MONDAY, 24 JUNE 2002
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Poem: "A Secret Life," by Stephen Dunn from Landscape at the End of the Century (W.W. Norton and Company).
A Secret Life
Why you need to have one
is not much more mysterious than
why you don't say what you think
at the birth of an ugly baby.
Or, you've just made love
and feel you'd rather have been
in a dark booth where your partner
was nodding, whispering yes, yes,
you're brilliant. The secret life
begins early, is kept alive
by all that's unpopular
in you, all that you know
a Baptist, say, or some other
accountant would object to.
It becomes what you'd most protect
if the government said you can protect
one thing, all else is ours.
When you write late at night
it's like a small fire
in a clearing, it's what
radiates and what can hurt
if you get too close to it.
It's why your silence is a kind of truth.
Even when you speak to your best friend,
the one who'll never betray you,
you always leave out one thing;
a secret life is that important.
It's the birthday of poet Stephen
Dunn, born in New York City in 1939. He played basketball for Hofstra
University during their championship season, and then played professional basketball
for the Williamsport Billies in Pennsylvania. His books include Full of Lust
and Good Usage, A Circus of Needs, Local Time, Landscape
at the End of the Century, and Loosestrife. His book Different
Hours won him the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Stephen Dunn once said:
"I once thought I could live a life that would hold up to scrutiny. A life
of admirable consistency. Life, itself, confounded that."
It's the birthday of novelist and short-story writer Anita
Desai, born in Mussoorie, India, in 1937, a "hill station"
village in the foothills of the Himalayas. Her father was Bengali, her mother
a German Jew. Her first novel was Cry, the Peacock. Her first work to
appear in the United States was Fire on the Mountain in 1977. She is
also the author of a number of children's books including The Peacock Garden
and The Village by the Sea.
It's the birthday of the journalist and novelist
Pete Hamill, born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1935. He worked as a
reporter for the New York Post in the early '60s, and then as a columnist
for Newsday and the New York Daily News. One of his best known
novels is Flesh and Blood, which is about an Irish American kid's journey
from the tough streets of Brooklyn to the world of professional boxing.
It's the birthday of the poet, critic, and translator John
Ciardi, born in Boston in 1916. He taught at Harvard and Rutgers, directed
the Breadloaf Writer's Conference in Middlebury, Vermont, and was the poetry
editor for The Saturday Review. His poetry textbook How Does A Poem
Mean was widely used in high schools and colleges. He was also a translator
of Dante's Divine Comedy.
It's the birthday of essayist and editor Norman
Cousins, born in Union Hill, New Jersey, in 1915, best known as editor
in chief of The Saturday Review, a job he held for more than 30 years.
It's the birthday of the novelist Mary
Wesley, born near Windsor in England in 1912, whose chief claim to fame
was getting her first novel published at the age of 70. She had written for
years before that, publishing children's novels. Her first adult novel was called
Jumping the Queue, in 1982, about a widow planning suicide.
It's the birthday of the essayist and short-story writer Ambrose
Bierce, born near Horse Cave Creek in Ohio in 1842. He was a drummer
in the Union army in the Civil War and was seriously wounded at Kenesaw Mountain.
He became a successful freelance writer, newspaper columnist, and editor. He
is best known to us as the author of The Devil's Dictionary, which came
out in 1906, and is a volume of ironic definitions.
TUESDAY, 25 JUNE 2002
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Poem: "Next of Kin," by Calvin Forbes from The Shine Poems (Louisiana State University Press).
Next of Kin
your name the one
I wrote down when asked
your name the one I carried
around just in case
your phone number I knew
better than my own
your's never did change
as I moved around
way back from jump
always the same eventually
no matter the friends I found
you were next of kin
On this day in 1950,
the Korean War began when the North Korean People's Army crossed
the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea. More than three million people lost
their lives in that war, and many years later, an American veteran named Harold
Richards wrote: "I was not brave, nor was I a hero in any way. I was just
as scared as anyone else under fire ... I took part in five major battles and
two invasions. I suffered the cold of North Korea along with every G.I. during
the northern campaign. There were so many unsung heroes of that war, only men
there could understand."
It's the birthday of mystery writer Dorothy
Gilman, born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in 1923. She is the author
of the Mrs. Pollifax mysteries. They're about a lonely widow in her 60s who
applies for a job with the CIA and is chosen for special assignments in exotic
locales. One book was made into a movie starring Rosalind Russell, and another
was made into a television film starring Angela Lansbury.
