MONDAY, 3 DECEMBER 2001
Listen (RealAudio) | How to listen
Poem: "An Offering for Mr. Bluehart," by James Wright from Above the River: Complete Poems (Noonday Press).
An Offering for Mr. Bluehart
That was a place, when I was young,
Where two or three good friends and I
Tested the fruit against the tongue
Or threw the withered windfalls by.
The sparrows, angry in the sky,
Denounced us from a broken bough.
They limp along the wind and die.
The apples are all eaten now.
Behind the orchard, past one hill
The lean satanic owner lay
And threatened us with murder till
We stole his riches all away.
He caught us in the act one day
And damned us to the laughing bone,
And fired his gun across the gray
Autumn where now his life is done.
Sorry for him, or any man
Who lost his labored wealth to thieves,
Today I mourn him, as I can,
By leaving in their golden leaves
Some luscious apples overhead.
Now may my abstinence restore
Peace to the orchard and the dead.
We shall not nag them any more.
It's the birthday of filmmaker and critic Jean-Luc Godard, born in Paris, France (1930). Godard, who once said, "All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl," was one of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th century, and introduced many techniques that have since become standard fare: jump cuts, hand-held camera work, unusual camera angles, and improvised dialogue. Asked by a fellow filmmaker if he would at least admit that a film should have a beginning, middle, and end, Godard replied, "Yes, but not necessarily in that order." In 1959, he produced his first feature film, based on an idea by Francois Truffaut. The film, Breathless, made Jean-Paul Belmondo a star, and won Godard international acclaim. It was to be his only commercial success. Throughout the 1960s, his films, including The Little Soldier (1965), Masculine-Feminine (1966), and Weekend (1967), gradually evolved into complex political statements. He left Paris for Switzerland, which has been his home for the last 20 years. Although he has continued to make films, he has also lived a reclusive life. In a rare interview, he told a reporter that he had clipped a cartoon that exemplified his situation. It shows a unicorn in a suit sitting at a desk, talking on the phone. The caption reads, "These rumors of my non-existence are making it very difficult for me to obtain financing." Godard's influence can be seen in the work of many other directors, including Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Wim Wenders, and Quentin Tarantino. Godard's latest film, In Praise of Love, received its premiere at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival.
It's the birthday of psychoanalyst and author Anna Freud, born in Vienna, Austria (1895). The youngest of six children born to Sigmund Freud, she became eminent in her own right for her theories on child psychoanalysis. She was an intensely private person, and little is known about her own childhood, except that, in an unusual and unorthodox procedure, she was psychoanalyzed by her own father. In her later years, Freud became interested in children's legal rights, and she applied her concepts of child psychoanalysis to such areas as child custody, foster care, and adoption.
It's the birthday of novelist Joseph Conrad, born in the Polish Ukraine, between Poland and Russia (1857). He was an orphan by the time he was 11, and was raised by a caring—and wealthy—uncle. He yearned for the life of a seafarer, and at the age of 16, moved to France, where he began working on sailing ships as an apprentice and steward. In 1878, he left for England, and shipped out on a British steamer. He became a naturalized British citizen and a captain in the British Merchant Marines. In 1890, he sailed to the Congo, a trip that was the inspiration for one of his most famous novels. Despite his world travels, Conrad was bored and not particularly successful in the merchant marines. So, although his native language was Polish, and he had spoken French for many years, he began a career as an English novelist. His first book, Almayer's Folly, set in the Dutch East Indies, was published in 1894. The book featured lush tropical jungles and exotic native cultures set against the moral ambiguities of colonialism. These themes were continued in one of Conrad's most famous novels, Heart of Darkness (1899), based on his earlier travels to the Congo. It is narrated by a seaman named Marlow, who searches the Congo for an ivory dealer named Kurtz. Although Marlow initially believes Kurtz to be a civilizing influence in Africa, he eventually finds him to be exploitative and corrupt. On a symbolic level, the novel is a voyage into the heart of darkness within each one of us. Conrad's second great novel, Lord Jim, was published in 1900. Marlow again narrates the story of a young sailor who abandons his passengers on what he thinks is a sinking ship, then later redeems himself on a Malaysian island. He continued to write, although distracted by ill health and money worries, for another 20 years.
