Friday

Apr. 30, 1999

Notice

by Steve Kowit

Broadcast Date: FRIDAY: April 30, 1999

Poem: "Notice," by Steve Kowit, from Mysteries of the Body, from A Book of Luminous Things, ed. Czeslaw Milosz (Harcourt, Brace & Co.).

It's the Spring festival known as WALPURGIS NIGHT, commemorating St. Walpurgis, a night when people in Europe light bonfires to ward off evil spells cast by witches who ride across the sky.

It was on this day in 1975 that SAIGON fell and the Vietnam War was over.

It's the birthday in Pittsburgh, 1945, of ANNIE DILLARD, the poet and novelist, best known for her essays, including the collection called Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, which won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction.

It's the birthday of country music songwriter and singer WILLIE NELSON, born in Abbott, Texas, in 1933.

It's the birthday in San Francisco of ALICE B. TOKLAS, 1877, best remembered as the partner of Gertrude Stein—their home in Paris became the center of the American expatriate arts community between the two world wars.

The LOUISIANA PURCHASE was signed on this day in 1803, extending the United States' boundaries westward from the Mississippi River all the way to the Rocky Mountains; more than 800,000 square miles of land purchased from France for about $15 million.

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

 

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