MONDAY, 23 JUNE 2003
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Poem: "Why I Take Good Care of my Macintosh," by Gary Snyder (used by permission of the poet).

Why I Take Good Care of my Macintosh

Because it broods under its hood like a perched falcon,
Because it jumps like a skittish horse
    and sometimes throws me
Because it is poky when cold
Because plastic is a sad, strong material
    that is charming to rodents
Because it is flighty
Because my mind flies into it through my fingers
Because it leaps forward and backward,
    is an endless sniffer and searcher,
Because its keys click like hail on a boulder
And it winks when it goes out,

And puts word-heaps in hoards for me,
    dozens of pockets of
    gold under boulders in streambeds, identical seedpods
    strong on a vine, or it stores bins of bolts;
And I lose them and find them,

Because whole worlds of writing can be boldly layed out
    and then highlighted and vanish in a flash
    at "delete"     so it teaches
    of impermanence and pain;
And because my computer and me are both brief
    in this world, both foolish, and we have earthly fates,
Because I have let it move in with me
    right inside the tent
And it goes with me out every morning
We fill up our baskets,       get back home,
Feel rich,      relax,      I throw it a scrap and it hums.

Literary Notes:

Tonight is Midsummer Night's Eve, also called St. John's Eve. St. John is the patron saint of beekeepers. It's a time when the hives are full of honey. The full moon that occurs this month was called the Mead Moon, because honey was fermented to make mead. That's where the word "honeymoon" comes from. Midsummer dew was said to have special healing powers. Women washed their faces in it to make themselves beautiful and young. They skipped naked through the dew to make themselves more fertile. It's a time for lovers. An old Swedish proverb says, "Midsummer Night is not long but it sets many cradles rocking." Midsummer Eve is also known as Herb Evening. Legend says that this is the best night for gathering magical herbs. Supposedly, a special plant flowers only on this night, and the person who picks it can understand the language of the trees. Flowers were placed under a pillow with the hope of important dreams about future lovers. Shakespeare set his play A Midsummer Night's Dream on this night. It tells the story of two young couples who wander into a magical forest outside Athens. In the play, Shakespeare wrote, "The course of true love never did run smooth."

It's the birthday of novelist and short story writer David Leavitt, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1961). His first story was published in the New Yorker when he was still a senior in college. It created a stir because it was the first story in the New Yorker with characters who were explicitly homosexual. When he was twenty-three, he published his first collection of stories, Family Dancing (1984). He said, "I don't think it's fair to say that writers have an obligation to write about any particular subject. A writer's only obligation is to write well."

It's the birthday of sex researcher Alfred C. Kinsey, born in Hoboken, New Jersey (1894). He was the first person to study human sexual behavior using modern scientific methods. He interviewed almost 19,000 people about their sexual behavior and published the results in Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948). It found, for instance, that premarital sex was more prevalent than people thought, that masturbation does not cause mental illness, and that virtually all men do it. The book was 804 pages, and it sold 185,000 copies in its first year, making it a bestseller. Later, he published Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), which sold even better, and put him on the cover of Time magazine.

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TUESDAY, 24 JUNE 2003
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Poem: "Losing Steps," by Stephen Dunn from Different Hours (Norton).

Losing Steps

1
It's probably a Sunday morning
in a pickup game, and it's clear
you've begun to leave
fewer people behind.
Your fakes are as good as ever,
but when you move
you're like the Southern Pacific
the first time a car kept up with it,
your opponent at your hip,
with you all the way
to the rim. Five years earlier
he'd have been part of the air
that stayed behind you
in your ascendance.
On the sidelines they're saying,
He's lost a step

2
In a few more years
it's adult night in a gymnasium
streaked with the abrupt scuff marks
of high schoolers, and another step
leaves you like a wire
burned out in a radio.
You're playing defense,
someone jukes right, goes left,
and you're not fooled
but he's past you anyway,
dust in your eyes,
a few more points against you.