It's the birthday of novelist George
Orwell, born Eric Blair in Motihari, India, in 1903. He moved to England
as a child and went off to prep school where he was looked down upon by both
his headmaster and his wealthy peers. Because of that experience, Orwell concerned
himself with the lives and the struggles of the poor. He lived in poverty for
more than a year, and wrote an account of his experiences in Down and Out
in Paris and London in 1933. He is best known to us as the author of Animal
Farm ("All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than
others.") and Nineteen Eighty-Four, written in 1949, the year before
he died of tuberculosis.
On this day in 1903, Marie
Curie announced the discovery of radium, for which she later won the
Nobel Prize. In a lecture at Vassar College 18 years later, she said, "We
must not forget that when radium was discovered, no one knew that it would prove
useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science."
It's the birthday of the radical writer and editor V.F. Calverton, born
in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1900. In 1923, Calverton founded the magazine Modern
Quarterly, in which he published the work of black writers and intellectuals,
including Zora Neal Hurston and Langston Hughes, when it was not particularly
popular to do so. He lived in Greenwich Village, and wrote many books including
Sex, Expression and Literature, and The Bankruptcy of Marriage.
It's the birthday of the playwright, director, and producer George Abbot,
born in Forestville, New York, in 1887. He wrote many plays and musicals, including
The Boys from Syracuse, Pal Joey, Where's Charley?, and
The Pajama Game. He wrote his autobiography, Mister Abbott, in
1963, but he lived for many years after that. He died at the age of 107.
The Battle of the Little Big
Horn was fought on this day in 1876. General George Armstrong Custer
and his force of about 300 men were up against approximately 4000 Sioux Indians,
led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull.
On this day in 1857, the novelist Gustave
Flaubert went on trial in Paris for publishing a morally offensive work-Madame
Bovary. He was acquitted, and the book came out that same year.
WEDNESDAY, 26 JUNE 2002
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Poem: "Latin,"
by an anonymous author and "Letters," by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Latin
Latin is a dead tongue
dead as dead can be
first it killed the Romans
now it's killing me
all are dead who wrote it
all are dead who spoke it
all are dead who learnt it
lucky dead they've earnt it
Letters
Every day brings a ship,
Every ship brings a word;
Well for those who have no fear,
Looking seaward, well assured
That the word the vessel brings
Is the word they wish to hear.
On this day in 1974, bar codes were introduced in supermarket
checkout lanes. They were the brainchild of Wallace Flint, vice-president
of the National Association of Food Chains.
It's the birthday of novelist Thomas Boyle, born in East Stroudsburgh,
Pennsylvania, in 1939, author of several mystery-thriller-police-procedurals,
including The Cold Stove League, and Only the Dead Know Brooklyn.
It's the birthday of children's writer Charlotte
Zolotow, born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1915. She began her career as
an editor at Harper and Brothers, and was also the author of more than 70 picture
books for young readers.
It's the birthday of poet and novelist Laurie
Lee, born in Stroud, Gloucester, England, in 1914. He is best known
for his autobiographical trilogy, Cider with Rosie, As I Walked Out
One Midsummer Morning, and A Moment of War.
It's the birthday of singer, songwriter, and guitarist Big
Bill Broonzy, born in Scott, Mississippi, in 1898 (sometimes said 1893),
one of 17 children of parents born into slavery. When he was a young boy, his
uncle made him a fiddle from a cigar box and taught him how to play. He moved
to Chicago and started playing fiddle tunes, which did not appeal to sophisticated
Chicago audiences. So, he learned to play the guitar and sing the blues. It
took him several years to get the hang of it, but he began making recordings
in 1927, and soon became one of the most popular blues singers in the country.
He sang at Carnegie Hall in 1939, but by the late 1940s, the blues began to
change with Muddy Waters' electric guitar sound and style. By 1950, Broonzy
was working as a janitor at Iowa State University when Studs Turkel "rediscovered"
him and had him on his program as a frequent guest. He toured Europe and England
in the early 50s, where his records were best sellers, and Eric Clapton later
credited Broonzy as one of his first influences.
It's the birthday of writer Pearl
Buck, born in Hillsboro, West Virginia, in 1892, who spent most of the
first 40 years of her life in China, where her parents were Presbyterian missionaries.
