Thursday

Sep. 11, 1997

The First Days

by James Wright

THURSDAY 9/11

Today's Reading: "The First Days" by James Wright from ABOVE THE RIVER, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux and University Press of New England (1990).

The 75th Los Angeles County Fair starts today in Pomona, California.

Investigative journalist Jessica Mitford, author of THE AMERICAN WAY OF DEATH, was born in Gloustershire, England, in 1917.

It's the anniversary of the first time the "Star Spangled Banner" was sung at the beginning of a baseball game. It was in 1916 in Cooperstown, New York.

W.C. Handy's most popular song, "St. Louis Blues," came out on this day in 1914.

Soprano opera singer Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale, made her American debut at New York's Castle Garden Theater in 1850.

Stephen Foster's "Oh! Susanna" was first performed in 1847 at a saloon in Pittsburgh.

English novelist D.H. Lawrence, author of SONS AND LOVERS, WOMEN IN LOVE and the controversial LADY CHATTERLEY'S LOVER, was born in Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, in 1885.

Physicist James Jeans, the first to theorize that matter is continuously created throughout the universe, was born in London in 1877.

Scottish poet James Thomson (THE SEASONS) was born in Ednam, Scotland, in 1700.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

 

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  • “Writers end up writing stories—or rather, stories' shadows—and they're grateful if they can, but it is not enough. Nothing the writer can do is ever enough” —Joy Williams
  • “I want to live other lives. I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get. Writing is my way of making other chances.” —Anne Tyler
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  • “In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.” —Denise Levertov
  • “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” —E.L. Doctorow
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