There are days we would rather know
than these, as there is always, later,
a wife we would rather have married
than whom we did, in that severe nowness
time pushed, imperfectly, to then. Whether,
standing in the museum before Rembrandt’s “Juno,”
we stand before beauty, or only before a consensus
about beauty, is a question that makes all beauty
suspect … and all marriages. Last night,
leaves circled the base of the ginkgo as if
the sun had shattered during the night
into a million gold coins no one had the sense
to claim. And now, there are days we would
rather know than these, days when to stand
before beauty and before “Juno” are, convincingly,
the same, days when the shattered sunlight
seeps through the trees and the women we marry
stay interesting and beautiful both at once,
and their men. And though there are days
we would rather know than now, I am,
at heart, a scared and simple man. So I tighten
my arms around the woman I love, now
and imperfectly, stand before “Juno” whispering
beautiful beautiful until I believe it, and—
when I come home at night—I run out
into the day’s pale dusk with my broom
and my dustpan, sweeping the coins from the base
of the ginkgo, something to keep for a better tomorrow:
days we would rather know that never come.
“Days We Would Rather Know” by Michael Blumenthal from Days We Would Rather Know. © Pleasure Boat Studio Press, 2005. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
It’s the birthday of the U.S. president described by novelist Washington Irving as “a withered little apple-john”: James Madison, born near Port Conway, Virginia (1751). He attended what is now Princeton University and graduated as the colonies were on the brink of revolution. Back home in Virginia, he served in state politics: as a delegate at to the Virginia Convention, in the House of Delegates, and the Council of State. He suffered from poor health, including epileptic-like seizures, so he never served in the military. At the age of 29, Madison became the youngest member of the Continental Congress. He was 5-foot-6 and weighed barely 100 lbs., a quiet man who worked tirelessly, and was the best prepared for every meeting. Madison believed in a strong central government, and he was one of the main drafters of the Constitution. The next step was to convince the states to ratify it, which was not easy in his home state. At the Virginia Ratification Convention, Madison faced off against Patrick Henry. Henry was a great orator, and gave passionate, soaring speeches about the dangers of the Constitution. But Madison went through the Constitution clause by clause, armed with facts and research, and although he was soft-spoken and no great speaker, he carried the day.
In 1789, Madison was elected to the new House of Representatives in the first U.S. Congress. He was asked to write Washington’s inaugural address, the House’s reply to the speech, and Washington’s reply to both chambers of Congress. He dominated policy-making in the House, including drafting and introducing the Bill of Rights. One legislator wrote: “He has astonished Mankind, and has by means perfectly constitutional become almost a Dictator.” Madison served as Secretary of State under Thomas Jefferson, was elected president in 1808, served two terms, and then retired with his wife to his home in Virginia. He lived to the age of 85 and died one morning eating breakfast in bed.
He wrote to Jefferson: “We are in a wilderness without a single footstep to guide us. Our successors will have an easier task. And by degrees the way will become smooth, short and certain.”
It was on this day 165 years ago, in 1850, that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter was published (books by this author).
When Hawthorne finished his manuscript, he read it aloud to his wife, Sophia. He said: “I read the last scene to my wife — tried to read it, rather, for my voice swelled and heaved, as if I were tossed up and down on an ocean, as it subsided after a storm [...] I think I have never overcome my adamant in any other instance.” Sophia was so distressed that she went to bed with a terrible headache, which pleased Hawthorne — he took it as a sign that the novel was effective.
It’s the birthday of Alice Hoffman (books by this author), born in New York City (1952). Growing up, she thought that her brother was the smart one, and that as a girl she couldn’t be a veterinarian or a writer, the two things she was most interested in, but should settle for life as a hairdresser. But she read a lot, and she said: “When I wasn’t reading science fiction, I read a lot of fairy tales and anything to do with magic. I was crazy about Mary Poppins and the E. Nesbit books and Edward Eager. I really loved those stories that begin with a normal family and then all of a sudden, something magical enters their lives.” After high school, she got a job in the Doubleday factory, but she hated it so much that she quit the first day and went to night school and on to graduate school to study writing. But she thought that the magical stories she had loved as a kid didn’t fit into adult writing. Then she read One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), by Gabriel García Márquez, and it changed her life. She said, “It allowed me to see that a writer could take everyday realities and transform them into something fabulous.”
Her most recent novel is The Museum of Extraordinary Things (2014).