The Writers almanac newsletter
Today: "Marriage of Many Years" by Dana Gioia
Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2016
Marriage of Many Years
by Dana Gioia
Most of what happens happens beyond words.
The lexicon of lip and fingertip
defies translation into common speech.
I recognize the musk of your dark hair.
It always thrills me, though I can't describe it.
My finger on your thigh does not touch skin
it touches your skin warming to my touch.
You are a language I have learned by heart.
This intimate patois will vanish with us,
its only native speakers. Does it matter?
Our tribal chants, our dances round the fire
performed the sorcery we most required.
They bound us in a spell time could not break.
Let the young vaunt their ecstasy. We keep
our tribe of two in sovereign secrecy.
What must be lost was never lost on us.
"Marriage of Many Years" by Dana Gioia from 99 Poems. © Graywolf Press,
2016. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
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The first large field trial of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine began on this
date in 1954.
Outbreaks of poliomyelitis were first recorded more than a thousand
years ago. The incurable disease is caused by a virus that attacks
nerve cells and sometimes even the central nervous system itself; it
causes muscle weakness and wasting, paralysis, and sometimes death. It
didn't kill as many people as other viruses like influenza, but it was
highly contagious and it was difficult to determine how it was
transmitted. Children were most often affected. The first major polio
outbreak in the United States struck in 1894, near Rutland, Vermont;
the virus claimed its most famous victim in 1921, when Franklin Delano
Roosevelt contracted it after a swim. His legs were completely
paralyzed. Roosevelt helped found an organization - originally called
the National Foundation on Infantile Paralysis, but later the March of
Dimes - to research and combat the disease.
Dr. Jonas Salk was leading the Virus Research Lab at the University of
Pittsburgh when the March of Dimes approached him in 1947. They asked
him to lead efforts to research and develop an effective vaccine. He
discovered there were about 125 different strains of the polio virus;
these could be grouped into three basic types. A vaccine needed to
provide immunity to all three types to be considered effective. Salk
gathered many different strains of the virus and "killed" or
deactivated them by pouring formaldehyde on them. The dead but intact
virus was then injected into a subject, whose body would enable the
body to fight off any future infections. Salk tested the vaccine on
monkeys first, and then began the first human trials in 1952. His chief
competitor, Albert Sabin, was working on a live-virus form of the
vaccine; Sabin claimed Salk's vaccine wasn't strong enough and called
him "a mere kitchen chemist." But Sabin's vaccine took a long time to
develop, and was still unstable, so the March of Dimes backed Salk's
method instead. Salk was so confident in the safety of his vaccine that
he used himself and his children as early test subjects. All of them,
including several other adult volunteers, produced antibodies to the
virus without contracting polio.
By this time, there was tremendous pressure to find an effective way to
control the disease: 1952 saw the worst outbreak in America's history,
with nearly 60,000 cases reported; more than 3,000 people died and more
than 21,000 were left disabled. Salk knew that he needed to begin
testing his vaccine on a large scale, and quickly. He set up a
makeshift lab in the gymnasium of Arsenal Elementary School in
Pittsburgh, and personally administered his vaccine to 137 schoolkids.
A month later, he announced that the first trial was a success, and he
soon expanded his efforts across the country. By the time the vaccine
was announced to be safe and effective in 1955, 1.8 million
schoolchildren had received the vaccine. Results showed that about 65
percent of test subjects became immune to poliovirus type 1, 90 percent
to type 2, and 94 percent to type 3. It marked the beginning of the end
of widespread polio outbreaks. The development and approval of Sabin's
competing oral vaccine, which was cheaper and easier to administer,
advanced the cause even further.
Soon after the 1954 trials began, the New York Times reported, "This
could mean that within the next three to five years polio, crippler of
young and old alike, will join diphtheria, smallpox, typhoid and other
formerly dreaded infectious diseases as plagues finally tamed and
conquered by man." In 1952, 60,000 people contracted polio in the
United States alone; 60 years later, in 2012, polio cases numbered only
223 in the entire world.
It's the birthday of scholar and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois
(books by this author), born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts (1868).