It's the birthday of portrait painter Gilbert Charles Stuart, born in North Kingston, Rhode Island (1755). In 1775, he went to London to study with the painter Benjamin West. He had his first exhibit in 1777, and was a successful portrait painter in England and Ireland for many years. In 1793 he returned to the United States to establish his American reputation. He did so in 1795, when he painted a portrait of George Washington. Although he was not satisfied with the work, Martha Washington liked it so much, she commissioned a second portrait. This became known as the "Atheneum" portrait, and Stuart painted over 100 copies of it. He painted more than one thousand portraits during his lifetime, including those of Martha Washington; Presidents John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison; and of the British Kings George III and George IV.
TUESDAY, 4 DECEMBER 2001
Listen (RealAudio) | How to listen
Poem: "Left Open," by W. S. Merwin from Travels: Poems by W. S. Merwin (Alfred A. Knopf).
Left Open
The shutters are rusted open on the north
kitchen window ivy has grown over
the fastenings the casements are hooked open
in the stone frame high above the river
looking out across the tops of plum trees
tangled on their steep slope branches furred
with green moss gray lichens the plums falling
through them and beyond them the ancient
walnut trees standing each alone on its
own shadow in the plowed red field full
of amber September light after so
long unattended dead boughs still hold
places of old seasons high out of the leaves
under which in the still day the first walnuts
from this last summer are starting to fall
beyond the bare limbs the river looks
motionless like the far clouds that were not
there before and will not be there again
It's the birthday of poet, novelist, biographer and translator Robert Payne, born in Cornwall, England (1911), who was one of the most multi-faceted and prolific writers of the 20th century. He authored more than 100 books on a variety of subjects. He began a career as a British shipwright, which gave him his introduction to China. He spent time there as a professor of English and naval architecture, and developed a lifelong love for the country. He expressed that love in two published diaries of his time there: Forever China (1945) and China Awake (1947). Throughout his life, he continued to write poetry, fiction, and non-fiction books about the country that he loved. But that was only one aspect of his writing career. Payne is perhaps best known as a biographer of literary figures, political icons, and films stars, including Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William Shakespeare, Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Chiang Kai-shek, Mao Tse-tung, Adolph Hitler, Karl Marx, Greta Garbo, and Charlie Chaplin.
It's the birthday of poet, critic and essayist Sir Herbert Edward Read, born in Kirbymoorside, Yorkshire, England (1893). The son of a farmer, and orphaned at the age of 10, Read made his writing debut in 1915 with a book of poetry called Songs of Chaos. His fledgling career was cut short by WWI, during which he co-founded the journal Arts and Letters, which attacked conservative views and attracted writers like T. S. Eliot. After the war, he became a literary critic and, in 1926, published Reason and Romanticism. He was a frequent champion of new artistic movements, and earned a reputation as a defender of modern art, especially of the sculptures of Henry Moore. He said: "The only sin is ugliness, and if we believed this with all our being, all other activities of the human spirit could be left to take care of themselves. That is why I believe that art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man's spiritual vision."
It's the birthday of poet Rainer Maria Rilke, born in Prague (1875). He wrote the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus.
It's the birthday of writer Samuel Butler, born in Nottinghamshire, England (1835). He was the author of two major satires, the first published anonymously in 1872 as Erehwon, which is "nowhere" spelled backwards. It was about a fictional nation called Erehwon, where many of the features of Victorian society were skewered and reversed. The book was an immediate success, whereupon Butler claimed the credit and the fame. In 1903, The Way of All Flesh was published posthumously. Considered Butler's greatest work, it is part autobiography and part brilliant criticism of the attitudes and institutions of Victorian England. Both Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh have since been acknowledged as literary classics. He said: "Every man's work, whether it be literature or music or pictures or anything else, is always a portrait of himself, and the more he tries to conceal himself the more clearly will his character appear in spite of him."
It's the birthday of philosopher and writer Thomas Carlyle, born in Dumfriesshire, Scotland (1795), who was the leading social critic of early Victorian England. He said: "A person usually has two reasons for doing something: a good reason and the real reason."
