across from the gas station
a bus stopped every ten minutes
under the blue streetlight
and discharged a single passenger.
Never more than one.
A one-armed man with a cane.
A girl in red leather.
A security guard carrying his lunch box.
They stepped into the light,
looked left, then right, and disappeared.
Otherwise, the street was empty,
the wind off the river gusting paper and leaves.
Then the pay phone near the bus stop
started ringing; for five minutes it rang,
until another bus pulled in
and a couple stepped off,
their hats pulled down low
The man walked up the street,
but the woman hesitated,
then answered the phone and stood
frozen with the receiver to her ear.
The man came back for her;
but she waved him away
and at the same moment her hat blew off
and skidded down the street.
The man followed it, holding his own hat,
and the woman began talking into the phone.
And she kept talking,
the wind tossing her hair wildly,
and the man never returned
and no more buses came after that.
“Through the Window of the All-Night Restaurant” by Nicholas Christopher from In the Year of the Comet. © Penguin, 1992. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)
On this day in 1913, California novelist Jack London (books by this author) wrote to six writers, including H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw, asking how much they were paid for their writing. London, who grew up in extreme poverty, always claimed that his chief motive for writing was money. He told his colleagues, “I have published 33 books, as well as an ocean of magazine stuff, and yet I have never heard the rates that other writers receive.” One of the writers London wrote to was Winston Churchill — the American novelist, not the British Prime Minister. Churchill replied to London with useful information. London was so appreciative that he wrote Churchill a thank-you letter and invited him to stay at his house in Sonoma County, California. He wrote: “It is as a born Californian that I dare to say that we will show you here a different California from any that you have seen so far. Please always remember, also, that we are only camping out; but that nevertheless this is a dandy place for a man to loaf in and to work in.”
It was on this day in 1775 that Patrick Henry gave a famous speech and probably delivered the line: “Give me liberty or give me death!”
Henry spoke at the Second Virginia Convention, a meeting of American colonial leaders. The Convention was held at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia. There were 120 delegates, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry. Henry was representing Hanover County, Virginia, where he had been born 39 years earlier. The four-day meeting turned into a fierce debate about whether or not to raise a militia and arm Virginia in the fight against the British.
Henry was an attorney with a knack for turning a phrase and a commitment to American independence. Twelve years earlier, he had stood up in court and called King George a tyrant, and he had been fighting against English laws and rule in the courts ever since.
There was a problem with Henry’s speeches. They were wonderful and charismatic, and everyone was entranced by them, but afterward, no one could remember what he had said. Thomas Jefferson said of Henry: “His eloquence was peculiar, if indeed it should be called eloquence; for it was impressive and sublime, beyond what can be imagined. Although it was difficult when he had spoken to tell what he had said, yet, while he was speaking, it always seemed directly to the point. When he had spoken in opposition to my opinion, had produced a great effect, and I myself had been highly delighted and moved, I have asked myself when he ceased: ‘What the devil has he said?’ I could never answer the inquiry.”
So although Henry’s speech at the Second Virginia Convention is so famous, no one is sure what he said. It wasn’t written down until 1816, by Henry’s biographer, William Wirt. Wirt talked to people who had been present at the speech and had them reconstruct it, but they were relying on their memories, not even notes.
According to one of Wirt’s sources, in what has become the accepted text of Henry’s speech, he ended with these famous words: “It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace — but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
It’s the birthday of the man who won the 1937 Nobel Prize in literature, French author Roger Martin du Gard (books by this author), born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France (1881). His life’s work was chronicling the fictional Thibault family in a series of novels known as Les Thibault, which he published over the course of two decades, from 1922 to 1940. It’s considered a “roman-fleuve,”a French term that literally means “river-novel.” It refers to a series of novels written by one author that are about the same few characters (often family members) — usually a saga where the historical backdrop plays a prominent role in the fiction, and the author often provides a sort of running commentary on the era. Roger Martin du Gard wrote eight novels about the Thibault family and the years around World War I serve as his framework.
The most famous roman-fleuve of them all is Marcel Proust’s seven-volume À la recherche du temps perdu (published in English as either In Search of Lost Time or Remembrance of Things Past).
It’s the birthday of Fannie Merritt Farmer (books by this author), born in Boston (1857). She’s known for publishing the first cookbook in American history that came with simple, precise cooking instructions.
She compiled all the recipes she had ever learned, along with advice on how to set a table, scald milk, cream butter, remove stains, and clean a copper boiler. At first, all the publishers turned her down because they reasoned that these were all things young women could learn from their mothers. Finally, Little, Brown agreed to publish the book if Fannie Farmer would pay for the printing of the first 3,000 copies. It has sold millions of copies since.
It’s the birthday of the writer Josef Čapek (books by this author), born in Hronov in what is now the Czech Republic in 1887. His brother, Karel, was the famous writer, but Josef will go down in history as the man who invented the word robot. Karel Čapek wrote a play called R.U.R., or Rossum’s Universal Robots (1921), a dystopian work about mass-produced human substitutes who are employed as cheap labor. But Karel Čapek couldn’t think of a good word for his artificial laborers — he was going to go with laboři but decided that was too obvious. Josef suggested roboti, and the name stuck. Josef was arrested and sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, from which he wrote Poems from a Concentration Camp (1946). He died there in 1945.