Friday
Nov. 5, 1999
Poem: "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed" by Edna St. Vincent Millay from Selected Poems published by Harper Perennial.
It was on this day in 1872 that SUSAN B. ANTHONY was arrested in Rochester, New York after leading a group of women to the polls and demanding the right to vote. She was tried and convicted for violating the voting laws but refused to pay the fine.
It's the birthday in 1885 of philosopher and historian WILL DURANT, born in North Adams, Massachusetts, author with his wife Ariel of the 11-volume Story of Civilization. In 1913 Durant was teaching in New York City, and fell in love with Ariel, who was his student and 13 years younger than him. He resigned from teaching, married her, and a year later, in 1914, in a Presbyterian church in New York, he began giving lectures on history, literature, and philosophy. He kept the talks up twice a week for nearly 13 years, and they provided most of the material for his books.
It was on this day in 1930 that writer SINCLAIR LEWIS became the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, given for his novel Babbit, which begins: "His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-six years old now, in April, 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay." When Lewis got the call from Sweden telling him that he'd won the prize, he thought it was a hoax, and he started mimicking the caller's Swedish accent.
It's the birthday in Los Angeles, 1937, of writer GEOFFREY WOLFF, author of a half-dozen novels, but best known for his memoirs: Duke of Deception (1979), and A Day at the Beach (1992). When his parents separated, Geoffrey went to live with his father, a man who, after failing school and being rejected by the Army, created elaborate lies about his early yearsthat he'd been an R.A.F pilot and member of the British Secret Servicethen passed these stories off as real to his son. The Duke of Deception was nominated for the 1980 Pulitzer Prize.
It's the birthday in 1940, Mountmellick, Ireland, of novelist TOM PHELAN (FAY-lun). He was a parish priest in England for several years, then came to America and taught English, did some carpentry, worked as an insurance claims adjuster, got married and had childrenall before he started writing in his early 50s. His first novel, In the Season of the Daisies (1993), won several literary prizes back in Ireland; it's the story of Seanie Doolin, whose twin brother is murdered by the IRA in small-town Ireland, in 1921.
It's the birthday in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, 1943, of playwright and actor SAM SHEPARD, born Samuel Shepard Rogers. The son of a career Army officer, SHEPARD grew up on military bases around the country. The family finally settled in California, and he tried college for a year before taking off for New York to act in and write plays. He had his first successes in Off-Off-Broadway productions, writing a series of one-act plays like Chicago, Icarus's Mother and Red Cross. In the mid-'70s he became playwright-in-residence at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, and most of his plays have been premiered there. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980 for Buried Child.
It was on this day in 1994 that RONALD REAGAN addressed an open letter to the nation which read, in part: "I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. At the moment I feel just fine. I intend to live the remainder of the years God gives me on this earth doing the things I have always done. But I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright new dawn ahead."
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®