Well-Bred & Well-Brewed

The date is May 23th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

Today is Red Nose Day for the USA. Red Nose Day is a day of fundraising – all donations make their way to programs that serve children in need. The day was inspired by the BBC event of the same name and is run by the non-profit Comic Relief, Inc. The idea is to leverage the entertainment world to inspire giving, “making it fun to make a difference.” 

Today is the birthday of Robert Moog, American engineer and electronic music pioneer. Moog, in addition to having a fantastic last name, invented the first commercial synthesizer. Moog’s synthesizer was compact compared to the room-sized synthesizers on the market and it was the first to have a keyboard

Wendy Carlos, a peer of Moog’s, arranged selections of Bach for the Moog synthesizer. The compositions ended up on the album Switched-On Bach, which took home 3 Grammys and was the first classical album to go certified platinum. (Hear a track from the album.)

Today is the birthday of Carl Linnaeus, botanist and founder of Linnaean taxonomy, the system used for classifying flora and fauna. 

Even as a child, Carl showed a penchant for nature. It was said that giving him a flower as a tot would calm his tears and when he was just nine, his father gave him a little spot to grow a garden of his own. During his boarding school years and he often skipped classes to walk the grounds and voraciously read botany books.

His dedication to calling things as they were nearly got him killed at one point. When visiting Hamburg, Germany, he and a friend were greeted warmly by the mayor who proudly showed the two scholars a stuffed hydra he had lately acquired. Linnaeus was instantly skeptical and upon further inspection declared the hydra to be a fake and made his observations public. The mayor was enraged as he planned to sell the stuffed hydra for a sizeable sum. Carl and his traveling buddy promptly got out of dodge. 

Carl saw a good deal of Northern Europe, its landscape, and the botanical gardens of the elite before publishing his magnum opus, Systema Naturae, in 1735. Systema Naturae introduced a hierarchical system of taxonomy to be adapted for use by other scientists. Linneaus was the first taxonomist to include apes and monkeys in the same category as humans. In fact, he was one of the first to include humans as a part of the animal kingdom, not as a separate noble entity. He received an outpouring of correspondence from scholars and theologians arguing that he could not categorize humans with animals, but Linnaeus stood by his idea, noting that the basic anatomy of the primates is the same. 

Ever the taxonomist, Carl said: “If you do not know the names of things, the knowledge of them is lost, too.”

Today is the birthday of Margaret Wise Brown, acclaimed children’s author and editor. Her book Goodnight Moon is a classic. First published in 1947, it has since been translated into a dozen languages and has sold an estimated 48 million copies. 

The success of Goodnight Moon is perhaps due to it being set in the present moment. The first line goes “Goodnight room. Goodnight moon. Goodnight cow jumping over the moon.” Since children cannot sense time as adults do, perhaps the popularity of the book lies in its rejection of a linear story, and its embrace of and focus on a single moment in time, the quieting moment of saying goodnight.  

Margaret published a total of 39 books during her short lifetime and 18 were published posthumously.

Follies

Carl Sandburg

Shaken, 

The blossoms of lilac,     

  And shattered, 

The atoms of purple.      

Green dip the leaves,           

  Darker the bark,

Longer the shadows.      

Sheer lines of poplar      

Shimmer with masses of silver   

And down in a garden old with years             

And broken walls of ruin and story,         

Roses rise with red rain-memories.         

      May!             

  In the open world         

The sun comes and finds your face,                

  Remembering all.

Thank you for listening. I’m your host, Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening. 

The date is May 22nd, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

Today is the birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Scottish writer and former physician, best known for his creation of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle went to school in his native Scotland, to become a doctor. He served as the doctor on exploration voyages traveling to Australia, West & South Africa, and the Arctic Ocean.

You could say that Doyle failed at becoming a doctor. He had plenty of experience and more education than required but was never able to gain a decent following of patients. 

In the time Doyle waited to see patients, which ended up being most of his time, he wrote short stories and novels. A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes novel, was published in 1887 and is arguably one of the first novels in the detective genre. 

