Tuesday

Apr. 27, 1999

Alley Violinist

by Robert Lax

Broadcast Date: TUESDAY: April 27, 1999

Poem: "Alley Violinist," by Robert Lax, from Love Had a Compass (Grove Press, 1996).

It's playwright AUGUST WILSON's birthday, author of Fences (1987), and The Piano Lesson (1990), both of which won Pulitzer Prizes.

It's the birthday today in Ballintogher, County Sligo in Ireland, of the poet CECIL DAY-LEWIS, born 1904.

It's the birthday of ULYSSES S. GRANT, in Point Pleasant, Ohio, 1822, leader of the Union Army during the Civil War.

It's the birthday today of the American painter and inventor SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE, born in Charlestown, Massachusetts in 1791, who developed an electric telegraph in the 1830s and in 1838 developed Morse Code, the system of dots and dashes by which telegraphic messages are conveyed.

The English writer, MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT, was born on this day in London, 1759 — author of Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, and A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, that came out in the 1780s and '90s.

It's the birthday of EDWARD GIBBON, in Surrey, England, 1737, author of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire.

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

 

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