Poem: "Sister Mary Appassionata Lectures the Eighth Grade Boys and Girls: Flesh Willing, Spirit Weak" by David Citino from The Book of Appassionata published by Ohio State University Press.
It's the birthday of chemist and microbiologist, LOUIS PASTEUR, born in the city of Dole, in eastern France, 1822; who proved that microorganisms cause grape fermentation and disease. He went on to show how heat could kill harmful bacteria in food, and his name became a noun: pasteurization. His most spectacular success came on July 6, 1885, when he injected nine-year-old Joseph Meister with a weakened form of the rabies virus after the boy had been bitten by a rabid dog. Joseph lived and Pasteur was a hero for conquering one of Europe's most feared diseases.
It was on this day in 1831 that 22-year-old CHARLES DARWIN set sail from Plymouth, England aboard the HMS Beagle. Darwin signed on as the unpaid ship's naturalist, assigned to observe and record plant and animal life that the Beagle encountered on its exploration of South America's coasts. The trip was supposed to last two years but stretched on to five. And after making it safely back to England, Darwin spent the next 30 years chewing over his findings, doing more research, attending scientific conferences, and in 1859, he published his theory of evolution in the book, On the Origin of Species, which concludes with: "From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life: from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."
It was on this day in 1900 that CARRY NATION first wielded her hatchet and wiped out every bottle and glass in the posh Carey Hotel bar in Wichita, Kansas. She called it "hatchetation" and she eventually took her campaign against alcohol across the whole country. This was in a day when women had few rights — even to their own children if the husband wanted to take them. If men "fell prey to drink," as she put it, the effects were awful for the whole family, and that's why she took up her hatchet.
It's the birthday in 1913 of Canadian poet and novelist, ELIZABETH SMART, born in Ottawa, 1913. Author of The Collected Poems of Elizabeth Smart which came out in 1992, a few years after her death, and By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept (1945), a fictionalized account of her affair with the poet George Barker.
Broadcast Date: TUESDAY: December 28, 1999
Poem: "Rhapsody for the Good Night" by David Lee from A Legacy of Shadows published by Copper Canyon Press.
It was on this day in 1973 that the first volume of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's book THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO was published in Paris. It was an expose of the Soviet prison system, and was a combination of memoir and history based on Solzhenitsyn's own eight-year incarceration there. The word, Gulag, is an acronym for the agency that ran the camps, and Solzhenitsyn meant the word Archipelago as a metaphor for the camps that were scattered throughout the USSR like a chain of islands. "The Kolyma was the greatest and most famous island, the pole of ferocity of that amazing country of Gulag, which, though scattered in an archipelago geographically, was, in the psychological sense, fused into a continent, an almost invisible, almost imperceptible country." The remaining two volumes came out over the next two years, but by then Solzhenitsyn had been arrested; and in February, 1974 he was exiled. He settled in the States for 20 years, then returned to Russia.
It was on this day in Paris, 1897, that Edmond Rostand's play CYRANO DE BERGERAC premiered: the story of a swashbuckling 17th-century Parisian poet who believes no woman could ever love him because of his huge nose. From afar, he falls in love with the beautiful young Roxanne, but graciously decides to help his rival Christian woo her; Cyrano writes touching love poems and letters to Roxanne, then gives them to Christian to pass off as his own. When Christian is killed in battle, Cyrano stays quiet for years about his love for Roxanne, and only as Cyrano is dying — when he recites to Roxanne a letter he'd written her years earlier — that she realizes it was his words, and thus him, that she really fell in love with. "Roxane, adieu! I soon must die! This very night, beloved; and I Feel my soul heavy with love untold. My heart has been yours in every beat! Here, dying, and there, in the land on high, I am he who loved, who loves you, I."
Broadcast Date: WEDNESDAY: December 29, 1999
Poem: "Winter Burning" by Sidney Hall Jr. from What We Will Give Each Other published by Hobblebush Books.
It was on this day in 1940, during World War II, that Germany began dropping INCENDIARY BOMBS ON LONDON. This was part of the eight-month Blitz on England that Hitler ordered to prepare for a German invasion, and the firestorm that night engulfed the area around St. Paul's Cathedral.
It s the birthday in 1922, New York, of novelist WILLIAM GADDIS who died last December. He only produced four books in the 40 years he spent writing, and after the first one, The Recognitions, came out in 1955 to horrible reviews, he published nothing for nearly 20 years. His next book finally appeared in 1975, JR, a sarcastic look at the corporate world. Carpenter's Gothic followed 10 years later, and his satire on the U.S. legal system, A Frolic of His Own (1994), won Gaddis both the National Book Award and National Book Critics' Circle Award. He grew up without a father, and all his novels feature the spirit of a dead or absent father who leaves his affairs in a mess for his children. Gaddis was famous for refusing interviews and for using long, stream-of-consciousness dialog that purposefully didn't designate who was talking. When critics said he made the reader work too much, Gaddis replied: "That's what books are about. The reader must bring something to it or he won't take anything away. Television provides everything. In situation comedies, you go with a completely blank mind, and you take nothing home. Bad fiction is like this. Everything is provided for you, and you forget it a week later."
