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Virginia Combs
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Dec 4, 2019
December 4th, Wednesday | Hiatus Week: The Walrus and the Carpenter
The date is December 4th, Wednesday, and today I’m traveling from Auckland, New Zealand to Los Angeles, California and then Los Angeles, CA to Portland, OR. Phew.
This week I’ll be on hiatus, check out Monday’s episode, December 2nd for the whole scoop!
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Lewis Carroll
The sun was shining on the sea,
Shining with all his might:
He did his very best to make
The billows smooth and bright—
And this was odd, because it was
The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily,
Because she thought the sun
Had got no business to be there
After the day was done—
"It's very rude of him," she said,
"To come and spoil the fun!"
The sea was wet as wet could be,
The sands were dry as dry.
You could not see a cloud because
No cloud was in the sky:
No birds were flying overhead—
There were no birds to fly.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand:
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
"If this were only cleared away,"
They said, "it would be grand!"
"If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose," the Walrus said,
"That they could get it clear?"
"I doubt it," said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
"0 Oysters, come and walk with us!"
The Walrus did beseech.
"A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
Along the briny beach:
We cannot do with more than four,
To give a hand to each."
The eldest Oyster looked at him,
But never a word he said;
The eldest Oyster winked his eye,
And shook his heavy head—
Meaning to say he did not choose
To leave the oyster-bed.
But four young Oysters hurried up,
All eager for the treat:
Their coats were brushed, their faces washed,
Their shoes were clean and neat—
And this was odd, because, you know,
They hadn't any feet.
Four other Oysters followed them,
And yet another four;
And thick and fast they came at last,
And more and more and more—
All hopping through the frothy waves,
And scrambling to the shore.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Walked on a mile or so,
And then they rested on a rock
Conveniently low:
And all the little Oysters stood
And waited in a row.
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings."
"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried,
"Before we have our chat;
For some of us are out of breath,
And all of us are fat!"
"No hurry!" said the Carpenter.
They thanked him much for that.
"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said,
"Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides
Are very good indeed—
Now, if you're ready, Oysters dear,
We can begin to feed."
"But not on us!" the Oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
"After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
"The night is fine," the Walrus said,
"Do you admire the view?
"It was so kind of you to come!
And you are very nice!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"Cut us another slice.
I wish you were not quite so deaf—
I've had to ask you twice!"
"It seems a shame," the Walrus said,
"To play them such a trick.
After we've brought them out so far,
And made them trot so quick!"
The Carpenter said nothing but
"The butter's spread too thick!"
"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.
"O, Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?"
But answer came there none—
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.
Thank you for listening. I’m your host, Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening.
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Dec 3, 2019
December 3rd, Tuesday | Hiatus Week: Legend of the Indian Summer
Hiatus Week Day 2: A belated autumnal poem to explain the Indian Summer phenomenon.
The date is December 3rd, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Auckland, New Zealand.
This week I’ll be on hiatus, check out Monday’s episode, December 2nd for the whole scoop!
Legend of The Indian Summer
Kate Harrington
I have learned a simple legend,
Never found in books of lore,
Copied not from old tradition,
Nor from classics read of yore ;
But the breezes sang it to me
With a low and soft refrain,
While the golden leaves and scarlet
Fluttered down to catch the strain.
And the grand old trees above me,
As their stately branches swayed,
Threw across my couch of crimson
More of sunlight than of shade.
I had lain there dreaming, musing
On the summer's vanished bloom,
Wondering if each penciled leaflet
Did not mark some flow'ret's tomb ;
Thinking how each tree could tell me
Many a tale of warrior's fame;
Gazing at the sky, and asking
How the ''Indian Summer' came.
Then methought a whispered cadence
Stole from out the haunted trees,
While the leaves kept dropping, dropping,
To the music of the breeze.
“I will tell thee,” said the whisper,
“What I've learned from Nature's book;
For the sunbeams wrote this legend
On the margin of a brook.
“'Tis about an Indian maiden,
She the star-flower of her race,
With a heart whose soft emotions
Rippled through her soul-lit face.
“All her tribe did homage to her,
For her father was their chief;
He was stern, and she forgiving,—
He brought pain, and she relief.
“And they called him 'Indian Winter,'
All his actions were so cold ;
Her they named the 'Indian Summer,'
For she seemed a thread of gold
“Flashing through her native forest,
Beaming in the wigwam lone,
Singing to the birds, her playmates,
Till they warbled back her tone.
“When the summer days were ended,
And the chilling months drew near,
When the clouds hung, dull and leaden,
And the leaves fell, brown and sere,
“Brought they to the chieftain's presence
One, a ‘pale-face,’ young and brave,
But whom youth nor manly valor
Could from savage vengeance save.
“‘Bring him forth!’ in tones of thunder
Thus the 'Indian Winter' cried,
While the gentle ' Indian Summer'
Softly flitted to his side.
'When the tomahawk was lifted,
And the scalping-knife gleamed high,
Pride, revenge, and bloody hatred
Glared within the warrior's eye;
'And the frown upon his forehead
Darker, deeper, sterner grew ;
While the lowering clouds above them
Hid the face of heaven from view.
''Spare him ! oh, my father, spare him!'
Friend and foe were thrust apart,
While the golden thread of sunlight
Twined around the red man's heart.
'And her eye was full of pity,
And her voice was full of love,
As she told him of the wigwam
On the hunting-ground above,
'Where great Manito was talking,—
She could hear him in the breeze ;
How he called the ' pale-face' brother—
Smoked with him the pipe of peace.
'Then the warrior's heart relented,
And the glittering weapon fell:
For the maiden's sake,' he muttered,
'Thou art pardoned,— fare thee well!'
' And the sun, that would have slumbered
Till the spring-time came again,
Earthward from his garnered brightness
Threw a flood of golden rain;
'And the 'Indian Summer' saw it,
She, the gentle forest child ;
And to ' Indian Winter' whispered,
See how Manito has smiled !'
'All the tribe received the omen,
And they called it by her name:
Indian Summer, Indian Summer,
It will ever be the same.
'Though the ' pale-face' gave another
To the lovely maid he won,
Nature still receives her tribute
From the wigwam of the sun.
' Here, alone, this shining symbol
Gilds the streamlet, warms the sod,
For no Indian Summer cometh
Save where Indian feet have trod.'
Thank you for listening. I’m your host, Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening.
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Dec 2, 2019
December 2nd, Monday | Hiatus Week: The Courtship of Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo
The date is December 2nd, Monday, and today I’m traveling from Port Vila, Vanuatu to Auckland, New Zealand.
This week I’ll be on hiatus, which may sound ridiculous considering the number of episodes I have to catch up on, but if you then consider that each episode takes me about 3 hours from research to writing to publication, I need time, that with working, I don’t always have.
So this hiatus week will be a recurring thing I do to help me stay on top of episodes while I figure out how to produce them faster (!). And each week I’ll share some content I couldn’t otherwise share on here. This week I’ll be sharing poems that I think are quite delightful and quirky but that would otherwise be too long for a regular episode. Future hiatus weeks may be something different! Stayed tuned.
So without further ado….
The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo
Edward Lear
On the Coast of Coromandel
Where the early pumpkins blow,
In the middle of the woods
Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
Two old chairs, and half a candle,
One old jug without a handle--
These were all his worldly goods,
In the middle of the woods,
These were all his worldly goods,
Of the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Of the Yonghy-Bonghy Bo.
Once, among the Bong-trees walking
Where the early pumpkins blow,
To a little heap of stones
Came the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
There he heard a Lady talking,
To some milk-white Hens of Dorking--
"'Tis the Lady Jingly Jones!
On that little heap of stones
Sits the Lady Jingly Jones!"
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
"Lady Jingly! Lady Jingly!
Sitting where the pumpkins blow,
Will you come and be my wife?"
Said the Yongby-Bonghy-Bo.
"I am tired of living singly--
On this coast so wild and shingly--
I'm a-weary of my life;
If you'll come and be my wife,
Quite serene would be my life!"
Said the Yonghy-Bongby-Bo,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
"On this Coast of Coromandel
Shrimps and watercresses grow,
Prawns are plentiful and cheap,"
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
"You shall have my chairs and candle,
And my jug without a handle!
Gaze upon the rolling deep
(Fish is plentiful and cheap);
As the sea, my love is deep!"
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
Lady Jingly answered sadly,
And her tears began to flow--
"Your proposal comes too late,
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
I would be your wife most gladly!"
(Here she twirled her fingers madly)
"But in England I've a mate!
Yes! you've asked me far too late,
For in England I've a mate,
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
Mr. Yongby-Bonghy-Bo!
"Mr. Jones (his name is Handel--
Handel Jones, Esquire, & Co.)
Dorking fowls delights to send
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
Keep, oh, keep your chairs and candle,
And your jug without a handle--
I can merely be your friend!
Should my Jones more Dorkings send,
I will give you three, my friend!
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
"Though you've such a tiny body,
And your head so large doth grow--
Though your hat may blow away
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
Though you're such a Hoddy Doddy,
Yet I wish that I could modi-
fy the words I needs must say!
will you please to go away
That is all I have to say,
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!
Mr. Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!"
Down the slippery slopes of Myrtle,
Where the early pumpkins blow,
To the calm and silent sea
Fled the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
There, beyond the Bay of Gurtle,
Lay a large and lively Turtle.
"You're the Cove," he said, "for me;
On your back beyond the sea,
Turtle, you shall carry me!"
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
Through the silent-roaring ocean
Did the Turtle swiftly go;
Holding fast upon his shell
Rode the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
With a sad primeval motion
Towards the sunset isles of Boshen
Still the Turtle bore him well.
Holding fast upon his shell,
"Lady Jingly Jones, farewell!"
Sang the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
Sang the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
From the Coast of Coromandel
Did that Lady never go;
On that heap of stones she mourns
For the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
On that Coast of Coromandel,
In his jug without a handle
Still she weeps, and daily moans;
On that little heap of stones
To her Dorking Hens she moans,
For the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo,
For the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo.
Thank you for listening. I’m your host, Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening.
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Nov 29, 2019
November 29th, Friday | Mom and Baby Barack
The date is November 29th, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu.
And today is the birthday of Louisa May Alcott, American writer.
Louisa May was born to a small family in 1832 in what is now Philadelphia, PA. They didn’t stay long there. The family would move to Boston shortly following Dad’s dream of founding a Transcendentalist school. The family would move 22 times in 30 years, mostly in and around New England.
While Alcott’s father was a man of high-minded ideals, he was not a man of high income. From a young age Louisa May had to work to supplement the family’s income. She, her mother and sisters worked in a variety of domestic roles from governesses to seamstresses.
Her father’s transcendentalist ideas did allow him to circulate with the likes of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson and meant he placed a strong emphasis on reading and philosophy. At one point the family corresponded with Frederick Douglass while a housing a fugitive slave as part of the Underground Railroad.
At age 27, Alcott began more seriously, a writing career. She started writing for The Atlantic Monthly, and, after a spell as a nurse in the Civil War— Alcott was a passionate abolitionist— and then as a patient from becoming deathly ill, her writing career took off. She published Hospital Sketches and Moods, both of which were well received for their humor and candor. She took on the pen name A. M. Barnard to publish more adventure-driven stories.
When Alcott’s classic Little Women first appeared in 1868, Alcott was skeptical it would be reviewed favorably—perhaps because she was concerned at how close it was to an autobiography. But it did well enough to have three sequels which followed the “little women” from adolescence to adulthood with their own kids: Good Wives, Little Men, and Jo’s Boys.
One of Alcotts childhood homes in Massachusetts is now a museum dedicated to the Alcott family legacy, and Lousia May Alcott was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame 1996.
Today is the birthday of Ann Dunham, American anthropologist.
Dunham was born in Kansas, but became an island girl when she followed her parents in moving to Hawaii. While a student at the new University of Hawaii at Mānoa, Dunham met an intelligent, independent man from Kenya named Barack Obama. The two, Dunham 18 and Obama 23, fell for each other and married, against the wishes of their parents, despite the fact that Ann Dunham Obama was already 3 months pregnant.
Dunham-Obama gave birth to Barack Obama II in August 1961 and was in classes the next semester, this time at the University of Washington in Seattle. Obama, Sr remained in Hawaii working in his original course of study. He departed for Harvard not long after that, Dunham raising little Obama in Hawaii with the help of her parents. Little did she know that her bundle of joy, who she would sometimes take with her to classes, would one day become that Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States.
In addition to being a mother, Ann Dunham was an anthropologist who found her calling studying and aiding women of Indonesia. She lived in Jakarta with her second husband and 6-year-old Barack for a number of years before returning to Hawaii to begin work on a PhD, partially funded by a grant from The Asia Foundation. She would return again to Indonesia many times, a champion for women in rural communities and starting one of the early microcredit programs in Indonesia.
Lullaby
Louisa May Alcott
Now the day is done,
Now the shepherd sun
Drives his white flocks from the sky;
Now the flowers rest
On their mother's breast,
Hushed by her low lullaby.
Now the glowworms glance,
Now the fireflies dance,
Under fern-boughs green and high;
And the western breeze
To the forest trees
Chants a tuneful lullaby.
Now 'mid shadows deep
Falls blessed sleep,
Like dew from the summer sky;
And the whole earth dreams,
In the moon's soft beams,
While night breathes a lullaby.
Now, birdlings, rest,
In your wind-rocked nest,
Unscared by the owl's shrill cry;
For with folded wings
Little Brier swings,
And singeth your lullaby.
Thank you for listening. I’m your host, Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely weekend.
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Nov 28, 2019
November 28th, Thursday | A Thanksgiving Poem
View this episode on our website.
The date is November 28th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu.
Today is Thanksgiving in America. It is a time for families and friends gather together to share a meal and spend the day reflecting on all the wonderful things, tangible and intangible, that have come our way over the past year.
So today I will just share a poem :)
Thanksgiving
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
We walk on starry fields of white
And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
We rarely offer praises.
We sigh for some supreme delight
To crown our lives with splendor,
And quite ignore our daily store
Of pleasures sweet and tender.
Our cares are bold and push their way
Upon our thought and feeling.
They hand about us all the day,
Our time from pleasure stealing.
So unobtrusive many a joy
We pass by and forget it,
But worry strives to own our lives,
And conquers if we let it.
There’s not a day in all the year
But holds some hidden pleasure,
And looking back, joys oft appear
To brim the past’s wide measure.
But blessings are like friends, I hold,
Who love and labor near us.
We ought to raise our notes of praise
While living hearts can hear us.
Full many a blessing wears the guise
Of worry or of trouble;
Far-seeing is the soul, and wise,
Who knows the mask is double.
But he who has the faith and strength
To thank his God for sorrow
Has found a joy without alloy
To gladden every morrow.
We ought to make the moments notes
Of happy, glad Thanksgiving;
The hours and days a silent phrase
Of music we are living.
