Archives

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born October 21st

Oct21

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, b. 1772

Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool,
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet.

Ursula K. LeGuin b. 1929. Does this brief piece by LeGuin on “What Makes a Story?” make sense to you? Ms. LeGuin has written some fine fantasy, including the Earthsea novels.

Ann Cameron, b. 1943. Author of easy-to-read chapter books for children. I like the Julian books very much, especially the story in which Julian and his little brother, Huey, eat their father’s special lemon pudding, a pudding that tastes “like a whole raft of lemons, like a night on the sea.” When Father wakes up from his nap to find the pudding gone and Julian and Huey hiding under the bed, he hauls them out and makes the punishment fit the crime.

Janet Ahlberg, b. 1944.

Also on this date in 1879, Thomas A. Edison first demonstrated his incandescent lamp. And it’s the birthday of Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, who left his fortune to endow the Noble Prizes.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born October 20th

Oct20

Thomas Hughes, b. 1822.

Arthur Rimbaud, b. 1854. A decadent poet for my French readers.
Fortunately, I don’t read French.

John Dewey, b. 1859, pragmatist and educator. In fact, Dewey was so pragmatic that if you don’t like this quotation, you can probably find one that says the exact opposite that you will like.

Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself.”

I’m not much of a fan of Mr. Dewey, but the above statement rings true and meshes well with home-schooling.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born October 31st

Oct31

John Keats, b.1795.

Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
The transient pleasures as a vision seem,
And yet we think the greatest pain’s to die.

How strange it is that man on earth should roam,
And lead a life of woe, but not forsake
His rugged path; nor dare he view alone
His future doom which is but to awake.

Chiang Kai-Shek, b.1887.

Sydney Taylor, b.1904. Ms. Taylor was an actress and a professional dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company in New York. But here in Semicolon family, she’s famous as the author of the All-of-a-Kind family books, from which we draw the frequently quoted phrase, “My mama smiles on me!”

Katherine Paterson, b.1932 in Qing-Jiang, China. Ms. Paterson wrote several classic children’s books including two Newbery Award books, Jacob Have I Loved and Bridge to Terebithia. She’s also the author of The Great Gilly Hopkins and The Master Puppeteer, both of which I’ve read and enjoyed. From an interview with the author at Katherine Paterson’s official website, terebithia.com:

In what ways has your religious conviction informed your writing? And would you comment on the presence (or lack ) of religious content, specifically Christian, in recent children’s literature (say the last fifteen years or so)?

I think it was Lewis who said something like: “The book cannot be what the writer is not.” What you are will shape your book whether you want it to or not. I am Christian, so that conviction will pervade the book even when I make no conscious effort to teach or preach. Grace and hope will inform everything I write.

You’re asking me to comment on fifteen years of 5000 or so books a year. Whew! We live in a Post-Christian society. Therefore, not many of those writers will be Christians or adherents of any of the traditional faiths. Self-consciously Christian (or Jewish or Muslim) writing will be sectarian and tend to propaganda and therefore have very little to say to persons outside that particular faith community. The challenge for those of us who care about our faith and about a hurting world is to tell stories which will carry the words of grace and hope in their bones and sinews and not wear them like fancy dress.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born October 30th

Oct30

John Adams, Second President of the United States, b. 1735. “There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.”

Richard Sheridan, playwright, b. 1751. He was the creator of the character, Mrs. Malaprop, in his play The Rivals. A malapropism is “the mistaken use of a word in the place of a similar soundong one, often with unintentionally amusing effect.” For instance Mrs. Malaprop says in the play, “He is the very pineapple of politeness!”

Paul Valery, French poet, b.1871.

Emily Post, b.1872. Her book, Etiquette: The Blue Book of Social Usage was first published in 1922.

Ezra Pound, American poet, b.1885.

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born October 27th

Oct27

“For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.”

“There are two things that I want you to make up your minds to: first, that you are going to have a good time as long as you live – I have no use for the sour-faced man – and next, that you are going to do something worthwhile, that you are going to work hard and do the things you set out to do.”

“Don’t hit at all if you can help it; don’t hit a man if you can possibly avoid it; but if you do hit him, put him to sleep.”

“I don’t think any President ever enjoyed himself more than I did. Moreover, I don’t think any ex-President ever enjoyed himself more.”

So, who was the adventurous US president born on this day in 1858?

No History, Only Biography

Oct29

James Boswell, famous for his biography of Samuel Johnson, was born on this day in 1740.

“The life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakespeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers.” –Thomas Babington Macaulay

Have you read Boswell’s Life of Johnson? Do you read very many biographies? What are your favorites? I realized in thinking about this topic that I have read and enjoyed quite a few autobiographies, but not so many biographies. Mostly I’ve read biographies with my children.

A few favorite biographies:

Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie
Leonardo da Vinci, Good Queen Bess and others by Diane Stanley
Paul Revere and the World He Lived In by Esther Forbes
Stonewall by Jean Fritz
Hard Times by Studs Terkel
Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy
Invincible Louisa by Cornelia Meigs

Wow! That was hard. I think I prefer people’s stories in their own words. I can think of dozens of good autobiographies and memoirs. What’s your favorite biography?