She learned to speak Chinese before she could speak English. She married an
agricultural economist named John Buck and they lived in a rural province in
China, which became the background for much of her writing. Her second novel,
The Good Earth, was tremendously popular in 1931. It became an instant
best seller and was one of the most popular books of the century. It was awarded
the Pulitzer Prize, was translated into more than 20 languages, dramatized for
Broadway, and made into a motion picture starring Paul Muni and Louise Rainer.
She was a prolific writer who turned out more than 85 novels and collections
of short stories and adopted nine children. In 1938, Buck won the Nobel Prize
in literature. Later, she became active in the civil rights and women's movements,
and she founded the first international, inter-racial adoption agency in the
United States.
It's the birthday of the art critic Bernard
Berenson, born in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 1865. He was brought up in
Boston and educated at Harvard. Berenson spent most of his life in a villa near
Florence, Italy. He was an expert in Italian Renaissance painting, and he left
his villa in Florence to Harvard University, where it is now the Harvard Center
for Italian Renaissance Studies.
THURSDAY, 27 JUNE 2002
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Poem: "Squatting," by Robert Morgan from Topsoil Road (Louisiana State University Press).
Squatting
The men in rural places when
they stop to talk and visit will
not stand, for that would make it seem
they're in a rush. Nor will they sit
on ground that might be cold or wet.
Instead they squat with dignity
on heels close to the ground and chat
for hours. And while they tell and answer,
or listen, hunkered out of wind,
they draw with sticks in dirt a map
to illustrate a story or
show evidence for argument.
They sketch out patterns, write on dirt
and doodle vague arithmetic,
who never will take up a pen
on page or slate or canvas. They
will absentmindedly make shapes
and figures of their reveries
and rub them out again complete
to give their art no status of
attention in the casual toss
of discourse, open forum of
community, out there on bare
familiar ground where generations
have squatted, called it ownership.
It's the birthday of novelist Alice
McDermott, born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1953. Her first novel was
The Bigamist's Daughter, published in 1982, the story of Elizabeth Connely,
the editor in chief of a small vanity press who becomes romantically involved
with a man who has written a story about a bigamist. Her fourth novel, Charming
Billy, won the National Book Award in 1998.
It's the birthday of science fiction writer James
Patrick Hogan, born in London in 1941. He is the author of a number
of novels based on "hard" science, which are popular among scientists
as well as with the public. His first novel was Inherit the Stars, published
in 1976. His latest novel is The Legend that was Earth. James Patrick
Hogan once said: "I believe that in the long term things get better. I
don't think we're about to overpopulate the planet, blow ourselves into oblivion,
poison ourselves into extinction, degenerate into Nazis, or disappear under
our own garbage. For ten thousand years the power of human reason and creativity
has continued to build better tomorrows, and nothing says it has to change now."
It's the birthday of novelist Peter
Maas, born in New York in 1929, who was an investigative reporter throughout
the 50s and 60s, but became famous for a book published in 1969 about a racketeer
and Mafia hit-man called The Valachi Papers. Maas later wrote a biography
of New York City police detective Frank Serpico, which was also a best seller
and became a movie starring Al Pacino.
It's the birthday of poet
Frank O'Hara, born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1925. He went to New
York City, where he was finally free to live openly as a homosexual, and got
a job at the front desk of the Museum of Modern Art selling tickets and post
cards, often writing his poems while he worked at the counter. His collections
include A City Winter, Lunch Poems, and Love Poems.
It's the birthday of author and playwright Richard Bissell, born in Dubuque,
Iowa (1913). He worked as a seaman on the American Export Business Lines, and
began to write about his experiences. His novel Seven and a Half Cents later
become the novel that the popular music The Pajama Game is based upon.
It's the birthday of the poet Paul
Laurence Dunbar, born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1872. Dunbar was one of the
first black writers in this country to attain national fame during his lifetime.
His last novel, often considered his best, is called The Sport of Gods and
was published in 1902.
FRIDAY, 28 JUNE 2002
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Poem: "Nap,"
by Michael McFee from Colander (Carnegie Mellon University Press).
Nap
Little deep word, how we crave
a dip in your healing waters!
Nap was once the ocean where we lived,
surfacing occasionally.
Now it's just a shrunken pool,
part of an oasis in the Desert of Light.
You won't find it on any map:
it requires a long unrouted detour
through Lesser Amnesia,
a hiatus in the mind's greedy itinerary.