And so the theme should swell and grow
As weeks and months pass o’er us,
And rise sublime at this good time,
A grand Thanksgiving chorus.
Thank you for listening. I’m your host Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely Thanksgiving.
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Nov 27, 2019
November 27th, Wednesday | Fanny Kemble stirs up trouble
Check out this episode on our website.
The date is November 27th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu.
Today is the birthday of Fanny Kemble, British actress and writer.
Fanny was born to an acting dynasty in 1809 and as such received her education in Paris in music and theater as a child, branching out to study literature and poetry in her teen years.
She returned to London and set to work writing her own plays while performing in nearly all of Shakespeare’s classics on London stages, quickly becoming a favorite for her charm and good looks as well as her talent as a playwright. Although acting wasn’t her favorite, she was obviously talented, and it brought in a salary that she couldn’t refuse.
While on an acting tour in America she met and fell in love with Pierce Butler. The couple lived in Philadelphia and had two daughters. But the marriage would not end well. Butler inherited massive plantations in the South from his grandfather not long into the marriage. Butler would travel South to oversee the plantations, leaving Fanny and the girls behind, perhaps already aware of Fanny’s abolitionist sentiments. Begrudgingly Butler took the whole family to Georgia in the winter of 1838, where Fanny was appalled to see the reality of slavery. The marriage quickly devolved, Butler growing abusive after being confronted with his own sins and a few cases of obvious infidelity.
Kemble was finally able to separate from Butler in 1847. She made a living by turning to her writing and performing again at the theater circuits in America. She was forbidden to see her daughters who were in the care of their father.
No longer under the control and abuse of her husband, Kemble wholeheartedly took up the abolitionist cause, publishing, most famously, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839, about, of course, that fateful winter she spent in Georgia on her husband’s plantations. The text was taken up by abolitionist circuits as more ammo for their cause.
She wrote a few additional plays, over ten memoirs regarding different times of her life, a collection of poetry, and translations of French plays. She returned to London, following a daughter who had married a British man. She passed away in 1893 at the age of 84.
And today is the birthday of Bruce Lee, Chinese- American actor and martial artist.
Bruce Lee was born in San Francisco, the son of a well-known Opera singer and heiress, though he spent his childhood in Hong Kong. After getting in an increasing number of street fights, some with persons in organized crime, his parents feared for his safety, though, he seemed to be winning a large number of the fights, thanks to his martial arts training. His parents sent him to America to finish his education.
A few years into studies at the University of Washington in Seattle, Lee moved to Oakland where he opened his second martial arts studio with a buddy, and opened its doors to all people, much to the chagrin of other Chinese residents. Becoming a prominent figure in the booming Bay Area, Lee began to venture into a more public sphere with live fights, and he landed a role in the 1966 television series The Green Hornet. Lee had studied drama during his time at University and had a good amount of experience from acting roles as a child and teen in Hong Kong.
Bruce Lee is credited with elevating the image of Asians in America through his roles and public persona. He starred in eight feature films and either starred or was a guest in eight television series. Bruce Lee passed away unexpectedly at the age of 33 from a swollen brain, deemed to be the cause of a bad combination of painkillers. His legacy as the first big Asian American actor lives on.
A Wish
Fanny Kemble
Let me not die for ever when I’m laid
In the cold earth! but let my memory
Live still among ye, like the evening shade,
That o’er the sinking day steals placidly.
Let me not be forgotten! though the knell
Has tolled for me its solemn lullaby;
Let me not be forgotten! though I dwell
For ever now in death’s obscurity.
Yet oh! upon the emblazoned leaf of fame,
Trace not a record, not a line for me,
But let the lips I loved oft breathe my name,
And in your hearts enshrine my memory!
Thank you for listening. I’m your host Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening.
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Nov 26, 2019
November 26th, Tuesday | Peanuts Creator was no Pauper!
Check out this episode on our website.
Charles Schulz basically made a killing with Peanuts! A fiercely independent American surgeon shares a birthday with the cartoonist. Poem by Lewis Carroll.
The date is November 26th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu.
Today is the birthday of Charles M. Schulz, American cartoonist.
Charles Schulz had been working on his Li’l Folks cartoon for a few years before Peanuts evolved from it. Li’l Folks started out as a mostly one-panel comic and was featured in the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper for about three years before they cut ties. During that time Schulz did a few one-panel comics for The Saturday Evening Post.
With that credit and his experience at his local paper, he was able to strike a deal with United Feature Syndicate, a comic syndicating company. Under the new name Peanuts, Schulz comic was first published in 7 newspapers on October 2nd, 1950. It took a bit to catch on, but by the 1960s, Peanuts was a hit and had its first animated performance in a Christmas special titled “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” “A Charlie Brown Christmas” is still shown on NBC in December. After its premiere in 1965 it won an Emmy and a Peabody Award.
In all Schulz wrote over 17,500 strips, rarely taking off even a single day. The merchandising of Peanuts became a source of intense wealth for Schulz, so that he was bringing in about $30 million annually from product sales, licensing, and endorsement deals. When the ice skating rink near his home in California shut down, he and his wife bought it and kept it going.
Not keen on the business side of things, Schulz kept his focus on creating, hiring others to manage contracts and monetary affairs. In 1997, Schulz took a mandatory five weeks off for his 75th birthday - it was the only time during his life that Peanuts comics were “re-run.”
Schulz was honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame as well as a Congressional Gold Medal and various additional awards from the cartoon and comic community. He passed away in February 2000.
And today is the birthday of Mary Edwards Walker, American surgeon and activist.
Mary Walker was a force to be reckoned with. Born in 1832 to a large family, Mary’s parents instilled in her a fierce independence and encouraged her to continually question gender and societal norms. In keeping with her family’s belief in equality and curiosity, Mary’s parents made sure their six girls and one boy received equal education. Since there were very few schools nearby, the Walkers started their own.
Mary quickly gained a fascination with medicine after discovering a number of anatomy and physiology textbooks in her father’s possession. She attended Syracuse Medical School, paying her own way after saving up from working as a teacher. She was the only woman to graduate in the class of 1855.
At the onset of the Civil War, Walker offered her skills as a surgeon to the US Army. Concerned that she was a woman, they declined, but offer her a position as a nurse, which Walker promptly rejected. Walker joined a civilian volunteer group as a surgeon instead.
During the American Civil War, Walker was famously captured as she crossed enemy lines to treat wounded soldiers on the battlefield. She wore men’s clothing as was her mode of late, finding them easier to move around in and perform tasks in. From an early age her mother and father had endorsed wearing clothes that were functional, rather than gendered. Her mother had ranted to her children about the restrictiveness of corsets as well as the physical strain they put on the body.
As a prisoner of war, she helped a confederate surgeon with an amputation before being sent to Castle Thunder. She was part of a prisoner exchange in 1864, just under a year before the war’s end.
For her heroism she received a Medal of Honor after the war. She remains the only woman to receive the honor, which is the highest and most prestigious military decoration.
Acrostic
Lewis Carroll
Little maidens, when you look
On this little story-book,
Reading with attentive eye
Its enticing history,
Never think that hours of play
Are your only HOLIDAY,
And that in a HOUSE of joy
Lessons serve but to annoy:
If in any HOUSE you find
Children of a gentle mind,
Each the others pleasing ever—
Each the others vexing never—
Daily work and pastime daily
In their order taking gaily—
Then be very sure that they
Have a life of HOLIDAY.
Thank you for listening. I’m your host Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening.
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Nov 25, 2019
November 25th, Monday | A Million Dollar Lady
Check out the show's website.
The date is November 25th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu.
On this day in 1947, Hollywood studios in Los Angeles California instituted the first blacklist. Ten writers and directors under suspicion of communist sympathies were all fired from their respective posts and movie and TV studios were instructed not to hire them. The Hollywood Ten as they are known were requested to testify in front of the House of Un-American Activities. On the whole, the Ten believed the entire situation to be a witch-hunt by paranoid John McCarthy followers. Their “trial” was a clear demonstration of power on the part of the US Government, though the ordeal is rather hypocritical in light of first amendment rights which protect freedom of speech, including artistic expression.
The practice of blacklisting artists - including actors - continued into the 1960s.
And on this day in 1975, Suriname gained its independence from the Netherlands.
Suriname is located on the northern coast of South America and is the smallest country by land mass on the continent. Its population is an estimated 580,000 with the majority of people living in the northern half of the country. The climate is tropical and the plant life is lush, so it’s perhaps no wonder that European trading companies immediately set to work developing plantations and creating an agrarian economy.
Suriname unfortunately, then became a center of slave exploitation. Primarily controlled by the Netherlands, slaves were shipped in from Africa, the East Indies, and India. To this day, Suriname is one of the most ethnically diverse countries.
Suriname has struggled with corruption in government for decades although high literacy rates are a sign of improvement. Democracy was restored in the early 2000s, though current president Dési Bouterse has a questionable history, involving military dictatorship in the 1980s. The next elections in Suriname will be held in 2020.
Tourism is indeed a part of the Suriname economy. The country is home to an extraordinary set of flora and fauna, as well as natural beauty like towering waterfalls, thanks to encompassing part of the Amazon rainforest. The interior of the country is said to be a birdwatcher's paradise.
And today is the birthday of Kate Gleason, American businesswoman, engineer, and philanthropist.
Kate Gleason was just shy of 12 when her father began training her as his assistant. Her step-brother had tragically died of typhoid fever leaving a void in her father’s heart as well as his gear-making company. Kate stayed by his side at the company, Gleason Works, for nearly 7 years, leaving at age 18 to enrolled at Cornell University’s engineering school, one of the first women to do so.
Gleason was soon back by her father’s side though. She had become an integral part of management and development and Gleason Works didn’t last more than a semester without her. Kate Gleason went back to work and enrolled at the nearby Mechanics Institute, today Rochester Institute of Technology.
Gleason took on increasing responsibility in the company and even ventured overseas to make sales in Europe, making Gleason Works one of the first American manufacturing companies to expand globally.
Gleason left Gleason Works at age 47 and began to explore other fields. She got into construction and took on various building projects, in Rochester, South Carolina, and California.
When she passed away in 1933, she left the majority of her $1.4 million estate (about $27 million in today’s dollars) to institutions in and around Rochester, NY, including her alma mater the Rochester Institute of Technology and the main Rochester Public Library. In turn RIT named their engineering departments the Kate Gleason College of Engineering and the Library’s main auditorium also bears her name.
The Cherry Trees
Edward Thomas
The cherry trees bend over and are shedding
On the old road where all that passed are dead,
Their petals, strewing the grass as for a wedding
This early May morn when there is none to wed.
Thank you for listening. I’m your host Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening.
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Nov 22, 2019
November 22nd, Friday | The Real George Eliot Lived in Sin
Check out today's episode on our website.
The date is November 22nd, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu.
On this day in 1995, Toy Story premiered in theaters.
Toy Story was the first feature-length film created completely using computer-generated imagery. It took around 5 years and $30 million to make. It was a worthy investment as Toy Story grossed nearly $380 million at the box office worldwide, was nominated for three Academy Awards and two Golden Globes, and launched a franchise of related merchandise, video games, and sequels. The most recent sequel, Toy Story 4, came out in June 2019 and grossed $1 billion at the box office.
And today is the birthday of George Eliot, English writer.
Of course many listeners will know that George Eliot is a pen name - the writer’s true identity was Mary Ann Evans.
As a young child, Mary Ann Evans was declared unpretty. She did possess obvious smarts though, and so her father sent her to a boarding school in the hopes that she could develop her brains to make up for her lack of beauty. The amount of formal schooling she received was unusual for a country girl in the first half of the 1800s.
George Eliot returned from school around 16 to take care of the home after her mother’s death. She continued reading voraciously and corresponded via letters with her former teacher.
Still unmarried at age 21, George Eliot followed her father in his move to a town near the larger-sized Coventry, where she became friends with a well-connected couple, and started to mix with the intelligentsia of the town. When Eliot’s father passed away in 1849, it was if she was newly liberated.
Eliot subsequently took a trip to mainland Europe with close friends of her and stayed in Geneva for a spell. Upon her return to England she relocated to London, taking up a position as an editor at a couple literary magazines as she continued to write on her own. While an editor she made up her mind to write novels, perhaps to fill a hole in what she saw as “Silly Novels by Lady Novelists.”
Partly to keep her writing career separate from her editing career, and also to escape public scrutiny, Mary Ann Evans published all her novels as George Eliot. At the time, Eliot was living with a married man, and polite society disapproved of the arrangement, despite Eliot’s partner being in an open relationship.
Mary Ann Evans was forced to admit that it was she who was truly George Eliot after other writers began claiming they were George Eliot. Fortunately, Eliot’s books had already become beloved by the public and Mary Ann carried on living with her partner without harm to her book sales.
Eliot’s most notable novels include Adam Bede, The Mill on Floss, and Middlemarch. Middlemarch in particular stands out among her works - it is the novel most often adapted to TV and film and although scholarly opinions remain mixed, Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf were personal fans of the novel. Emily Dickinson once said in a letter to her cousin: “What do I think of Middlemarch? What do I think of glory?”
Count that Day Lost
George Eliot
If you sit down at set of sun
And count the acts that you have done,
And, counting, find
One self-denying deed, one word
That eased the heart of him who heard,
One glance most kind
That fell like sunshine where it went --
Then you may count that day well spent.
But if, through all the livelong day,
You've cheered no heart, by yea or nay --
If, through it all
You've nothing done that you can trace
That brought the sunshine to one face--
No act most small
That helped some soul and nothing cost --
Then count that day as worse than lost.
Thank you for listening. I’m your host Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely weekend.
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Nov 21, 2019
November 21st, Thursday | "Un Petit Volontaire"
Don't forget to check out our website!
The date is November 21st, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu.
Today is the birthday of Catharina Questiers, Dutch writer.
Catharina was born in 1631 in Amsterdam where she lived her whole life. She focused her efforts on plays and poetry and is speculated to be the youngest person to write Dutch plays and have them professionally produced.
Catharina Questiers gained public noteriety when her play, based on the structure of the popular Spanish romances, premiered starring the alluring Ariana Nozeman, a top-billed actress. Sold out performances and positive reviews solidified Questiers as a playwright to watch.
Questiers amassed a substantial amount of wealth in her lifetime. She didn’t marry until age 34 which was strange for the time. She claimed to have put off marriage because she enjoyed her freedom so much. Questiers also knew that once she were married she would have to give up any paid work, which she did after marrying Johan Cough in 1664. Her last play was The Battle for Laurels.
And today is the birthday of Voltaire, French philosopher, writer, and historian.
Voltaire was born Francois-Marie Arouet in 1694 in Paris to an upper-middle-class family. His parents hoped he would grow up to become a lawyer or at least have a steady career in government. But the independent-minded youngin wished to become a writer instead.
However, young Voltaire did still have to make money and so he worked some jobs set up by his father. He wrote essays, histories, and poetry, developing a quick wit which made him a popular among the socialites in Paris.