The novel was well-liked, but it wasn’t until the second Sherlock novel was syndicated in a magazine that Sherlock became the household name he is today. Sherlock-centered short stories in magazines and periodicals increased readers’ appetites for the polymath detective and his partner Watson.

To Doyle, Sherlock was just another one of his characters and he confessed to his mother he’d rather like to kill Sherlock off so he could focus on his other works. His mother replied “You won’t! You can’t! You mustn’t!” 

He didn’t. Instead he raised the price for Sherlock stories to an amount that he was sure the publishers wouldn’t pay. But pay they did, making Doyle one of the best-paid writers during his lifetime. 

Doyle finally managed to kill Sherlock and Moriarty in “The Final Problem”. There was so much outrage however that Doyle effectively raised Sherlock from the dead a few years later in The Hound of the Baskervilles. 

Doyle was a polymath like Sherlock. In addition to being a physician and a writer, he dabbled in semi-pro sports, excelling at soccer and cricket. He also had a hand in exonerating two wrongly convicted men.

And today is the birthday of Jim Thorpe, Olympic Gold medalist and astounding American athlete. He was born to a half-Irish, half-Native American father and a half-French, half-Native American mother. He was the first Native American to win an Olympic Gold. 

At age 20, Thorpe returned to school at Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. On campus one day, he walked by a track practice in session and got in line for the high-jump. When it was his turn, he made an astounding 5’9” jump, beating all the other track members while still in his street clothes. 

He was a multi-sport athlete at Carlisle and even excelled in ballroom dancing winning the intercollegiate ballroom dancing competition in 1912. That same year he lead the Carlisle football team in a winning season, defeating the favorite Army team where future-president Dwight D. Eisenhower played. Of Thorpe, Eisenhower said “He could do anything better than any other football player I ever saw.”

He competed in the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, easily winning the pentathlon, as if it was just a warm up for the decathlon, which he also won handily. 

King Gustav V presented Thorpe with an ornate silver chalice at the end of the Games, saying “You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world.” Thorpe responded with a simple “Thanks, King.”

Unfortunately, his athletic grace did not save him from intense racial prejudice. A year later he was stripped of his medals and the gift. The rhetoric used suggests it was motivated by the racially prejudiced American Amateurs Union who stirred up a technicality. 

In 1982, thirty years after his death, Thorpe’s medals and the gift from King Gustav were restored to his adult children. He has since been recognized as the greatest athlete of the 20th Century and honored in multiple Halls of Fame, townships, and colleges.  

Afternoon on a Hill

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I will be the gladdest thing  

    Under the sun!  

I will touch a hundred flowers  

    And not pick one.  

I will look at cliffs and clouds

    With quiet eyes,  

Watch the wind bow down the grass,  

    And the grass rise.  

And when lights begin to show  

    Up from the town,

I will mark which must be mine,  

    And then start down!

Thank you for listening. I’m your host, Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening. 

The date is May 21st, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

Today is the birthday of Alexander Pope, English Poet, born in 1688. He gives us such lines as “To err is human; to forgive, divine.” and “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

His greatest works were satirical in nature, commenting on English politics, life, or contemporary public figures. Pope gave us English translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey, and is heavily quoted in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, second only to Shakespeare. 

And today is the birthday of Fats Waller, jazz musician and composer during the Harlem Renaissance. [By 15, Fats had dropped out of school to work as an organist in Harlem for $32 a week. He was considered a prodigy by the staff of the Lincoln Theater where he worked.] He composed hits of his own and also sold songs to other artists to use as their own compositions. 

He was famous enough that in his 20s, he was abducted by gangsters after a performance of his in Chicago. He was forced into a car, driven across town, and escorted through the back entrance of the Hawthorne Inn. Fats must have been sweating in fear as he was told to open a final door. When the door opened, Fats found himself in a room with a birthday party in full swing, the honoree mobster Al Capone. Waller suddenly realized he was not going to be murdered, rather, he had been kidnapped to be the ‘surprise guest’ for Capone’s party. 

According to one biographer, Fats emerged from the Hawthorne Inn a few days later, exhausted, intoxicated, and his pockets as fat as his person from Capone and other extremely generous tippers at the party.

