Sunday

Oct. 19, 1997

To Autumn

by John Keats

SUNDAY 10/19

Today's Reading: "To Autumn" by John Keats.

The 20th annual Chicago Marathon takes place today in Chicago.

English suspense and spy novelist John Le Carre (THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, THE HONORABLE SCHOOLBOY) was born in Poole, Dorset, in 1931.

Writer and urban planner Lewis Mumford, who wrote for THE NEW YORKER for more than 30 years, putting architecture and urban development in a social context, was born in Flushing, New York, in 1895. He wrote: Traditionalists are pessimists about the future and optimists about the past.

Alice Josephine McLellan Birney, a child welfare worker who came up with the idea of the National Congress of Mothers, which later evolved into the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, known today as the PTA, was born in Marietta, Georgia, in 1858.

Australian poet Adam Lindsay Gordon was born in Faial, the Azores, in 1833. He wrote: Life is mostly froth and bubble/Two things stand like stone/Kindness in anotherâs trouble/Courage in your own.

In 1812 Napoleon's army began its retreat from Moscow, following his 12-week campaign in Russia.

English essayist, journalist and poet Leigh Hunt was born in Southgate, Middlesex, in 1784. From his poem "Jenny Kissed Me," Say I'm weary, say I'm sad/ Say that health and wealth have missed me/ Say I'm growing old/ but add Jenny kissed me.

The Revolutionary War essentially ended on this day in 1781 when British General Charles Cornwallis ended a three-week siege by surrendering to General George Washington at Yorktown.

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

 

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