Naturally, his independent spirit and penchant for satire got him in trouble along the way. He went to jail or was exiled to England a few times in response to unflattering depictions of the Regent and the Church - though the French Regent would later honor Voltaire for his writings.
Voltaire adopted the name “Voltaire” in 1718 after one of his spells in jail. His last name “Arouet” unfortunately was very similar to the French word for getting beaten up - an easy target for puns and highly unglamorous. As a child, Voltaire’s sister had often called him “un petit volontaire” or “a determined little thing.” Voltaire is also an anagram for the Latin-ized form of the French name “Arouet” - the anagram theory is supported by scholars. In any case, it certainly made him stand out even more among his contemporaries.
Voltaire’s exile to England proved rather productive as he mixed with the best the literary community had to offer. Returning to France, he was able to finally sort out his shabby financial situation and receive money his father had tied up in a trust for him. With that, Voltaire could devote himself entirely to writing, without having to worry about money - must’ve been nice.
Voltaire lived to the ripe old age of 83 - quite a feat in the 18th century. He is one of the most beloved French writers, countless writers, scholars, and politicians of his time and after cite Voltaire’s works as instrumental in forming their own philosophies.
Famous quotations attributed to Voltaire include:
* “Best is the enemy of good.”
* “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.”
* “The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.” And
* “Common sense is not so common.”
birth-day
Lucille Clifton
If you like this poem, check out the collected works of Lucille Clifton, a modern American poet.
Thank you for listening. I’m your host Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening.
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Nov 20, 2019
November 20th, Wednesday | Selma Lagerlöf wins it all
The date is November 20th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu.
Today’s episode is brought to you by the generous, the warm-hearted, the green-thumbed Candy P. or Oregon.
Today is the birthday of Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish writer.
Lagerlöf was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature, receiving the award in 1909 at the age of 51 “in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings.”
Lagerlöf was quiet and contemplative as a child, busying herself with books in between private tutoring sessions with her siblings and listening enraptured by her grandmother's telling of fairy and folk tales. She finished reading her first novel at age seven and by age ten had read the Bible cover to cover.
She received an education to become a teacher and for a few years in the 1880s, she gladly regaled her students with stories during all possible lessons. She worked on her first novel in her sp…
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Nov 19, 2019
November 19th, Tuesday | Hiram Bingham's Big (re)Discovery
The date is November 19th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu.
Today is the birthday of Hiram Bingham III, American professor and explorer.
Born in Hawaii to arguably successful missionaries, Hiram Bingham III would hold on to his father’s work ethic and adventurous spirit, though he would not be quite so pious or humble.
In fact, It was Hiram Bingham III who felt that, “If a man were going to work that hard, someone ought to know about it.”
Hiram left Hawaii for the mainland as a teen, bound for the East Coast where he completed his education among Ivy-league colleges. He studied Latin American history and married Alfreda Mitchell, an heiress to the Tiffany & Co fortune in 1900 at age 24. The Tiffany side of Alfreda’s family looked down on Bingham who they felt had yet to prove himself worthy .
Bingham then spent his next few years as a professor, first at Harvard, then at Princeton under Woodrow Wilson, and finally landing back at his alma mat…
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Nov 1, 2019
November 1st, Friday | A Very Vietnam War
The date is November 1st, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Sydney, Australia.
On this day in 1955, the Vietnam War began. It would last 19 years and be a massive stain in the history of American international affairs. It is also known in some parts of Vietnam as the War of American Aggression or simply the American War. History books may call it the Second Indochina War.
The fight over Vietnam started earlier with the First Indochina War, also known as the Anti-French Resistance War. At the end of WWII, Vietnam was split into two with North Vietnam under the influence of China and South Vietnam under the influence of France.
There was a desire for all of Vietnam to unite, however, with two nations of opposing forms of government vying for influence, war broke out.
Fighting between French forces, supported by the USA, and Guerilla and Northern Vietnam forces, supported by China lasted for seven years. The Geneva Peace Conference of 1954 temporarily halted the conflict, aga…
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Oct 31, 2019
October 31st, Thursday | Of Course We're Gonna Talk About Halloween!
The date is October 31st, Thursday, and today I’m traveling from Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon in Vietnam to Sydney, Australia.
Today is Halloween for most of the globe. Halloween is typically celebrated with costume dressing, trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins, bobbing for apples and general mischief.
Many people believe that Halloween traditions have sprouted out of a Christian festival, but its true roots are not that simple.
Halloween is indeed a Christian name: it is a shortened version of “All Hallows’ Eve.” November 1st is celebrated as All Saints Day, or All Hallows’ Day and November 2nd is All Souls Day in the Christian tradition.
Of course, All Saints Day and All Souls Day didn’t start out on Nov. 1st and 2nd - at first they were celebrated by Christian parishes at all different times, many occurring in April or May.
When the church finally did decide on November 1st and 2nd, the Gaelic festival Samhain began to blend with the feast days.
Samhain celebrated the e…
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Oct 30, 2019
October 30th, Wednesday | A Kentucky Writer & Tourette
The date is Wednesday, October 30th, and today I’m coming to you from Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon in Vietnam.
Today is the birthday of Elizabeth Madox Roberts, American writer.
Elizabeth grew up in Springfield, Kentucky in the late 1800s. She attended the University of Kentucky briefly, dropping out on account of poor health. Roberts was gravely disappointed as she wholeheartedly enjoyed literature and philosophy. She moved back home, taking up a career in teaching.
In 1910, Elizabeth had had enough of her hometown and moved to Colorado bear her sister. It seems the new environment was beneficial to her and she began writing more seriously, publishing a short book of poetry. After encouragement from a professor friend, Roberts, at age 36, found herself a college student once again, this time at the University of Chicago. She thrived in the academic community and achieving her lifelong dream of a college education seemed to bolster her can-do spirit. She returned back to Springfield, K…
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Oct 29, 2019
October 29th, Tuesday | The Biggest (and Easiest) Jewel Heist
The biggest (most priceless) jewel heist happens at the American Museum of Natural History. It’s arguably also the easiest. Poem by Robert Frost.
The date is October 29th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon in Vietnam.
On this day in 1964, the biggest jewelry heist in history took place at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Notable gems stolen included the 563-carat sapphire Star of India, the 100-carat DeLong Ruby, and the 16-carat Eagle Diamond.
Jack “Murf the Surf” Murphy and Alan Kuhn were the brains of the operation. In Miami they had reputations as party boys, not afraid to spend their profits from steady burglary jobs. They never used force, preferring to burgle and steal while wealthy hotel guests were out of their rooms. A few times hotel staff and insurers were even in on the jobs.
Partially on a whim, Murf and Kuhn flew up to New York in October of 1964 with only a general plan to do some burgling. They explore…
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Oct 28, 2019
October 28th, Monday | Edna Mode-I mean Edith Head!
The date is Monday, October 28th, and today I’m traveling from Vung Tau to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.
Today is the birthday of Edith Head, American costume designer. Prolific from the 1940s through the 1970s, Edith was nominated for 35 Academy Awards, and won 8, a record that has yet to be topped.
Costume design was actually Edith’s second career. She received a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in French from UC Berkeley and Stanford University, respectively. She taught French at the high school level in the 1920s in Los Angeles and offered to teach art as well in the hopes of increasing her salary. When given the position Edith scrambled to enroll in a few evening courses at two local design schools, including Otis College of Art and Design.
Fully in love with drawing, Edith traded teaching for an entry level job as a costume sketch artist at Paramount Studios in 1924. By the 1930s, Edith Head had worked her way up through the ranks of costume design at Paramount. Her fir…
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Sep 10, 2019
September 10th, Tuesday | The Barefoot Gold Medalist
The date is September 10th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Tejakula, Bali. Today is also our 100th episode!
On this day in 1960, Abebe Bikila became the first sub-Saharan African to win an Olympic gold medal, and the first Ethiopian gold medalist.
It was the Summer Olympics in Rome and Abebe Bikila had just bought a new pair of shoes a week earlier for the marathon. The shoes, to his disappointment gave him awful blisters and so Bikila decided he would just run without shoes.
That’s right, Abebe Bikila won a Gold Medal running barefoot. Luckily for Bikila the race started in the late-afternoon and finished after dark so the course was cooling down while he ran.
Bikila was neck-and-neck with another competitor until the last 500 meters (nearly a third of a mile) when he took off in a sprint. Italian soldiers holding torches lit the rest of the way as Bikila zoomed past them.
He finished in 2 hours, 15 minutes, 16.2 seconds, breaking the world record by eight tenths.…
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Sep 9, 2019
September 9th, Monday | The Colonel of KFC
The date is September 9th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Tejakula, Bali.
Today is the birthday of Colonel Harland David Sanders, American businessman, founder of KFC.
Sanders was born in 1890 in southern Indiana, not far from the Indiana-Kentucky state line. His mother was a devout Christian and it was perhaps her warnings about the evils of drink that led Sanders to be vehemently against alcohol consumption his whole life. (Her preaching against cursing, however, did no good.)
Sanders’s father died when he was just five and as the oldest child, he was quickly made a helping hand in the home. By age seven he was adept in the kitchen.
After bouncing around jobs in his teens and twenties and even his thirties, Sanders finally settled down a little bit around age 40 with his family in Kentucky. He already had experience in sales and business which helped served up success in his new restaurant venture.
Sanders’s “Colonel” title is not from any military service -…
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Sep 6, 2019
September 6th, Friday | La-fay-ette! And Ze-li-a!
The date is September 6th, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Tejakula, Bali in Indonesia.
Today is the birthday of Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, French military leader and political influencer. Lafayette, as he is known in the States, was instrumental in the American Revolutionary War and the French Revolution both in the second half of the 1700s.
The first part of Lafayette’s life was of true comfort. He was born to wealthy aristocratic parents in 1757. His upbringing and education were balanced and with a long line of military men before him, Lafayette developed a healthy taste for action. (His father died in battle when Lafayette was a month away from 2 years old.)
At 16 he was betrothed to 14-year-old Adrienne de Noailles and they married soon thereafter.
Around age 18 Lafayette became a believer in the American Revolution. He came to see the cause as a noble one - the colonies were fighting for justice against a greedy Britain. As a French aristocrat, Laf…
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Sep 5, 2019
September 5th, Thursday | Amy Beach & Robert Fergusson
The date is September 5th, Thursday, and today I’m traveling from Jakarta to Bali in Indonesia.
Today is the birthday of Robert Fergusson, Scottish poet.
He enrolled at the University of St Andrews in Scotland in 1765 at the age of about 15. While there, Fergusson narrowly escaped expulsion, made important connections and honed his writing skills. When his father passed away in 1768 he moved back home to help support his mother.
He got involved in the bohemian scene in Edinburgh and began contributing poems to a small weekly periodical. He wrote poems both in English and “Scots.”
Scottish bard Robert Burns cites Fergusson as a major influence on his own work, inspiring him to write in both English and “Scots” as well. Burns even paid for a new headstone for Fergusson’s burial plot.
Fergusson achieved his legacy in a very short time - he died in 1775 at the age of 24. He was involuntarily sent to a mental hospital after a fall left him with a concussion. He lasted just…
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Sep 4, 2019
September 4th, Wednesday | Ahem, it's "The City of the Queen of the Angels"
The date is September 4th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Jakarta, Indonesia.
On this day in 1781, 44 Spanish settlers officially founded El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de los Ángeles, known today as Los Angeles, California.
Compared to other settlements, los Ángeles was specifically a municipal settlement: not a Catholic mission base or strategic military settlement. It was the second pueblo in the Spanish colonization of Alta California, just after San Jose.
The settlers were recruited from other settlements in the area with a promise of large plots of land. Per the ordinances set out by the Spanish government on how to create new towns, the main town center roads were constructed from SW to NE and NW to SE – so in an x rather than a plus-sign. To this day Downtown Los Angeles streets maintain 45-degree angles.
Los Angeles remained a Spanish settlement for about 40 years until it became a part of Mexico with Mexican independence in 1821. Los Angeles and…
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Sep 3, 2019
September 3rd, Tuesday | A Blind Mathematician & Sarah Jewett
The date is September 3rd, Tuesday, and today I’m traveling from Tokyo, Japan to Jakarta, Indonesia.
Today is the birthday of Lev Semenovich Pontryagin, Soviet mathematician.
In 1922 or ‘23 at age 14, an explosion of a small cooking stove left Lev Pontryagin blind. His parents were not well-off by any means, but his mother, Tat'yana Andreevna, insisted Lev continue his studies. She dedicated herself to helping Pontryagin adjust to his new situation as blind. In particular, she would read to him from his textbooks and write down his answers to equations on homework. She grew to know the course materials so well she would sometimes correct his work, which naturally had mistakes, as he honed his abstract thinking skills.
Eventually, Pontryagin left home for college. Pontryagin did not take notes in his classes since of course he could not see. However, his professors soon noticed he had an outstanding mind. Pontryagin was able to memorize formulas and perform equations in his head,…
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Aug 30, 2019
August 30th, Friday | Mary Shelley and the Birth of Frankenstein
The date is August 30th, Friday, and today I’m traveling from Portland, OR to Los Angeles, CA.
In honor of Labor Day on Monday, today we’re taking a look at how we got Labor Day.
No one is sure who exactly the first person to propose the idea was, but anyone who has worked has probably, at one point, had the idea that everyone that works should have a day off.
The first recorded group to hold a specifically Labor Day picnic in honor of all their workers was the Central Labor Union in New York City. They chose Tuesday September 5th in 1882 and 1883.
As the idea and practice spread among Labor Unions, the holiday was celebrated in increasing numbers in towns and cities. By 1887 Oregon was the first state to pass the holiday into law, with the majority of states having adopted the day on their own by 1894. Later that same year Congress passed Labor Day into law, declaring it a national holiday.
And today is the birthday of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, English writer.
Mary…
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Aug 29, 2019
August 29th, Thursday | Wendell Holmes, Sr & Vivien Thomas
The date is August 29th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR.
Today is the birthday of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr, American physician and writer.
Born in 1809, he had the good fortunate to attend small but good schools in Boston. From a young age, Holmes was noted as a very talkative lad. It was the only sticking point for his secondary school teachers, who admired his quick mind.
At sixteen Holmes enrolled at Harvard University. He carried on his love for reading and chatting by joining the “Puffmaniacs” a group of students who would sit around talking about all manner of things while smoking, presumably, pipes.
Struggling in his law studies some years later, Holmes occupied himself with writing poetry. He discovered he rather had a knack for it. By 1830 he had become a well-known and in-demand poet in a young America.
However, Holmes ultimately settled on a career in medicine and wrote in his free time. He was often called upon to compose poems for speci…
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Aug 28, 2019
August 28th, Wednesday | MLK's "I have a dream..."
The date is August 28th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR.