3
Suddenly you're fifty;
if you know anything about steps
you're playing chess
with an old, complicated friend.
But you're walking to a schoolyard
where kids are playing full-court,
telling yourself
the value of the experience, a worn down
basketball under your arm,
your legs hanging from your waist
like misplaced sloths in a country
known for its cheetahs and its sunsets

Literary Notes:

It's the birthday of the journalist and novelist Pete Hamill, born in Brooklyn, New York (1935). By the time he was eight his father introduced him to the hard-drinking lifestyle, bringing him along to his favorite bar, Gallagher's. Hamill said, "This is where men go, I thought; this is what men do." By age ten he was drinking beer with his friends from the street. Still, he got good grades in school and eventually landed a job at the New York Post. In his book A Drinking Life: A Memoir (1994), he said, "I drank in the morning when I worked nights, and at night when I worked days." At a New Year's Eve party in 1972 he looked into a glass of vodka, decided it would be his last, and it was. He has been a productive writer ever since, with novels such as Flesh and Blood (1977), and Forever (2003), which was published this year. Pete Hamill, who said, "The best newspapermen I know are those most thrilled by the daily pump of city room excitements; they long fondly for a 'good murder'; they pray that assassinations, wars, catastrophes break on their editions."

It's the birthday of the essayist and short story writer Ambrose Bierce, born near Horse Cave Creek, Ohio (1842). Bierce was famous as a California journalist for his fearlessness; they called him "the wickedest man in San Francisco" and "Bitter Bierce." He once wrote a book review that said, "The covers of this book are too far apart." His major fiction is collected in the books Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891) and Can Such Things Be? (1893), but he's best known for The Devil's Dictionary (1906), his book of ironic definitions. It includes definitions such as, "Saint. A dead sinner revised and edited," and "Bride. A woman with a fine prospect of happiness behind her."

It's the birthday of poet Stephen Dunn, born in New York City (1939). He's published over a dozen books of poetry, including Different Hours, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000, and Local Visitations (2003), which came out this year. In 1962 at Hofstra University he was a key player on one of the greatest basketball teams in school history. They called him "Radar" for his jump shot against the zone. After college he wrote brochures in New York City for Nabisco. He was successful, but he quit the well-paying job and moved to Spain with his wife, where they lived for almost a year on $2200. He went to write a novel and ended up writing the poetry. He is the first male in his family to live to his sixties. He wrote: "Because in my family the heart goes first/ and hardly anybody makes it out of his fifties,/ I think I'll stay up late with a few bandits/ of my choice and resist good advice."

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WEDNESDAY, 25 JUNE 2003
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Poem: "The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb," by Sharon Olds from Blood, Tin, Straw (Alfred A. Knopf).

The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb

Whatever he needs, he has or doesn't
have by now.
Whatever the world is going to do to him
it has started to do. With a pencil and two
Hardy Boys and a peanut butter sandwich and
grapes he is on his way, there is nothing
more we can do for him. Whatever is
stored in his heart, he can use, now.
Whatever he has laid up in his mind
he can call on. What he does not have
he can lack. The bus gets smaller and smaller, as one
folds a flag at the end of a ceremony,
onto itself, and onto itself, until
only a heavy wedge remains.
Whatever his exuberant soul
can do for him, it is doing right now.
Whatever his arrogance can do
it is doing to him. Everything
that's been done to him, he will now do.
Everything that's been placed in him
will come out, now, the contents of a trunk
unpacked and lined up on a bunk in the underpine light.

