Sunday
May 23, 1999
I Will Bow and Be Simple
When We Assemble Here
Lyrics: Two Shaker hymns: "I will bow and be simple," and "When we assemble here."
It was 50 years ago today that the FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF WEST GERMANY was declared. The nation was carved out of the western two-thirds of Germany, the part that the U.S., Great Britain, and France occupied at the end of WWII. It remained in existence until 1990 when the former East Germany adopted the West's constitution and official name, the Federal Republic of Germany.
The poet JANE KENYON was born on this day in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1947, author of many volumes of poems, including The Boat of Quiet Hours (1987), and Let Evening Come (1991).
It's ROSEMARY CLOONEY's birthday, Maysville, Kentucky, 1928, who started her recording career in 1951 at the age of 23 with the tune, "Come On-a My House."
President William Howard Taft presided over the dedication of the NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, on May 23, 1911, famous for the pair of lions which adorn the steps outside. They used to be called "Leo Astor" and "Leo Lenox," after the library founders John Astor and James Lenox, but were later renamed by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia as "Patience" and "Fortitude" during the Great Depression.
It's the birthday in 1810, Cambridgeport, Massachusetts, of writer MARGARET FULLER, who edited The Dial, the magazine of the Transcendentalists.
It was on this day in 1701 that CAPTAIN WILLIAM KIDD, the famous sea pirate, was hanged in England. He'd been a wealthy, upstanding merchant in New York for most of his life, and in 1696 set sail aboard a warship to go after pirates who were harassing England's East India Company off the coast of Madagascar. His crew mutinied and he turned pirate himself. He was later arrested and sent to London where he was convicted of murder and piracy.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®