Fats was featured in the 1943 hit film Stormy Weather singing his song “Ain’t Misbehavin’” which is in the Grammy Hall of Fame along with another of his best known songs “Honeysuckle Rose”.

And today is the birthday of Henri Rousseau, French painter during the late 19th century. He never went to school for art, and worked most of his life as a toll and tax collector. A self-taught painter, he didn’t begin showing his painting in galleries and salons until he was in his 40s. His work was not popular among the masses but gained a small following of avant-garde critics and other artists, including Pablo Picasso, who practically stumbled upon it. 

The story goes that Picasso spotted a painted canvas for sale as a canvas to paint over. Picasso was so taken with the painting, he demanded the salesperson give him the name of the artist. Picasso promptly found Rousseau and soon thereafter held a dinner party in Rousseau’s honor, calling it Le Banquet Rousseau. Contemporary artists, previously unknown to Rousseau attended the dinner as well writers and critics. Gertrude Stein was also in attendance. 

Rousseau’s depictions are rich in color and flat in space, giving them an almost child-like quality. His more famous include Tiger in a Tropical Storm, The Dream, and The Snake Charmer. His gravestone epitaph reads: “We salute you Gentle Rousseau… Let our luggage pass duty free through the gates of heaven. / We will bring you brushes paints and canvas / that you may spend your sacred leisure in the light and Truth of Painting.”

Today’s poem is “Ode to Solitude” by birthday poet Alexander Pope.

Ode to Solitude

Alexander Pope

Happy the man, whose wish and care

   A few paternal acres bound,

Content to breathe his native air,

                            In his own ground.

Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,

   Whose flocks supply him with attire,

Whose trees in summer yield him shade,

                            In winter fire.

Blest, who can unconcernedly find

   Hours, days, and years slide soft away,

In health of body, peace of mind,

                            Quiet by day,

Sound sleep by night; study and ease,

   Together mixed; sweet recreation;

And innocence, which most does please,

                            With meditation.

Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;

   Thus unlamented let me die;

Steal from the world, and not a stone

                            Tell where I lie.

Thank you for listening. I’m your host, Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening. 

The date is May 20th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

On this day in 1873, Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received the patent for the use of copper rivets on jeans. Rivets are those little round metal things on your jeans, usually on a seam, that make the seam stronger. Jacob Davis, a tailor in Nevada, had the idea but didn’t have the money to file the patent. He was frequently buying denim from Levi Strauss and suggested they go in on the patent together. Strauss agreed. 

At the time, denim overalls and clothing were primarily worn by working men – miners, ranchers, lumberjacks, rail workers. And they wanted clothes that could withstand the hard wear. Denim fabric was much tougher than the denim we see in stores today, and the copper rivets helped the seams and pockets last as long as the fabric. 

The popularity of jeans in the 1950s soared and copper rivets on back pockets all but disappeared from Levi’s jeans. The new wave of jean-wearers complained about the back-pocket rivets scratching up the furniture they sat in.

Today is possibly the birthday of Toussaint Louverture, general, leader of the Haitian Revolution and president of Haiti. He was born in 1743 on the island of Hispaniola, in the French colony Saint-Domingue, in what is present-day Haiti. There are no official records of Louverture’s birthday as he was born into slavery. Of his roots Louverture said: “I was born a slave, but nature gave me a soul of a free man.”

He acquired the name ‘Louverture’ during his time as a leader of the Haitian Revolution. L’ouverture is French for “opening” just as an overture in music is the opening song to a larger performance. It’s possible it was given to him because of a gap between his front teeth, or more nobly, because he opened the way for the Haitian Revolution against France. 

Louverture is often called “The Black Napoleon” for his prowess in battle, but his tact and leadership may make him more closely resemble George Washington. Early on in Louverture’s military career, he and leaders of the Haitian Revolution were engaged in a tense negotiation with France for extended rights for slaves and freed slaves, in exchange for a number of white prisoners. The French rejected the first proposal, leaving the revolution leaders enraged.  Regrouping the revolt leaders thought killing the prisoners would show the French they meant business. But Louverture disagreed. He realized that the prisoners were the main bargaining chip for Haiti. He calmed his vindictive peers and they were able to return to the negotiating table and come out with a favorable deal. 

