MONDAY, 25 MARCH 2002
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Poem: "The Last Uncle," by Linda Pastan from The Last Uncle (W.W. Norton).

The Last Uncle

The last uncle is pushing off
in his funeral skiff (the usual
black limo) having locked
the doors behind him
on a whole generation.

And look, we are the elders now
with our torn scraps
of history, alone
on the mapless shore
of this raw, new century.

In the Christian tradition, today is Annunciation Day, commemorating the announcement to the Virgin Mary by the Angel Gabriel that she would give birth to the Messiah. In ancient Rome, March 25 was the traditional date of the festival known as the Hilaria. The festival honored the Mother Goddess Cybele, and celebrated the resurrection of her lover, Attis. It was the first feast day after the spring equinox, when the days begin to be longer than the nights.

It's the birthday of writer Toni Cade Bambara, born in New York City (1939). In the 1970s, she became a prominent civil rights activist, as well as a writer known for novels and short stories written in black street dialect. Her books include the short story collections Gorilla, My Love (1972) and The Sea Birds Are Still Alive (1977), and the novels The Salt Eaters (1980) and If Blessing Comes (1987).

It's the birthday of novelist and short story writer (Mary) Flannery O'Connor, born in Savannah, Georgia (1925). She studied creative writing at the University of Iowa, lived briefly in New York City, then returned to live with her mother in her hometown of Milledgeville, Georgia, after she was diagnosed with lupus. Her first novel, Wise Blood, appeared two years later, in 1952. She followed it up with a collection of short stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find (1955), the novel The Violent Bear It Away (1960), and the short story collection Everything That Rises Must Converge (1965). Her Complete Stories won the National Book Award in 1972, eight years after her death. She was a devout Roman Catholic, and once said that her stories were about "the action of grace in territory held largely by the devil." She said: "I can write about Protestant believers better than Catholic believers-because they express their belief in diverse kinds of dramatic action which is obvious enough for me to catch. I can't write about anything subtle."

It's the birthday of British novelist Paul Scott, born in Palmer's Green, England (1920). He joined the British Army in 1940 and was sent to India, where he served until 1946. He ended up writing four novels- The Jewel in the Crown (1966), The Day of the Scorpion (1968), The Towers of Silence (1971), and A Division of the Spoils (1975)-known collectively as The Raj Quartet.

It's the birthday of agricultural scientist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, born in Cresco, Iowa (1914). After he received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota, he was sent by the Rockefeller Foundation to direct an agricultural research station in Mexico. There, he began to experiment with breeding a new strain of high-yield "dwarf" wheat. Using Borlaug's new strain of wheat, Mexican farmers tripled their production between 1944 and 1960. In his acceptance speech for the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize, Borlaug said: "The first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all mankind. Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world."

It's the birthday of American sculptor Gutzon Borglum, born in St. Charles, Bear Lake, Idaho (1867). The son of Danish immigrants, he's best known for his colossal, literally mountain-sized sculptures celebrating great figures from American history. He accepted a commission by the state of South Dakota to begin sculpting the faces of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt on the side of Mount Rushmore. He unveiled Washington in 1930, Jefferson in 1936, Lincoln in 1937, and Roosevelt in 1939.

It's the birthday of the great Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, born in Parma, Italy (1867). He was a young cellist in the orchestra at the opera house in Rio de Janeiro in 1886 when he was called on to fill in for the conductor in a production of Verdi's Aïda. He conducted the entire score from memory.

TUESDAY, 26 MARCH 2002
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Poem: "Lines Written in Dejection on the Eve of Great Success," by Robert Frost.

Lines Written in Dejection on the Eve of Great Success

I once had a cow that jumped over the moon,
Not onto the moon but over.

I don't know what made her so lunar a loon;
All she'd been having was clover.

That was back in the days of my godmother Goose.
But though we are goosier now,
And all tanked up with mineral juice,
We haven't caught up with my cow.

Postscript

But if over the moon I had wanted to go
And had caught my cow by the tail,
I'll bet she'd have made a melodious low
And put her foot in the pail;

Than which there is no indignity worse.
A cow did that once to a fellow
Who rose from the milking stool with a curse
And cried, "I'll larn you to bellow."

He couldn't lay hands on a pitchfork to hit her
Or give her a stab of the tine,
So he leapt on her hairy back and bit her
Clear into her marrow spine.

No doubt she would have preferred the fork.
She let out a howl of rage
That was heard as far away as New York
And made the papers' front page.

He answered her back, "Well, who begun it?"
That's what at the end of a war
We always say-not who won it,
Or what it was foughten for.

