Friday

Nov. 13, 1998

The Return

by Ogden Nash

FRIDAY 11/13

Today's Reading: "The Return," by Ogden Nash, published in CANDY IS DANDY: THE BEST OF OGDEN NASH, Andre Deutsch, 1972.

THE VIETNAM WAR MEMORIAL was dedicated on this day in 1981 on the mall in Washington D.C., right near the Lincoln Memorial. The memorial is inscribed with the names of the nearly 58,000 soldiers killed or missing in the war.

It's the anniversary of the HOLLAND TUNNEL, the first underwater tunnel in the U.S., which opened on this day in 1927. It runs under the Hudson River between Manhattan and Jersey City, New Jersey.

It's the birthday in 1894, Kansas City, of jazz pioneer BENNIE MOTEN. He spent most of his career in his hometown, playing jazz piano and organizing bands. He started his first group when he was in his mid-20s, a ragtime trio. Over the years he picked up more players, including the pianist, Count Basie, and they played a heavy, stomping style of blues. When Moten died in 1935, Basie picked up the band and made it into the Count Basie Orchestra.

It's the birthday of LOUIS BRANDEIS, born in Louisville, Kentucky, 1856, the lawyer and U.S. Supreme Court Justice after whom Brandeis University was named. He practiced law in Boston for many years and was known as "the people's attorney." He was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1916.

It's the birthday of ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, the Scottish adventurer and writer, born in Edinburgh, 1850, author of Treasure Island, Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Child's Garden of Verses, and many other books. He went to school to become a lawyer, but found he didn't like law, so in his mid-20s began traveling and writing books about his experiences. He was always in frail health from tuberculosis, and traveled around looking for a better climate for his health. He fell in love with an American and followed her from his home in Scotland back to her's in California, and wrote about it in his books The Amateur Emigrant and Across the Plains. He worked for a time in Monterey and San Francisco, then after he married her, came back to Great Britain where he worked on Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He eventually moved to Samoa in the South Pacific where he died at the age of 44.

It's the birthday of the early Christian theologian SAINT AUGUSTINE, born in the year 354 in what is now Algeria. He's best known for The Confessions, which he wrote about the year 400 when he was in his 40s, a kind of spiritual autobiography, and for The City of God.

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

 

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