Friday

Aug. 20, 1999

Broadcast Date: FRIDAY: August 20, 1999

The COLORADO STATE FAIR, in Pueblo, and the CALIFORNIA STATE FAIR, in Sacramento, begin today and run through September 6th.

It's the birthday in 1960, Belfast, of novelist DEIDRE MADDEN, whose first book, Hidden Symptoms, came out in 1987 when she was still in her 20s and won Ireland's literary award, the Rooney Prize. The story is set in 1969 Belfast and is about Theresa, embittered by the death of her twin brother at the hands of Protestant terrorists.

It's the birthday in Englewood, New Jersey, 1958, of KEVIN BAKER, author of the historical novel Dreamland, which came out this spring, set in Coney Island and New York's Lower East Side 100 years ago, a book he describes as filled with "cigars, and oysters and roasting corn, shady characters and women of bad reputation." In 1993 Baker came out with the baseball novel, Sometimes You See It Coming.

It's the birthday in San Diego, 1948, of poet HEATHER McHUGH. Her 1994 collection, Hinge and Sign, was a finalist for the National Book Award.

It's the birthday in Tucson, Arizona, 1933, of children's author SUE ALEXANDER, best known for her 1983 book, Nadia the Willful.

In Philadelphia it is the birthday of JACQUELINE SUSANN, born in 1918. Susann's first novel, Valley of the Dolls, was one of the best-selling books of all time.

It's the birthday in 1913, Hartford, Connecticut, of ROGER SPERRY, winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work in brain research. Sperry was the first to show how the left and right hemispheres of the brain pass information back and forth; the left side is normally dominant in analytical and verbal work, the right in music and spatial tasks, and that the two communicate through the corpus callosum, a kind of cable with over 200 million nerve fibers.

On August 20, 1866, the newly organized National Labor Union meeting in Baltimore called on Congress to mandate an EIGHT-HOUR WORKDAY. The Union was a coalition of workers and farmers created to exert pressure on Congress to reduce the 10- to 12-hour workday. When Congress rejected the idea, the union failed and disbanded. The law wasn't passed until 1933.

Today is the birthday of EDGAR A. GUEST, born 1881 in Birmingham, England, though he came to the United States when he was 10. The line "it takes a heap o' livin' in a house t' make it home" is from one of his poems.

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
  • “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
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  • “Writing is my dharma.” —Raja Rao
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  • “I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.” —Michael Cunningham
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