Literary Notes:

It's the birthday of novelist George Orwell, born Eric Blair in Motihari, India, in 1903. He won a scholarship to the prestigious prep school Eton, but he didn't fit in because he was poorer than most of his classmates. He deliberately slacked off, finishing 138th in a class of 167. Instead of going to a university he joined the Imperial Police and went to Burma, but he felt ashamed of British rule and so he resigned, came home, and decided that he would become a writer. When Orwell came home from Burma he lived as a tramp for four years. He put on ragged clothes and lived with laborers and beggars in the slums of London and Paris. He worked in the hopfields in Kent and as a dishwasher in a French hotel, and wrote about it in Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) under the pen name George Orwell, after the River Orwell in East Anglia. He published his first novel, Burmese Days (1934), the next year. Animal Farm (1945) was the book that made him famous. It's a political fable about Stalinism. A group of barnyard animals chase off their human masters and set up their own society, but then the smartest animals, the pigs, take control and turn out to be even more ruthless than the humans. He wrote, "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." At first Orwell couldn't find a publisher for Animal Farm, but when it came out it was an instant success and for the first time Orwell had some money in his pocket. In some countries, Animal Farm was distributed by the United States government. When Orwell died, the C.I.A. secretly bought the movie rights to the book from Orwell's widow, made an animated-film version in England, and sent it all over the world. Orwell used the royalties from Animal Farm to buy a remote house on the island of Jura, off the coast of Scotland. He had tuberculosis, and when he wasn't too sick to type he smoked black shag tobacco and wrote his masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), a novel set in a future where the world is controlled by totalitarian police states. The book gave us words and phrases such as "Big Brother is watching you," "Thought Police," "newspeak," and "doublethink." He said, "On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time."

On this day in 1857, the French poet Charles Baudelaire published Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil). About a month after it went on sale, Baudelaire was brought to trial because the book was in contempt of laws protecting religion and morality.

Today is the day that Rosemary has her baby, in the book Rosemary's Baby (1967) by Ira Levin.

It's the birthday of the playwright, director, and producer George Abbot, born in Forestville, New York (1887). He made his first appearance on Broadway in 1913, and for more than 80 years he was involved, in one way or another, with 120 productions. Some years, he had three hits running at once. He directed a long list of successful musical comedies, including Boy Meets Girl (1935), The Pajama Game (1954), Damn Yankees (1955), Fiorello! (1959), and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962).

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THURSDAY, 26 JUNE 2003
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Poem: "Surviving Bulls," by Leland Kinsey from Sledding on Hospital Hill (David R. Godine, Publisher).

Surviving Bulls

The whitewashed walls were smeared with blood
the day the bull rampaged inside the barn
after escaping from its pen.
My father gave my brother and me
each a stout stick to block exits
and hoped we didn't have to use them
as he beat the bull around the stable floor,
bloodied its nose, dented his ribs,
as the bull had done to my mother
when it pinned her to the ground
in the pasture and rolled and butted her about.
He'd then gone in the barn with the cows
and she managed to crawl beyond the fence
where we found her sitting when we came
home from the fields.

I once had a young Jersey bull turn on me
in the muddy barnyard.
He came from the side, lowered his horns
and bowled me over cleanly
and two or three of his feet tromped
me into the mud. I struggled up
and he turned to come again.
I pulled a fence post from the ground
and laid it hard right on his crown.
He went down to his knees
recovered and fled to the woods
with me in pursuit
and not until a half-mile in
did I notice I still carried the heavy post.

A full grown Holstein bull charged me once
with no chance for escape.
I jumped slightly as he hit,
wrapped my legs around his nose,
my arms around his neck
and gave a twist that took him down
heavily but not much on me
and stunned him enough to give me time to run.

My brother, not so lucky, was rumpled good
by the same bull in an open field,
held at the chest by the bull's head
as the bull spun round
then backed up for more,
but my brother sprung behind
a lone utility pole
and after a short savage dance
the bull walked off, and my brother,
breathing painfully, walked home.

The snap once broke on the nose ring pole
as my father led an Ayrshire bull to breed.
In the tight enclosure the bull knocked
my father about and down like a skittle peg,
but he rolled under a high enough board
and got away with a bruised leg,
and an unwanted lesson in maintenance.
My father had taken nothing out on that bull,
but this day he gave the bull who knocked
my mother down a hard and useless lesson.
After it all he called the commission sales
to come and get the bull while it still stood,
and gave my swollen, black-and blue mother
the check to cash and spend in town,
but she just put it by.

