Thursday

May 21, 1998

Magnolia

by Lisel Mueller

THURSDAY 5/21

Today's Reading: "Magnolia" by Lisel Mueller from WAVING FROM SHORE, published by Louisiana State University Press (1989).

The first woman president of Ireland, Mary Bourke Robinson, was born on this day in Ballina, County Mayo, in 1944.

It's the birthday of poet Robert Creeley, of the Black Mountain School of poets, born in Arlington, Massachusetts, 1926.

Nuclear physicist and Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, was born in Moscow on this day in 1921. He won the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize for his activism.

It's the birthday of Sister Maria Innocentia Hummel, whose drawings became the basis of Hummel figurines. She was born in Massing, Bavaria, in 1909.

Architect Marcel Breuer was born in Pecs, Hungary, on this day in 1902. He designed St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.

It's the birthday of the physiologist and inventor of the electrocardiogram, Willem Einthoven, born in the Dutch East Indies in 1860.

Ethnomusicologist Frances Densmore, who devoted her life to study Native American music, was born on this day in Red Wing, Minnesota, in 1867.

It's the birthday of the philanthropist, GRACE HOADLEY DODGE, born in New York this day in 1856, who fought for the welfare of working women in the U.S. She came from the Dodge family of metal manufacturers, and gave away about $1.5 million dollars all in all. In the 1880s she organized an association to foster the industrial arts in public schools; she funded the New York College for the Training of Teachers, that eventually became a part of Columbia University. And in 1905 she mediated the merger of two rival groups into the Young Women's Christian Association, the YWCA of the United States, and served as its president until she died in 1914.

It's the birthday of the French painter Henri Rousseau, born in Laval, France, on this day in 1844.

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

 

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