Through strategic alliances and tactful military planning, Louverture successfully led Haiti to becoming a slavery free colony and independent nation in 1801. His win created a domino effect in France, which outlawed slavery a year later in 1802. Louverture noted: “It is easy to cut down the tree of liberty, but not so easy to restore it to life.” 

And today is World Bee Day in honor of Anton Janša, an apiary (beekeeper) during the second half of the 1700s. Hailing from present-day Slovenia, Anton was a talented painter who abandoned art to pursue beekeeping. His father was a beekeeper but Anton’s love for bees went beyond his father’s average beekeeping. Anton improved hive arrangements, allowing for the box-stacking structures used to this day. He published books on beekeeping and toured through the Hapsburg Empire lecturing and promoting beekeeping. 

In his foremost book on bees and beekeeping, Anton said: “Amongst all God's beings there are none so hard working and useful to man with so little attention needed for its keep as the bee.”

'Hope' is the thing with feathers (254)

Emily Dickinson

'Hope' is the thing with feathers—

That perches in the soul—

And sings the tune without the words—

And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale is heard—

And sore must be the storm—

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land

And on the strangest Sea—

Yet, never, in Extremity,

It asked a crumb—of Me.

Thank you for listening. I’m your host, Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening. 

The date is May 17th, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

As promised, today we have more on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the first distinctly American fairy-tale-fantasy novel. 

On this day in 1900, the first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published, the first copy given to L. Frank Baum’s younger sister. Baum was the creator and author of the story and the original illustrations were by W.W. Denslow.

The publisher did not think the book would be particularly crowd pleasing. He only agreed to publish it after securing a deal for the story to be adapted into a musical play for the Chicago theater scene, in order to increase publicity. 

The first edition of 10,000 copies sold out quickly due to a large number of pre-sales. The second edition of 15,000 copies was almost gone by October of that same year. By the time it entered the public domain in 1956, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz had sold more than three-million copies. Since it had been in the public domain for more than fifty years, it is difficult to say how many copies it has sold to date.

As mentioned on Wednesday’s episode, Baum bounced around many jobs, writing and otherwise, before finally making it as an author at age 41. In one of Baum’s earlier writing jobs he wrote a piece about drought ridden towns wearing green-tinted glasses to make the yellowed landscape appear more lush. In Oz, before entering the Emerald City, Dorothy and her posse must put on glasses, which they discover, have green-tinted lenses and the city made of emeralds, is just a normal city. 

As a writer for a window-dressing magazine, Baum saw his fair share of creative displays of household objects. According to his son, in a window-dressing of Baum’s own, he stacked metal objects together to make a metal-man, or you could say, a tin man.

In writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum took bits and pieces from everywhere. Witches, wizards, and magical creatures from fairy-tales. A female protagonist in a strange land from Alice in Wonderland. A ‘good’ driven young person, who values her family, from the Victorians. 

Baum then used typically American things such as cornfields, a booming metropolis, and a tornado, to make The Wonderful Wizard of Oz what critics have deemed the first distinctly American fairy-tale and fantasy novel.

The first book was followed by thirteen more Oz-related tales. The countless spin-offs, adaptations, and inspired works are a testament to the indelible mark The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has made on American literature and culture. It is truly a work of “wonderment and joy.”

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

Edward Lear

The Owl and the Pussy-Cat went to sea

   In a beautiful pea-green boat:

They took some honey, and plenty of money

   Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,

   And sang to a small guitar,

"O lovely Pussy, O Pussy, my love,

   What a beautiful Pussy you are,

            You are,

            You are!

   What a beautiful Pussy you are!"

Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl,

   How charmingly sweet you sing!

Oh! let us be married; too long we have tarried,

   But what shall we do for a ring?"

They sailed away, for a year and a day,

To the land where the bong-tree grows;

And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood,

   With a ring at the end of his nose,

            His nose,

            His nose,

   With a ring at the end of his nose.

"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

   Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."