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born October 27th

Oct27

James Cook, b. 1728. Famous English sea captain and explorer, he discovered the Hawaiian Islands and was killed in Hawaii on February 14, 1779. He also was the first European to visit New Zealand while looking for a southern continent that was believed to exist in order to keep the earth in balance. This book sounds interesting: Explorations of Captain James Cook in the Pacific As Told by Selections of His Own Journals, 1768-1779 by James Cook and edited by A. Grenfell Price. Another one for The List.

Theodore Roosevelt, b. 1858. He was the 26th president of the United States and my favorite. He was the first president to ride in an automobile, the first to submerge in a submarine, and the first to fly in an airplane. TR quotes:

“For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.”
“There are two things that I want you to make up your minds to: first, that you are going to have a good time as long as you live – I have no use for the sour-faced man – and next, that you are going to do something worthwhile, that you are going to work hard and do the things you set out to do.”
“Don’t hit at all if you can help it; don’t hit a man if you can possibly avoid it; but if you do hit him, put him to sleep.”
“I don’t think any President ever enjoyed himself more than I did. Moreover, I don’t think any ex-President ever enjoyed himself more.”

I think Teddy Roosevelt is so much fun to read about because he did enjoy thoroughly whatever he did. It’s a trait I could afford to emulate more often.

Dylan Thomas, b. 1914. Poem in October was written in celebration of the poet’s own thirtieth birthday.
“It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore . . .”

To This Great Stage of Fools: Born October 21st

Oct21

Alfred Bernhard Nobel, b.1833. Swedish chemist and engineer. Did you know he invented dynamite? And his brother Emil died in a nitroglycerine explosion. From Nobel’s will:

“The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.

2005 Nobel Prize winners

Physics: Roy J. Glauber, John L. Hall, Theodor W. Hansch for something to do with optical something?
Chemistry: Yves Chauvin, Robert H. Grubbs, Richard R. Schrock for the development of the metathesis method in organic synthesis?
Medicine: Barry J. Marshall, J. Robin Warren for the discovery of the pylori bacterium and its role in gastric ulcer disease.
Peace: International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei for efforts to prevent military use of atomic energy.
Literature: Harold Pinter, playwright. I’ve read one Pinter play, A Slight Ache, never seen one. I just read a little of his anti-war poetry, and I am not impressed (WARNING: poetry consists of profanity, rabid anti-Americanism, attacks on orthodox Christianity). But who am I? And what is truth?

“There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.”

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?— Harold Pinter

What kind of gobbledygook is that? “I believe truth and goodness to be relative when I want to write whatever I want to write and deny you any basis upon which to criticize it. But when I don’t like the American/British invasion of Iraq, I choose to say that truth and goodness are what I say they are. And you can’t disagree with me. Because I’m an artist.”

Also born on October 21st: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, b. 1772, Ursula K. LeGuin, b. 1929, Ann Cameron, b. 1943, Janet Ahlberg, b. 1944.

Born October 20th

Oct20

Thomas Hughes, b. 1822.

Arthur Rimbaud, b. 1854. A decadent poet for my French readers.
Fortunately, I don’t read French.

John Dewey, b. 1859, pragmatist and educator. In fact, Dewey was so pragmatic that if you don’t like this quotation, you can probably find one that says the exact opposite that you will like.

“Education is not a preparation for life; education is life itself.”

Crockett Johnson, b. 1906. Author of Harold and the Purple Crayon.

Born October 18th

Oct18

Michael Wigglesworth, b. 1631 in England, but lived most of his life in America, a pastor in Malden, Massachusetts. He married three times and had eight children. And he became a doctor in addition to being a preacher and a writer. He wrote a long poem, 224 stanzas, called The Day of Doom. The theme of the poem was the Judgment Seat of Christ, and Wigglesworth portrays vividly both the delight of the saved and the despair of the damned, spending rather more stanzas on the goats or the non-elect. Here’s a sample of the Puritan, Calvinist theology of the poem:

Of Man’s fall’n Race, who can true Grace,
or Holiness obtain?
Who can convert or change his heart,
if God withhold the same?
Had we apply’d our selves, and try’d
as much as who did most
God’s love to gain, our busie pain
and labour had been lost.

Christ readily makes this Reply,
I damn you not because
You are rejected, or not elected,
but you have broke my Laws:
It is but vain your wits to strain,
the end and means to sever:
Men fondly seek to part or break
what God hath link’d together.

Whom God will save, such he will have,
the means of life to use:
Whom he’ll pass by, shall chuse to dy,
and ways of life refuse.
He that fore-sees, and foredecrees,
in wisdom order’d has,
That man’s free-will electing ill,
shall bring his will to pass.

Here’s the interesting part:

Published in 1662, The Day of Doom became America’s first best seller, circulating 1800 copies during the first year. It has been estimated that at one time one copy was owned for every thirty-five people in all of New England; every other family must have had The Day of Doom on its parlor table. The poem went through ten editions in the next fourteen decades, four in the seventeenth century and six in the eighteenth.

Can you imagine such a poem becoming a bestseller nowadays?

James Leigh Hunt, b. 1784 wrote a poem about the Judgment that is much more acceptable to our current sensibilities: Abou Ben Adhem.