Saturday
Aug. 7, 1999
After a Movie
Poems: "After A Movie," by Henry Taylor, from Understanding Fiction (Louisiana University Press).
We're HALFWAY THROUGH SUMMER today. As of about noon today, EDT, there are 46 days, 19 hours and 51 minutes both elapsed and to go in the season.
The OLD BEDFORD VILLAGE GOSPEL FESTIVAL takes place this weekend in Bedford, Pennsylvania. And the LEITERSBURG PEACH FESTIVAL also runs this weekend in Leitersburg, Maryland.
The BATTLE OF BUSHY RUN is re-enacted today in Harrison City, Pennsylvania; it was the decisive battle of the so-called Pontiac's War of the 1760s, which was an aftermath of the French and Indian Wars of the 1750s. The British had agreed to recognize the area west of the Alleghenies, including Fort Pitt, as belonging to the Indians, but after a series of treaty violations, settlers and traders began pouring in. The war chief of the Ottawa tribe, Pontiac, attacked Fort Detroit in May, 1763, and within weeks, a series of British forts had been captured and the entire frontier from Pennsylvania to Michigan was reclaimed by the Indians. In western Pennsylvania, frontier families took refuge in Fort Pitt, the area that became what is now Pittsburgh, but because it was surrounded they were in danger of starvation. Colonel Henry Bouquet led the attack to free Fort Pitt, and won the Battle of Bushy Run, which took place the first week of August, 1763.
It's the birthday in Columbus, Ohio, 1936, of the saxophonist, flutist, and clarinetist ROLAND KIRK.
It's the birthday of LAURENCE EIGNER, born in 1927, Swampscott, Massachusetts. He was a prolific writer of nearly fifty volumes of poetry and short stories, all composed from either his bed or wheelchair, to which he was confined because of a childhood injury. Nearly all his poems deal with what he sees out of house, car, or plane windows.
It's the birthday of Revolutionary war hero NATHANIEL GREENE, 1742, in Potowomut, Rhode Island. In January 1781 he led the defeat of General Cornwallis at Cowpens, South Carolina.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®