So they took it away, and were married next day

   By the turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince and slices of quince,

   Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

   They danced by the light of the moon,

            The moon,

            The moon,

   They danced by the light of the moon.

Thank you for listening. I’m your host Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely weekend. 

The date is May 16th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

On this day in 1866, the United States Congress passed a bill to allow the minting of a new 5-cent coin, now known as the nickel. Why is the nickel so thick? The existing “half-dimes” prior to the nickel’s introduction were extremely thin, since they were half the size in weight of a dime, which was a tenth of the size of an American silver dollar. When the idea of using nickel in the 5-cent coin was proposed, it solved the problem of having to make such a tiny coin, since more nickel is needed to equal the value of silver. 

Of course it wasn’t Congress’s idea to use nickel. Rather using nickel in 5-cent coins got a big shove through Congress from wealthy industrialist Joseph Wharton who basically had a monopoly over the nickel mines and stood to make plenty of money from the idea. (For those wondering, Joseph Wharton is the founder of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.)

Today is the birthday of Margret Rey, German born illustrator and co-author of the Curious George book series. 

Margret fled Nazi Germany in 1935 in fear for her life. She ended up in Rio de Janeiro, where she met her future husband Hans Augusto Rey, a fellow Jew who had also fled Germany. They quickly fell in love and married that same year.  

When they moved to Paris in 1936, a publisher discovered Hans’s artwork and commissioned a children’s book. The book, Cecily G. and the Nine Monkeyswas perfectly acceptable, but the favorite character for the couple was one of the monkeys, Curious George. They began coming up with drawings and ideas for a book with Curious George as the main character. Margret worked mostly on the story with Hans on the illustrations. 

Before they could get the manuscript in front of anyone however, there was yet another near run-in with Nazi Germany. WWII was ramping up and in June 1940 German forces were days away from Paris. It was obvious the French army would not be able to stop them. Margret and Hans gathered up their most precious belongings, including the watercolor manuscript of the first Curious George book, and took off on their bicycles, headed for the Spanish border.

When they reached their final destination, New York City, they were able to secure a book deal. Curious George was an immediate success and the couple went on to write several more books in a Curious George series.

And today is the birthday of John Bulwer, English physician, born in 1606. Bulwer was intrigued by hand gestures and facial expressions as a universal language. He noticed that certain gestures were the same across counties, states, and even countries, concluding that gesturing was, in a way, man’s first language. 

Bulwer began to compile gestures and their universal meanings into a book. He ended up with two. The first was a dictionary of common gestures and hand formations along with their meanings. He titled it: Chirologia, or the Natural Language of the Hand. His second book was essentially an early self-help book for orators, advising them on how to use gestures to their advantage in public speaking.  

Infinitely curious about all things body language, Bulwer also studied the muscles of the face and facial expressions. He connected patterns of facial muscle movements to specific emotions. For example, he observed that a genuine smile includes a squeezing of muscles around the eyes, not just an upturn curve of the lips. Bulwer made these conclusions 200 years before Duchenne published The Mechanism of Human Facial Expressions. 

Additionally, Bulwer was an advocate for the deaf, being one of the first people to suggest there be special schools for the deaf and a language of gestures to aid communication. Most of Bulwer’s gestures and hand shapes from Chirologia are still in use in British Sign Language. 

The Look

Sara Teasdale

Strephon kissed me in the spring,

      Robin in the fall,

But Colin only looked at me

      And never kissed at all.

Strephon's kiss was lost in jest,

      Robin's lost in play,

But the kiss in Colin's eyes

      Haunts me night and day.

Thank you for listening. I’m your host, Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening. 

The date is May 15th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

On this evening in 1793, farmer-turned-inventor Diego Marín Aguilera, in the light of the full moon, dragged a contraption to the top of his castle. His cousin and his blacksmith friend looked on as Diego jumped off the top.  The contraption was a flying machine so Diego did not jump to his death. Instead he flew about 19 feet high in the air for a quarter of a mile, crash landing near the next town over when a joint in one of the wings broke. 

When his cousin and the blacksmith arrived on scene, fearing the worst, they found Diego with only minor cuts and bumps, and very cross at the blacksmith over the poorly welded joint. 

