Monday

Sep. 14, 1998

Patience

by Sir Thomas Wyatt

MONDAY 9/14

Today's Reading: "Patience" by Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542).

It's the birthday of feminist writer KATE MILLETT, in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1934, whose Ph.D. dissertation, Sexual Politics, was published in 1970 and played a key role in instigating the women's movement.

It's the birthday of philosopher and writer ALLAN BLOOM, in Indianapolis, in 1930, whose controversial 1987 best-seller The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students blamed pop cultural factors such as rock'n'roll and TV for an assortment of societal ills.

Film producer Hal B. Wallis (THE MALTESE FALCON; CASABLANCA) was born in Chicago in 1898.

It's the birthday of birth-control pioneer MARGARET SANGER, in Corning, New York, in 1879, who began advocating the distribution of birth-control information—then considered obscene—after witnessing botched abortions and the effects of unwanted pregnancies while working as a nurse in New York's Lower East Side. Her efforts led to the loosening of controls on contraceptive information, and she was a founder of Planned Parenthood.

Illustrator CHARLES DANA GIBSON, creator of the Gibson Girl, was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1867.

Author HAMLIN GARLAND, who wrote about the Midwest in his novel A SON OF THE MIDDLE BORDER and in THE BOOK OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN, was born in West Salem, Wisconsin, in 1860.

In 1847 U.S. forces under General Winfield Scott captured Mexico City, bringing the two-year MEXICAN WAR to a close.

Francis Scott Key wrote "THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER" in 1814 after watching Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor withstand a British bombardment the night before.

Italian poet DANTE ALIGHIERI died of Malaria in 1321, just hours after finishing writing PARADISO.

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

 

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