It's the birthday of American Indian historian, activist and writer Vine (Victor) Deloria, Jr., born in Martin, South Dakota (1933). He's best known for his book Custer Died For Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (1969).

It's the birthday of American playwright Thomas Lanier Williams, Tennessee Williams, born in Columbus, Mississippi (1914). He scored his first big success with his play The Glass Menagerie (1944), which won a New York Drama Critics Circle Award. He followed it up over the next decade with A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Summer and Smoke (1948), The Rose Tattoo (1950), Camino Real (1953), and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955). Two of his plays, Streetcar and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, earned him the Pulitzer Prize. His later plays include Sweet Bird of Youth (1959) and Night of the Iguana (1961).

It's the birthday of Joseph Campbell, born in New York City (1904). As a child, he became interested in American Indian folklore, and later began to notice similarities between motifs in American Indian folklore and Arthurian legend. This led him to begin a lifelong study of comparative mythology, which yielded the book The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949) and the four-volume work, The Masks of God (1959-1967).

It's the birthday of American poet Robert Frost, born in San Francisco, California (1874). When William Prescott Frost died in 1885, his wife gathered up her two children and headed east to honor her husband's last request: to be buried in his native New England. After the funeral, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, Mrs. Frost realized that she didn't have enough money for a return ticket. So she settled with her children in New England. Her son Robert grew up to be known as "the poet of New England." His first success, however, came in old England, where he spent the years 1912 to 1915 working on his writing. During those years, he came out with his first two books of poems, A Boy's Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914), which did well in England, and began to attract attention back home in the States. When he returned to America in 1915, North of Boston was a surprise bestseller, and the poet was suddenly in demand for public readings and lectures.

It's the birthday of English poet and classical scholar A.E. (Alfred Edward) Housman, born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, England (1859). His first volume of poetry, A Shropshire Lad (1896), became enormously popular, with poems like the one which begins, "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now/Is hung with bloom along the bough." A. E. Housman, who said: "Good literature continually read for pleasure must, let us hope, do some good to the reader: must quicken his perception though dull, and sharpen his discrimination though blunt, and mellow the rawness of his personal opinions."

WEDNESDAY, 27 MARCH 2002
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Poem: "April 4," by David Lehman from The Evening Sun (Scribner Poetry).

April 4

The exodus from Egypt takes place
tonight this is the bread
of affliction this the wine
like the water of the Nile turned
into blood, the first plague
visited upon Pharaoh this is
the lamb of the feast the blood
of the lamb smeared on the doorposts
so the angel of death would know
which houses to pass over as he
came to slay the first-born sons
of the Egyptian ruling class these
are the bitter herbs fresh horse-
radish the sharpest most pungent
my mother served the tears
of many centuries and my father
poured the wine in Elijah's cup
that the prophet invisibly sipped
let all who are hungry join us

The Jewish festival of Passover, or Pesach, begins today at nightfall. The eight-day festival commemorates the birth of the Jewish people as a nation when Moses led them out of Egypt, over three thousand years ago. Passover is celebrated with a special meal, called the Seder, at which special foods are eaten, special prayers are recited, and the story of the flight from Egypt is told.

It's the birthday of the great African-American dancer and choreographer Arthur Mitchell, born in New York City (1934). He started out studying tap dancing, majored in modern dance at New York City's High School for the Performing Arts and took up ballet at the age of eighteen. Three years later, in 1955, he was called in by George Balanchine to take the lead in the ballet Western Symphony at the New York City Ballet. At the time, the debut of a black dancer in the part was considered a "casting novelty." Mitchell was soon made a principal with the company, and Balanchine created memorable roles for him in A Midsummer's Night Dream (1962), Agon (1967), and other ballets. In 1969, Mitchell founded the all-black dance company, the Dance Theater of Harlem.

It's the birthday of Russian cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, born in Baku, Russia (1927). In 1969, his support of dissident author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn brought him into conflict with the Soviet authorities, who kept him under wraps for nearly five years. Finally, in 1974, he was allowed to travel to the United States, where he made a stunning debut as guest conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. His outspoken criticism of the Soviet Union while he was on the tour caused the Soviet authorities to strip him of his citizenship and brand him an "ideological renegade." In 1990, as the Soviet Union was crumbling, he made a triumphant return to his homeland as the music director of the National Symphony Orchestra.

It's the birthday of poet Louis (Aston Marantz) Simpson, born in Jamaica (1923). In 1964, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his collection At the End of the Open Road (1963). He said: "I want a poem to leave the reader wondering. I want it to be open. When a poem is written in a regular form that closes, click, with a rhyme-I don't like that."

