Poem: "Sometimes
With the One I Love," by Walt Whitman.
It's the birthday of playwright David Hare, born in St. Leonards, Sussex, England (1947). He's the author of Racing Demon (1990, about conflicts within the Church of England); Murmuring Judges (1991, about policemen, lawyers, and prison governors); and The Absence of War (1993, about the Labor Party). His most recent play to appear in New York was Amy's View (last year, starring Judy Dench). He said,
- "When people are confronted with a real work of art, then they discover that they don't believe what they thought they believed all along. In a way, the great art, the great subversive art, is art that makes you realize that you don't think what you thought you did."
It's the birthday of novelist Margaret Drabble, born in Sheffield, England (1939), the daughter of a judge and the sister of novelist A.S. Byatt. She's the author of A Summer Bird-Cage (1962), The Garrick Year (1964), and The Millstone (1965) and The Witch of Exmoor (1996).
It's the birthday of journalist Bill Moyers, born in Hugo, Oklahoma (1934). He grew up in Marshall, Texas, in a blue collar family. Moyers says the town "was a wonderful place to be poor if you had to be poor. It was a genteel poverty, in which people knew who you were and kind of looked after you. Status was important in Marshall, but more important was being part of the community." Moyers served as President Lyndon Johnson's chief of staff, then as his press secretary. In 1967 he quit to run the Newsday newspaper for 3 years. Then he bought a tape recorder and traveled 13,000 miles across the country, conducting interviews he put together his best-selling book, Listening to America: A Traveler Rediscovers His Country (1971). Later projects involved TV interviews (mostly on public TV), that then came out as books.
On this day in 1900, novelist Stephen Crane died in a tuberculosis sanitarium in Germany, 28 years old—of TB, but complicated by the malaria he had caught while covering the Spanish-American War in Cuba, and further complicated by overwork, trying to support his family through writing.
It's the birthday of Federico Garcia Lorca, born in Fuente Vaqueros, Spain (1898)known for his poetry, and his trilogy of plays: Blood Wedding (1933), Yerma (1934), and The House of Bernarda Alba (1936). He was admired for his poetry, but resisted publishing it, saying, "Verse is meant to be recited. In a book it is dead." Originally passed along by word of mouth, his poems would be published as Songs (1927) and The Gypsy Ballads (1928). He was assassinated by Franco's fascists at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (1936), 2 months after turning 38.
It's the birthday of anthropologist Ruth Benedict, born in New York City (1887), author of Patterns of Culture (1934) and Zuni Mythology (1935).
On this day in 1851, the first installment of Uncle Tom's Cabin, or, Life Among the Lowly, came out in the journal The National Era. It was written by Harriet Beecher Stowe, who had been outraged by passage of the Fugitive Slave Law (1850). When the full-length version of Uncle Tom's Cabin came out (1852), it was a sensation, selling 300,000 copies its first year. It did as much as any single book to lead to the civil war.
Broadcast Date: TUESDAY: June 6, 2000
Poem: "Appetite," by Maxine Kumin from
Selected Poems 1960-1990 (W.W. Norton &
Company).
It's the birthday of playwright and actor Harvey Fierstein, born in Brooklyn (1954), author of the play Torch Song Trilogy (1981), the story of a drag queen's search for lasting love.
In 1949 on this date, George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four was published. The novel is set in a future world dominated by three police states, continually at war with each other. Its hero, Winston Smith, is a minor official whose longing for truth and decency leads him to rebel, secretly, against the government.
On this day in 1944, D-Day, the largest amphibious assault ever, took place. In the early morning hours, in rough weather, the Allies made their long-awaited cross-Channel invasion, landing on the beaches of western Normandy. American troops landed at Omaha and Utah beaches; Canadians landed at Juno beach, British troops landed at beaches named Gold and Sword. At least half the Allied casualties came at Omaha Beach, where the Allied air and sea bombardment had been misdirected, striking far inland. 130,000 men had landed from air and sea; 9,000 were killed or wounded.
It's the birthday of poet Maxine Kumin, born in Philadelphia (1925). She began writing in her mid-thirties, when she was married, the mother of 3, living in a Boston suburb, and was, in her words, "acutely miserable." She joined an adult education poetry workshop that included Anne Sexton, with whom Kumin stayed close friends. Her poetry collection Up Country: Poems of New England won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973. She has also published 5 novels for adults and more than 20 books for children.