In 1947 on this day, Tennessee Williams' play, "A Streetcar Named Desire," premiered at New York's Shubert Theater. The play, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948, was an immediate success, as were its stars: Marlon Brando, Jessica Tandy, Karl Malden, and Kim Hunter.
WEDNESDAY, 5 DECEMBER 2001
Listen (RealAudio) | How to listen
Poem: "Letter to the Front," by Muriel Rukeyser from Muriel Rukeyser: The Collected Poems (McGraw-Hill).
Letter to the Front
VII
To be a Jew in the twentieth century
Is to be offered a gift. If you refuse,
Wishing to be invisible, you choose
Death of the spirit, the stone insanity.
Accepting, take full life. Full agonies:
Your evening deep in labyrinthine blood
Of those who resist, fail, and resist; and God
Reduced to a hostage among hostages.
The gift is torment. Not alone the still
Torture, isolation; or torture of the flesh.
That may come also. But the accepting wish,
The whole and fertile spirit as guarantee
For every human freedom, suffering to be free,
Daring to live for the impossible.
It's the birthday of journalist, critic, and novelist Calvin Trillin, born in Kansas City, Missouri (1935). Trillin began his writing career as a journalist for Time magazine, where he was a "floater," moving from one department to the next, an experience that was the inspiration for his 1980 novel, Floater. And although he has written several other novels, including his latest, Tepper Isn't Going Out, Trillin is best known as a writer of non-fiction. Trillin often writes about food. Three books, American Fried: Adventures of a Happy Eater (1974), Alice, Let's Eat (1978), and Third Helpings (1983), celebrate the variety of American cuisine, like hamburgers, fried chicken, and Chicago-style pizza. One of Trillin's most popular books was his 1996 Messages from My Father: A Memoir. Trillin, who once said: "Writing about your family is tricky business. I think the rule of thumb is very easy on that: If you have any reason to believe that you are Dostoyevsky, it's OK. But if you don't have any reason to believe that you are Dostoyevsky, it isn't OK."
It's the birthday of novelist, essayist, and screenwriter Joan Didion, born in Sacramento, California (1934). Her novels include Play It As It Lays (1970), her non-fiction includes Salvador (1983), Miami (1987), and her screenplays include Panic in Needle Park (1971), A Star is Born (1977), True Confessions (1982), and Up Close and Personal (1995).
It's the birthday of editor, author, and fisherman Arnold Gingrich, born in Grand Rapids, Michigan (1903). He began his career as an advertising copywriter, and then moved on to become editor of Apparel Arts magazine in 1931. Two years later, he founded Esquire magazine, which came out in 1933.
It's the birthday of screenwriter, producer, and director Nunnally Johnson, born in Columbus, Georgia (1897). He moved to New York in 1919, where he worked for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, the New York Evening Post, and the New York Herald Tribune. He also wrote short stories, one of which, Rough House Rosie, was adapted to the silent screen in 1927. That gave him the idea to move to Hollywood, which he did in 1932. He stayed for more than 40 years, and wrote, directed, and/or produced over 100 films. His screenplays include The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Tobacco Road (1941), The Desert Fox (1951), and The Dirty Dozen (1967). In addition, he both wrote and directed How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (1956), and The Three Faces of Eve (1957).
It's the birthday of screenwriter and director Fritz Lang, born in Vienna, Austria (1890). His 1927 masterpiece, Metropolis, is a story of a futuristic slave society.
It's the birthday of poet Christina Rossetti, born in London, England (1830). She spent much of her childhood in the country, exposed to nature and the wilderness, themes that are recurrent in her poetry even though she spent most of her adult life in the city of London. Rossetti led a very retiring life and was often ill, diagnosed vaguely with tuberculosis or angina or some psychosomatic hysteria.
In 1955 on this day, the Montgomery Bus Boycott began in Alabama. At that time, buses were segregated; the front of the bus was for whites and the back was for blacks. Blacks were required to give up their seats if the bus was crowded. On December 1, 1955, seamstress Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Minutes later, she was arrested and sent to jail. The following day, Martin Luther King Jr. and other prominent blacks declared a boycott of the bus system. It began December 5 and lasted more than a year. In the end, the segregation laws were declared unconstitutional.