It's the birthday of Japanese novelist Shusaku Endo, born in Tokyo (1923). Ten of his novels have been translated into English, including Silence (1969) and Wonderful Fool (1983), both about European missionaries in Japan.

It's the birthday of American photographer Edward Steichen, born in Luxembourg (1879). In 1902, he joined photographer Alfred Stieglitz in founding the Photo-Secession Group, whose mission was to establish photography as a fine art. They opened a gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York City.

It's the birthday of French writer Henri Murger, born in Paris (1822). His autobiographical novel Scènes de la vie bohème (Scenes of the Bohemian Life, 1849) became the basis for Puccini's famous opera La Bohème.

THURSDAY, 28 MARCH 2002
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Poem: "Practicing," by Linda Pastan from The Last Uncle (W.W. Norton).

Practicing

My son is practicing the piano.
He is a man now, not the boy
whose lessons I once sat through,
whose reluctant practicing
I demanded-part of the obligation
I felt to the growth
and composition of a child.

Upstairs my grandchildren are sleeping,
though they complained earlier of the music
which rises like smoke up through the floorboards,
coloring the fabric of their dreams.
On the porch my husband watches the garden fade
into summer twilight, flower by flower;
it must be a little like listening to the fading

diminuendo notes of Mozart.
But here where the dining room table
has been pushed aside to make room
for this second or third-hand upright,
my son is playing the kind of music
it took him all these years,
and sons of his own, to want to make.

Today is Maundy Thursday, or Holy Thursday, commemorating the Last Supper which Jesus held with his disciples before his arrest and crucifixion. The name "Maundy" comes from the Latin word MANDATUM, or commandment, because at the Last Supper Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment: to love one another.

It's the birthday of American novelist Russell Banks, born in Newton. Massachusetts (1940). He grew up with an abusive father in a working-class community in New Hampshire. After college, he went south, intending to fight with Castro's guerilla army in Cuba. He got as far as Florida, where he worked for two years as a mannequin dresser for a Montgomery Ward department store before returning to New England. After his first marriage broke up, he began to write seriously and to place stories in literary magazines. His stories and novels frequently return to the bleak New England landscape of his childhood. He said: "Growing up in New Hampshire gave me an exaggerated sense of it as a place where the winters were endless, the soil barren and the houses falling down. If we got by at all, there was a sense of disaster being over the next horizon." His novels include Continental Drift (1985), Affliction (1990), The Sweet Hereafter (1992) and Cloudsplitter (1998).

It's the birthday of Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, born in Arequipa, Peru (1936). At fourteen, he was sent off for two traumatic years in a Peruvian military academy. The experience gave him material for his first novel, The Time of The Hero (1962). A thousand copies of the novel were burned on the grounds of his former school in Peru, but in Spain it received a major prize and brought the young novelist to international attention. His other novels include Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1977), The War at the End of the World (1981), The Storyteller (1988), Death in the Andes (1996), and The Feast of the Goat (2001). Mario Vargas Llosa said: "All my fiction-short stories, novels or plays-began as personal experiences. I wrote those works because something happened to me, because I met someone or read something that became an important experience for me. I am not always aware of the reasons why a particular experience remains in my memory with such vividness, nor why an experience gradually becomes a source of encouragement to invent or fantasize about."

It's the birthday of the American novelist Jane Rule, born in Plainfield, New Jersey (1931). She's best known for her first novel, Desert of the Heart (1964), which has since become a classic of lesbian literature.

It's the birthday of American novelist Nelson Ahlgren, born in Detroit, Michigan (1909). He was working as a door-to-door salesman in Texas during the Depression when he decided he wanted to try his hand at writing. He stole himself a typewriter and headed north to Chicago, where he was caught and sent back to spend four months in a Texas prison. His first published story was set in a Texas filling station; it came out in Story magazine in 1933. Two years later he came out with his first novel, Someone in Boots (1935), about a Texas drifter who ends up down-and-out in Chicago. His greatest success came with the short story collection The Neon Wilderness (1947), and the novels The Man with the Golden Arm (1949) and A Walk on the Wild Side (1956).

It's the birthday of Russian writer Aleksei Maksimovich Peshkov, who wrote under the name Maksim Gorky, born in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia (1868). His greatest early success was the play The Lower Depths (1902).

FRIDAY, 29 MARCH 2002
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Poem: "Grace," by Linda Pastan from The Last Uncle (W.W. Norton).

Grace

When the young professor folded
his hands at dinner and spoke to God
about my safe arrival
through the snow, thanking Him also
for the food we were about to eat,

it was in the tone of voice I use
to speak to friends when I call
and get their answering machines,
chatting about this and that
in a casual voice,

picturing them listening
but too busy to pick up the phone,
or out taking care of important
business somewhere else.
The next day, flying home

through a windy
and overwhelming sky, I knew
I envied his rapport with God
and hoped his prayers
would keep my plane aloft.

