Friday

Dec. 31, 1999

A Red, Red Rose

by Robert Burns

Jabberwocky

by Lewis Carroll

Broadcast Date: FRIDAY: December 31, 1999

Poems: "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll and "My Love is Like a Red Red Rose" by Robert Burns.

Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians played "AULD LANG SYNE" as a New Year's Eve song for the first time on this night in 1929, at the Hotel Roosevelt Grill in New York City. We credit the 18th-century Scottish poet Robert Burns for writing the words, but Burns said he had simply heard an old man singing the words one day, "auld lang syne" and he wrote them down. They mean literally "old long since."

It's the anniversary of the famous 1967 ICE BOWL, the NFL championship game between the Green Bay Packers and the Dallas Cowboys. They played at Lambeau Field in Green Bay in a 40-below windchill, and the referees' whistles actually froze to their lips. Green Bay won, 21-17.

It's the birthday in 1933, Hollywood, of EDWARD BUNKER, who was sent to reform school when he was 10 years old and spent the next 27 years in and out of prison, charged with robbery, burglary, and selling drugs; at one time he was even on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list. Then in 1973 he came out with his first book, the novel No Beast So Fierce, the story of Max Dembo, a recently paroled thief who performs a jewel heist to make one big score that will get him out of the country. That started Bunker on his literary career, and he's followed up with several more gritty novels, like Little Boy Blue (1981) and Dog Eat Dog (1996).

It's the birthday in 1905, Arkansas City, Kansas, of poet FRANK MARSHALL DAVIS, who came to fame in 1935 with his first collection, Black Man's Verse.

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

 

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