On this day in 1963 Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” Speech as part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
MLK addressed a crowd of approximately 250,000 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The whole March is generally regarded as the impetus for the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
As a Reverend, MLK’s speech contained plenty of language from the Christian Bible. It also contains allusions to Shakespeare, as well as the popular hymn “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” the American Declaration of Independence, and President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.
As MLK walked off the stage to a moved crowd, he gave the typed copy of his speech to the volunteer security guard George Raveling, who still has it.
In the days following the speech, television, radio stations, and newspapers (including The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Los An…
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Aug 27, 2019
August 27th, Tuesday | The Famous Five (of Canada)
The date is August 27th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR.
On this day in 1927 in Canada, five women filed a petition to the Supreme Court of Canada. Their petition asked, "Does the word 'Persons' in Section 24 of the British North America Act, 1867, include female persons?"
The five women were Emily Murphy, Irene Marryat Parlby, Nellie Mooney McClung, Louise Crummy McKinney and Henrietta Muir Edwards. They are sometimes known as “The Famous Five” or “ The Valiant Five.”
The petition was part of a larger movement toward expanded equal rights for women in Canada. Though women had the right to vote in Canada, they were still barred from serving in politics, specifically, the Senate. Over six months later, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that women were not “persons.”
They kept on keeping on though, and finally in October 1929, the British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council overturned that decision, setting the precedent that women are indeed…
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Aug 26, 2019
August 26th, Monday | A Small-Town Writer & Hot Air Balloon Man
The date is August 26th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR.
Today is the birthday of Zona Gale, American writer.
Zona Gale upon returning to her small hometown in Wisconsin at the age of 28, she found it rife with material. She moved home and devoted herself full-time to writing.
Gale attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison, WI receiving a Bachelor’s and Master's in literature. Before settling back into her hometown she wrote for newspapers in New York City and Wisconsin.
As she worked on her novels, Zona Gale published poetry and short stories, using connections from her newspaper days to find periodicals to submit her work. She published her first novel in 1906 and found national success with her 1920 novel Miss Lulu Betts.
Miss Lulu Betts told the story of a young single female who is able to pull herself up by the bootstraps despite the limited opportunities afforded by her small Midwestern town.
Gale adapted Miss Lulu Betts for the stage where…
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Aug 23, 2019
August 23rd, Friday | One for the Books! Events from 1944, 1973, &1991
The date is August 23rd, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR.
On this day in 1944, King Michael of Romania ousted the military dictatorship and declared war on Germany, switching sides from Axis to Allies.
At the onset of the war, Romania monarch Carol II, Michael’s father, was forced to abdicate after a military coup. Ion Antonescu (eyon Antonescuu)became dictator and had Michael crowned as king, though he only served as a figurehead. Antonescu allied with Nazi Germany in WWII.
By 1944 the Romania was in turmoil. King Michael was able to successfully bring together Ally sympathizers to overthrow Antonescu. King Michael then declared war on Germany, effectively switching sides in the war.
One historian has estimated that this event shortened the war by about six months, preventing countless more lives from being lost. (Romania unfortunately did not fair well in the treaty they signed with the USSR.)
And on this day in 1973, the Salad Bowl Strike began in Cali…
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Aug 22, 2019
August 22nd, Thursday | Bradbury & Debussy
The date is August 22nd, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR.
Today is the birthday of Ray Bradbury, American author. Bradbury is best remembered for his novel Fahrenheit 451.
When Ray was 14, the Bradbury family moved to Los Angeles from their small town in Illinois. Ray’s father had been out of work and was searching in booming Southern California.
When his father came home one day and announced he’d found a steady full-time job, Ray was ecstatic. The young Bradbury had already fallen in love with Hollywood.
Bradbury was an avid reader of science fiction and fantasy and a regular at book stores and libraries. In high school he was active in the poetry club and drama club, as many are wont to do in Los Angeles.
Graduating high school during the Great Depression, Bradbury admits that the family simply didn’t have money to send him to college. In lieu of university, Bradbury claims to have gone to the library 3 times a week for 10 years post-graduation.…
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Aug 21, 2019
August 21st, Wednesday | Count Basie
The date is August 21st, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR.
Today is the birthday of Count Basie, African American bandleader, musician, and composer.
Count Basie, born William James Basie in 1904, was tutored by his mother on piano as a child. When his talent surpassed his mother, much like Samuel Coleridge Taylor’s story, his mother scraped money together to send him to private lessons.
Never a big fan of school, Basie often picked up odd jobs at the local theater in exchange for free admission to shows. It was there where he was exposed to improv. Silent movies were accompanied by live music, often just a pianist. Sometimes there was music written specifically for a film, but often, it was left up to the player or band to create a soundtrack on the spot.
As a youngin’ Basie enjoyed playing the drums more than piano. But, Sonny Greer, a fellow musician in the area, outshone Basie as a drummer, and Basie returned to piano, where he could compete for wo…
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Aug 20, 2019
August 20th, Tuesday | Estonia Breaks Free After a Human Chain
The date is August 20th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR.
On this day in 1897, Sir Ronald Ross discovered that female mosquitoes transmit malaria to humans. As such today is also known as World Mosquito Day.
Sir Ronald Ross had studied all stages of development of the malaria parasite. He therefore was able to recognize the parasite in the gut bacteria of mosquitoes and in their saliva glands. There were already theories that malaria was caused by swamp-like conditions - conditions that are also conducive to high populations of mosquitoes. Ross and colleagues concluded that malaria was spread among humans by infected mosquitoes.
World Mosquito Day is commemorated by spreading awareness of how fend off mosquitoes. In addition to using screens, bed nets, and hat nets, using fans are a good deterrent as mosquitoes can’t fly well in even the slightest breeze. The average mosquito weighs about 2.5 milligrams - compare that to a single Cheerio, which weighs abou…
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Aug 19, 2019
August 19th, Monday | Coco Chanel befriends Stravinsky
The date is August 19th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR.
Today is the birthday of Ogden Nash, American humorist and poet.
Born in 1902, Ogden Nash reports having always enjoyed rhyming. He was known for unconventional rhymes such as rhymes that relied on the mispronunciation of words or rhymes that used two words.
Nash moved to New York City a few years after dropping out of Harvard and worked writing car ads for a time. While in New York City, Nash felt gutsy enough to submit some of his rhymes to The New Yorker. The editor of The New Yorker was so pleased with Nash’s rhyming submissions he wrote to him and asked for more. Nash then worked for The New Yorker for a short while before publishing his first collection of poems.
Ogden Nash went on to have a career as a guest on radio and comedy shows and also toured the nation giving lectures and speeches at colleges. He wrote light verse all his career, publishing a number of collections and continuing to ap…
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Aug 16, 2019
August 16th, Friday | The Good, the Bad, and an Australian Poet
The date is August 16th, Friday, and today I’m traveling from Rochester, NY to Portland OR in the USA.
Today is the birthday of Wallace Thurman, African American editor and writer.
Wallace Thurman was a member of the Harlem Renaissance in New York during the late 1920s. He edited several small newspapers and had relationships with writers and artists such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Dunbar Nelson, Aaron Douglas, and Gwendolyn Bennett.
He believed that the struggle of African Americans - the good and the bad - should be acknowledged and explored. As two scholars put it, Thurman felt that “the black writer need not pander to the aesthetic preferences of the black middle class, nor should he or she write for an easy and patronizing white approval.” (Get the book here: The Collected Writings of Wallace Thurman: A Harlem Renaissance Reader)
Thurman was darker skinned than many of his peers and was keenly aware of how he was treated differently because of it. He w…
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Aug 15, 2019
August 15th, Thursday | Samuel Coleridge Taylor
The date is August 15th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Rochester, NY.
Today is the birthday of Samuel Coleridge Taylor, African-English composer.
His Creole father, Dr. Daniel Taylor was visiting London to complete a course of study. While there his father became involved with a London woman named Alice Hare. When Dr. Taylor’s program had ended he returned to Sierra Leone, leaving behind Alice. Dr. Taylor never knew that Alice had become pregnant and it’s possible even Alice didn't know until he was gone. Alice did not attempt to contact Dr. Taylor to tell him the news and gave birth to a boy in 1875. Alice named their son Samuel Coleridge Taylor, after the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Samuel Coleridge Taylor appears to have grown up in a large loving family. Alice and newborn Sam moved in with Alice’s father and his family. Little Sam was surrounded by doting aunts and grandparents, many of whom were musically inclined. His grandfather was a decent vio…
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Aug 14, 2019
August 14th, Wednesday | Inventor of the Blender
The date is August 14th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Rochester, NY.
Today is the birthday of Stephen Poplawski, Polish-American inventor of the blender.
Poplawski was born in Poland in 1885 and immigrated to the United States with his family at nine years old. Little is available on his early years, but by 1918 at the age of 33 he had gained enough skills and knowledge to start his own tool company.
The following year Poplawski was asked to design a mixing machine for soda fountains, popular sugar-centric diners. His hometown of Racine, WI was famous for being the home of Horlick Malted Milk, aka a milkshake, and they needed a mixer that could combine more thoroughly the ingredients of milk and ice cream.
In 1922 Poplawski patented his mixing machine. It featured a mounted spinning blade that would be encased by a cup. The first design was for commercial use in soda fountains. Poplawski tinkered further with the “mixer” so that it could liquify fruits and vege…
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Aug 13, 2019
August 13th, Tuesday | A Hawaiian Pop Star & a Sharpshooter
The date is August 13th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Rochester, NY.
Today is the birthday of Don Ho, Hawaiian-American musician. Don was born in Hawaii and joined the Air Force in 1954 at age 23, just a few years after marrying his high school sweetheart.
Don and his wife Melva moved to California per Don’s job in the Air Force. While there, he picked up an electronic keyboard to accompany his voice. (He had already done a bit of singing as a young man at his Mom’s bar in Hawaii.)
Not many years later Don Ho left the Air Force and returned to Hawaii to take care of his ailing mother and her bar, Honey’s. Soon, Don found himself performing as the headliner for the bar. As his popularity as an entertainer spread, Don was asked to headline at another bar, Duke’s. Duke’s was a popular spot for celebrities and executives on vacation and Don would be ‘discovered’ by a music agent there.
Don Ho signed with Reprise Records and would go on to have a successful…
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Aug 12, 2019
August 12th, Monday | "America the Beautiful" & Gladys Bentley
The date is August 12th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Rochester, NY.
Today is the birthday of Katharine Lee Bates, American educator and poet.
Bates most notably penned the lyrics for “America the Beautiful.” The words were inspired by a hike to the top of Pike’s Peak in Colorado. Bates happened to be teaching a course at a Colorado school for the summer.
Bates’s first draft of “America the Beautiful” was jotted down in a notebook between teaching classes. It was first published in 1895 in a small weekly journal and gained notoriety in 1904 when a new version appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript, an afternoon newspaper.
But Bates did more than just write “America the Beautiful.” She was a noted educator at Wellesley College, the author of multiple books, and a journalist. She is credited with making American Literature a legitimate course of study and is perhaps the first woman to write a textbook. Her textbook is credited with elevating the writi…
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Aug 9, 2019
August 9th, Friday | Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton
The date is August 9th, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Rochester, NY.
Today is the birthday of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton, American humanitarian. She is also, of course, the wife of Alexander Hamilton.
Elizabeth Schuyler, sometimes affectionately referred to as Eliza or Betsey, was thrown into high society from her birth in 1757. Eliza was born into large Dutch family and it is unclear how many siblings she had since not all of them lived to adulthood. Her family’s prominence in early America meant she was surrounded by the foremost thinkers of the new nation. She even had a chance to meet Benjamin Franklin.
When she was 22, Eliza was sent from the Schuyler residence in Albany, NY to Morristown, NJ to live with a maternal Aunt.
Rather Fortuitously, George Washington’s army was stationed in Morristown and Eliza, in need of society, became friends with Martha Washington and began a courtship with Alexander Hamilton, one of George Washington’s aides.
A short severa…
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Aug 8, 2019
August 8th, Thursday | Sara Teasdale's lost love
The date is August 8th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Rochester, NY.
Today is the birthday of Sara Teasdale, American poet.
Born in 1884 in St. Louis Missouri, Sara was a sickly child and her mother kept her at home. At age 10 she was finally deemed healthy enough to attend school.
Despite having entered into a more public existence, during her teens Sara was still fairly solitary. Her mother had built Sara her own suite in the family home and Sara spent most of her time working, sleeping, and eating in her own quarters. Her enrollment in school was a positive. Sara Teasdale gained friends and a mentor which chased away much of the loneliness to which she had grown accustomed.
Done with school at 18, Teasdale’s mentor, Lillie Rose Ernst, encouraged her to join a women’s group she was forming. In 1904, Teasdale was a member of the Potters. The Potters was a group of young women in St Louis that worked together to publish The Potter’s Wheel, a monthly literary ma…
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Aug 7, 2019
August 7th, Wednesday | The Other Kermit and a Spy
The date is August 7th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Rochester, NY.
Today is the birthday of Mata Hari, Dutch dancer and spy.
Born in the Netherlands as Margaretha Zelle in 1876, her lavish childhood fell apart when her father declared bankruptcy in 1889. Her parents divorced and her mother died not long afterwards. Margaretha was sent to live with a godfather.
Eighteen and ready for change, Margaretha Zelle answered an ad in a newspaper. A Dutch Army Captain was looking for a wife. As you may be able to predict, the marriage didn’t work out well. Zelle was swept away to Java where her new husband, 20 years her senior, proceeded to reveal alcoholic and abusive tendencies. She found solace in studying Indonesian traditions and by joining a local dance group.
After a few more turbulent years in Indonesia, the couple returned to Europe where a divorce was finalized. Margaretha then moved to Paris, and rose to fame as an exotic dancer, taking the name Mata Hari.
Mat…
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Aug 6, 2019
August 6th, Tuesday | Why "Bolivia"?
The date is August 6th, Tuesday, and today I’m traveling from Mattapoisett, MA to Rochester, NY.
On this day in 1825 Bolívia declared independence. The rumblings of independence began as early as 1808 when the Spanish crown was overthrown. The uncertain times in Spain created room for uprisings across all of Latin America, including Bolívia, which was then known as Charcas.
Charcas had an uphill battle. As one of only two land-locked countries in South America, they had to drive out Spanish loyalists as well as fend off Argentina and Peru who both attempted to expand their influence Bolívia.
Charcas was fortunate enough to have Simon Bolívar as their first president. Simon Bolívar had led the fight for independence in multiple countries in South America and to secure his leadership was an important step for a new nation.
However, Simon Bolívar wanted Charcas to unite with Peru. It’s theorized that to persuade Bolívar away from that idea, the Charcas government council to…
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Aug 5, 2019
August 5th, Monday | Father of the Modern Short Story
The date is August 5th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Mattapoisett, MA.
Today is the birthday of Guy de Maupassant, French author. Maupassant is considered the father of the modern short story. During his lifetime he published over 200 short stories, seven novels, and a poetry collection.