Today is Good Friday, the day on which most Christians commemorate the Crucifixion of Christ. The day is also known as Holy Friday, Sorrowful Friday, or Long Friday. The day is marked by an evening service known as the Tenebrae, which often involves the dramatic unveiling and adoration of the Cross.

On this day in 1973, the last American combat troops left Vietnam, ending the direct involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War. Several thousand civilian Defense Department employees stayed on in Vietnam after the withdrawal of troops. The last of these Americans were airlifted out of the country when Saigon fell to the Communists on April 30, 1975.

It's the birthday of novelist Judith Guest, born in Detroit, Michigan (1936). In 1974, she sent the manuscript of her first novel off to Viking Press. She didn't have an agent, and didn't send along a query letter or a synopsis first. The novel managed to catch the eye of an editor, and became the first unsolicited manuscript accepted by the press in twenty-six years. The novel was Ordinary People (1976), which went on to become a bestseller.

It's the birthday of American playwright and actor Howard Lindsay, born in Waterford, New York (1886). In 1908, he dropped out of Harvard, where he was studying to become a minister, in order to study acting in New York. He ended up joining several touring theater companies, working as stage manager, director, actor, understudy, or in whatever position he was needed. He also tried his hand at writing plays, but didn't have much success until he teamed up with another playwright, Russel Crouse, to write the book for the 1934 musical Anything Goes. The success of that musical launched them on a long and brilliant collaboration which yielded the long-running play Life with Father (1939), in which Lindsay also starred, and the book for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music (1959). The team also produced the popular play Arsenic and Old Lace (1941). Lindsay and Crouse won a Pulitzer Prize for their 1945 play State of the Union, and a Tony Award for lifetime achievement in 1959.

This day in 1865 marked the beginning of the Appomattox Campaign, the final campaign of the Civil War. As the fighting got started in Virginia-at Quaker Road and Gravelly Run-Ella Gertrude Clanton Thomas, of Georgia, wrote in her diary: "I may perhaps be glad hereafter that I have lived through this war but now the height of my ambition is to be quiet, to have no distracting cares-the time to read-leisure to think and write-and study. Country, glory, and patriotism are great things, but to the bereaved hearts of Mrs. Stovall and Mrs. Clayton, each moaning for the death of their first born, what bitter mockery there must be in the words. Thus it is-I strive to get away, to forget in reading or in writing or in talking the ever-present, the one absorbing theme of war. I make no plans for the future."

On this day in 1792, Swedish King Gustavus the Third died, thirteen days after being shot in the back during a midnight masked ball at the palace. The incident later inspired Verdi's opera Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball, 1859).

SATURDAY, 30 MARCH 2002
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Poem: "March 23," by David Lehman from The Evening Sun (Scribner Poetry).

March 23

I'm taking jazz as
a second language
in jazz if you have chops
it means you can do things
with your right hand like Art
Tatum at the piano while people
at the bar keep talking not
realizing you're Art Tatum
and later when we play the song
we like the fact that we can
hear their chatter indistinct
in the background as he jumps
around the keyboard with
such quick elegance like a dance
of fingers and keys
now with a singer you don't
say chops you say pipes
as in the case of Sarah Vaughan
who could do things with her
voice that no one heard
until she did them, and not even then

Today is Holy Saturday. In the early Christian church, Holy Saturday was a day of silence, fasting, and baptisms. It was the occasion of the great Easter Vigil, a nightlong service that ended at sunrise on Easter morning.

On this day in 1943, the musical Oklahoma opened on Broadway. The show marked the debut of the successful team of composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein the Second.

It's the birthday of novelist Jon Hassler, born in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1933). He was a high school English teacher for fourteen years before he wrote his first novel, Staggerford (1977), whose main character is an English teacher in a small Minnesota town. His other novels include Simon's Night (1979), Grand Opening (1987), North of Hope (1990), and Rookery Blues (1995).

It's the birthday of English poet Frances Cornford, born in Cambridge, England (1886). She was the granddaughter of Charles Darwin, and near the end of her life she was awarded the Queen's Medal for poetry, but she's best remembered for her poem "To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train" (1915):

O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves
When the grass is as soft as the breast of doves
And shivering-sweet to the touch?

