Tuesday

Sep. 1, 1998

Transplanting

by Theodore Roethke

TUESDAY 9/1

Today's Reading: "Transplanting" by Theodore Roethke from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF THEODORE ROETHKE, published by Doubleday.

MERCURY will be the morning star during the first half of this month and on the 11th and 12th MERCURY AND VENUS will be a particularly close and brilliant pair in the early morning. The planet JUPITER makes its best appearance since 1987, showing up as the bright "star" near the full moon on the 6th.

It's the birthday in 1935 in Hoten, Japan, of conductor SEIJI OZAWA. The only western music he heard as a child in Japan was his mother singing Christian hymns. He created some surprised when he expressed a desire to learn to play piano instead of a traditional Japanese instrument. He intended to concentrate on the piano, but broke both of his index fingers while playing soccer during his teens. He couldn't play piano for eight months, so changed his emphasis of composition and conducting. After further study in Paris and Berlin, Leonard Bernstein hired him as an assistant conductor of the New York Philharmonic. He went on to become music director of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (1965), the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra (1970) and the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1973).

It's the anniversary of the beginning of World War II. GERMANY INVADED POLAND on this day in 1939, mobilizing Britain and France, who were bound by treaties to defend Poland.

It's the birthday in 1898 in Evansville, Indiana, of MARILYN MILLER (MARY ELLEN REYNOLDS), one of the most popular comic actresses of the 1920s, who debuted in vaudeville at the age of four, and later starred onstage in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1918. She went to Hollywood in 1930, made film versions of some of her stage roles, as well as Her Majesty, Love (1931) with W.C. Fields. She returned to Broadway to star in As Thousands Cheer (1933), but died of a sinus infection at age 37 while still at the height of her career.

The creator of Tarzan, novelist EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS, was born on this day in 1875 in Chicago, Illinois. He was phenomenally unsuccessful at many jobs and business ventures until settling into writing advertising copy, and science fiction and adventure stories. He wrote his first Tarzan story—about a boy abandoned in the jungle and raised by apes—in 1912, and Tarzan of the Apes in 1914, the first of 25 Tarzan books.

On this day in 1864, during the Civil War, Confederate troops under General John Bell Hood EVACUATED ATLANTA during an assault by Union forces commanded by General Sherman.

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

 

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