Tuesday
Jun. 22, 1999
Ocean View
Poem: "Ocean View," by James Broughton, from Packing Up for Paradise: Selected Poems 1946-1996 (Black Sparrow Press, 1997).
It's the birthday in Pasadena, California, 1947, of OCTAVIA E. BUTLER, the science fiction writer, author of the five-volume Patternist series about an elite group of telepaths, including the first in the series, Patternmaster (1976). Butler is one of only a few African American women writing science fiction a fact she says she couldn't care less about.
It's the birthday in the village of Penn Yan, New York, 1945, of STEVEN HAVILL, author of novels set in Posadas County, New Mexico, featuring sheriff Bill Gastner, an overweight guy who has trouble sleeping at night. The books include Heartshot, Bitter Recoil, and Prolonged Exposure, published last year. Havill has also been a high school biology and English teacher since the late '70s in Grants, New Mexico.
It was on this day in 1940 that FRANCE SURRENDERED TO GERMANY. Eight days earlier, the Germans had marched into Paris and French President Petain requested a truce with Hitler. The papers were signed in the same old railroad car in which Germany signed the 1918 armistice.
It's DAVID FISHER's birthday, born in Philadelphia, 1932, author of thrillers like Hostage One, and The Wrong Man. He also wrote popular science books like A Race on the Edge of Time, about the development of radar.
It's the birthday in rural Audobon County, in western Iowa, 1929, of writer JULIE McDONALD, author of novels about life in the midwest, including Petra, The Sailing Out, The Ballad of Bishop Hill, and her most recent, Young Rakes, that came out in 1991. She says, "I've spent my writing life sifting midwestern experience for fictional truth a truth that is quiet and solid and not destined for best-sellerdom, but attention must be paid to life in this place because there is value in it for people everywhere."
It's the birthday in 1906, Englewood, New Jersey of writer and aviator ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH. She's best known for two books: North to the Orient (1935), about flying over Canada and Kamchatka to pioneer routes to Asia, and Gift from the Sea (1955).
It's the birthday in Osnabruck, Germany, 1898, of novelist ERICH MARIE REMARQUE, author of the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, about life in the trenches during World War I.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®