Diego had tinkered with and improved upon a few devices previously, including one for increasing productivity in watermills and another for marble cutting. But his ‘plane’ was his magnum opus. Made out of wood, iron, cloth, and bird feathers, he had spent considerable time studying and analyzing the flight of hawks and eagle while tending his sheep, and a considerable amount of money and time on the creation of the machine. 

Word got out locally about Diego’s flight, and the townspeople were not impressed. Rather, they believed Diego was a lunatic and his contraption “demonic.” They banned together and burned Diego’s feathered invention, leaving Diego feeling disgraced and depressed. He only lived another 6 years, passing away at age 44. It wasn’t until nearly two hundred years later that Diego was honored for his attempts at flight by the Spanish Air Force, with a monument next to the ruins of his castle in Northern Spain.  

On this day in 1928 Mickey Mouse premiered in the short cartoon, "Plane Crazy" to a small test audience. It was a silent film and was received by the test audience with a “Meh.”  The Mickey Mouse short “Steamboat Willie” came out in November with sound and was a roaring success. The next year, “Plane Crazy” was released with sound, and was liked quite a bit better. 

Today is the birthday of L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and 14 other Oz related stories, as wells as non-Oz plays, short stories, novels, and poems.

Baum was born in 1856 to a well-to-do family in Upstate New York. His writing career started early. While in their young teens, Baum’s father had acquired a cheap printing press. Baum and his brother quickly went about printing up a paper and distributing it for free to family members and friends. They wrote all the articles and even had spaces for local advertisers.

Baum didn’t take a straight path toward writing fiction. He moseyed around dabbling in other ventures such as raising trendy Hamburg chickens and writing a guidebook on it. He operated a general store at one time, but that venture failed, mostly because of Baum’s generosity and guile. He let customers pay with credit and had a hard time following up and collecting payment. It seemed Baum always went back to writing, usually as a journalist or playwright.

In 1897, at the age of 41, Baum published Mother Goose in Prose, which finally allowed him enough income to focus solely on writing. Three years later, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published and quickly sold out its first run of 10,000 copies. More on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz on Friday. 

Baum has been praised for his vivid Alice-in-Wonderland-like adventure stories, that were often ahead of their time. He featured young women in what could be considered ‘action stories’ and his other works, such as The Master Key, was practically sci-fi in its content about what inventions we may have by means of electricity. 

A Red, Red Rose

Robert Burns

O my luve’s like a red, red rose,

    That’s newly sprung in June;

O my luve’s like the melodie

    That’s sweetly played in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

    So deep in luve am I;

And I will luve thee still, my dear,

Till a’ the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

    And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:

O I will love thee still, my dear,

    While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve,

    And fare thee weel awhile!

And I will come again, my luve,

    Though it were ten thousand mile.

Thank you for listening. I’m your host, Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening. 

The date is May 14th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Today is the birthday of Earle Combs, Baseball Hall of Fame-r. Earle played centerfield for the Yankees and was the leadoff hitter for the New York Yankees legendary “Murderers’ Row” in 1927.

Combs hadn’t planned on baseball being his career. He went to college to become a teacher for the one-room schoolhouses in rural Kentucky where he was born and raised. He played baseball, basketball, and ran track while completing his education. 

Out of college, Combs played on two local baseball teams while teaching. His play caught the eye of the Louisville Colonels. Combs had married his high school sweetheart in 1921, so when the Louisville Colonels offered to pay Combs a salary above his teaching pay, he took it, happy and proud to be able to bring home more as the breadwinner. 

However, his first game with the Colonels went terrible. He made multiple errors, allowing the opposition to score two extra runs to win the game. Afterwards, Earle was distraught, thinking his career in baseball was going to be over before it had begun! The manager of the team approached Combs, to let him know that he signed Earle for a reason: he knew what Combs was capable of and he didn’t doubt Earle’s ability. Bucked up by the pep talk, Combs worked harder on his fielding and was a star hitter for the team. 

Combs went to the Yankees in ‘24 and stayed with them until the end of his playing career in ‘35. He was a sharp contrast in demeanor to his showboat teammates Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. But his reserved temperament and resolve to always do his best, made him a Yankee fan favorite. 