In 1872 on this day, the ship the Mary Celeste was found abandoned off the Portuguese coast. The ship left New York on November 7 with Captain Benjamin Briggs, his wife Sarah, their daughter Sophia, and a crew of seven. On December 5, the ship Dei Gratia came upon the Mary Celeste halfway between the Azores and the Portuguese coast. There was no one on board. The captain, his family, and crew were never seen again. Their mysterious disappearance was never solved.
THURSDAY, 6 DECEMBER 2001
Listen (RealAudio) | How to listen
Poem: "Lonely Hearts," by Wendy Cope from Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (Faber and Faber).
Lonely Hearts
Can someone make my simple wish come true?
Male biker seeks female for touring fun.
Do you live in North London? Is it you?
Gay vegetarian whose friends are few,
I'm into music, Shakespeare and the sun.
Can someone make my simple wish come true?
Executive in search of something new—
Perhaps bisexual woman, arty, young.
Do you live in North London? Is it you?
Successful, straight and solvent? I am too—
Attractive Jewish lady with a son.
Can someone make my simple wish come true?
I'm Libran, inexperienced and blue—
Need slim, non-smoker, under twenty-one.
Do you live in North London? Is it you?
Please write (with photo) to Box 152.
Who knows where it may lead once we've begun?
Can someone make my simple wish come true?
Do you live in North London? Is it you?
It's the birthday of photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt, born in Dirschau, Prussia (1898). When Eisenstaedt was 14, his uncle gave him an Eastman Kodak Number Three Folding Camera, and he began taking pictures. He photographed many famous artists and statesman and, in 1933, was sent to shoot the first meeting of Hitler and Mussolini. Two years later, Eisenstaedt fled Germany for America. In New York he was hired, along with three other photographers, by Henry Luce for something Luce called "Project X." On November 23, 1936, Project X debuted as Life magazine, featuring five pages of Eisenstaedt's pictures. It was after WWII that Eisenstaedt captured his most famous image, a sailor kissing a nurse on V-J Day in Times Square.
It's the birthday of writer and lyricist Ira Gershwin, born in New York, New York (1896), who, along with his younger brother George, wrote many of the songs that even today remain standard American classics. George Gershwin was already a successful songwriter when Ira decided to try and write lyrics. In 1924 the brothers renewed their collaboration and produced the song "The Man I Love." That same year, they produced their first hit musical show, Lady, Be Good!, starring Adele and Fred Astaire. Other hit shows on which the two collaborated include TipToes (1925), Oh, Kay (1926), Funny Face (1927), and Strike Up The Band! (1930). These shows included such hits as "Someone to Watch Over Me," "'S Wonderful," and "I Got Rhythm." In 1935, the brothers, along with novelist DuBose Heyward, wrote Porgy and Bess. The last song they wrote together was "Love Walked In." George Gershwin died of a brain tumor in 1937. Ira collaborated with Moss Hart on the Broadway musical Lady in the Dark. He wrote (from They All Laughed):
They all laughed at Christopher Columbus
when he said the world was round.
They all laughed when Edison recorded sound.
They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother
when they said that man could fly.
They told Marconi, wireless was a phony—It's the same old cry.
They laughed at me wanting you, said I was reaching for the moon.
But oh, you came through. Now they'll have to change their tune.
They all said we never could be happy, they laughed at us and how!
But ho, ho, ho! Who's got the last laugh now?
It's the birthday of poet and critic Joyce Kilmer, born in New Brunswick, New Jersey (1886). He moved on to write for The New York Times Sunday Magazine and Review of Books. He wrote his first book of verse, Summer of Love, in 1911, but it was in 1913 that he wrote his most famous verse, called Trees. On July 13, 1918, he was on a volunteer solo scouting mission to pinpoint the enemy's positions, when he was struck and killed by a sniper's bullet.
"Trees"
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
FRIDAY, 7 DECEMBER 2001
Listen (RealAudio) | How to listen
Poem: "Twilight," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from Longfellow Poems and Other Writings (The Library of America).