Literary Notes:

On this day in 1974, bar codes were first used in supermarket checkout lanes. In a Marsh's supermarket in Troy, Ohio, the first product to be scanned was a 10-pack of Wrigley's Juicy Fruit chewing gum. It just happened to be the first thing lifted from the cart. Today, the pack of gum is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.

On this day in 1945, the United Nations Charter was signed by delegates from 50 nations in the Herbst Theater in San Francisco. The world body was established to save "succeeding generations from the scourge of war."

On this day in 1870, the first section of the Atlantic City Boardwalk opened. People came from all over the world to visit the New Jersey beach for the fresh sea air and the fancy hotels and restaurants, and to eat saltwater taffy along the boardwalk. Back then, swimmers wore wool flannel bathing dresses with stockings, canvas shoes, and big straw hats. There were censors who walked the beaches looking for people who showed too much skin.

It's the birthday of writer Pearl Buck, born in Hillsboro, West Virginia (1892). Her parents were missionaries. They took her to China when she was 3 months old, and her first language was Chinese. She published stories in the weekly children's edition of the Shanghai Mercury. Her first book was East Wind: West Wind (1930), and she followed it with the book that won the Pulitzer and made her famous all over the world: The Good Earth (1931), about a Chinese farmer and his wife and their struggle to make a life for themselves. She wrote two sequels to The Good Earth: Sons (1932) and A House Divided (1935), and published them all together in 1935 as a trilogy called House of Earth that won her the Nobel Prize. She went on to write over 85 books, sometimes two or three a year, but that early novel, The Good Earth, was always her best.

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FRIDAY, 27 JUNE 2003
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Poem: "Ave Maria," by Frank O'Hara from The Selected Poems of Frank O'Hara (Vintage).

Ave Maria

Mothers of America
                      let your kids go to the movies!
get them out of the house so they won't know what you're up to
it's true that fresh air is good for the body
                              but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images
and when you grow old as grow old as you must
                                they won't hate you
they won't criticize you they won't know
                        they'll be in some glamorous country
they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey
they may even be grateful to you
                              for their first sexual experience
which only cost you a quarter
                                and didn't upset the peaceful home
they will know where candy bars come from
                          and gratuitous bags of popcorn
as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it's over
with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg
near the Williamsburg Bridge
              oh mothers you will have made the little tykes
so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies
they won't know the difference
                  and if somebody does it'll be sheer gravy
and they'll have been truly entertained either way
instead of hanging around the yard
                or up in their room
                      hating you
prematurely since you won't have done anything horribly mean yet
except keeping them from the darker joys
                        it's unforgivable the latter
so don't blame me if you won't take this advice
                            and the family breaks up
and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set
                                  seeing
movies you wouldn't let them see when they were young

Literary Notes:

On this day in 1928, Sylvia Beach invited James Joyce and Scott Fitzgerald to a dinner party above her Paris bookstore Shakespeare & Company. Fitzgerald became drunk and said that he was such a fan of Joyce's work that he would throw himself out the window to prove it. Neither writer was having much success: Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby hadn't sold well, and Joyce's Ulysses (1922) wouldn't be published outside of Paris for another five years. Both men died only 13 years later, less than a month apart, with no money and few readers.

On this day in 1829, English scientist James Smithson died. Even though he had never been to America, he left behind a will that said that if his only nephew died without any heirs, his whole estate should go to the United States of America, to found the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. He left a fortune including 11 boxes of over 100,000 gold sovereigns. After the gold was melted down, it was worth well over $500,000. Today, the Smithsonian is composed of 18 museums and galleries around the world, including the National Museums of Natural and American History, the National Zoological Park, the National Portrait Gallery, and the National Air and Space Museum.