Born in 1850 in France, Maupassant was no stranger to family drama. When he was 11, his mother was finally able to separate from an abusive husband. Maupassant, his mother, and his brother moved away to a small town, settling comfortably into a villa. Maupassant’s mother was an avid reader and provided a solid educational foundation from which Maupassant would grow.
In his 20s Maupassant had the good fortune to have Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary, as a mentor. Through Flaubert, Maupassant successfully entered the literary world, becoming a bestselling author and an in-demand contributor to literary magazines and periodicals.
Maupassant joined a group of intellectuals and…
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Aug 2, 2019
August 2nd, Friday | Two Activists and a Sculptor walk into a bar...
The date is August 2nd, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Charlton, MA.
Today is the birthday of Marianne Weber, German sociologist, writer, and women’s rights activist.
At the age of three Marianne was sent away to be raised by her aunt and grandparents upon the death of her mother. Her father and brothers were deemed psychologically unstable by family and would later be institutionalized.
After a proper upbringing and education, in 1891 Marianne was introduced to a few distant cousins, namely, Max Weber, a budding sociologist and philosopher as well as his mother, Helene. Marianne and Max married in 1893, at ages 23 and 29, respectively. Marianne enjoyed being daughter-in-law to Helene with whom she had already grown close.
While Max taught at University of Heidelberg, Marianne pursued philosophy in her spare time as a new wife. She read up on the subject and became active in a burgeoning feminist movement in Berlin. Around this time, she persuaded her husband to aid i…
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Aug 1, 2019
August 1st, Thursday | Melville's Stormy Start
The date is August 1st, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Charlton, MA.
Today is the birthday of Herman Melville, American author and poet.
Melville’s life started out smooth sailing. He was born in 1819 to loving, doting parents. And they were wealthy to boot. His mother had a vast inheritance as did his merchant father. As years ticked by and the family grew, the Melvilles moved to a bigger house each year in New York City, and maintained two to four servants. The Melville parents enjoyed spending money. To them, it seemed their inheritances were never-ending.
But of course they did end. Eventually Mr. and Mrs. Melville’s respective families, cut them off for over-reaching. The whole family then had to grapple with near bankruptcy. The entire Melville clan, eight kids and two adults, moved to Albany to cut costs and Herman’s father entered the fur trade.
Herman entered a new school in Albany but was pulled from it after only a few months. He was a fine student, b…
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Jul 31, 2019
July 31st, Wednesday | Atlantic Records was founded by...
The date is July 31th, Wednesday, and today I’m still traveling to Boston, Massachusetts.
Today is the birthday of Ahmet Ertegun, Turkish-American founder of Atlantic Records.
Ahmet was born in Istanbul, Turkey in 1923. His father was a successful lawyer and his mother a skilled musician. She played the piano and a number of stringed instruments and indulged in records. Ahmet and his brother Nesuhi were admittedly spoiled by their unimpeded access to the music from the top musicians and bands of the day.
Ahmet proclaimed he truly fell in love with music at age 9. While in London with his family, Ahmet’s brother Nesuhi dragged him to a concert to see Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and their respective bands play at the Palladium Theater. Ahmet was in awe of the performers and their sound.
In 1935, Ahmet’s father became the Turkish Ambassador to the United States and the family moved to Washington, D.C.. Ertegun joked that despite attending an affluent private high school and th…
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Jul 30, 2019
July 30th, Tuesday | Emily Brontë
The date is July 30th, Tuesday, and today I’m traveling from Portland, Oregon to Boston, Massachusetts.
Today is the birthday of Emily Brontë, English writer.
Born in 1818 in Northern England, Emily was joyously welcomed. She was the fifth child out of six for a simple clergyman and his wife. Emily’s sister Anne, two years her junior would become her closest confidante.
Emily’s early years were plagued with loss: her mother died of cancer when Emily was just three.
At six, Emily was sent away to school, joining her three elder sisters. Charlotte had written home insisting the school was only bad news. The teachers were abusive and abrasive, the instruction subpar and she begged her father to bring them all home. He refused.
Maria the eldest, became sick while at school and made the journey home. Upon her return to the parsonage, she quickly succumbed to her illness. When the remaining three girls arrived home, presumably for Maria’s funeral, Elizabeth the second oldest al…
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Jul 29, 2019
July 29th, Monday | Tocqueville admires America
The date is July 29th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon.
Today is the birthday of Alexis de Tocqueville, French politician and historian.
Born in 1805 in France, Tocqueville’s lasting mark in history is his work De la démocratie en Amerique or Democracy in America.
A typical aristocratic upbringing saw Tocqueville seamlessly enter politics. When Tocqueville was 26, the French Monarchy sent him and a partner to America. They were to study the American prisons and prison systems and report back. Tocqueville returned after nine months in North America and, three years later, published an account of his travels. Democracy in Ameri ca published in 1835 is not what the Monarchy had asked for, but it is undoubtably a more interesting read.
Tocqueville did pursue a line of inquiry into American prisons, but he was much more impressed with cultural differences between America and Europe. Tocqueville found that while Europe clung to the vestiges of an idle arist…
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Jul 26, 2019
July 26th, Friday | Shaw: If You Can't Beat 'em, Join 'em
The date is July 26th, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon.
Today is the birthday of George Bernard Shaw, Irish-born English writer. He was a noted critic of music, plays, and art during his lifetime, but its his own plays that live on today.
Born the youngest of three in 1856 in Dublin, his parents were already drifting apart. His father had married his mother hoping to see some of her family’s wealth; and his mother married his father to escape her overbearing family. It seems neither got what they wanted.
When George was 6, his mother and her new beau, a man named George Lee, decided to move in together. Mrs. Shaw, Mr. Lee, and the three Shaw children shared two homes: one in an upper-class neighborhood in Dublin, and a cottage outside of town with a view of Killiney Bay.
George preferred the cottage. Lee was a popular vocal teacher and conductor and it seemed, particularly in the city, there were always singers and players and music in the home. When h…
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Jul 25, 2019
July 25th, Thursday | Parrish, Franklin, and Chapman
The date is July 25th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland Oregon.
Today is the birthday of Rosalind Franklin, English chemist and X-ray crystallographer.
Besides being instrumental to the discovery of DNA and its double-helix shape, Franklin had a rich life outside of her science work. One thing she enjoyed most was trekking. She would take off on multi-day trips with a backpack full of supplies and hike wherever was convenient. After a particularly stunning trek through the French Alps, Franklin declared “I am quite sure I could wander happily in France forever.”
Despite James Watson’s critical account of Rosalind Franklin’s personality, by accounts of friends, she was truly fun. First there was her adventurous spirit as evidenced by her trekking. Second, her consorting with colleagues in America led them to think she had quite an entertaining sense of humor. In fact, Watson’s words regarding Rosalind in his biography are likely stained with self-import…
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Jul 24, 2019
July 24, Wednesday | A writer or a lover first?
The date is July 24th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland Oregon.
Today is the birthday of French writer Alexandre Dumas. Notable titles include The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Prince of Thieves (a Robin Hood Tale), and a version of the Nutcracker. It was Dumas’s version of the classic tale that would be adapted into the Tchaikovsky opera of the same name in 1892. Scholars estimate that Dumas’s writing, in total, amounts to about 100,000 pages.
But Dumas’s ancestors had a rocky start. His father was the child of a Haitian slave and her French master. Luckily, Dumas’s father was brought to France as a teen to attend a military training academy and enjoyed a prestigious career. Despite Dumas’s father’s complexion, he mixed in French high society, so that by Alexandre Dumas’s birth in 1802, the Dumas family was surrounded by fellow aristocrats, scholars, and artists.
Dumas’s connections gave him a headst…
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Jul 23, 2019
July 23rd, Tuesday | A Starry-eyed Gov'na
The date is July 23rd, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon.
Today is the birthday of Thomas Brisbane, British-Australian governor and astronomer.
Brisbane was born in 1775 in Scotland. After a career in the military, Brisbane served as the 6th governor of Australia in his late 40s, from 1821 to 1825. At the time Australia was called “New South Wales” and large portions of the island remained wild and unexplored by colonists.
Halfway through Brisbane’s term as governor, a keen surveyor explored a winding river on the Eastern half of the island. The surveyor dubbed the river the Brisbane River in the governor’s honor. Years later the city along the Brisbane River would adopt the name as well.
Brisbane was generally seen as a good governor. He acted in accordance with the rules set forth for the position and governed with a fair hand. However, he was arguably more interested in astronomy.
The location of New South Wales (Australia) afforded Brisbane t…
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Jul 22, 2019
July 22nd, Monday | "Give me your tired, your poor..."
The date is July 22nd, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon.
Today is the birthday of Emma Lazarus, American poet and activist. Verses from her poem “The New Colossus” are on a plaque under the Statue of Liberty.
She was born in 1849 in New York City, the fourth of seven children. Her father was a successful merchant and sugar refiner, and the family had the means to educate Emma and her siblings privately at home.
She took to poetry at an early age. Having studied the German and French languages and classic literature, by the age of 15, Emma was happily penning English translations of the works of Alexandre Dumas, Heinrich Heine, and Victor Hugo. She also experimented writing her own verse around the same time.
Emma’s father was so taken with his daughter’s work that he had her poems and translations printed privately for family and friends. The warm reception led to a commercial printing of Emma Lazarus’s first book, Poems and Translation in 1867,…
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Jul 19, 2019
July 19th, Friday | Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson
The date is July 18th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon.
On this day in 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention, also known as the Women's Rights Convention began in Seneca Falls, New York. It was a gathering of women and men and their goal was to come out with a Declaration of Sentiments. Notable attendees included Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Amy Post, Amelia Bloomer, Eunice Newton Foote, and Frederick Douglass.
Going into the Convention, there was a question as to whether or not to include the right to vote in the Declaration of Sentiments. After a spirited debate among the ladies and handful of gentlemen, Elizabeth Cady Stanton penned it in.
Today is the birthday of Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson, African American poet and journalist.
Alice was born in 1875 in New Orleans to mixed race parents. She grew up entrenched in Creole culture, but noticed that because of her fairer skin she was quite isolated, particularly as a child. She was not white enoug…
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Jul 18, 2019
July 18th, Thursday | Mandela's Prison University
The date is July 18th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon.
Today is the birthday of Nelson Mandela, South African political leader and first president of South Africa.
He was born the son of an African chief in 1918, though he did not live like a prince. As a young boy he played out in fields and herded cattle. It wasn’t until he was seven that he attended school – and only because it was a Christian school and his mother was a devote Christian. At his first school he acquired the name “Nelson,” bestowed upon him by a teacher.
As he continued his education, he began to be exposed to the imperialist dynamic in South Africa. On one hand certainly imperialism was a disruption of natives’ way of life, however Mandela also saw the opportunities it brought, namely educational institutions.
As the ruling power in South Africa began to tighten its grip and spiral into deep racism, Mandela and a group of like-minded peers, set to work on a plan to take a…
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Jul 17, 2019
July 17th, Wednesday | The Air Conditioner is Born!
The date is July 17th, Wednesday and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon.
As the Northern Hemisphere enters the heat of July, it seems appropriate that on this day in 1902 Willis Carrier in Buffalo, NY submitted drawings for what would be the first air conditioner. He determined that, to work, an Air Conditioner machine must do four things:
1. Control temperature
2. Control humidity
3. Control air circulation, and
4. Cleanse the air.
Indeed, a large part of how Carrier’s air conditioner worked had to do with dew point depression. As a resident of Western New York, and more largely the East Coast, Carrier would have known all too well how suffocating a hot AND humid day can be. After fiddling with the contraption for a few years, Carrier received a patent for the first working air conditioner in 1907.
Air conditioners use a a LOT of energy. An article from 2012 estimated that a car’s A/C will use around 3kw or 4 horsepower from the engine therefore decreasing the…
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Jul 16, 2019
July 16th, Tuesday | The First Parking Meter
The date is July 16th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon.
On this day in 1935 the world's first parking meter was installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in the USA.
As much as parking meters are an accepted evil of city parking today, the first parking meters were welcomed. The population in Oklahoma had risen with the discovery of rich oil fields, and with people and money came a rise in vehicles. In 1913 the number of cars in and around Oklahoma City was about 3000. By 1930, that number had reached an estimated 500,000! Downtown Oklahoma City was a mess with everyone jostling for open spaces and staying as long as they liked. Restaurants and retailers complained about lost business.
The first parking meters were installed on one side of the street on a main thoroughfare downtown, and by the next day requests for more meters from retailers on the opposite side of street poured in. The meters had timers and were coin operated. They successfully brought in r…
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Jul 15, 2019
July 15th, Monday | The Greatest Etcher of all Time
The date is July 15th, Monday, and today I’m traveling from Bend, Oregon to Portland, Oregon in the USA.
Today is the birthday of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Dutch artist. He is considered the most important artist in Dutch history, and one of the great visual artists in art history.
Born in 1606 in the Dutch Republic, now the Netherlands, Rembrandt was the ninth child of a miller father and baker mother. Rembrandt dropped out of secondary school at the age of 14 to become the apprentice to a painter in Leiden.
Rembrandt studied painting for three years as an apprentice, following it up with a short six-month apprenticeship in Amsterdam. Unlike most of his artist peers who further honed their artistic skills by studying in Italy, Rembrandt never left the Netherlands.
By the tender age of 18, Rembrandt set up a studio in his hometown of Leiden, refining his art while teaching other artists. His break came when his paintings caught the eye of a statesman. The statesmen began se…
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Jul 12, 2019
July 12th, Friday | The Man who Popularized Photography
The date is July 12th, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR.
Today is the birthday of George Eastman, American inventor and businessman.
Eastman’s tinkering with film and cameras in his 20s led him to develop his own film and start a business that would dominate the industry. Eastman was the first to use roll film in cameras allowing for multiple pictures to be taken in succession without much ado. Roll film would be the precursor to film for motion pictures. The likes of Thomas Edison used Eastman’s film and Edison was, at least once, a house guest at Eastman’s estate in Rochester, NY.
George Eastman’s company Eastman Kodak made film and cameras affordable for the masses and is largely credited with promoting and spreading photography to the nation. Perhaps the most popular Kodak camera was the Brownie series camera.
Additionally, George Eastman is credited with the development of the city of Rochester, New York. Rochester became a boomtown as Eastman Ko…
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Jul 11, 2019
July 11th, Thursday | To Kill a Mockingbird...
Today we take a look at To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960, and never once out of print! Poem by Effie Smith.
The date is July 11th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon.
On this day in 1960, the novel To Kill a Mockingbird was released. It was an instant bestseller and was published into ten different languages its second year in print. Since its first publication, To Kill a Mockingbird has won a Pulitzer Prize (1961), been translated into over 40 languages, and is the most widely read book among middle school and high school students.