Combs was hired as a full-time coach by the Yankees after his retirement from play. They desperately wanted him to train their newly-signed rookie replacement for centerfield, Joe DiMaggio. Earle’s earlier education as a teacher served him well during his two decades coaching in the major leagues before retiring to his farm in Kentucky with his wife. 

Babe Ruth said of Combs: “[He] was more than a good ballplayer; he was always a first-class gentleman.” 

To that end, during his retirement Combs donated his money and time to his alma mater, Eastern Kentucky University, starting scholarships and serving as a Board Member.

Today’s poem submitted by listener Tom C. of Penfield, NY!

The House with Nobody in It 

Joyce Kilmer

Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track

I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.

I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute

And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it. 

I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;

That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.

I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do;

For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two. 

This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,

And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.

It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;

But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside. 

If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid

I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.

I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be

And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free. 

Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,

Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.

But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone

For the lack of something within it that it has never known. 

But a house that has done what a house should do,

a house that has sheltered life,

That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,

A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet,

Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet. 

So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track

I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,

Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,

For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.

Thank you for listening, I’m your host Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening.  

The date is May 13th, and today I’m coming to you from Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Today is the birthday of Daphne du Maurier, English author and playwright. We have Daphne to thank for such novels as Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel as well as short stories like “The Birds,” in which birds begin attacking humans kamikaze style. 

She wrote primarily in the horror genre, often using psychological and paranormal elements. Her parents were both involved in the theater business, but Daphne was never one to soak up the limelight. She became increasingly reclusive as her fame as a writer grew. She was even said to be withdrawn and cold toward her husband and children, particularly when she was in the middle of a novel. Perhaps that was Daphne putting herself in the shoes of her characters, who tend to become isolated from the people around, increasing the reader’s sense of dread and stranger anxiety in the story-world.

“The Birds” and Rebecca were successful in their own right and each adapted to film by Alfred Hitchcock.

Today is the birthday of Inge Lehmann, Danish seismologist and geophysicist. 

It is common knowledge that our planet Earth has a solid core, a second molten layer, and an upper mantle and crust. We know this thanks to Inge Lehmann. In 1936, Inge’s seismology work allowed her to posit mathematical formulas to determine that Earth’s core was solid. 

With the outbreak of WWII, further research to prove Lehmann’s Discontinuity theorum was put on hold. It wasn’t until decades later, in 1971, that her theorem was finally proven. A computer was able to make all the calculations necessary to verify that the Earth’s core is indeed a solid. This piece of common knowledge really isn’t all that old! 

And today is the birthday of Otto “Otl” Aicher , graphic designer and typographer. 

We have Otl to thank for the iconography and stick figures that are ubiquitous. Otl was asked to do the branding for the 1972 Summer Olympics in his native Germany. At that point he had already had a successful career as a pioneer of corporate branding and design. Otl teamed up with Masaru Katsumie who had been in charge of the design and branding for the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.  

Otl didn’t invent the idea of pictograms and iconography, but his simplified style and effort to make each pictogram’s meaning blatantly obvious helped the idea of pictograms gain traction.  

You probably see pictograms so often that you don’t notice them much. Driving from one town to another, you might see an orange sign with a stick-figure man with a shovel full of dirt. Or maybe it’s a pictogram of a picnic table or a person in a bed, or a pair of binoculars. Without even telling you the meaning, you probably can conjure up an image and know what these mean. Road work, rest area or picnic area, hotels nearby, and a vista point. 

If you’ve ever at an airport, the pictograms and iconography are generally very pronounced. This is in order to communicate with passengers who might be speaking a foreign language. Having done a bit of traveling myself, the pictogram for ‘restroom’ is pretty universal: a man and woman with a vertical line between them. Want to “go back” to your last webpage? I’ll bet you’re not clicking on text that says “back.” I’ll take a guess that it’s an arrow or maybe just a ‘v’ pointing to the left. 

You get the point! It’s everywhere.

Take a look around today and see how much iconography you notice. There are probably some sitting right in front of you! 