It's the birthday of novelist Thomas Mann, born in Lübeck, Germany (1875). His first novel was Buddenbrooks (1901). After several novellas, including Death in Venice (1913), Mann wrote The Magic Mountain (1924), for which he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1929. His other novels include a 4-book cycle on biblical Joseph: The Tales of Jacob (1933), The Young Joseph (1934), Joseph in Egypt (1938), and Joseph the Provider (1943). He considered this extended opus to be his greatest work, an evaluation few critics have shared.
Broadcast Date: WEDNESDAY: June 7, 2000
Poem:
"The Bean Eaters," by Gwendolyn Brooks,
from Selected Poems (Perennial Library, Harper &
Row).
It's the birthday of poet and novelist Louise Erdrich, born in Little Falls, Minnesota (1954), the oldest of 7 children. She grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where her German-American father and Chippewa Indian mother taught at an Indian school. Her novel Love Medicine (1984) began a novel cycle about Indian families on and near a Chippewa reservation: The Beet Queen (1986), Tracks (1988), The Bingo Palace (1994), and Tales of Burning Love (1996). Of growing up Native American, she says, "People make everything into a story… People just sit and the stories start coming, one after another. I suppose that when you grow up constantly hearing the stories rise, break, and fall, it gets into you somehow."
On this day in 1945, the 4th draft of Malcolm Lowry's novel Under the Volcano was destroyed when his beach cabin in British Columbia burned to the ground. Lowry pressed on and recreated his masterpiece, but when it came out, critics were unimpressed. He died, in obscurity, at the age of 47: 10 years after Under the Volcano first came out to no fanfare, and 5 years before it was reissued to posthumous acclaim.
It's the birthday of Norwegian poet and novelist Kjartan Fløgstad, born in Sauda, Norway (1944), best known for his novel Dalen Portland (1977; English title Dollar Road). Among the most innovative post-war Norwegian novelists, he also wrote the Cold War novel U3 (1983), and At Knife-point (1991).
It's the birthday of poet Nikki Giovanni, born in Knoxville, Tennessee (1943), author of many poems on the subjects of black power and revolution, as reflected in the titles of her first two poetry collections: Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968) and Black Judgement (1968). She has also written three collections for children: Spin a Soft Black Song (1971), Ego-Tripping (1973), and Vacation Time (1980).
Today is the birthday of poet Gwendolyn Brooks, born in Topeka, Kansas (1917). When she was very small her family moved Chicago, where Gwendolyn grew up poor, but in a close family and a cheerful community. Her first poem, "Eventide," was published in American Childhood Magazine when she was just 13; after meeting Langston Hughes she wrote for the Chicago Defender and published poems in a weekly column. Her work is known for describing extraordinary moments in ordinary lives of black people in the cities. In 1949 she became the first black person to receive a Pulitzer Prize. Her collections include A Street in Bronzeville (1945), Reckonings (1975), and Winnie (1988).
It's the birthday of novelist Elizabeth Bowen, born in Dublin, Ireland (1899), and brought up by relatives in Kent. Her stories often feature a young heroine who has to cope with adult circumstances she wasn't brought up to handle.
It's the birthday of Danish explorer and ethnologist Knud Rasmussen, born in Jacobshavn, Greenland (1879) to a Danish missionary father and Eskimo mother. He took part in several Greenland expeditions to confirm his theory that Inuit and North American Indians were descended from migratory Asian tribes.
It's the birthday of Post-Impressionist painter (Eugene Henri) Paul Gauguin, born in Paris (1848). At the age of 35 he left his family and his successful business as a stock broker to become a painter.
Broadcast Date: THURSDAY: June 8, 2000
Poem: "Flight," by Louis Jenkins, from The
Winter Road (Holy Cow Press).
It's the birthday of mystery writer Sara Paretsky, born in Ames, Iowa (1947). She earned a Ph.D. in history (1977), but during the month preceding her oral exams she read 24 mysteries—"which should have given me a clue about what my real interests were." Her detective books Deadlock (1984), Blood Shot (1988), and Tunnel Vision (1994) all feature detective Victoria Iphigenia Warshawski, known as V.I. Warshawski, or "Vic," a Cubs fan who is good with a Smith & Wesson and adept at karate.
