Friday

May 14, 1999

To Daffodils

by Robert Herrick

Broadcast Date: FRIDAY: May 14, 1999

Poem: "To Daffodils," by Robert Herrick (1591 - 1674).

It was on this date in 1948, 51 years ago, that David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the STATE OF ISRAEL, just eight hours before the British Mandate over Palestine was set to expire.

It's the birthday of jazz drummer ZUTTY SINGLETON, born in the little town of Bunkie, Louisiana, 1898, about 120 miles northwest of New Orleans. His real name was Arthur James, but he picked up the name Zutty when he was still an infant, a Creole word that means "cute."

LEWIS AND CLARK set out from St. Louis on this day in 1804 on their great exploration of the West, which was, at the time, a big blank spot on the map. The idea to explore it came from President Thomas Jefferson, who picked Meriwether Lewis, and Lewis' friend, William Clark, to lead the 40-man group he dubbed "The Corps of Discovery". Lewis and Clark planned to travel up the Missouri as far as the Rocky Mountains, then cross to the Columbia and descend to the Pacific-they thought it would take about a year, but in the end it took two and a half years to make the round trip.

It's the anniversary of the 1607 founding of JAMESTOWN, the first permanent British settlement in North America, when 104 men landed on a peninsula in the James River, 60 miles upriver from the Chesapeake Bay.

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

 

«

»

  • “Writers end up writing stories—or rather, stories' shadows—and they're grateful if they can, but it is not enough. Nothing the writer can do is ever enough” —Joy Williams
  • “I want to live other lives. I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get. Writing is my way of making other chances.” —Anne Tyler
  • “Writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig” —Stephen Greenblatt
  • “All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • “Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.” —John Edgar Wideman
  • “In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.” —Denise Levertov
  • “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” —E.L. Doctorow
  • “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” —E.L. Doctorow
  • “Let's face it, writing is hell.” —William Styron
  • “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” —Thomas Mann
  • “Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials.” —Paul Rudnick
  • “Writing is a failure. Writing is not only useless, it's spoiled paper.” —Padget Powell
  • “Writing is very hard work and knowing what you're doing the whole time.” —Shelby Foote
  • “I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it.” —William Carlos Williams
  • “Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.” —Iris Murdoch
  • “The less conscious one is of being ‘a writer,’ the better the writing.” —Pico Iyer
  • “Writing is…that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.” —Pico Iyer
  • “Writing is my dharma.” —Raja Rao
  • “Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.” —Anthony Powell
  • “I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.” —Michael Cunningham
Current Faves - Learn more about poets featured frequently on the show