But cats know where it is, and dogs,
and old men in the shade catching forty winks
so delicious they will always wake
salivating, born again.
It's the birthday of King
Henry VIII, born in Greenwich, England, in 1491. He became king when
he was 18 years old and married his brother Arthur's widow, Catherine of Aragon.
When she did not provide him with a male heir, however, he sought to divorce
her. When the Pope refused permission for the divorce, Henry decided that the
English Church should separate from Rome and be ruled by the king. He divorced
Catherine therewith.
It's the birthday of painter Pieter
(sometimes Peter) Paul Rubens, born in Siegen, Germany, in 1577. He
was a successful court painter to the Austrian archduke, Albert, and to the
wealthy of Flanders. He is best known for his paintings of voluptuous women.
It's the birthday of author and philosopher Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, born in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1712, whose first important
work, Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, was published in 1750.
He wrote in this work that man is good by nature but has been corrupted by society
and civilization. He later coined the phrase: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,"
and wrote: "Man was born free, but he is everywhere in chains."
It's the birthday of the author and playwright Luigi
Pirandello, born in Girgenti, Italy, in 1867. He is the author of Right
You Are if You Think You Are, and Six Characters in Search of an Author.
It's the birthday of historian and novelist Esther
Forbes, born in Westborough, Massachusetts, in 1891. She is best known
for Johnny Tremain: A Novel for Young and Old.
It's the birthday of composer and lyricist Richard
Rodgers, born in New York City in 1902. He collaborated for 20 years
with Lorenz Hart, and later with Oscar Hammerstein II.
On this day in 1919, the
Treaty of Versailles was signed, ending World War I.
It's the birthday of actor, director, screenwriter, and playwright Mel
Brooks, born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York, in 1926. While Brooks
was in the Army in World War II, deactivating mines after the Battle of the
Bulge, he was also organizing shows for fellow servicemen. When he returned
to the States, he worked as a drummer and pianist in the Catskills, taking over
for an ailing stand-up comedian one night. In 1949, Brooks' friend Sid Caesar
asked him to write for his comedy program, Your Show of Shows. In 1968,
he wrote his first feature film, The Producers. Although the movie did
poorly at the box office, it has been made into a Broadway musical, winning
15 Tony Awards.
It's the birthday of novelist and short-story writer Maureen
Howard, born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1930, who wrote about her
Catholic school upbringing and her life as a professor's wife in her much-acclaimed
autobiography, Facts of Life. Her latest work is Big as Life: Three
Tales for Spring.
It's the birthday of novelist and short-story writer Mark
Helprin, born in New York in 1947. He is the author of A Soldier
of the Great War, and Winter's Tale.
SATURDAY, 29 JUNE 2002
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Poem: "Rolls-Royce Dreams," by Ginger
Andrews from An Honest Answer (Story Line Press).
Rolls-Royce Dreams
Using salal leaves for money,
my youngest sister and I
paid an older sister
to taxi an abandoned car
in our backyard. Our sister
knew how to shift gears,
turn smoothly with a hand signal,
and make perfect screeching stop sounds.
We drove to the beach,
to the market, to Sunday School,
past our would-be boyfriends' houses,
to any town, anywhere.
We shopped for expensive clothes everywhere.
Our sister would open our doors
and say, Meter's runnin' ladies,
but take your time.
We rode all over in that ugly green Hudson
with its broken front windshield, springs poking
through its back seat, blackberry vines growing
through rusted floorboards;
with no wheels, no tires, taillights busted,
headlights missing, and gas gauge on empty.
Today is the Feast
of Sts. Peter and Paul, which has been celebrated since the early centuries
of the Christian era.
It's the birthday of the science fiction writer
Brian Herbert, born in Seattle in 1947, the son of another great
science fiction author, Frank Herbert, who wrote the Dune trilogy. Brian
Herbert came out with his first book in 1983, entitled Sidney's Comet,
which is about an enormous comet, composed of human garbage, that is dumped
in space and returned by higher powers. In 1999, 13 years after his father's
death, Herbert teamed up with author Kevin Anderson to write a trilogy of prequels
to Dune.
It's the birthday of the actress and director JoAnne
Akalaitis, born in Cicero, Illinois, in 1937. She was a writer and director
for the experimental theater collective Mabou Mines. She said: "One of
the most powerful aspects of theater is that it is a communal event. You're
never lonely if you're in the theater."
