Sunday

Jul. 4, 1999

Stars and Stripes Forever

by John Philip Sousa

Broadcast Date: SUNDAY: July 4, 1999

Lyrics: "Stars & Stripes Forever," lyrics by John Philip Sousa.

It's writer NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE's birthday, born in Salem, Massachusetts, 1804. In 1848, he was in his mid-40s with a family to feed; and faced with bankruptcy he wrote The Scarlet Letter in about two months, which made him wealthy and the country's best-known novelist.

They broke ground on this day in 1817 for the ERIE CANAL, to link the Great Lakes with New York City via the Hudson River.

HENRY DAVID THOREAU left his home in Concord, Massachusetts, 1845 on this day, when he was twenty-eight years old, to take up residence in a little cabin he'd built on Ralph Waldo Emerson's land on Walden Pond.

The FIRST EDITION OF WALT WHITMAN'S LEAVES OF GRASS, came out on this day in 1855. Whitman had had no luck finding a publisher, so he brought these 12 poems out himself. He left his name off the cover, and put his own portrait on instead.

It's INDEPENDENCE DAY, the anniversary in 1776 of the Continental Congress' approval of the Declaration of Independence.

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

 

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  • “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
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