year.
It's the birthday of KATHLEEN WINSOR, 1919, Olivia, Minnesota, who moved out to California and got a job as a receptionist for the Oakland Tribune, and wrote one famous book, Forever Amber, the story of the 17th-century beauty Amber St. Claire and her lovers. It came out in 1944 when Winsor was just 25 years old and its steamier passages caused a national scandal: Boston libraries banned it as obscene and offensive, which, of course, helped sales: within a month it'd gone into its second printing, and a year later its 12th, and movie rights fetched a higher price than even those for Gone with the Wind.
It's playwright EUGENE O'NEILL's birthday, in 1888, born in a New York hotel room on Broadway, and whose plays Beyond the Horizon, Anna Christie, Strange Interlude, and Long Day's Journey into Night won O'Neill four Pulitzer Prizes. He also wrote The Iceman Cometh, and A Moon for the Misbegotten. He worked for years as a sailor, collecting what he called "life experiences" onboard ships, and ashore in South America and Europe. When he settled down around 1920, he made a name for himself as a prolific playwright: between 1920 and 1943 he completed 20 long plays — several of them double and triple length.
It's the anniversary of JOHN BROWN's 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia, where he and 22 men seized the Wagner House Hotel, the federal arsenal, the town firehouse, and about 30 citizens. Brown was 60 years old and a white man; his aim: to free the slaves and create an independent Negro republic. The whole thing was a disaster. Two days later a squad of Marines under Robert E. Lee battered down the firehouse door and captured Brown and his men, six of whom, including Brown, were hanged a few weeks later.
The first operation with the patient under ANESTHESIA was performed on this day in Boston, 1846. It took place at Massachusetts General Hospital, the ether administered by Dr. William Morton, a dentist, while surgeon Dr. John Warren removed a tumor from a young man's jaw.
Today's Reading: "My Hat" by Stevie Smith from COLLECTED POEMS, published by New Directions.
ALBERT EINSTEIN arrived in the U.S. on this day in 1933, leaving Germany because of rising anti-Semitism. He settled in Princeton, New Jersey and not long after was followed by the German author Thomas Mann who also settled in Princeton.
It's the birthday of writer JIMMY BRESLIN, born in Jamaica, New York, 1930, whose collected newspaper columns won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize. He grew up in Queens and started off as a sportswriter for New York papers in the 1950s, then switched to writing columns in the 1960s for the New York Post. He became a famous man with the piece he filed on November 24, 1963, from Dallas. Most of the reporting that day focused on the hunt for President Kennedy's assassin, theories about the assassination, and the mood in Dallas. Breslin also wrote several novels, including The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight (1969), and this past July came out with a memoir, I Want to Thank My Brain for Remembering Me.
It's playwright ARTHUR MILLER's birthday, born in New York City, 1915, author in 1949 of Death of a Salesman, the story of Willy Loman and his two sons, Happy and Biff. Miller's own father was a businessman who lost everything during the Great Depression, and Miller worked at a car parts factory and washing dishes to put himself through the playwriting program at the University of Michigan. His first success came with the 1945 novel, Focus, about anti-Semitism, which he followed two years later with the play All My Sons. Willy Loman, in Death of a Salesman, is introduced this way by his wife, Linda: "I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him."
It's the birthday of satirist NATHANAEL WEST, born in 1903, New York, best known for his 1939 novel about Hollywood, The Day of the Locust. He grew up in New York and right out of college went to Paris for a year and wrote his first novel, The Dream Life of Balso Snell, about several characters inside the Trojan horse. It didn't sell well, so he supported himself managing the Hotel Sutton on East 56th Street in New York, where he gave free rent to other writers struggling just like him, people like James T. Farrell and Erskine Caldwell; and Dashiell Hammett, who finished The Maltese Falcon while staying upstairs.
It's the anniversary of the 1777 BATTLE OF SARATOGA, the turning point in the Revolutionary War in which British General John Burgoyne surrendered 5,000 men at Saratoga, New York. Burgoyne's plan had been to come down out of Canada and divide the colonies along the Hudson River. The colonists offered little resistance when the campaign began in June of that year, but by the fall they'd been reinforced, and casualties were running 4-to-1 against the British. On October 17, outnumbered and surrounded, Burgoyne surrendered, and the French soon entered the war on the side of the colonists. After the surrender a group of American soldiers had to accompany Burgoyne for several days, out of fear he'd be tarred and feathered by the New York colonists.
Today's Reading: "The Pupil" by Donald Justice from THE DONALD JUSTICE READER, published by Middlebury College Press.
It's the FEAST DAY OF ST. LUKE, author of the third Gospel, and the Acts of the Apostles, and the patron saint of doctors and artists.
It's the birthday of novelist TERRY MCMILLAN born in Port Huron, Michigan, 1951, author of Waiting to Exhale (1992) and How Stella Got Her Groove Back, which came out two years ago. She left Port Huron when she was 17 years old for Los Angeles and after college she got a job doing word processing for a law firm, then spent two weeks at the MacDowell Colony finishing a first draft of her novel Mama, the story of a strong-willed woman raising five children on her own, a book modeled after McMillan's own mother.
It's playwright WENDY WASSERSTEIN's birthday born in Brooklyn, 1950, winner of the 1989 Pulitzer Prize for The Heidi Chronicles, the story tracing the life of Heidi Holland from a girl in the 1960s to motherhood in the 1980s. Wasserstein grew up in New York going to plays and musicals, then started writing her own plays during summers in college. Her first hit was Uncommon Women and Others, that came out in 1978, followed in 1981 by Isn't It Romantic. This past April she published two new books: a children's book, Pamela's First Musical; and An American Daughter.
It's the birthday in 1948, Trenton, New Jersey of the writer and performer NTOZAKE SHANGE, born Paulette Williams, author of the 1974 theater piece For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf. She took her African names in 1971, and they mean "She who comes with her own things," and "She who walks like a lion." Four years later she came out with For Colored Girls — a group of 20 poems for seven actors on the power of black women. She followed that up with novels Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo (1983), Betsey Brown (1985) and poetry collections Nappy Edges (1978) and A Daughter's Geography (1983).
It's singer-songwriter CHUCK BERRY's birthday, born Charles Edward Anderson in St. Louis, 1926. He spent three years as a teenager in a reform school for attempted burglary, then moved to the South Side of Chicago where he started playing blues. He broke into the charts in 1955 with "Maybellene," then followed it with a string of hits: "Roll Over, Beethoven," "Rock and Roll Music," and "Johnny B. Goode."
It's the birthday of the Western novelist and poet H.L. DAVIS, born in Yoncalla, Oregon, 1896. Davis worked as a cowboy, typesetter, and surveyor before his poems started getting published. H.L. Mencken was one of his early fans and encouraged him to try his hand at fiction. Davis went to Mexico in the early '30s and wrote his novel Honey in the Horn there, which won the 1936 Pulitzer Prize. Mencken called it the best first novel written by an American. He followed that with Beulah Land (1949) and The Distant Music (1959), books that rejected the stereotype of the cowboy hero and instead told the stories of pioneers struggling just to survive.
