--- Begin Message ---
- From: "The Writer's Almanac" <newsletter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: juliereneb@xxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2006 01:00:04 -0600 (CST)
SATURDAY, 4 MARCH, 2006
Listen (RealAudio)
<A href="http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=obWaKCBbz-sYpR4Jm8EJYw.."; >
http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=obWaKCBbz-sYpR4Jm8EJYw.. </A>
How to listen
<A href="http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=Jh_prxLvwnZbXezp6E2M-A.."; >
http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=Jh_prxLvwnZbXezp6E2M-A.. </A>
Poem: "After the Test Said Yes" by Kelly Madigan Erlandson from Born
in the House of Love. © Main-Traveled Roads. Originally published in
Barrow Street. Reprinted with permission.
After the Test Said Yes
Stopped at the crossroad on 14th street, ice clean
as an apple slice under my wheels, I am waiting
for my turn and I don't know yet about looking back
which is why I cannot describe the color or make of what hit me,
moving too fast to brake on the black, and my blue Volkswagen
shoots out into oncoming lanes and once there begins to spin--
and that is where time slows, like they always say,
forming an opening in the day that was already thick with news.
The man comes to the car window,
wants to know if I'm okay, and I tell him I'm pregnant,
that I just found out this morning, and he looks like he will faint,
and I open the door and step out into the street,
and this, I believe, is the story of conception; how my daughter
used momentum and ice and velocity and impact
to pierce the atmosphere and enter the world.
Literary and Historical Notes:
It was on this day in 1789 that the U.S. Constitution went into
effect, and so it was that this day was chosen as the original
Inauguration Day
<A href="http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=IF_rZYwDaP_KfmTfjNQxaA.."; >
http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=IF_rZYwDaP_KfmTfjNQxaA.. </A> . Just
about every president from Washington to Roosevelt was inaugurated on this day,
except for Zachary Taylor and Rutherford B. Hayes, who were both inaugurated on
March 5th, due to the 4th falling on a Sunday. Also, Washington's very first
inauguration was delayed
until April 30th.
The constitution only requires that the newly elected president swear
a thirty-five-word vow to uphold the Constitution. It was George
Washington who started the custom of giving an inaugural address. He
also gave the shortest inaugural address in history at his second
inauguration on this day in 1793. It was only 135 words long.
John Adams didn't much enjoy becoming the second inaugurated
president. None of his family showed up for the event, he was
suffering from money troubles, and he was terrified that he'd never be
able to fill George Washington's shoes.
Among the most notorious inaugurations was President Andrew Jackson's
in 1829. He invited the American public to the White House, and more
than 20,000 drunken partygoers showed up. The crowds became so
boisterous that they ruined many of the White House furnishings, and
Jackson had to escape through a window. White House aides eventually
lured people from the building by placing vats of whiskey on the front
lawn.
On this day in 1841 William Henry Harrison stood outside in an ice
storm and delivered the longest inaugural address in American history.
It was 8,445 words long, and it took Harrison two hours to deliver it.
He died a month later from pneumonia.
In his second inaugural, with John Wilkes Booth in the audience,
Lincoln said, "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with
firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive
on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to
care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his
orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting
peace among ourselves and with all nations."
Franklin Roosevelt was the last president to be inaugurated on this
day in 1933. That year, the constitution was amended to move the
inauguration up to January to reduce the lag time between
presidencies.
On this day in 1952, Ernest Hemingway wrote a letter to his publisher,
telling him that he'd finished his latest novel, The Old Man and the
Sea. Hemingway's previous novel, Across the River and Into the Trees,
had gotten horrible reviews, and people were starting to think he was
washed up. He was working on a huge novel that he called The Sea Book,
and The Old Man and the Sea was originally written as an epilogue to
the novel, but he thought it was good enough to publish by itself.
It came out in a single edition of Life magazine, which sold over five
million copies. It was also published as a book, which stayed at the
top of the best-seller list for six months. It won the Pulitzer Prize
in 1953, and it was a big reason that Hemingway won the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1954.
It's the birthday of crime novelist James Ellroy
<A href="http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=UuOe8V9CT6Qm1htB-btctw.."; >
http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=UuOe8V9CT6Qm1htB-btctw.. </A> , born in
Los Angeles, California (1948). Ellroy is perhaps best known for his "LA
Quartet," a series of four novels that attempt to depict the criminal history
of Los Angeles from the 1940s through the 1950s. He's also the author of My
Dark Places (1996), a memoir about the
murder of his mother.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.©
SPONSOR MESSAGES
The Poetry Foundation
National broadcasts of The Writer's Almanac Are Supported By The
Poetry Foundation, Publisher of Poetry Magazine For Over 90 Years.
<A href="http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=TphQy7OlHrCRYBsBFIv02w.."; >
http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=TphQy7OlHrCRYBsBFIv02w.. </A>
The Writer's Almanac is produced by Prairie Home
Productions and presented by American Public Media.
-----------------------------------------------------
You received this free e-mail newsletter because you previously
subscribed or because it was sent to you by a friend.
Subscribe
<A href="http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=5su4YdFgB-eDgFnOzqN91Q.."; >
http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=5su4YdFgB-eDgFnOzqN91Q.. </A>
| Unsubscribe
<A
href="http://mail.publicradio.org/site/CO?i=iYfOlKvkUNt2zx6vzfce6iL95ROUJD76&cid=1023";
>
http://mail.publicradio.org/site/CO?i=iYfOlKvkUNt2zx6vzfce6iL95ROUJD76&cid=1023
</A>
| Tell a Friend
<A href="http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=32ePXPONLUa_oUgH-yPT6A.."; >
http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=32ePXPONLUa_oUgH-yPT6A.. </A>
© 2006 American Public Media
newsletter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
45 East Seventh Street, Saint Paul, MN USA 55101
powered by Convio
<A href="http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=cHle5ioO-2UdcQIy_0xP1A.."; >
http://mail.publicradio.org/site/R?i=cHle5ioO-2UdcQIy_0xP1A.. </A>
--- End Message ---