On this day in 1921,
Edith Wharton became the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize
for her book The Age of Innocence. She had written the book almost as
an aside, saying: "I wanted to put into words the years of the war, as
I had lived them in Paris ... all their fantastic heights and depths of self-devotion
and ardour, of pessimism, triviality and selfishness. But before I could begin
to deal objectively with the stored-up emotions of those years, I had to get
away from the present altogether ... I found a momentary escape in going back
to my childish memories of a long-vanished America, and wrote The Age of
Innocence."
It's the birthday of composer, librettist, and lyricist
Frank Loesser, born in New York City in 1910. He was best known for
his musicals Guys and Dolls, which opened on Broadway in 1950, How
to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and The Most Happy Fella.
Frank Loesser once said, "Loud is good."
It's the birthday of aviator and author Antoine
de Saint-Exupery, born in Lyons, France, in 1900. His first love in
life was flying, and his second was writing about flying. His first book was
Southern Mail, and his second was Night Flight, published in 1932.
He was shot down in 1944 and disappeared on a World War II reconnaissance mission.
His most popular work was a children's book written the year before he died,
The Little Prince. It is narrated by a pilot who has crashed in the desert
where he meets a child who has traveled to earth from his own tiny planet.
SUNDAY, 30 JUNE 2002
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Poem: "Alphabet," by R.T. Smith from Messenger (Louisiana State University Press).
Alphabet
In the sewing room
the mail-order Singer
with its chrome-rimmed
wheel and gleaming needle
was turned under
to make a desk while
mother started dinner.
I faced west where
the window shimmered.
For an hour I rehearsed
my letters, spelling
everything visible-
zipper and scissors,
thimbles and spools.
The oval mirror made
the wallpaper zinnias
flower still further,
and a mantel clock
held the minutes back.
The Eagle pencil
in my cramped hand
scratched fishhook
j or an i like a needle.
Late sunlight glazed
the holly leaves silver
beyond the peeling sill.
While I squinted hard
at the Blue Horse paper,
the twilight world
held perfectly still.
When I was finished,
each curve and flourish
set in disciplined rows,
fresh tea with ice
appeared at my elbow,
the yellow c of lemon
in the tumbler's perfect o,
and if mother had praise for what I had done,
I would shine all evening
bright as a straight pin,
while the new moon
with its careless serifs
cleared the trees and rose.
On this day in 1952, The
Guiding Light was first broadcast on television, in an episode that
was 15 minutes long. The soap opera began on radio in 1937, and from 1952 until
1956, the cast performed the same scripts for radio and television each day.
The original stories centered around the Rev. Doctor John Ruthledge and the
people who came to him for help. He always kept a lamp on in his study as a
sign to those who needed his assistance, and the lamp was known to all as "The
Guiding Light." Currently, The Guiding Light is the longest running
show in broadcast history.
On this day in 1936, Gone
with the Wind was published.
The novel was written by Margaret Mitchell.
It's the birthday of the poet, novelist, and translator Czeslaw
Milosz, born in Szetejnie, Lithuania in 1911. He fought in the Polish
resistance during World War II, was a diplomat in communist Poland after the
war, and came to the United States to teach at Berkeley in 1960. He became a
U.S. citizen in 1970, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1980.
It's the birthday of the novelist Winston
Graham, born in Victoria Park, Manchester, England, in 1910. He is best
known for his Poldark novels, which became a BBC television series.
On this day in 1857 (sometimes 1853), Charles
Dickens gave his first public reading. He needed the money, and he wanted
to get away from home and his unhappy marriage. He also loved to perform in
front of an audience. It was June in 1857, but his first reading was of "A
Christmas Carol" at Saint Martin's Hall in London. Altogether, he gave
about 471 readings during his life.
It's the birthday of scholar and editor Alexander Dyce, born in Edinburgh,
Scotland, in 1798. One of the most respected editors of his time, his works
are characterized by scrupulous care and attention to detail. Dyce edited a
dictionary of the language of Shakespeare, and then a nine-volume edition of
Shakespeare's works which came out in 1857.
It's the birthday of the poet and dramatist John
Gay, born in Barnstaple, England, in 1685, and buried in Westminster
Abbey with the self-composed epitaph: "Life is a jest, and all things show
it. I thought so once, and now I know it." Gay is best known for his play,
The Beggar's Opera, which was very popular when it opened in 1728.