TKAM has been compared to Uncle Tom’s Cabin due to its timely release date, in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement. Some scholars claim it was an important book for drumming up sympathy for the African American cause, though it’s difficult to quantify its impact on the whole.
TKAM is from the perspective of a young girl named Jean Louise Finch, who readers come to know as ‘Scout.’ The main event in the book…
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Jul 10, 2019
July 10th, Wednesday | Tesla's Youth
The date is July 10th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon.
Today is the birthday of Nikola Tesla, Serbian-born American engineer. He is known for his Tesla Coil and the contributions he made to alternating current electricity supply system.
He was born in 1856 to an Eastern Orthodox Priest and his wife. Tesla’s mother, Đuka Mandić Tesla, had a knack for crafting tools for use in the home and fixing what mechanical appliances the family had. Despite no formal education, Đuka had an elastic brain and could recite epic poems from memory. Tesla credited his mother with giving him an excellent memory and instilling in him an insatiable curiosity for how things worked.
A professor’s demonstrations of electricity during Tesla’s teen years piqued his own interest in the subject. He felt there was something particularly alluring about electricity and desired to learn more.
Tesla returned from school to his small hometown at age 17, having completed the 4…
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Jul 9, 2019
July 9th, Tuesday | A Gothic Enchantress & an Inventor
The date is July 9th, Tuesday, and today I’m heading from Los Angeles, California to Portland, Oregon, in the USA.
Today is the birthday of Elias Howe, American inventor of the sewing machine.
Born in 1819 in Massachusetts, Elias Howe was reportedly interested in machines and how they worked from an early age. He began working in a cotton factory in Boston as soon as he was old enough. To survive the hard financial times of 1837 and preceding years, Howe bounced from factory to factory. The exposure to a variety of early mechanisms would prove helpful in his engineering knowledge.
During his time at a textile mill, a boss casually mentioned that the person who invented a sewing machine would be wealthy indeed. There were other sewing machines on the market, but none were commercially successful. Twenty-two years old and full of ambition, Howe spent the next five years tinkering with a sewing machine invention in his spare time, and was rewarded with a patent in 1846.
With technic…
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Jul 8, 2019
July 8th, Monday | The Man who invented Coca-Cola
The date is July 8th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Los Angeles, California, in the USA
Today is the birthday of John Pemberton, American pharmacist and inventor of the Coca-Cola secret recipe.
Pemberton was born and raised in Georgia, outside of Atlanta. He finished up a medical degree at age 19 in 1850. He tried practicing medicine and surgery but was ultimately drawn toward the chemistry side. He opened up a drug store in a town outside of Atlanta. He got married, had a son, and life moved along at a jaunty pace.
But the Civil War changed all that. Pemberton received sword blow to the abdomen during a battle. Even after the injury healed outwardly, Pemberton would be struck with bouts of intense pain. He would be so overcome with the pain that he would be bedridden for days at a time. To manage the severe pain, he used morphine, and soon became an addict
Hoping to find an alternative to his costly morphine habit, Pemberton began experimenting to make a cure-all elix…
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Jul 5, 2019
July 5th, Friday | Who was "de Silhouette"?
The date is July 5th, Friday, and today is my last day in La Serena, Chile.
Today is the birthday of Étienne (EH-tien) de Silhouette, a notoriously cheap Comptroller-General of finances under King Louis XV in 1759. As the head of France’s finances he was in charge of pulling the nation out of a mound of debt. He did so by taxing the wealthiest citizens, curtailing the spending habits of the Royal family, and reforming state pensions.
Although his methods were more or less effective, they earned de Silhouette a reputation for being a cheap, penny-pincher. He lasted 8 months in the position before gracefully ‘retiring.’ French citizens began to refer to things that were austere or cheap as à la Silhouette.
Happening at the same time as de Silhouette’s cut-rate reputation was the rise in popularity of shadow profiles cut from black paper. It was popular as an affordable alternative to spendy and elaborate painted portraits or miniatures. The wealthier members of society of co…
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Jul 4, 2019
July 4th, Thursday | The Star-Spangled Banner (poem)
The date is July 4th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile.
On this day in 1776, America’s Second Continental Congress unanimously voted to ratify the Declaration of Independence. As such, today America celebrates its independence and it is a national holiday in the States.
I’ll spare everyone the long story that is the American Revolution this year, and instead opt for a reading the poem “The Star Spangled Banner” by Francis Scott Key.
The poem was set to music in the year 1814. The tune was a popular melody called “The Anacreontic Song” by John Stafford Smith of England. But it was Francis Scott Key’s brother-in-law, a judge by the name of Joseph H. Nicholson, who thought the lyrics perfectly fit the existing melody, and first published the tune and lyrics together.
The song spread through the country over the next 100 years. It wasn’t officially the National Anthem until President Hoover signed it into law on March 4th, 1931.
Luckily, fo…
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Jul 3, 2019
July 3rd, Wednesday | W.H. Davies & Québec City
The date is July 3rd, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile.
On this day in 1608, Québec City was founded by Samuel de Champlain. Champlain landed with three ships at the shore of the city on the bank of the St. Lawrence River. He and his crew set about fortifying the city with walls and a moat.
Québec City is one of the oldest European settlements in North America and the only city north of Mexico City to still have parts of its original fortifying walls.
Today is the birthday of poet and writer W. H. Davies. He was born in 1871 in Newport, Wales, a part of the United Kingdom. Davies was always getting into trouble in his youth. As a teen he was arrested with a gaggle of friends for stealing handbags and continued on in vagrant ways into his 20s.
He lived as a tramp, but not to gather material for writing, as George Orwell did. Rather, a young Davies simply preferred to romp about. And he was young enough not to care for the comforts of a clean or comfor…
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Jul 2, 2019
July 2nd, Tuesday | Thurgood Marshall & an Eclipse
The date is July 2nd, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile.
Today is the ‘midpoint’ of the year. We’ve put 182 days of 2019 behind us and there are 182 days to go.
Today, people in Chile and Argentina will experience a Total Solar Eclipse – including me! A Total Solar Eclipse is when the moon passes directly in front of the sun, blocking it out completely. It essentially becomes nighttime for two minutes during the middle of the day, with stars visible during totality.
You can look directly at a Total Solar Eclipse during totality. The corona, the ring of light around the sun, is visible and it is truly spectacular. Pictures and video cannot do a Total Solar Eclipse justice – it really is too incredible for words – just absolutely breathtaking. The next Total Solar Eclipse will occur in December 2020 also in the Southern Hemisphere.
Today is the birthday of Thurgood Marshall, American lawyer and Supreme Court Justice. He was born in Baltimore, Ma…
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Jul 1, 2019
July 1st, Monday | Before Lindbergh, there was Blériot
A French aviator, American poet, and the only Olympic Medalist from Ecuador share a birthday. “The Morning Glory” starts off the new month.
The date is July 1st, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile.
Today is the birthday of Louis Blériot, French engineer and aviator. In 1909 he became famous as the first person to fly across the English Channel and received £1000 from a contest held by the Daily Mail. But before that he made his fortune in car headlamps.
In his early twenties, post-graduation, Blériot worked for an electrical engineering company. In his spare time, he invented the first practical headlamp for automobiles. He left the company to develop the headlamp and at age 25 he began his own business selling his headlamps to the top two auto makers in France.
With the money from his headlamps, he funded experiments in aviation, a burgeoning field. His competitive spirit and love of mechanical puzzles certainly drew him to the challenge of building…
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Jun 28, 2019
June 28th, Friday | Rousseau, Peaceful Child & Turbulent Teen
The date is June 28th, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile.
Today is the birthday of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Genevan writer and philosopher. His writings The Social Contract and Discourse on Inequality were heavily influential in the European Enlightment, as well as various independence movements in the Western Hemisphere.
Born in 1712, Jean-Jacques’s mother died of fever just nine days after his birth. His father’s sister moved in and helped raise Jean-Jacques and his older brother.
The Rousseaus lived in an upper-class neighborhood, the house bought with money from Jean-Jacques mother’s side. But at age five their father sold the house and moved into a more middle class neighborhood of craftsmen. His father was a watchmaker by trade and fit into the neighborhood better. Being around such hardworking and skilled individuals left a lasting impression on the young Jean-Jacques.
Also leaving a lasting effect was his father’s indulgence in evening readin…
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Jun 27, 2019
June 27th, Thursday | Paul Laurence Dunbar, Elevator Poet
The date is June 27th, Thursday and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile.
Today is the birthday of Paul Laurence Dunbar, African American poet, novelist, and playwright. Dunbar, though he had a short career, achieved a good deal of success mostly through his poetry.
Born in 1872 in Dayton, Ohio, Paul was the child of an emancipated mother and a father who has escaped slavery just before the end of the Civil War. The marriage wasn’t happy though and the couple separated after the birth of Paul’s sister. Matilda Dunbar raised her children with the help of her extended family in Dayton.
Paul, despite his disadvantaged background, was a child prodigy. His mother taught him to read using her Bible, thinking he might grow up to become a Methodist minister. But Paul caught the poetry bug early. Reportedly at age six he had composed his first poem, giving his first poetry recital at age nine.
Dunbar in the late 1880s, was the only African-American student at Central High Sch…
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Jun 26, 2019
June 26th, Wednesday | Pearl Buck brush with death
The date is June 26th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile.
Today is the birthday of Pearl S. Buck, American writer. Her most famous work is certainly her novel The Good Earth, though she would write over 85 combined novels, short stories, and essays during her career. The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in America for 1931 and 1932 and Pearl was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for it.
Pearl was born to Christian missionary parents in 1892. That same year, the family traveled to China. Growing up, Pearl played with the Chinese children, received schooling from a local Confucian scholar, and learned both English and Chinese.
During the Boxer Rebellion, which we covered in last Friday’s episode, Pearl, her siblings and mother retreated to Shanghai for cover. While there, eight-year-old Pearl was among other white children for the first time. She quickly found that none of them spoke the native Chinese language. On top of that, she was shock…
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Jun 25, 2019
June 25th, Tuesday | Who was George Orwell?
The date is June 25th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile.
Today is the birthday of English writer Eric Arthur Blair, known better by his pen name George Orwell. He’s remembered today for his novella Animal Farm and novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. From his work we get terms like “Big brother” and the “Thought Police” and of course there is the word “Orwellian” which refers to the dystopian reality depicted in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
During his short lifetime, Blair, or Orwell, was best recognized for his writing in magazines, periodicals, and newspapers. He wrote numerous essays on life, particularly as life from a poor-man’s perspective.
After a few years spent as an Imperial Officer in the British-ruled India, Orwell returned to England. He wanted to write, but at first wasn’t sure about what. A mentor suggested he head to London’s East End, a working-class neighborhood, for inspiration and content.
Orwell gave it a try. He spent a few year…
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Jun 24, 2019
June 24th, Monday | The first UFO 'sighting'
The date is June 24th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile.
On this day in 1947 aviator Kenneth Arnold of Washington State made the first widely reported UFO sighting. As he was flying a plane near Mt Rainer in Washington, he claims to have seen nine unusual flying objects. He said they were shaped like a pie pan or like a saucer. The term “flying saucer” was quickly used by the media. The US Government was quick to label Arnold’s sighting a mirage as they generally are wont to do with UFO sightings.
Arnold’s sighting is notable for the stir it caused. UFO sightings increased after his report and he participated in a few interviews of people claiming they had contact with aliens.
But Arnold grew tired of UFOs and the enthusiasts and stopped all UFO-related guest appearances. But on the 30-year anniversary of his sighting he showed up to the first International UFO Congress meeting in Chicago and said a few words as a guest of honor. The plane Arnold w…
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Jun 21, 2019
June 21st, Friday | Boxers rebel!
The date is June 21st, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile.
Today is the Summer Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and the Winter Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. The Earth is at a point of maximum tilt toward the sun, accounting for the longest day of year for the Northern hemisphere and shortest day for the Southern. Just part of another trip around the sun!
Although in regions closer to the equator, today is mid-summer, in the more seasonal climates it is the official kick-off of the summer season! If you haven’t yet, break out the grills and take off those pool covers.
On this day in 1900 China’s Empress Dowager Cixi (see-Chee) declared war on eight foreign nations in the conflict known as the Boxer Rebellion.
For decades, European nations, Russia, and America, the “Allies,” had been vying for ports and spheres of influence in China, as you may recall from high school history. By 1900, the Chinese had already suffered through and lost two Op…
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Jun 20, 2019
June 20th, Thursday | Vitamins & Rationing
The date is June 20th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile.
Today is the birthday of Charles W. Chesnutt, African American writer and activist. He was born in 1858, a few years before the start of the civil war, to free-born parents in Ohio. His parents were of mixed race, resulting in Chesnutt’s light complexion. The mystery surrounding who his grandfathers were, would lead to Chesnutt’s life-long fascination with miscegenation, or mixed-race persons. Struggling to identify with racial groups would become central theme of his work.
Chesnutt was a lawyer in addition to being a writer, since even back then, writing usually only paid very small bills. Being a professional lawyer was trying, but Chesnutt was fortunate enough to carve out a niche for himself as a court stenographer, making a somewhat lucrative career out of the business.
Chesnutt who said, “The workings of the human heart are the profoundest mystery of the universe”, wrote short stories…
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Jun 19, 2019
June 19th, Wednesday | What is Juneteenth?
The date is June 19th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile.
Today is Juneteenth. On this day in 1865 in Galveston Texas, Union Army General Gordon Granger read “General Order No. 3” from the top deck of Ashton Villa.
It had been two years since Lincoln had given the Emancipation Proclamation, and this was the first the slave population was hearing of their freedom. General Granger had arrived with 2000 troops to enforce the freeing of all the slaves. The beginning of his speech went like this: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves…”
Of course, equality for slaves wasn’t as easy as the General Order No. 3 would make it sound, but that first Juneteenth was nonetheless was celebrated with dancing in the streets.
Juneteenth would be celebrate…
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Jun 18, 2019
June 18th, Tuesday | Anastasia & an Economist
The date is June 18th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile.
Today is the birthday of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia, sometimes referred to as Princess Anastasia. Born in 1901, she was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last Russian Tsar.
Anastasia’s birth was a grave disappointment to her parents. The tsarina’s biological clock was ticking and instead of a male heir, they had produced a fourth girl. Fortunately, the birth of her brother Prince Alexei three years later spared Anastasia of any lasting resentment.
With the focus off Anastasia and onto her sickly brother, she was free to behave as mischievously as she wished. According to governesses and palace guests, Anastasia was not a demure and proper princess, and preferred to run about and play tricks on the servants and her sisters.
Contrary to popular mythology, Anastasia was a full-fledged teen of 17 at the time of her murder, not a child of ten or eleven. In fact, all of…
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Jun 17, 2019
June 17th, Monday | Everyone's Favorite Cookie
The date is June 17th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile.