It's the anniversary of the WOUNDED KNEE massacre. It took place in South Dakota, 1890, when about 200 Sioux Indians were killed by U.S. troops sent to disarm them. It was the last major conflict between Native Americans and the federal government. A few hundred Sioux had left the Pine Ridge Reservation in southwest South Dakota two weeks earlier after their leader, Chief Sitting Bull, was killed. They were armed and planned on hiding in the Badlands. But on the 28th they decided to turn themselves in, and on the morning of the 29th they were handing over their guns to the U.S. 7th Cavalry, when a shot went off somewhere in the crowd. A trooper fell, then the soldiers opened fire. The exact number of dead is unknown because it occurred in winter, and some survivors returned to retrieve bodies themselves. But come spring, a grave could finally be dug, and 144 Indians, including 44 women and 16 children, were buried in a mass grave.
It's the birthday in 1876 of the cellist and composer PABLO CASALS, in Vendrell, Spain. Casals loosened up the cellist's technique, making the left hand more flexible, and the right "bow" arm freer; and his own playing was marked by an effortless, singing tone. He was also a good piano player, and every morning before breakfast went to his piano, he said, to fill the house with Bach and get the day off to the best possible start.
It was on this day in 1170 that ARCHBISHOP THOMAS BECKET was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in England. He and King Henry II had been at odds for years over who in England held the reins of the church: the Pope, as Becket believed, or the king.
Broadcast Date: THURSDAY: December 30, 1999
Poem: "The Clearing" by Gregory Djanikian from The Man in the Middle published by Carnegie Mellon Press.
It's the birthday in 1865, in Bombay, India, of RUDYARD KIPLING. After an unhappy childhood he was shipped back to England and raised in boarding schools he hated. He returned to India at 17 and began working as a journalist. This gave him license to see nearly anything he wanted to in late-19th-century India, then a part of the British Empire. He began writing stories and poems about it, and between his 22nd and 24th birthdays he published six volumes of short stories, including The Phantom Rickshaw, which contained "The Man Who Would Be King," and Wee Willie Winkie, containing "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" — two of his best-known stories. By his mid-20s he returned to England and was proclaimed the most famous writer in the land. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.
It's the birthday in 1869, Hampshire, England, of Canadian humorist STEPHEN LEACOCK. He taught for 40 years at McGill University in Montreal, most of that time as chairman of the Economics Department; but in summer he moved to the little town of Orillia (or-ILL-yuh), Ontario, and every morning got up at dawn to write for several hours. For nearly four decades he put out a new book of humor a year.
It's the birthday of the poet, novelist, short story writer, and composer, PAUL BOWLES, born in New York City, 1910, best known for his first novel, The Sheltering Sky (1949). On Gertude Stein's advice, he settled in Morocco and lived there for most of his life, writing music for days at a stretch, then short stories which he mailed to Stein who told him he was onto something. Doubleday gave him an advance to write The Sheltering Sky, but when he sent them the manuscript, they were so shocked at the story of two American drifters who lose themselves in the African desert, that they demanded their money back. Most of Bowles' stories go like that: American or European travelers visit a North African civilization they consider inferior to their own, and it destroys them. He died last month in Morocco at age 88 of a heart attack.
Broadcast Date: FRIDAY: December 31, 1999
Poems: "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll and "My Love is Like a Red Red Rose" by Robert Burns.
Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians played "AULD LANG SYNE" as a New Year's Eve song for the first time on this night in 1929, at the Hotel Roosevelt Grill in New York City. We credit the 18th-century Scottish poet Robert Burns for writing the words, but Burns said he had simply heard an old man singing the words one day, "auld lang syne" and he wrote them down. They mean literally "old long since."
It's the anniversary of the famous 1967 ICE BOWL, the NFL championship game between the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys. They played at Lambeau Field in Green Bay in a 40-below windchill, and the referees' whistles actually froze to their lips. Green Bay won, 21-17.
It's the birthday in 1933, Hollywood, of EDWARD BUNKER, who was sent to reform school when he was 10 years old and spent the next 27 years in and out of prison, charged with robbery, burglary, and selling drugs; at one time he was even on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. Then in 1973 he came out with his first book, the novel No Beast So Fierce, the story of Max Dembo, a recently paroled thief who performs a jewel heist to make one big score that will get him out of the country. That started Bunker on his literary career, and he's followed up with several more gritty novels, like Little Boy Blue (1981) and Dog Eat Dog (1996).