It's the birthday of poet Frank O'Hara, born in Baltimore, Maryland (1925). O'Hara always believed he was born on this day in 1926, but his parents lied about his birthday to hide the fact that he was conceived before their marriage. He joined the U.S. Navy, served as a sonarman on a destroyer during World War II, and went to Harvard on the G.I. Bill. He met his friend, the poet John Ashbery, there, and a few years later they met up again in New York City, where they became part of the New York School of poets. O'Hara wanted a job that gave him time to write, so he worked the front desk at the Museum of Modern Art, selling tickets and postcards, and in 1952 he published his first book of poetry, A City Winter, and Other Poems.

It's the birthday of novelist Alice McDermott, born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1953. Her books are set in Queens and on Long Island, New York, where she grew up. Her parents were first generation Irish-Americans, and they discouraged McDermott from becoming a writer, so she struck a compromise, got a job as a secretary at a vanity press, and used the experience in her first novel, A Bigamist's Daughter (1982). Her novel Charming Billy (1998), about a loveable alcoholic who was never able to marry the woman he loved, won the National Book Award.

It's the birthday of poet and children's author, Lucille Clifton, born in Depew, New York (1936). She had six children under ten years old when her first poetry collection, Good Times (1969), was called one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times. She became Maryland's Poet Laureate in 1974, and published her collected poems, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, in 2000.

It's the birthday of poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, born in Dayton, Ohio (1872), America's first great black poet. He was the only African American in high school, but he was editor of his high school paper and president of the literary club. He published his first poems in the Dayton Herald when he was sixteen, and he published his first poetry collection, Oak and Ivy (1893), while working as an elevator operator, selling copies to his passengers.

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SATURDAY, 28 JUNE 2003
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Poem: "A Farewell, Age Ten," by William Stafford from The Way It Is, New and Selected Poems (Graywolf).

A Farewell, Age Ten

While its owner looks away I touch the rabbit.
Its long soft ears fold back under my hand.
Miles of yellow wheat bend; their leaves
rustle away and wait for the sun and wind.

This day belongs to my uncle. This is his farm.
We have stopped on our journey; when my father says to
we will go on, leaving this paradise, leaving
the family place. We have my father's job.

Like him, I will be strong all of my life.
We are men. If we squint our eyes in the sun
we will see far. I'm ready. It's good, this resolve.
But I will never pet the rabbit again.

Literary Notes:

It's the birthday of author and philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, born in Geneva, Switzerland (1712), whose writing inspired the leaders of the French Revolution. He wrote Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts (1750), The Social Contract (1762), and novels, including The New Eloise (1761). He coined the phrase, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," and wrote: "Man was born free, but he is everywhere in chains."

It's the birthday of the "father of the modern spy novel," Eric Ambler, born in London (1909), author of thrillers including Background to Danger (1937), Cause for Alarm (1938), and Journey into Fear (1940). Graham Greene called him, "the greatest living writer of suspense." He was the first author to write stories about international espionage that were based on real life. He started writing thrillers because all of the ones he read were full of ridiculous superheroes and villains. He wanted to write about exciting events that could actually happen. He said, "Thrillers are acceptable now. . . . A hundred years from now, if they last, these books may offer some clues to what was going on in our world." Topkapi (1964) was a movie based on his novel The Light of Day (1962). After seeing the movie, the famous thief Jack "Murf the Surf" Murphy was inspired to steal the world's largest sapphire, the Star of India, from the Museum of Natural History in New York.

It's the birthday of fiction writer Mark Helprin, born in New York City (1947). His novels include Winter's Tale (1983), Memoir from Antproof Case (1995), and A Soldier of the Great War (1991). He's known for writing big, old-fashioned, ambitious stories and novels. His father was in the film industry and his mother starred in Broadway plays. He became serious about writing when he was seventeen years old. He sent short stories to the New Yorker while he was still at college, and they finally published two of them his senior year. He was 22 years old and soon came out with a collection of stories, A Dove of the East and Other Stories (1975). He said, "I have no agony or resentments. Boredom and alienation don't mean a thing to me."

