Wednesday

Apr. 5, 2000

Her Door

by Mary Leader

Broadcast Date: WEDNESDAY: April 5, 2000

Poem: "Her Door," by Mary Leader, from Red Signature (Graywolf Press).

It was on this day in 1793 that George Washington approved plans for public buildings and roads in the new American capital city—WASHINGTON D.C.

It's the birthday today of British poets ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE, born in London 1837. At Oxford in the 1850s, he was part of a circle of writer's and artists that included William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, and Dante Gabriel Rosetti, known collectively as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was infamous in his day for writing shocking hedonistic poetry celebrating the pleasures of the flesh, such as can be found in his collection Poems and Ballads (1866).

It's the wedding anniversary of Indian Princess POCAHONTAS , and the English Tobacco grower, JOHN ROLFE, wed in 1614 near Jamestown, Virginia. Pocahontas was about 19 years old and already had been serving several years as a go-between for the Indians and the new white settlers in the James River area. Rolfe was 29 and had come from England four years earlier and made a name for himself developing the strain of tobacco that became Virginia's staple crop.

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

 

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