It's the birthday of Irish playwright Sean O'Casey, born John Casey in Dublin, Ireland (1880). When his first successful play, The Shadow of a Gunman, premiered at Dublin's Abbey Theater in 1923, a notice appeared in the program that said: "Any gunshots heard during the performance are part of the script. Members of the audience must at all times remain seated." His two best known plays were also premiered at the Abbey Theater; they are Juno and the Paycock (1924) and The Plough and the Stars (1926).

It's the birthday of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, born in Zundert, The Netherlands (1853). In 1879, he went as a missionary to the coal miners on southwestern Belgium. The result was a spiritual crisis that led him to try to express himself through art. For the next ten years, from 1880 to 1890, he painted fast and furiously. He painted sunflowers, wheat fields, self-portraits-all while his mental health was steadily breaking down. One of his greatest paintings, Starry Night (1889), was painted while he was confined in an asylum. In 1988, his Irises, painted in the asylum courtyard, sold for forty-nine million dollars. At the time it was the highest price ever paid for a painting.

It's the birthday of the French poet Paul Verlaine, born in Metz, France (1844). He published his first poem in 1863, when he was nineteen. He was married, then abandoned his wife to wander around Europe with the poet Arthur Rimbaud. He spent two years in prison for wounding Rimbaud with a revolver during an argument.

It's the birthday of British novelist Anna Sewell, born in Yarmouth, Norfolk, England (1820). When she was fourteen, she injured her ankles in a bad fall and became a partial invalid. Unable to walk, she relied on horse-and-carriage to get around. Her dependence on horses grew into a deep affection, which she expressed in her only novel, Black Beauty (1877). She wrote the novel, she said, "to induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses."


SUNDAY, 31 MARCH 2002
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Poem: "The Months," by Linda Pastan from The Last Uncle (W.W. Norton).

The Months

March

When the Earl King came
to steal away the child
in Goethe's poem, the father said
don't be afraid,

it's just the wind…
As if it weren't the wind
that blows away the tender
fragments of this world-

leftover leaves in the corners
of the garden, a Lenten Rose
that thought it safe
to bloom so early.

April

In the pastel blur
of the garden,
the cherry
and redbud

shake rain
from their delicate
shoulders, as petals
of pink

dogwood
wash down the ditches
in dreamlike
rivers of color.

May

Mayapple, daffodil,
hyacinth, lily,
and by the front
porch steps

every billowing
shade of purple
and lavender lilac,
my mother's favorite flower,

sweet breath drifting through
the open windows:
perfume of memory-conduit
of spring.

Today is Easter, the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Christ on the third day after his crucifixion. Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon (or fourteenth day of the lunar month) occurring after the twenty-first of March.

It's the birthday of British novelist John Fowles, born in Leigh upon Sea, Essex, England (1926). His first novel was The Collector (1963), which was followed by The Magus (1966), chosen as one of the one hundred best novels of the twentieth century by the Modern Library. He's perhaps best known, though, for his third novel, The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969).

It's the birthday of Mexican poet and essayist Octavio Paz, born in Mexico City (1914). His Selected Poems came out in English in 1979. He also wrote nonfiction, including the influential essay on Mexican culture, The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990.

It's the birthday of Scottish man of letters Andrew Lang, born in Selkirk, Scotland (1844). He was one of the greatest journalists of his time; a translator of Homer's Iliad (1883) and Odyssey (1879); a contributor of articles on everything from ballads to poltergeists for the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica; and the author of a series of popular books of fairy stories for children, beginning with the Blue Fairy Tale Book in 1889.

It's the birthday of diarist Mary Chesnut, born in Pleasant Hill, South Carolina (1823). Her husband was a staff officer in the Confederate Army, and she was able to accompany him on his missions and keep a detailed diary of her thoughts and experiences. The diary, which covers the period from February 15, 1861 to August 2, 1865, was published in 1905 as A Diary from Dixie. The diary provides valuable insight into Southern society and the workings of the Confederacy during the Civil War.

It's the birthday of English writer Edward FitzGerald, born Edward Purcell in Bredfield, Suffolk, England (1809). He spent most of his life in his native Suffolk, living in seclusion except for occasional visits by literary friends like Thackeray, Carlyle, and Tennyson. His greatest work was published anonymously in 1859, and nearly forgotten until it attracted the attention of the poets Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Algernon Swinburne. The book was an adaptation, from the original Persian, of The Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyám.

Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
The Winter garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly-and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.

It's the birthday of the English poet Andrew Marvell, born at Winestead-in-Holderness, Yorkshire, England (1621). His fame as a poet was only earned three years after his death in 1678, when his former housekeeper published Miscellaneous Poems by Andrew Marvell, Esq. His best known poem is "To His Coy Mistress":

Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime...
But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near:
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.

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