Today is the birthday of Ruth Graves Wakefield, American chef and inventor of the most popular cookie in America: the chocolate chip cookie. After graduating in 1924 from what is now known as Framingham State University, with a degree from the Department of Household Arts, Ruth lectured and worked as a dietician in the Massachusetts town.
In 1930, Ruth and her husband bought a small inn in Whitman, MA a popular stop-over town for travelers on their way to the southern Massachusetts coast. They named it the Toll House Inn and had a small restaurant where Ruth cooked homemade meals. It became known for its lobster dinners and delicious desserts, from Boston cream pie to sticky pecan rolls, and of course various cookies.
The Toll House was very well frequented. It is rumored that Joseph Kennedy, Sr., would visit for dessert and that his daughter Rosemary sent her brother John F. Kennedy Toll House cooki…
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Jun 14, 2019
June 14th, Friday | Father's Day's dark past
The date is June 14th, Friday, and there are 200 days left of 2019. Today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile.
In honor of Father’s Day this weekend, we have a bit about the origins of Father’s Day. Before it was nationally observance in the US, Father’s Day was primarily celebrated by Catholics and Christians on March 19th, the feast day of St. Joseph. In Latin America, Father’s Day is generally still celebrated on March 19th.
Once Mother’s Day became a tradition in the US, it didn’t take long for people to start thinking a day for fathers would be a good idea too. There were a few townships that nearly made it a ‘thing’ but it wasn’t until Sonora Smart Dodd led the charge that a day for dads gained momentum.
Sonora Dodd was the eldest of six children who were raised by their father after their mother died in childbirth. After hearing a sermon on Mother’s Day about the day, she felt that a father’s day would be a grand idea. She helped to organize a town…
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Jun 13, 2019
June 13th, Thursday | Yeats's Unrequited Love
The date is June 13th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile.
Today is the birthday of Irish poet William Butler Yeats, more commonly referred to as W.B. Yeats. He was born to an artist father and heiress mother in 1865 in Ireland, but the family moved to London shortly thereafter to benefit his father’s artistic career.
While in London, Yeats along with his three siblings were informally homeschooled by their mother and father. Their mother regaled the children with Irish stories and folktales, while their father introduced them to geography, chemistry, and natural history, though not in a very cohesive or congruent manner.
By the time Yeats entered a formal school, he kept up with the average children, but showed no signs of the great poet he would become. In fact, he was quite bad at spelling in school, and more interested in biology and zoology than any other subject.
The Yeats family moved back to Dublin in 1880, where life moved along as expected. Th…
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Jun 7, 2019
June 7th, Friday | Gauguin goes
The date is June 7th, Friday, and today is my second to last day in Buenos Aires!
Today is the birthday of Paul Gauguin, French artist. He was active in the second half of the 19th Century and painted in the post-Impressionist style, which was characterized by an experimental use of color and folk-art influences. (MoMA published a catalogue of Gauguin’s work, which you can see/get here.)
He did extensive traveling for an artist and caught the traveling bug at an early age. As a baby, his family voyaged to Peru. His father hoped to take advantage of his wife’s distant wealthy relations and restart his career as a journalist from afar. While on route, however, Gauguin’s father suddenly died of a heart attack, leaving his wife with almost nothing besides her infant son and toddler daughter.
Fortunately, the Gauguins were welcomed into the arms of family, and ended up living a fairly luxurious lifestyle, attended by maids and servants, as their relations were politically powerful…
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Jun 6, 2019
June 6th, Thursday | Two Writers
The date is June 6th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Today is the birthday of Thomas Mann, German-born writer. Mann received the Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 54 for his two epic novels Buddenbrooks and The Magic Mountain and his numerous short stories. It was Thomas Mann who said: “In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius.”
In Mann’s fiction work, readers spend a lot of time in the character’s heads thinking, musing, and feeling. His epic novels are largely philosophical and psychological as opposed to action-packed journeys through foreign lands.
Besides being a successful fiction writer, Mann was an essayist and critic. He and his family fled Germany when the Nazi party came to power in 1933, eventually settling in Los Angeles, California. Mann was outspoken when it came to politics. During WWII, Mann recorded anti-Nazi in German.…
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Jun 5, 2019
June 5th, Wednesday | A Runaway Best-Seller
The date is June 5th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
On this day in 1851 the first two chapters of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe appeared in The National Era.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was set to run for just a few weeks in the abolitionist newspaper, but the story and its characters became so popular, that Harriet Beecher Stowe expanded the narrative. It ended up running for 40 weeks. On the weeks that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was not in print, The National Era would receive complaints from impatient readers.
With the success of the serialized version, Stowe was persuaded by a publisher to make it into a book. The first edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was was published 9 months after its first serialized appearance in March 1852. It sold 3,000 copies in the first day and 300,000 in it’s first year. It was translated into several major languages and sold 200,000 copies in England in its first year. Uncle Tom’s Cabin would go on to become…
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Jun 4, 2019
June 4th, Tuesday | The US Army had....Camels?
The date is June 4th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
As weird as it might sound, on this day in 1855 Major Henry C. Wayne set sail on the USS Supply to procure a small herd of camels for the US military.
He stopped in the Mediterranean making it to Greece, Turkey, Egypt (of course), and Tunisia, picking up 33 camels, two being pregnant. They also hired five expert camel drivers and bought a variety of gear including saddles and saddle packs that they wouldn’t be able to find anywhere in the United States for obvious reasons.
After nearly a year of procuring camels and the necessary assets, the caravan headed back for the States. The crew were given very specific instructions on the care of the camels and it’s reported that they camels were in better shape upon their arrival in Indianola, Texas than when they had set sail.
So how did this all start? The idea was proposed as early as 1836 to use camels as beasts of burden. A select few milita…
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Jun 3, 2019
June 3rd, Monday | A Most Charming Spy
The date is June 3rd, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Today is the birthday of Josephine Baker, African American dancer, entertainer, spy, and activist.
Josephine was born in 1906 under suspicious circumstances. As noted by her son in Baker’s biography, Josephine’s mother was taken in by a white hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, and given care unknown to African American women at the time. Most minorities gave birth at home with the help of a midwife or nurse. Josephine’s mother never revealed the identity of Josephine’s father, but Josephine suspected he was white and fairly wealthy which would account for her mother’s special treatment during the birth.
Josephine was raised by her mother and stepfather in St. Louis. She had two half-sisters. There’s not much information about her early childhood, but she had quit school by 12 and was out on the streets at 13. Either home was an unwelcoming place or she really wanted her independence.…
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May 31, 2019
May 31st, Friday
The date is May 31st, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Today is the birthday of American writer and poet Walt Whitman. Born in 1819 on Long Island, Walt considered his childhood relatively unhappy with an impecunious father leading the family. When Whitman was just four, the family moved to Brooklyn, his father seeking better employment.
Brooklyn is where Walt would grow up, the city and country still reveling in its young glory of being an independent nation. Whitman recalled that on July 4th, 1825, an aged Lafayette was in New York for American Independence Celebrations. Whitman, a small six-year-old, claims he was picked up and given a kiss on the cheek by none other than Lafayette, an important general in the fight for freedom. A joyful moment in an otherwise gray childhood.
Whitman ended his school days at age 11 and promptly set out to find work to bring the family some much-needed, extra money. His first job was an errand boy for two lawyers…
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May 30, 2019
May 30th, Thursday | About a Girl
The date is May 30th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Today is the feast day of Joan of Arc, patron saint of soldiers and France. She was born around 1412 in rural France to a farmer with 50 acres and his wife. She never received any formal education and was illiterate. Her local church however was right around the corner from her home and it could be inferred that her ecclesiastical knowledge came from her close proximity to the church as well as her intense devotion.
She was able to convince the heir presumptive of France to give her armor and ride into battle with his officers. Naturally the Dauphin was skeptical of the farm girl, but on the losing side of a French civil war, he was ready to try almost anything. When Joan correctly predicted the outcome of a battle several days before it was confirmed, the French Prince gave Joan a suit of armor and a horse and other supplies were donated by the town.
Joan never led troops herself, instead sh…
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May 29, 2019
May 29th, Wednesday | JFK & a Sherpa
The date is May 29th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
On this day in 1953, Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary reached the top of Mount Everest. They were the first to conclusively reach the top and took plenty of pictures looking down to prove it. Hillary also took the now-iconic picture of Norgay on the summit, holding his ice axe overhead.
Afterwards, Norgay, a Nepali-Indian Sherpa mountaineer, decided to take May 29th as his birthday. He knew he was born in late May, but not the specific day.
The two were a team to the end. In an earlier expedition, Norgay saved Hillary from a fatal fall with some quick thinking and an ice axe. Hillary the considered Norgay a necessary asset for any expeditions from that point on. Neither one ever revealed who took the first step onto the summit, only ever insisting that it was a joint effort.
Today is the birthday Alfonsina Storni. Born in 1892 in Switzerland to Italian-Swiss parents, Alfonsina grew up in A…
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May 28, 2019
May 28th, Tuesday | But wait: there's Moore
The date is May 28th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
On this day in 585 BCE the Battle of Halys (hey-lis) came to a quick end when a Solar Eclipse occurred over the battlefield. When the sunny skies suddenly turned dark, the two armies immediately dropped their weapons and came to a truce, ending a five-year-long war. The account was written down by the Greek philosopher and scientist Thales and remains the first ever noted solar eclipse. If you’ve ever witnessed a total solar eclipse in person, they are pretty astounding. If you didn’t know what was happening, you might change your ways also.
Today is the birthday of Irishman Thomas Moore. Today he’s remembered for his poetry, but Moore was a singer-songwriter, actor, and entertainer. Although he was Irish born, he acquired an English accent during his school years and maintained it throughout his life.
He was not a fan of American politics. His views were validated during his Grand Tour…
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May 24, 2019
May 24th, Friday | Memorial Day & Modern Kitchens
The date is May 24th, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Today is the birthday of Lillian Moller Gilbreth, an industrial/organizational psychologist. The title sounds fancy, but it’s really quite practical. She, along with her husband Frank Gilbreth ran a consulting business, helping companies increase productivity and efficiency in their systems. They were particularly looking at things on the human level.
[A lot of their early work was on how to increase worker efficiency. In one instance, they determined that changing the tone and brightness of the lighting in the workspace would decrease the employees’ eyestrain, thereby increasing productivity. In another, they recommended adjustments to machinery to fit the height of each worker would make for more comfortable and efficient movements. Today we recognize this as ergonomics.]
When Frank Gilbreth passed away unexpectedly of a heart attack, their business took a hit. Frank had struck most of th…
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May 23, 2019
May 23rd, Thursday | Goodnight Moon and Mr. Moog
The date is May 23th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Today is Red Nose Day for the USA. Red Nose Day is a day of fundraising – all donations make their way to programs that serve children in need. The day was inspired by the BBC event of the same name and is run by the non-profit Comic Relief, Inc. The idea is to leverage the entertainment world to inspire giving, “making it fun to make a difference.”
Today is the birthday of Robert Moog, American engineer and electronic music pioneer. Moog, in addition to having a fantastic last name, invented the first commercial synthesizer. Moog’s synthesizer was compact compared to the room-sized synthesizers on the market and it was the first to have a keyboard
Wendy Carlos, a peer of Moog’s, arranged selections of Bach for the Moog synthesizer. The compositions ended up on the album Switched-On Bach, which took home 3 Grammys and was the first classical album to go certified platinum. (Hear a t…
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May 22, 2019
May 22nd, Wednesday | Sherlock & a Sports Legend
The date is May 22nd, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Today is the birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Scottish writer and former physician, best known for his creation of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle went to school in his native Scotland, to become a doctor. He served as the doctor on exploration voyages traveling to Australia, West & South Africa, and the Arctic Ocean.
You could say that Doyle failed at becoming a doctor. He had plenty of experience and more education than required but was never able to gain a decent following of patients.
In the time Doyle waited to see patients, which ended up being most of his time, he wrote short stories and novels. A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes novel, was published in 1887 and is arguably one of the first novels in the detective genre.
The novel was well-liked, but it wasn’t until the second Sherlock novel was syndicated in a magazine that Sherlock became the household name he is today. Sher…
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May 21, 2019
May 21st, Tuesday | Fats Waller meets the Mob
The date is May 21st, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Today is the birthday of Alexander Pope, English Poet, born in 1688. He gives us such lines as “To err is human; to forgive, divine.” and “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
His greatest works were satirical in nature, commenting on English politics, life, or contemporary public figures. Pope gave us English translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey, and is heavily quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, second only to Shakespeare.
And today is the birthday of Fats Waller, jazz musician and composer during the Harlem Renaissance. [By 15, Fats had dropped out of school to work as an organist in Harlem for $32 a week. He was considered a prodigy by the staff of the Lincoln Theater where he worked.] He composed hits of his own and also sold songs to other artists to use as their own compositions.
He was famous enough that in his 20s, he was abducted by gangsters after a pe…
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May 20, 2019
May 20th, Monday | Jean & Bees & Toussaint
The date is May 20th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
On this day in 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received the patent for the use of copper rivets on jeans. Rivets are those little round metal things on your jeans, usually on a seam, that make the seam stronger. Jacob Davis, a tailor in Nevada, had the idea but didn’t have the money to file the patent. He was frequently buying denim from Levi Strauss and suggested they go in on the patent together. Strauss agreed.
At the time, denim overalls and clothing were primarily worn by working men – miners, ranchers, lumberjacks, rail workers. And they wanted clothes that could withstand the hard wear. Denim fabric was much tougher than the denim we see in stores today, and the copper rivets helped the seams and pockets last as long as the fabric.
The popularity of jeans in the 1950s soared and copper rivets on back pockets all but disappeared from Levi’s jeans. The new wave of jean-wearers com…
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May 17, 2019
May 17th, Friday | The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
The date is May 17th, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
As promised, today we have more on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the first distinctly American fairy-tale-fantasy novel.
On this day in 1900, the first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published, the first copy given to L. Frank Baum’s younger sister. Baum was the creator and author of the story and the original illustrations were by W.W. Denslow.
The publisher did not think the book would be particularly crowd pleasing. He only agreed to publish it after securing a deal for the story to be adapted into a musical play for the Chicago theater scene, in order to increase publicity.
The first edition of 10,000 copies sold out quickly due to a large number of pre-sales. The second edition of 15,000 copies was almost gone by October of that same year. By the time it entered the public domain in 1956, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz had sold more than three-million copies. Since it had been in t…
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May 16, 2019
May 16th, Thursday | Curious George escapes WWII
The date is May 16th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
On this day in 1866, the United States Congress passed a bill to allow the minting of a new 5-cent coin, now known as the nickel. Why is the nickel so thick? The existing “half-dimes” prior to the nickel’s introduction were extremely thin, since they were half the size in weight of a dime, which was a tenth of the size of an American silver dollar. When the idea of using nickel in the 5-cent coin was proposed, it solved the problem of having to make such a tiny coin, since more nickel is needed to equal the value of silver.
