Monday

Feb. 22, 1999

Sonnet 2: Time does not bring relief

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Broadcast Date: MONDAY: February 22, 1999

Poem: Sonnet, "Time does not bring relief; you all have lied," by Edna St. Vincent Millay, from Selected Poems (HarperPerennial).

It's the birthday of poet EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY, born 1892 in Rockland, Maine. Her book of poems, A Few Figs From Thistles, which came out when she was just 28 years old, gave her a reputation as a daring bohemian. She won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and over the course of her lifetime published 11 collections and over 500 poems, including over 170 sonnets.

It's the birthday today of HEINRICH HERTZ, born in Hamburg, Germany, 1857, the physicist who was the first to send and receive radio waves. The unit of measurement for frequency—the hertz—is named after him.

It's the birthday in 1857 of SIR ROBERT BADEN-POWELL, born in London, the founder of the Boy Scouts. He didn't know what to call the movement at first—he wrote, "Had we called it what it was, namely a 'Society for the Propagation of Moral Attributes', the boy would not exactly have rushed for it. But to call it SCOUTING was quite another pair of shoes. Give him a uniform to wear, with badges to be won for proficiency in Scouting—and you got him."

It's the birthday today of our first president, GEORGE WASHINGTON, born 1732 in Westmoreland County, Virginia. He was a delegate to the two Continental Congresses, who named him commander-in-chief of the American forces a few months after the fighting broke out at Lexington & Concord, and he led his ill-equipped and ragged army through the entire Revolutionary War. He served two terms as President in order to establish the new constitution, but declined a third so he could return to his Mount Vernon estate.

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

 

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