Great Barrington was largely made up of European Americans, and Du Bois
freely attended school with white children. He was smart and quick and
curious about the world, and served as valedictorian of his high
school. When it came time for college, the town raised funds to send
him to Fisk University in Tennessee.
It was at Fisk that Du Bois encountered institutional racism for the
first time. Jim Crow laws were strictly enforced: blacks could not use
the same drinking fountains, restrooms, restaurants, banks, or schools
as white people. While he was studying abroad in Berlin, and talking
with prominent social scientists, Du Bois decided to write about racism
and the African-American experience. He published a landmark book, The
Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899). The book popularized Du
Bois's phrase "the talented tenth," a term describing the likelihood of
one in 10 black men becoming leaders of their race. He also wrote The
Souls of Black Folk, a collection of essays (1903).
In 1905, Du Bois met with 30 other African-American scholars, artists,
and activists in Canada, near Niagara Falls, to discuss the challenges
that people of color faced. The men had to meet in Canada because
blacks were not allowed rooms at white-run U.S. hotels. It took a few
years, but from this first meeting sprang the formation of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909), which still
exists today to fight racism and bridge cultural divides.
Du Bois was the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard
University. He became a naturalized citizen of Ghana at the age of 95,
where he died in 1963, exactly one day before Martin Luther King Jr.
delivered his epochal "I Have A Dream" speech at the March on
Washington.
It's the birthday of the diarist Samuel Pepys (books by this author),
born in London in 1633. Thanks to Pepys and his diaries, we have a
fairly clear picture of 17th-century Restoration England; without his
observations and accounts, historians would have had to rely on the
single, government-run newspaper operating in London at that time, and
that paper was subject to censorship. Pepys wrote about the plague of
1665, the Great Fire of 1666, and the coronation of Charles II. He
recorded more mundane matters as well: his eating habits, toilet
habits, intimate relationships with his wife and several other women,
and social events that he had attended.
It's the birthday of composer George Handel, who wrote the great
oratorio Messiah, born in Halle, Germany (1685). His dad wanted him to
be a lawyer, not a musician, so as a child he waited till his father
went to sleep, then crept up to the attic and secretly practiced his
instruments.
A duke who heard Handel, aged seven, play the organ was so impressed
that he handed the boy fistfuls of gold coins. Handel's dad repealed
the music ban and the boy was able to study with the town's church
organist. He was a child prodigy, and his tutor announced when Handel
was 11 that it was time to turn professional. So he went to Berlin.
In 1741, he was asked to do a benefit in Dublin. He decided to write a
new oratorio for the performance, and he worked on it zealously, often
neglecting to eat or sleep. In 25 days, he'd created the score for the
Messiah, which was composed of 50 separate pieces. When he was finished
he said, "I think God has visited me."
It was on this day in 1940 that Woody Guthrie wrote the lyrics to "This
Land Is Your Land" - now one of America's most famous folk songs.
The melody is to an old Baptist hymn. Guthrie wrote the song in
response to the grandiose "God Bless America," written by Irving Berlin
and sung by Kate Smith. Guthrie didn't think that the anthem
represented his own or many other Americans' experience with America.
So he wrote a folk song as a response to Irving Berlin's "God Bless
America," a song that was often accompanied by an orchestra. At first,
Guthrie titled his own song "God Blessed America" - past tense. Later,
he changed the title to "This Land Is Your Land," which is the first
line of the song.
Although Guthrie wrote the words to the song in his notebook on this
day in 1940, he didn't perform it until 1944, and it was several years
more still before he published it in a book of mimeographed folk songs.
The song really took off in the 1960s. Bob Dylan did a famous version,
and it became a popular anthem during the Civil Rights movement.
It's the birthday of William L. Shirer (books by this author), born in
Chicago, Illinois (1904). After graduating from college, he expected to
spend two months in Europe. He stayed for more than 20 years and became
one of America's most outstanding war correspondents. He spent much of
his early career in Vienna, Berlin, and Prague, reporting on the Nazis'
rise to power. After the war, Shirer was labeled a communist
sympathizer and couldn't find work as a journalist. In desperation to
make a living, he began The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History
of Nazi Germany (1961). It was the first historical overview of Nazi
Germany for general readers, and it became one of the best-selling
nonfiction books of the decade.
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