It's the birthday of half of the Rodgers and Hammerstein songwriting team, Richard Rodgers, born in New York City (1902). He wrote the music for the musicals Oklahoma! (1944), South Pacific (1950), The King and I (1951), The Sound of Music (1959), and dozens of others. They included songs like "Funny Valentine," "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'," "Getting to Know You," and "My Favorite Things." He collaborated with the lyricist Lorenz Hart for over twenty years. When Hart died in 1943, Rodgers asked his friend Oscar Hammerstein II to write a musical with him. He agreed, and they wrote Oklahoma!, one of Broadway's biggest hits. His melodies were easy to sing and dance to, and he could compose them at the drop of a hat. He wrote complete songs during breakfast.

It's the birthday of comedian and filmmaker Mel Brooks, born Melvin Kaminsky in Brooklyn, New York (1926). He's known for off-the-wall comedies like Blazing Saddles (1974) and Young Frankenstein (1974). When he was fourteen years old he played the drums in a band that performed in summer lodges of the Catskill Mountains. One night, a comedian called in sick and the young Mel Brooks volunteered to fill in for him. The audience liked him so much that he gave up the drums and became a full-time comedian, working for 25 dollars a week. He came out with his first movie in 1968, The Producers. And he said, "Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."

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SUNDAY, 29 JUNE 2003
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Poem: "Turning Fifty," by Stephen Dunn from Landscape at the End of the Century (Norton).

Turning Fifty

I saw the baby possum stray too far
and the alert red fox claim it
on a dead run while the mother watched,
dumb, and oddly, still cute.
I saw this from my window
overlooking the lawn surrounded
by trees. It was one more thing
I couldn't do anything about,
though, truly, I didn't feel very much.
Had my wife been with me,
I might have said, "the poor possum,"
or just as easily,
"the amazing fox." In fact
I had no opinion about what I'd seen,
I just felt something dull
like a small door being shut,
a door to someone else's house.

That night, switching stations, I stopped
because a nurse had a beautiful smile
while she spoke about triage and death.
She was trying to tell us
what a day was like in Vietnam.
She talked about holding
a soldier's one remaining hand,
and doctors and nurses hugging
outside the operating room.
And then a story of a nineteen-year-old,
almost dead, whispering, "Come closer,
I just want to smell your hair."

When my wife came home late, tired,
I tried to tell her
about the possum and the fox,
and then about the young man
who wanted one last chaste sense
of a woman. But she was interested
in the mother possum,
what did it do, and if I did anything.
Then she wanted a drink, some music.
What could be more normal?
Yet I kept talking about it
as if I had something to say--
the dying boy
wanting the nurse to come closer,
and the nurse's smile as she spoke,
its pretty hint of pain,
the other expressions it concealed.

Literary Notes:

On this day in 1613, The Globe Theater burned down. It was built by Shakespeare's acting company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, in 1599. It was a round, wooden building with thatched-roof balconies for the gentry. A cannon was fired during a performance of Henry VIII to mark the King's entrance, the thatched roof caught fire, and the whole theater was lost in an hour. It was rebuilt the next year, but taken down in 1644 to make space for tenements, after the Puritans closed all theaters. A replica, the new Globe Theater, was built in the mid-1990's. 700,000 people visit it every year.

On this day in 1921, Edith Wharton became the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for her book The Age of Innocence. Sinclair Lewis's Main Street won the first vote, but it was considered too offensive by some prominent Midwesterners. Wharton's working title for The Age of Innocence was Old New York. She lived in Paris during the first World War, and she said, "I found a momentary escape in going back to my childish memories of a long-vanished America, and wrote The Age of Innocence." The book opens, "On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York."

It's the birthday of the aviator and author of The Little Prince (1943), Antoine de Saint-Exupery, born in Lyons, France (1900).