Monday
Apr. 5, 1999
Her Door
Poem: "Her Door," by Mary Leader, from Red Signature (Graywolf Press, 1997).
It's the birthday in Philadelphia, 1893, of DAVID BURPEE, founder of the W. Atlee Burpee Company, the world's largest mail-order seed company.
It was on this day in 1793 that GEORGE WASHINGTON approved plans for new public buildings and roads in the new American capital city.
It's the birthday of the British poet ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, born in London 1837. At Oxford in the 1850s he was part of the circle of writers and artists known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, including William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, and Dante Gabriel Rosetti. He was known in his day for writing shocking hedonistic poetry celebrating the pleasures of the flesh, including his collection Poems and Ballads (1866).
It's the wedding anniversary of Indian princess, POCAHONTAS, and the English tobacco grower, JOHN ROLFE, wed in 1614 near Jamestown, Virginia. Pocahontas was about 19 years old and already had been serving for several years as a go-between for the Indians in the James River area, and the new white settlers. Rolfe was 29 and had come from England four years earlier and made a name for himself developing the strain of tobacco that became Virginia's staple crop.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®