It's the birthday in 1905, Arkansas City, Kansas, of poet FRANK MARSHALL DAVIS, who came to fame in 1935 with his first collection, Black Man's Verse.
Broadcast Date: SATURDAY: January 1, 2000
Poem: "When Two Souls Stand Up Erect and Strong" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
On this day in 1959, FIDEL CASTRO led Cuban revolutionaries to victory over dictator Fulgencio Batista who'd ruled Cuba since the early 1930s. Castro had tried to overthrow Batista several times before in the '50s, and his most recent attempt began two years earlier when he banded together a group of 80 men to fight a guerrilla war against the government. By late 1958 he had about 800 rebels, to the government's 30,000-man army, but the federals were demoralized and poorly led, and on January 1st Castro captured Cuba's main army base without a shot and Batista resigned.
It was on this day in 1953 that one of the early greats in country music, singer HANK WILLIAMS SR., died of a heart attack in Oak Hill, West Virginia. He was in the back seat of a Cadillac being driven north to play a concert. He was only 29 years old.
It's the birthday in 1919, New York City, of writer J(erome) D(avid) SALINGER, author of Catcher in the Rye (1951), Franny and Zooey (1961) and several short story collections, nearly all of it first published in the New Yorker. He moved to rural Cornish, New Hampshire right as Catcher in the Rye came out, and has lived there in near-seclusion ever since, rarely granting interviews or making any mention of his work — other than to say, as he did to the Boston Globe about 20 years ago, "I love to write, but I write for myself and I want to be left absolutely alone to do it. Sometimes I wish I'd never published. I have absolutely no plans to publish at this time." Catcher in the Rye remains his best-known work: Salinger's novel about the young rebel Holden Caulfield, still sells about a half-million copies a year.
It was on this day in 1892 that the Immigrant Station in New York formally opened. A 15-year old Irish girl named Annie Moore became the first of the more than 12 million immigrants to pass through Ellis Island in its 62 years of operation.
It was on this day in 1660, that the 27-year old English writer SAMUEL PEPYS began his famous diary, a book he'd keep up for nine years, recording both the grand events and minutiae of Restoration-era London where he worked as a naval administrator. His first entry: "At the beginning of this year, I live in one of the houses belonging to the Navy Office, and have now for about half-a-year with my wife, Jane, my servant Will; and Myself in constant good health and in a most handsome and thriving condition, Blessed be Almighty God for it."
Broadcast Date: SUNDAY: January 2, 2000
Poem: from Chapter 44 of the Book of Ecclesiastes.
It's the birthday in Janesville, Wisconsin, 1914, of writer WILLIAM SCOTT, author of the novels The Plowhand (1957), and Red Sunrise (1958), and the poetry collection On My Knees in the Field (1977) — all books that Scott wrote after ending his day on a small, 80-acre farm he worked in southern Wisconsin. He was raised in Minneapolis, but moved as a teenager to the prairie of western North Dakota when his banker-father acquired some dirt-cheap land during the Depression. He said, "I'd take my notepad and pencil out to the windmill at dusk during summer. That sound of the wind in the rusted mill paddles, the water burbling up from Lord knows how deep, and the improbable sunsets — trying to get all those things down right on paper was not only a challenge, but the only recreation open to me."
It's the birthday of JANICE SLEPIAN (SLEP-ee-an), born in 1921, New York City, who didn't get her start until she was done raising her kids and working for years as a speech therapist. She began writing a newspaper column on child psychology, called "Parents Ask," which led to a series of picture books on children with disabilities. After 10 years she enrolled in her first English class and then, at 57, wrote her first novel, The Alfred Summer (1980), which was the beginning of a string of young-adult books, all dealing with handicapped kids and inspired by Slepian's own brother who is retarded. Others: Lester's Turn (1981), The Night of the Bozos, (1983).
It's the birthday of short story writer and novelist LEONARD MICHAELS, born in New York City, 1933. He grew up in the Lower East Side, the son of immigrant Polish Jews, and spoke only Yiddish until he was about five or six years old. His mother introduced him to English when she bought a complete set of Charles Dickens. He said, "If you can imagine a little boy listening to his mother, who can hardly speak English, reading Dickens hour after hour in the most extraordinary accent, it might help to account for my peculiar ear." He's the author of Going Places (1969), and I Would Have Saved Them If I Could (1975).
It's the birthday in Bremerhaven, Germany, 1948 of war novelist LEONARD B. SCOTT author of Charlie Mike (1985), The Last Run (1987), and The Hill (1989).