Today is the birthday of Andrew Weil, born in Philadelphia (1942), the author of Spontaneous Healing (1995) and other alternative health books.
Today is the birthday of actor Robert Preston, born in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts (1918), best known for playing Professor Harold Hill in Meredith Willson's musical comedy The Music Man—on Broadway (1957) and on screen (1962).
It's the birthday of biophysicist Francis Crick, born in Northampton, England (1916). With American biologist James Watson and fellow Englishman Maurice Wilkins, he made one of the most important discoveries of 20th-century biology, decoding the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA. Crick and Watson constructed a molecular model of DNA (1953). Then, in 1958, Crick proposed that the DNA determines the sequence of amino acids in a polypeptide by means of a triplet code. Three years later, he, Watson and Wilkins shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Crick wrote about the revolution in molecular biology in his books Of Molecules and Men (1966) and What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery (1988).
Today is the birthday of "the father of science fiction," John W. Campbell, born in Newark, New Jersey (1910). His first published story, "When the Atoms Failed" (1930), contained one of the earliest versions of a computer to appear in fiction. He predicted, in 1939, that atomic energy could be attained through the release of energy from Uranium 235.
It's the birthday of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, born in Richland Center, Wisconsin (1869). He said, "No house should ever be on any hill or on anything. It should be of the hill, belonging to it, so hill and house could live together, each the happier for the other."
It's the birthday of novelist Charles Reade, born in Ipsden, Oxfordshire, England (1814), whose best known historical romance was The Cloister and the Hearth (1861), and whose motto was "Make 'em laugh; make 'em cry; make 'em wait."
Broadcast Date: FRIDAY: June 9, 2000
Poems: "I have no life but this," by Emily
Dickinson; and an anonymous blues lyric, "Hard Road
Blues."
It's the birthday of mystery writer Patricia Cornwell, born in Miami, Florida (1956). Her first 3 novels featured male detectives, and were rejected. Then she created Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner who tracks down deranged killers based on their manner of mangling victims. Scarpetta made her first appearance in Postmortem (1990), which won the John Creasey Award from the British Crime Writers Association, and the Edgar Award in America. Her other Kay Scarpetta bestsellers include Cruel and Unusual (1993) and Cause of Death (1996).
It's the birthday of virtuoso guitarist and inventor Les Paul (Lester William Polsfuss), born in Waukesha, Wisconsin (1915). He amplified his acoustic Sears & Roebuck guitar with a phonograph needle wired to a radio speaker. Later he devised the Gibson Company's first solid-body electric guitar (1952), and engineered such innovations as overdubbing, the close-mike technique, the record delay echo, and many other tricks now taken for granted in recording studios.
It's the birthday of cartoonist George Price, born in Coytesville, New Jersey (1901), who drew over 1,200 cartoons, between 1932 and his death in 1995, for The New Yorker magazine. His scenes frequently featured dangling bare light bulbs—and scrawny pets, scratching away at themselves in the corner.
It's the birthday of playwright and biographer S(amuel) N(athaniel) Behrman, born in Worcester, Massachusetts (1893). He wrote about a particular strain of upper-class American in two dozen 'comedies of manners,' nearly all of them hits: No Time for Comedy (1939), The Second Man (1927), Meteor (1929), Brief Moment (1931), and Lord Pengo (1962).
It's the birthday of songwriter Cole (Albert) Porter, born in Peru, Indiana (1891). He learned to play the piano at 8, and published his first song when he was 10. He attended Yale, where he composed the football songs, and later wrote musicals—both the words and the music. Anything Goes (1934), considered his finest show, includes the classic songs "I Get a Kick out of You," "Anything Goes," "All Through the Night," and "You're the Top."
It's the birthday of Austrian novelist Ba roness Bertha von Suttner, born in Prague (1843). Her pacifist novel Die Waffen nieder! (1889—"Lay Down Your Arms!"), hugely popular in Europe, had a social impact there as great as Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin did in America.
Broadcast Date: SATURDAY: June 10, 2000
Poem: "Leisure," by W.H. Davies
(1871-1940).