Twilight
The twilight is sad and cloudy,
The wind blows wild and free,
And like the wings of sea-birds
Flash the white caps of the sea.
But in the fisherman's cottage
There shines a ruddier light,
And a little face at the window
Peers out into the night.
Close, close it is pressed to the window,
As if those childish eyes
Were looking into the darkness
To see some form arise.
And a woman's waving shadow
Is passing to and fro,
Now rising to the ceiling,
Now bowing and bending low.
What tale do the roaring ocean,
And the night-wind, bleak and wild,
As they beat at the crazy casement,
Tell to that little child?
And why do the roaring ocean,
And the night-wind, wild and bleak,
As they beat at the heart of the mother
Drive the color from her cheek?
In 1941 on this day, the Japanese attacked American ships at Pearl Harbor. The goal of the attack was to cripple the United States Naval fleet so that Japan could then capture the Philippines and Indochina, and eventually control the entire Pacific region. Three of the nine battleships stationed at Pear Harbor were destroyed that day, and five more were damaged, 188 planes were destroyed, and more than 2,400 Americans were killed. The next day, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared war against Japan.
In 1842 on this day, the New York Philharmonic gave its first concert. The New York Philharmonic is the oldest symphony orchestra in the United States, and one of the oldest in the world. At its first concert, the orchestra performed Beethoven's Symphony Number Five, which had been heard in New York only once before.
It's the birthday of writer and linguist Noam Chomsky, born in Philadelphia (1928), who began teaching linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955, and has been teaching there ever since. His studies of how children learn to speak led him to believe that our ability to master grammar is a genetically determined product of evolution.
It's the birthday of novelist and screenwriter Leigh Brackett, born in Los Angeles (1915), whose work covered the genres of crime, westerns, science fiction, and fantasy. She worked on pictures like The Big Sleep (1946), Rio Bravo (1959), Hatari! (1961), and El Dorado (1967). She continued to write novels of her own as well, both crime stories and science fiction, including The Starman (1952), Alpha Centauri or Die! (1963), and The Ginger Star (1974). Her last screenplay was her most famous; she died in 1978, just after it was completed. The film, Star Wars, Episode Five: The Empire Strikes Back, opened in 1980 and was dedicated to her memory.
It's the birthday of journalist, essayist, and author Haywood Campbell Broun, born in Brooklyn, New York (1888). In 1921, he moved to the New York World, where his syndicated column, "It Seems to Me," began and eventually garnered more than one million readers a day. Broun also founded the American Newspaper Guild.
It's the birthday of novelist and short-story writer Willa Cather, born in Back Creek Valley, Virginia (1875). She and her family moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska, when she was 10. After graduating from the University of Nebraska, Cather was offered a position editing Home Monthly magazine in Pittsburgh. While there, she started writing short stories. They impressed the publisher of McClure's Magazine, who invited her to join his staff. Within five years, she became its managing editor, but then left the magazine to write full time. Cather's first successful novel was O Pioneers! (1913), the story of the strong-willed daughter of a Swedish immigrant who fights to keep her family together under harsh prairie conditions. Cather's most famous novel is My Ántonia (1918), another story of a strong woman pitted against Western hardships. Cather went on to write several more novels and short story collections. Although not as well known as her earlier works, many critics feel that the later books, including The Professor's House (1925), My Mortal Enemy (1926), and Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), are among her best.
It's the birthday of painter, sculptor, and playwright Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini, born in Naples, Italy (1598), whom critics have dubbed the greatest sculptor-architect of the 17th century. Bernini was appointed the architect of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.
SATURDAY, 8 DECEMBER 2001
Listen (RealAudio) | How to listen
Poem: "Sarah," by Delmore Schwartz from Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge (New Directions).
Sarah
The angel said to me: "Why are you laughing?"
"Laughing! Not me. Who was laughing? I did not laugh. It was
A cough. I was coughing. Only hyenas laugh.
It was the cold I caught nine minutes after
Abraham married me: when I saw
How I was slender and beautiful, more and more
Slender and beautiful.
I was also
Clearing my throat; something inside of me
is continually telling me something
I do not wish to hear: A joke: A big joke:
But the joke is always just on me.
