Saturday, October 22, 2005
All About Writers
Birthday of novelist Doris Lessing, born in Kermanshah, Persia, (now Iran) (1919). Her father was a captain in the British army, and her mother was a nurse. Lessing grew up in Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, and then moved to South Africa. She supported herself working in a dress shop writing...
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Friday, October 21, 2005
One of My Favorites and Are You Sleeping?
Birthday of one of my favorite people, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born in Devonshire, England (1772). After his father died when he was 10, he went to boarding school and hated it. He attended Cambridge but dropped out to join the army. At one time, he thought of coming to America, Pennsylvania, to...
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Thursday, October 20, 2005
On This Day in Wisconsin
In Wisconsin: On this day in 1856 Frederick Douglass arrived in Beaver Dam to speak about the brutality and immorality of slavery, intending to generate support for the abolitionist movement in Dodge County and Wisconsin. A former runaway slave and leading orator and author of the abolitionist...
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Rebel Architect, Eddie and the Cruisers, and other things
Birthday of the architect Sir Christopher Wren, born at East Knoyle, Wiltshire, England (1632). Among the many buildings he designed is the Windsor Town Hall. When building inspectors said it was supported by an inadequate number of pillars, Wren added four more pillars, none of which touched the...
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Thursday, October 13, 2005
History, Writing, Music, and Jokes
On this day in 1792, in Washington D.C. the cornerstone was laid for the presidential residence, known as the White House. A Frenchman, Pierre L'Enfant (he designed Washington, D.C.) wanted the residence to look like the palace of Versailles. George Washington thought that was too fancy, so he had...
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Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Oktoberfest and People with Depth of Feeling
Oktoberfest is getting underway in Munich, the biggest festival in the world. Nearly 6 million people usually attend. They drink more than 10 million pints of beer. Oktoberfest has its origins in a big wedding party that happened on this day in 1810. Crown Prince Louis of Bavaria was marrying...
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Friday, July 15, 2005
Today's Writers' Birthdays
Birthday of journalist and writer Arianna Huffington, born in Athens, Greece (1950). She went to Cambridge and moved to America in 1980. She was a conservative columnist, but over the years has become more and more liberal. She wrote, "One of the definite changes in my thinking was born of the hard...
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Thursday, July 14, 2005
Historical Novels
Birthday of the man who wrote the first big cowboy novel, Owen Wister, born in Germantown, PA (1860). Although he attended Harvard, studied music in Paris, and became a lawyer in Philadelphia, when he went to Wyoming for his health, he became fascinated by the Old West. He used that fascination to...
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July 13th - Poverty and a Life Cut Short
Birthday of poet John Clare, born in Nottinghamshire, England (1793), considered by some to be the poorest person ever to become a major writer in English literature. His father was a peasant farmer. The family often had to live off the proceeds from a single apple tree in their yard. John Clare...
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Tuesday, July 12, 2005
The Pond, Advice to Today's Leaders, and the Dome
Birthday of Henry David Thoreau, who was born David Henry Thoreau in Concord, MA (1817), author of Walden, and the essay "Civil Disobedience." He became the first member of his family to go to college. He went to Harvard, but didn't much care for it. He didn't much care for school teaching either,...
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