Of course it wasn’t Congress’s idea to use nickel. Rather using nickel in 5-cent coins got a big shove through Congress from wealthy industrialist Joseph Wharton who basically had a monopoly over the nickel mines and stood to make plenty of money from the idea. (For those wondering, Joseph Wharton is the founder of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylva…
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May 15, 2019
May 15th, Wednesday - The Man Behind the Curtain
The date is May 15th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
On this evening in 1793, farmer-turned-inventor Diego Marín Aguilera, in the light of the full moon, dragged a contraption to the top of his castle. His cousin and his blacksmith friend looked on as Diego jumped off the top. The contraption was a flying machine so Diego did not jump to his death. Instead he flew about 19 feet high in the air for a quarter of a mile, crash landing near the next town over when a joint in one of the wings broke.
When his cousin and the blacksmith arrived on scene, fearing the worst, they found Diego with only minor cuts and bumps, and very cross at the blacksmith over the poorly welded joint.
Diego had tinkered with and improved upon a few devices previously, including one for increasing productivity in watermills and another for marble cutting. But his ‘plane’ was his magnum opus. Made out of wood, iron, cloth, and bird feathers, he had spent considerable…
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May 14, 2019
May 14th, Tuesday - A Baseball Cinderella Story
The date is May 14th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Today is the birthday of Earle Combs, Baseball Hall of Fame-r. Earle played centerfield for the Yankees and was the leadoff hitter for the New York Yankees legendary “Murderers’ Row” in 1927.
Combs hadn’t planned on baseball being his career. He went to college to become a teacher for the one-room schoolhouses in rural Kentucky where he was born and raised. He played baseball, basketball, and ran track while completing his education.
Out of college, Combs played on two local baseball teams while teaching. His play caught the eye of the Louisville Colonels. Combs had married his high school sweetheart in 1921, so when the Louisville Colonels offered to pay Combs a salary above his teaching pay, he took it, happy and proud to be able to bring home more as the breadwinner.
However, his first game with the Colonels went terrible. He made multiple errors, allowing the opposition to score t…
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May 13, 2019
May 13th, Monday
The date is May 13th, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Today is the birthday of Daphne du Maurier, English author and playwright. We have Daphne to thank for such novels as Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel as well as short stories like “The Birds,” in which birds begin attacking humans kamikaze style.
She wrote primarily in the horror genre, often using psychological and paranormal elements. Her parents were both involved in the theater business, but Daphne was never one to soak up the limelight. She became increasingly reclusive as her fame as a writer grew. She was even said to be withdrawn and cold toward her husband and children, particularly when she was in the middle of a novel. Perhaps that was Daphne putting herself in the shoes of her characters, who tend to become isolated from the people around, increasing the reader’s sense of dread and stranger anxiety in the story-world.
“The Birds” and Rebecca were successful in their own right and eac…
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May 10, 2019
May 10th, Friday
The date is May 10th, Friday, and today is my last day in Lima, Peru.
In honor of Mother’s Day this weekend, I just wanted to take a moment to thank all the moms, grandmas, aunts, and mom-figures out there doing their best.
Today in 1908 was the first celebration of Mother's Day in America in the township of Grafton, West Virginia. (May 10th was a Sunday that year.) We talked about the founder of Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis, on her birthday, May 1st. Jarvis led the charge to get the day recognized on the national level, so that by 1914, Woodrow Wilson made it official.
By then the day was growing too commercialized in Anna’s opinion. She believed a handwritten letter to one’s mother was the appropriate display of affection, and despised the companies peddling Mother’s Day cards, special flower arrangements, and candy as symbols of love. She was so upset that she protested outside a candy maker’s convention in Philadelphia and at one point was arrested for disturbing the pe…
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May 9, 2019
May 9th, Thursday
The date is May 9th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru.
Today is the birthday of Sir James Matthew Barrie, Scottish writer of stories and plays, better known as J.M. Barrie. When Barrie was just 6 years old, his 13-year-old brother David died in a skating accident. David was thier mother’s favorite and she completely despondent for her favorite child. Little Jimmy would carry on whistling tunes his brother had, but nothing he did seemed to attract the attention of his mother away from the child she had lost. Her only consolation was that David would always remain a boy. It’s surmised that Barrie’s unusually short stature of 5’3.5” was due to the intense stress he felt as a young child, starved for attention by his mother’s preoccupation with her dead son.
I know, said, but, Barrie did grow up. And his early love of reading and telling stories turned into a passion for writing. His play and then novel about a boy who could fly and was always a boy bec…
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May 8, 2019
May 8th, Wednesday
The date is May 8th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru.
Today is the birthday of Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States. Truman assumed the remainder of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency when FDR passed away in April 1945. He then served the next full term after winning the election.
Less than a month after assuming the presidency, on Truman’s birthday, German forces unconditionally surrendered to the Allies, marking the end of WWII in Europe. As such, today is Victory in Europe Day, or V-E Day for much of Europe and the States.
Harry was a bit of a man’s man. He greatly enjoyed sipping bourbon while playing poker with friends. This rubbed some Americans and staff members the wrong way, as it was a stark contrast to the habits of FDR before him.
However, the phrase “the buck stops here” which has origins in poker, became commonplace during Truman’s time. If you say “the buck stops here” you are taking responsibility for your own…
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May 7, 2019
May 7th, Tuesday
The date is May 7th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru.
Today is the birthday of Mary Mahoney, born in 1845 in Boston. Mary Mahoney was the first African-American woman to be a registered nurse. Nursing school hasn’t changed much since Mahoney went to school – she and her classmates had grueling 16-hour work days for little pay with plenty of studying to do in between.
Things didn’t get any easier after Mary completed the nursing program. Minority nurses were often lumped together with the household staff, their education and training overlooked. To distinguish herself as a professional, she would eat suppers alone in the kitchen, separate from household servants when employed at a household. As her reputation as a professional nurse and outstanding caregiver spread, Mahoney found herself with a number of private wealthy clientele.
Mary was a strong advocate for ethnic equality, insisting nurses of all colors should receive equal pay, particularly when the…
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May 6, 2019
May 6th, Monday
The date is May 6th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru.
On this day in 1994 the Channel Tunnel rail line opened between England and France. The idea of a tunnel under the English Channel connecting France and England was proposed as early as 1802 by a French mining engineer, but it wasn’t until 1988 that a plan was approved of. The Tunnel has the longest underwater section in the world and construction ended up costing nearly twice as much as the original budget, about £9 million.
Today is the birthday of Willie Mays, Baseball Hall of Famer. Both of Mays parents were athletically gifted, his father playing baseball on a local Alabama team. Willie was playing catch by five and sitting on the bench at his dad’s baseball games by age ten. By high school he was playing on a semi-pro Negro league team, and by age 19 in he was playing in the MLB Minor Leagues. That same year on May 24th, he was called up to the Majors to play for the New York Giants, where he would…
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May 3, 2019
May 3rd, Friday
The date is May 3rd, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru.
On this day in 1978, the USA celebrated Sun Day, led by President Jimmy Carter. Jackson Browne performed in concert on the DC Mall and Robert Redford gave a speech in New York City at the UN Plaza. Redford reminded the audience that the sun “can’t be embargoed by any foreign nation.” Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the lawn of the White House during his presidency, but President Reagan took them out when he moved in.
Today is the birthday of Dodie Smith, author and creator of The One Hundred and One Dalmatians and the evil villain, Cruella De Vil. Smith herself had a Dalmatian named Pongo and when a friend commented that Pongo would make a great fur coat, the idea for the story was born.
Dodie’s most famous book is certainly The One Hundred and One Dalmatians, though she wrote a number of other novels, plays, memoirs, and even screenplays.
Today is the birthday of Bing Crosby, born Harry Lillis Cro…
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May 2, 2019
May 2nd, Thursday
The date is May 2nd, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru.
On this day in 1866, the Spanish Armada assaulted the coast Peruvian town of Callao (Cai-yow) in the Battle of Callao. In an attempt to get back its reputation as a force to be reckoned with, Spain antagonized their former colonies Peru and Chile.
Cannon fire sounded from sea and from land. But the Spanish Armada was a too far out in the water for their attack to be effective. The city, not being able to move, was similarly not close enough to put a definitive end to the battle. A small Peruvian fleet of ships were able to get close enough to inflict severe damage to the Spanish Armada, and ward them off by the end of the day. The batteries in the city of Callao had run out, and were quiet as the Spanish departed. Spain called it a win, their glory restored. Peruvians, having escaped unconquered and seen the Spanish retreat, also called it a win. A U.S. General onsite during the battle summed it up by sayin…
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May 1, 2019
May 1st, Wednesday
The date is May 1st, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru.
On this day in 1930, the Lowell Observatory released the name for “Planet X.” The Lowell staff voted on three possible names and the vote was unanimous: the new planet would be called “Pluto.”
The name came to the team rather by accident. An ocean away from the Arizona observatory, in the United Kingdom was a young girl spoke to her grandfather about Roman mythology. She suggested the new plant should be named “Pluto,” the Roman god of the underworld. Her grandfather thought it was an excellent idea, and passed along the name to an astronomy professor in Oxford. The astronomy professor wired the idea to his peers in the US. When the name was announced, the grandfather gave his granddaughter, named Venetia, £5 as a reward.
Today is the birthday of Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother’s Day. Anna was always close with her mother. As a young girl, she declared to her Sunday-school class after be…
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Apr 30, 2019
April 30th, Tuesday
The date is April 30th, Tuesday and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru.
On this day in 1883 New York State Governor Grover Cleveland passed legislation that would allow for the creation of the first state park in the United States, Niagara Falls State Park. The bill approved the “selection, location and appropriation of certain lands in the village of Niagara Falls” and in 1885 the Park was officially opened. The landscape architect Frederick Olmsted had been a big proponent of the bill, believing that the area should be preserved for its obvious natural beauty and open for the general public to enjoy.
And on this day in 1997, “The Puppy Episode” premiered on ABC toward the end of season 4 of the TV sitcom Ellen. In the episode, Ellen Morgan, played by Ellen DeGeneres, came out as gay. It might seem common place now to have TV show characters of all different sexual orientations, but just 22 years ago, it was a big deal. Despite protests and boycotts of the show in cer…
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Apr 29, 2019
April 29th, Monday
The date is April 29th, Monday and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru.
Today is International Dance Day for all member countries of the United Nations. It’s a day of celebrating dance and recognizing it’s importance as a part of all cultures. The International Theatre Institute, in partnership with UNESCO holds festivals on this day to encourage participation in dance, even if you have two left feet.
Today is the birthday of animator Iwao Takamoto. He was born in 1925 in Los Angeles to first generation Japanese immigrants. As a teen during WWII, he was sent to an internment camp with his family in Manzanar, California to wait out the war. While there, he received some rudimentary lessons on drawing and animation from a few fellow internees.
With no official portfolio at the end of the war, Takamoto took a sketchbook to Disney and applied for a position as an animator. He ended up working under one of the “Nine Old Men” at Disney and was an animator and character desig…
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Apr 26, 2019
April 26th, Friday
The date is April 26th, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru.
Today is Arbor Day across most of the northern states. Arbor Day is celebrated not on one day nation-wide, but on a day that is best for each state to plant tree saplings. The first Arbor day was celebrated in 1872 in Nebraska, led by J. Sterling Morton and it’s estimated one million trees were planted. In 1907, urged on by Native American conservationist Major Israel McCreight, Theodore Roosevelt gave an “Arbor Day Proclamation to the School Children of the United States” calling for schools include the importance of trees and forestry in their curriculum.
Today is the birthday of John James Audubon, ornithologist and painter. His major work The Birds of America, first published in 1827 was a result of a lifetime of observing and documenting birds in their natural habitat throughout a young American nation.
Originally born in the French Colony of what is now Haiti in 1785, his French father moved t…
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Apr 25, 2019
April 25th, Thursday
The date is April 25th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru.
On this day in 1953, Watson, Crick, Wilkins, and Franklin published their revolutionary paper on the double helix shape of human DNA. As such, today is often celebrated as “DNA Day” in academic circles.
Watson and Crick had come up with a shape for DNA in 1951, but after showing it to Rosalind Franklin, had to start over. She had alerted them that their design was impossible because of the way water molecules and amino acids interact. They discovered the new shape in February of 1953 and published their findings quickly in the hopes of beating a rival, Linus Pauling, to the discovery. It probably goes without saying that this was a major advancement in genomics!
On this day in 1998, the Red Hat Society was founded. The Red Hat Society calls themselves a ‘playgroup for women’ with their central mission to connect women for the purpose of having fun in spaces away from the everyday duties of caree…
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Apr 24, 2019
April 24th, Wednesday
The date is April 24th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru.
On this day in 1800 President John Adams allocated $5000 for the Library of Congress to accumulate “books as may be necessary for the use of Congress” and for the construction of a building to house those books and documents. The original collection included 740 books and three maps.
The Library of Congress was torched during the War of 1812, just over a decade after its establishment. President Thomas Jefferson graciously offered to sell his collection of over six thousand books to the Library…for nearly $24,000. Despite the hefty price tag, it was an important step in the Library’s history. Jefferson’s collection was not just scholarly books but included the likes of items such as cookbooks and contemporary literature. Despite some critics arguing that such frivolous items should not be in the government Library, Jefferson overruled them, believing that there were “no subject to which a Me…
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Apr 23, 2019
April 23rd, Tuesday
The date is April 23, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru.
On this day in 1516 the Reinheitsgebot was signed into law in Bavaria in what is present day Germany. The literal translation of Reinheitsgebot is “purity order” and it had to do with a very German thing: beer. It mandated that beer could only be made of barley, hops, and water. The order also made recommendations for punishing those that dared serve or sell impure beer and set guidelines for the price of beer in Bavaria.
The Reinheitsgebot was expanded to include a handful of herbs and spices around 1550. Yeast wasn’t recognized as a separate ingredient and was added to the list when it was discovered later on.
Some historians and critics argue that the Reinheitsgebot stunted the development of the German beer scene, though it certainly has given a strong identity to German beer. In 2015, the Reiheitzgebot was revised yet again, this time to allow beer to more broadly contain natural ingredients.
T…
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Apr 22, 2019
April 22nd, Monday
The date is April 22nd, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru.
Today is Earth Day. The first official Earth Day was celebrated across the United States in 1970. The day came out of a desire to raise awareness and respect for the environment following the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill which killed over 10,000 birds and sea fauna. The April date was specifically chosen to fall during the school year in the hopes it would lead to increased education in schools. And on that first Earth Day in 1970, the majority of participants who stepped outside into the sunshine were children, teens, and young adults from elementary school to college.
And on this day in 1876 the Philadelphia Athletics faced off against the Boston Red Stockings in the first game of the National League. It ended up being the only game that day as the other 3 scheduled games were rained out in their cities. At the time, the National League was changing up the way teams operated. Player contracts were altere…
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