On this day in 1943, the ballpoint pen was patented by the Hungarian inventor Laszlo Biro, in Argentina, where he had gone to escape the Nazis. In many countries the word for ballpoint pen is still simply "Biro."
It's the birthday of journalist and novelist Philip Caputo, born in Chicago (1941)—best known for A Rumor of War (1977), an account of his time as a Marine lieutenant in Vietnam in the mid-sixties.
It's the birthday of children's book writer and
illustrator Maurice Sendak, born in Brooklyn (1928).
A sickly child, he suffered measles and pneumonia at 2,
scarlet fever at 4, and spent much of his childhood drawing
pictures of life he saw outside his window. At 9 he
hand-lettered and drew pictures for his stories on shirt
cardboards bound with tape. He wrote and illustrated
Where the Wild Things Are (1963), In the Night
Kitchen (1970), and many other books. He said,
It's the birthday of novelist James Salter, born in New York City (1925), author of Dusk: And Other Stories (1988), The Hunters (1957), A Sport and a Pastime (1967), Light Years (1976). His recent memoir is called Burning the Days (1998).
It's the birthday of journalist and novelist Nat(han Irving) Hentoff, born in Boston (1925).
Today is the birthday of Judy Garland (Frances Ethel Gumm), born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota (1922). She and her sisters changed their stage name to Garland; she took her new first name from the Hoagy Carmichael song "Judy."
It's the birthday of novelist http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/bellow-on-ellison .html title="Review of Invisible Man>Saul Bellow, born in Lachine, near Montreal (1915). His novels include Humboldt's Gift (1975 Pulitzer Prize), The Dean's December (1982), More Die of Heartbreak (1987), A Case of Love (1992), and The Actual (1997). He was the first novelist to win the National Book Award 3 times, for The Adventures of Augue March (1953), Herzog (1964), and Mr. Sammler's Planet (1971). He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1976.
It's the birthday of playwright Sir Terence
Rattigan, born in London (1911)master of what is called
the 'well-made play.' His father agreed to support him in a
trial period of play-writing—after which, if he failed,
he was to go into banking or the diplomatic service. Shortly
before the trial period expired, he wrote a farce, French
Without Tears (1936), which enjoyed one of the longest
runs in the history of British theater.
Broadcast Date: SUNDAY: June 11, 2000
Poem:
"Song: To Celia," by Ben Johnson.
Today is Pentecost, the 7th Sunday after Easter. Recognized since the 3rd century, Pentecost commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles. As this is a popular date for baptisms, it's also called "Whitsunday" or "White Sunday" for the white garments often worn by babies during the ceremony.
Today is observed in Hawaii as Kamehameha Day, honoring King Kamehameha the Great (1758-1819), who united the Hawaiian Islands into a single kingdom. Between 1785 and 1810, Kamehameha took control of the various Hawaiian islands, organized a government, allowed foreign traders to settle, and ended the practice of human sacrifice.
It's the birthday of novelist Allan Gurganus, born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina (1947), author of Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All (1989).
It's the birthday of playwright and actor (Harold) Athol Fugard, born in Middleburg, Cape Province, South Africa (1932), author of "Master Harold"and the Boys (1982), The Blood Knot (1960), The Drummer (1980), A Place with the Pigs (1987), and The Captain's Tiger (1997).
It's the birthday of novelist William Styron, born in Newport News, Virginia (1925), author of Lie Down in Darkness (1951), The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967Pulitzer Prize), and Sophie's Choice (1979the movie, starring Meryl Streep, came out in 1982), and other books.
It's the birthday of critic Irving Howe, born in New York City's East Bronx (1920). In the 1950s he founded Dissent, a magazine of what he called the "moderate Left." His most widely read book is World of Our Fathers (National Book Award, 1976), a history of Eastern European immigration to America.
It's the birthday of Japanese novelist Yasunari Kawabata, born in Osaka (1899). His best-known novel is Snow Country (1948); others include The Sound of the Mountain (1952) and A Thousand Cranes (1952). Kawabata was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author so honored.
It's the birthday of poet and dramatist Ben Jonson, born in London (1572). He worked as a bricklayer, served in the army, became a traveling actor, then began writing plays. His first important play was Every Man in his Humour (1598), performed at the Curtain Theatre with William Shakespeare in the cast. He also wrote Volpone (1605) and The Alchemist (1610).
