The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor

It's the 80th birthday of writer Wendell Berry (books by this author), born near Port Royal, Kentucky (1934). He came from a long line of tobacco farmers who had farmed in the same place in rural Kentucky for generations . His father was a farmer and a lawyer, and his brother also went into law, but Berry said: "My father and my brother have very quick minds. I have a fairly slow one. I don't think I could have stood the pressure of a courtroom practice." Instead he went to the University of Kentucky and received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship to study creative writing at Stanford, where he was mentored by Stegner himself. Berry planned to move around teaching at various universities. He said of Port Royal: "My education had implied, over and again, that you couldn't amount to anything in a place like this. I grieved over that. I liked the work of the farms. I liked this country, this place. But, at Stanford, I thought I was at the commencement of some kind of an academic vagabondage that would carry me I didn't know where." He won a Guggenheim Fellowship and lived in Italy, then taught at New York University.

Then he got a job offer to teach at the University of Kentucky — and although Berry never knew for sure, he thought the offer had been arranged by Wallace Stegner. Berry and his wife decided to move back to Kentucky, even though all his literary friends thought he was ruining his career by leaving New York City. He bought a farm in the Kentucky River Valley, near where he grew up. It had limestone soils, and sloped fields held in place by oaks, ash, hickory, and sycamore. He and his wife raised sheep, hay, and small grains. He said: "Port Royal is what a lot of people have been schooled to call 'nowhere.' [...] It's extremely important, it seems to me, that those nowhere places should be inhabited by people who will speak for them."

He began writing about Kentucky in poems, essays, stories, and novels. His first novel, Nathan Coulter (1960), was set in Port William, a fictional version of Port Royal. Over the years, he continued to write about Port William, using the same characters, re-creating the voices of the people around him. He said: "I always loved to listen to the old people, and I heard a lot of talk. At least until the 1980s, I was working in the fields a lot with people whose language had not been the least bit touched by the media. They spoke a beautiful language, direct and strongly referential, as far as possible from 'pure poetry.' I grew up around people who would entertain themselves by talking. There'd be a crew at work and something remarkable would happen, and they would start telling about it as soon as it was over. Three or four would each tell a different version of it, and they'd be trying to get the language right."

In 2011, Berry protested mountaintop removal by participating in a three-day sit-in in the Kentucky governor's office. He was prepared to be arrested, but the governor didn't want any pictures circulating of the famous writer in handcuffs. A couple of weeks later, Berry received the National Humanities Medal. Berry didn't mention mountaintop removal to President Obama because he didn't want to be rude, but he thought about the possibility of protesting in the future. He said, "I did examine the rugs in the White House to see how comfortable they'd be to sleep on."

His books include The Unsettling of America (1977), Jayber Crow (2000), Hannah Coulter (2004), and The Mad Farmer Poems (2008).

He said: "I never felt like I had to write in order to be happy. It has given me great freedom as a writer."

And: "I've known writers — I think it's true also of other artists — who thought that you had to put your art before everything. But if you have a marriage and a family and a farm, you're just going to find that you can't always put your art first, and moreover that you shouldn't. There are a number of things more important than your art. It's wrong to favor it over your family, or over your place, or over your animals."

It's the birthday of Guy de Maupassant (books by this author), born in Normandy (1850), one of the great French short-story writers. He became an apprentice of Gustave Flaubert, who used to invite him to lunch on Sundays, lecture him on prose style, and correct his early work. Flaubert also introduced him to some of the leading writers of the time, like Émile Zola, Ivan Turgenev, and Henry James. Flaubert said, "He's my disciple and I love him like a son." Maupassant began publishing his first stories a few weeks before Flaubert's death. In just 10 years, between 1880 and 1890, he wrote most of the work for which he is remembered, including 300 stories and five novels.

He wrote, "A sick thought can devour the body's flesh more than fever or consumption."

And he wrote, "Great minds that are healthy are never considered geniuses, while this sublime qualification is lavished on brains that are often inferior but are slightly touched by madness."

It's the birthday of the naturalist, scientist, and writer Miriam Rothschild (books by this author), born near Peterborough, England (1908). She stumbled onto the natural sciences when she was a teenager and her brother and she dissected a frog. She said: "I had never before seen fresh, internal organs, blood vessels, and nerves. Their extreme beauty was a revelation, my road to Damascus." She went on to make important discoveries in marine biology, chemistry, horticulture, and zoology, but is best known now as the world's leading expert on fleas.

It's the birthday of Conrad Aiken (books by this author), born in Savannah, Georgia (1889). His parents were wealthy New Englanders who had moved south for his father's medical practice. When Conrad was 12, with no warning or explanation, his father became increasingly emotionally unstable and violent. He woke one morning to the sound of gunshots and discovered the bodies of his parents — his father had shot his mother before turning the gun on himself. Aiken went to live with an aunt in Massachusetts, where he attended private New England schools before entering Harvard. He started writing a poem a day, always changing the form, paying little attention to the content. He met T.S. Eliot through the literary magazine and the two developed a lifelong friendship, bonding over literature, drinking, and Krazy Kat comics.

In 1952, Aiken published his autobiography, Ushant, all about the trauma of his childhood and his own attempt at suicide, his affairs, and many literary friendships. Toward the end of his life, he returned to his hometown of Savannah to live until his death in 1973 at the age of 84.

Conrad Aiken wrote:
"All lovely things will have an ending,
All lovely things will fade and die,
And youth, that's now so bravely spending,
Will beg a penny by and by."

Today in 1884, the cornerstone of the Statue of Liberty's pedestal was laid. It was largely funded by an auction of contributed art and literary works. Emma Lazarus, 34 years old at the time, donated a poem for the occasion, which she titled "The New Colossus."

Lazarus was devoted to the plight of Jewish immigrants, and she imagined that the statue would become a symbol of hope for all Ellis Island arrivals. The poem was forgotten for nearly 20 years, after which Lazarus' friends lobbied to have it emblazoned on a plaque and hung in the museum inside the pedestal. From there, it went on to define not just the monument but also the country's immigration policy. The poem ends in the voice of the lady of the harbor:

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"