He said: you will have more children than the sky's stars
And the seashore's sands, if you just wait patiently.
Wait: patiently: ninety years? You see
The joke's on me!"
It's the birthday of novelist, memoirist, and short story writer Mary Gordon, born in Far Rockaway, New York (1949). Final Payment (1978), The Company of Women (1981), and Men and Angels (1985), all center around single women struggling to find their relationships to the world around them, bound by familial obligations and the limitations of love. Then, in 1996, Gordon wrote The Shadow Man, a memoir about her father, who died when she was eight years old. While researching the book, she discovered that many things she thought she knew about her father were false. She thought he had attended Harvard, for instance, and discovered that he was a high school dropout who had worked as a railroad clerk.
It's the birthday of poet and critic Delmore Schwartz, born in Brooklyn, New York (1913), who struggled throughout his life to live up to his early success. His family lost most of its savings in the 1929 stock market crash, and his father died the following year. The executor of his father's will embezzled whatever was left. At the age of sixteen, Schwartz was practically penniless. He managed to attend college, however, first at the University of Wisconsin and then at New York University. In 1938, his debut collection of poems, In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, was published to great critical acclaim. At the age of 25 wenty-five, Schwartz was recognized as one of America's preeminent poets. His work never seemed to critics to live up to his early efforts, despite the fact that he won the Bollingen Prize for Poetry for his 1959 collection called Summer Knowledge. Schwartz, a long time alcoholic, felt that he had failed to live up to his promise. The last six years of his life were filled with drink and drugs, and commitments to hospitals for psychiatric treatment. In 1966, Schwartz suffered a massive heart attack in a New York City elevator. Novelist Saul Bellow, a friend of Schwartz's, based the title character of his book, Humbolt's Gift, on the sad, declining life of the ruined poet.
It's the birthday of novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and journalist Richard Llewellyn, born in Saint David's, Wales (1906). It is as a novelist that Llewellyn gained fame, and for one novel in particular: How Green Was My Valley (1940), the story of the problems faced by a late nineteenth century South Wales coal mining family.
It's the birthday of cartoonist, journalist, and short story writer James Thurber, born in Columbus, Ohio (1894). Thurber attended college at Ohio State University, where he began to write for the school newspaper, and edited The Sundial, the school's humor magazine. He left for France and became a reporter for the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune. He returned to New York in 1927 with no specific plans. At a party, he met fellow writer E.B. White, who introduced him to Harold Ross, editor of The New Yorker. He was hired as managing editor for the magazine, for which, he finally convinced Ross, he was unfit, and so began thirty-year association with the magazine as a writer and cartoonist. He became a prolific writer for the magazine. Thurber's cartoons appeared in the magazine from 1930 to 1947. Between 1930 and 1961, Thurber published nearly thirty books, including My Life and Hard Times (1933), The Middle-Aged Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935), and My World—And Welcome to It (1942). The latter contained one of Thurber's most famous stories, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty," the story of a man who daydreams about heroic adventures in order to escape from his domineering wife and boring job.
It's the birthday of cartoonist Elzie Crisler Segar, born in Chester, Illinois (1894). He created "Popeye the Sailor Man." For about ten years, the respectably popular strip starred three characters, Castor Oyl, Olive Oyl, and Ham Gravy. Then on January 17, 1929, Castor Oyl hired a funny-looking old sailor to pilot a ship to Dice Island. That character's name was Popeye, and he was more of a fighter than a sailor.
It's the birthday of playwright Georges Feydeau, born in Paris, France (1862), who is considered one of the major figures in French comic theater. Two of his most popular plays, The Lady from Maxim's (1899) and A Flea in Her Ear (1907), are still often performed today.
It's the birthday of poet and satirist Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known as Horace, born in Venusia, Italy (65 BC).
SUNDAY, 9 DECEMBER 2001
Listen (RealAudio) | How to listen
Poem: "In the Night," by Carolyn Kizer from Cool, Calm & Collected Poems 1960-2000 (Copper Canyon Press).
In the Night
There are spirit presences
Around my bed
Waiting for me to die.
They are in no great hurry
Nor am I.
Do not fear death,
I whisper to my keepers.