Sunset on the Spire

Elinor Wylie

All that I dream

    By day or night

Lives in that stream

    Of lovely light.

Here is the earth,

    And there is the spire;

This is my hearth,

    And that is my fire.

From the sun’s dome

    I am shouted proof

That this is my home,

    And that is my roof.

Here is my food,

    And here is my drink,

And I am wooed

    From the moon’s brink.

And the days go over,

    And the nights end;

Here is my lover,

    Here is my friend.

All that I

    Could ever ask

Wears that sky

    Like a thin gold mask.

Thank you for listening, I’m your host Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening.  

The date is May 10th, Friday, and today is my last day in Lima, Peru. 

In honor of Mother’s Day this weekend, I just wanted to take a moment to thank all the moms, grandmas, aunts, and mom-figures out there doing their best.

Today in 1908 was the first celebration of Mother's Day in America in the township of Grafton, West Virginia. (May 10th was a Sunday that year.)  We talked about the founder of Mother’s Day, Anna Jarvis, on her birthday, May 1st. Jarvis led the charge to get the day recognized on the national level, so that by 1914, Woodrow Wilson made it official. 

By then the day was growing too commercialized in Anna’s opinion. She believed a handwritten letter to one’s mother was the appropriate display of affection, and despised the companies peddling Mother’s Day cards, special flower arrangements, and candy as symbols of love. She was so upset that she protested outside a candy maker’s convention in Philadelphia and at one point was arrested for disturbing the peace.

And today is the birthday of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin who discovered what stars are made of. Cecilia was a student at Radcliffe College in Boston studying astronomy and astrophysics. In her doctoral thesis, she purported that stars contain mostly hydrogen and helium. And so really are just “balls of gas burning billions of miles away.” Her advisor dismissed the idea, since it was contrary to the scientific consensus at the time. A few years later, that same advisor ended up discovering that Cecilia was in fact correct about the atomic make-up of the sun and stars. When he published the findings, which he came to by an alternate route, he praised Cecilia’s work, but the scientific community recognized him for the discovery. 

Cecilia continued to study stars. She went on to publish multiple books about her research, sometimes conducting studies with her husband. In the mid-1950s, after working in research for two decades, she was offered a professorship at Harvard, making her the first female professor in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. 

And today is the birthday of Fred Astaire, dancer, singer, choreographer, and actor. He starred in such musical-films as Flying Down to Rio, Swing Time, and Shall We Dance. 

It was Fred’s mother’s idea to get Fred and his sister Adele into dancing and singing, as she desperately wished to get out of Omaha, Nebraska. When Fred’s father unexpectedly lost his job, mom convinced the family to pack up and head to New York. 

Fred and his sister ending up being an adorable duo, and thanks to their father’s intuitive sales sense, they secured a contract to perform on a tour through the States. When Adele shot up 3 inches past her brother in height, the duo looked oddly mismatched, and the family took a break from show business. 

After success dancing on Broadway, Fred was lured to Hollywood. His first screen tests did not go well. Feedback from the studios was that he couldn’t act, his ears were too big, and the balding wasn’t a good look. But he had an undeniable charm, and he sure could dance. 

His success was certainly not luck, rather it was a ton of hard work. Fred rehearsed his steps more than others felt necessary and asked for more takes on set than most producers felt was needed!

Despite his obvious charm, Fred skipped out on the lavish parties of Hollywood, preferring to spend his free time with his beloved wife Phyllis and their two kids Fred, Jr. and Ava. 

[Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome]

Christina Rossetti

 Sonnets are full of love, and this my tome

      Has many sonnets: so here now shall be

   One sonnet more, a love sonnet, from me

To her whose heart is my heart’s quiet home,

   To my first Love, my Mother, on whose knee

I learnt love-lore that is not troublesome;

   Whose service is my special dignity,

And she my loadstar while I go and come.

And so because you love me, and because

   I love you, Mother, I have woven a wreath

      Of rhymes wherewith to crown your honoured name:

      In you not fourscore years can dim the flame

Of love, whose blessed glow transcends the laws

   Of time and change and mortal life and death.

Thank you for listening. I’m your host Virginia Combs wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely weekend.