Fear life if it goes on too long.
For the lost losers
Make winners weepers.
It's so quiet tonight
I can hear the angels breathing.
Our hands are transparent,
As veined as autumn leaves.
I rest in their arms
And sense the mist rising.
It's the birthday of novelist and screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, born in Montrose, Colorado (1905). Trumbo's first novel, Eclipse, was published in 1935. At the same time, he became a screenwriter for Warner Brothers—a job he took thinking it would tide him over until he became a successful novelist. For the next six years, Trumbo wrote twenty-one screenplays, most of them low-budget B-pictures. He did not, however, give up his novel writing. During the 1930s, he read a story about a British officer who was horribly disfigured in World War One. That was the inspiration for Trumbo's 1939 classic anti-war story, Johnny Got His Gun. In 1943, Trumbo joined the Communist Party, and in October of 1947, Trumbo was called to testify before the House Committee of Un-American Activities. He and nine other screenwriters and directors, who became known as "The Hollywood Ten," refused to name names of others they knew to be Communists, and were sentenced to federal prison for contempt. Upon his release, he was blacklisted by Hollywood and could not get work. For the next several years, he continued to write screenplays, using other people as fronts. In 1953, he wrote the story for Roman Holiday, under the name of his friend, Ian McClellan Hunter. It won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay. In 1956, using the name Robert Rich, he won another Academy Award for The Brave One. He wrote seven more films without credit until 1960, when he wrote the screenplay for Spartacus, and producer and star Kirk Douglas insisted that Trumbo be given the writing credit. This ended the blacklist. Trumbo went on to write many more screenplays, including Exodus (1960), The Fixer (1968), and Papillon (1973).
It's the birthday of children's story writer and illustrator Jean de Brunhoff, born in Paris, France (1899). He was married and had two small sons, and they came to him one day and told them about a story their mother had made up for them about a little elephant. Brunhoff liked the story so much, he changed it around, added his own touches, and drew pictures to go along with it. It was published in 1931 as The Story of Babar, the Little Elephant. In it, Babar leaves the forest after his mother dies, is adopted and civilized by a character called "the Old Lady," and then returns to his home and becomes king of his native land. The book was a success around the world. It was followed immediately by two more books, The Travels of Babar (1932) and Babar the King (1933). In 1935, Brunhoff was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and spent much of the rest of his life in a sanitarium in Switzerland. He often mailed letters home to his children that contained more elephant stories; he would then turn these into Babar books. Brunhoff died in October of 1937; both Babar and His Children (1938), in which Babar and his elephant wife, Celeste, had triplets, and Babar and Father Christmas (1940) were published posthumously. When Brunhoff's son Laurent became an adult, he began writing and publishing new Babar books.
It's the birthday of journalist and humorist Joel Chandler Harris, born in Eatonton, Georgia (1848). In 1876, Harris moved to the Atlanta Constitution, where he published a series of sketches done in African-American dialect. Three years later, Harris introduced the character of Uncle Remus, a slave who told old folk tales, many of which centered aound the sinister deeds of Brer Rabbit. The stories were collected into a book in 1880, called Uncle Remus: His Song and Sayings: Folklore of the Old Plantation.
It's the birthday of poet and essayist John Milton, born in London, England (1608), who is considered to be among the five greatest poets in the English language. In 1637, he wrote a pastoral elegy, Lycidas, expressing his grief over the death of a college friend, Edward King. In 1643, Milton published a pamphlet that gained him a lot of notoriety. It was called the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce. Unhappily married at the time, Milton argued that although adultery was the only legal defense for divorce, incompatibility should be considered as well. In 1644, he published Areopagitica, his famous defense in favor of a free press. In 1667, Paradise Lost was first published. It is the story of Adam and Eve, God and Satan, and what happened when Satan, the most beautiful of angels, was expelled from Heaven.
In 1854 on this day, "The Charge of the Light Brigade" was published. This poem, written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, was created to memorialize the Battle of Balaclava, a suicide charge by light cavalry over open terrain by British forces in the Crimean War. Two hundred forty seven men were killed or wounded.
From "The Charge of the Light Brigade"
Half a League, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred…
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
