Well-Bred & Well-Brewed

The date is April 25th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru. 

On this day in 1953, Watson, Crick, Wilkins, and Franklin published their revolutionary paper on the double helix shape of human DNA. As such, today is often celebrated as “DNA Day” in academic circles. 

Watson and Crick had come up with a shape for DNA in 1951, but after showing it to Rosalind Franklin, had to start over. She had alerted them that their design was impossible because of the way water molecules and amino acids interact. They discovered the new shape in February of 1953 and published their findings quickly in the hopes of beating a rival, Linus Pauling, to the discovery. It probably goes without saying that this was a major advancement in genomics!

On this day in 1998, the Red Hat Society was founded. The Red Hat Society calls themselves a ‘playgroup for women’ with their central mission to connect women for the purpose of having fun in spaces away from the everyday duties of careers, caring for loved ones, and housework. They grew largely by word of mouth in their first few years, growing from a small group of friends to 70 thousand members all over the world today. 

Today is the birthday of Ella Fitzgerald, the Queen of Jazz. Ella was born in 1917 in Virginia, but moved to Yonkers when she was just a few years old. New York is where Fitzgerald would grow up. A bright student, she was more fond of dancing than singing. It wasn’t until she entered a talent show, Amatuer Nights at the Apollo Theater, at age 17, that she discovered she may have a thing with this singing. She was originally going to do a dance number, but after seeing a sister duo do a dance, she thought she’d have a better shot at winning the talent show by singing. 

She was right. She took first prize and a few months later opportunities began sprouting up. 

Ella achieved great success over multiple decades, deftly adapting to the shifts in musical taste, and using nostalgia for her early recording days toward the end of her career. The song that put her on the map was her version of the nursery rhyme “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” but it’s her rendition of “Mack the Knife” from the live album Ella in Berlin which sticks with most people. Her scatting and be-bopping truly shine in the track and it’s no wonder one of her 13 Grammys were awarded for that number. And naturally she also received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Ella was honored with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and National Medal of Arts bestowed by Congress in 1987. Her last appearance was in 1990 in London to perform with the Count Basie Orchestra for the launch of Jazz FM, and she passed away six years later, at the age of 79, a full life lived. 

And today is the birthday of Walter de la Mare, English writer of novels, short stories, and poems. He wrote for adults and children alike, his writing often tinged with supernatural elements from ghosts to subtle psychological horrors. He is the author of the poem “The Listeners” which is our poem today. 

The Listeners

Walter de la Mare

'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller,

    Knocking on the moonlit door;

And his horse in the silence champed the grasses

    Of the forest's ferny floor:

And a bird flew up out of the turret,

    Above the Traveller's head:

And he smote upon the door again a second time;

    'Is there anybody there?' he said.

But no one descended to the Traveller;

    No head from the leaf-fringed sill

Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes,

    Where he stood perplexed and still.

But only a host of phantom listeners

    That dwelt in the lone house then

Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight

    To that voice from the world of men:

Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair,

    That goes down to the empty hall,

Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken

    By the lonely Traveller's call.

And he felt in his heart their strangeness,

    Their stillness answering his cry,

While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,

    'Neath the starred and leafy sky;

For he suddenly smote on the door, even

    Louder, and lifted his head: - 

'Tell them I came, and no one answered,

    That I kept my word,' he said.

Never the least stir made the listeners,

    Though every word he spake

Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house

    From the one man left awake:

Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup,

    And the sound of iron on stone,

And how the silence surged softly backward,

    When the plunging hoofs were gone.

As usual, I'm wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a lovely evening!

The date is April 24th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru. 

On this day in 1800 President John Adams allocated $5000 for the Library of Congress to accumulate “books as may be necessary for the use of Congress” and for the construction of a building to house those books and documents. The original collection included 740 books and three maps. 

The Library of Congress was torched during the War of 1812, just over a decade after its establishment. President Thomas Jefferson graciously offered to sell his collection of over six thousand books to the Library…for nearly $24,000. Despite the hefty price tag, it was an important step in the Library’s history. Jefferson’s collection was not just scholarly books but included the likes of items such as cookbooks and contemporary literature. Despite some critics arguing that such frivolous items should not be in the government Library, Jefferson overruled them, believing that there were “no subject to which a Member of Congress may not have occasion to refer.”

Despite another fire in 1851 that claimed 35,000 items, the Library carried on. They now have a current collection of more than 164 million items- not just books and maps, but music, paintings, recordings, video, prints, and more. 

In 1990 the Library began work on a project called “American Memory” with the goal of digitizing its collection. At first everything was to go on CDs and DVDs, but wit the advent of the internet, that was abandoned. You can now find 7 petabytes (7,000 thousand terabytes, or 7,000,000 gigabytes) of the Library of Congress’s collections online at www.loc.gov. 

Today is the birthday of Japanese botanist Tomitaro Makino. He was raised by his grandmother in the town of Sakawa in Southern Japan. His magnum opus is Makino’s Book of Botany in which he classifies 6000 species in six volumes, but his text Makino’s Illustrated Flora of Japan was more prominent and is still used as a reference book today. Over Makino’s lifespan he named 2500 plants and amassed a collection of 400,000 specimens, all of which were donated at his passing to the Tokyo Metropolitan University. The Botanical Garden in Kochi, near his hometown, is named in Makino’s honor.

And today is the birthday of David Blackwell. Blackwell was an African-American mathematician and professor whose work in game theory, coding theory, information theory, and probability theory I will not attempt to explain. In an interview a few years before his retirement from UC Berkley, Blackwell said “I’m not interested in doing research and I never have been... I’m interested in understanding, which is quite a different thing.” 

And today is the birthday of English writer Anthony Trollope. Trollope worked as a postal employee before his writing career took off. He stuck to a strict writing schedule to make sure he was producing, sometimes writing during the lengthy train-rides he had to take for work. 

It was his Barsetshire novels that really put Trollope on the map for readers and allowed him to eventually leave his postal office position to devote time to writing and other pursuits. His 47 novels generally all contain sly commentary on society and politics, but also happy endings for the good guys and justice for the bad guys.

Today is also the birthday of Elizabeth Goudge, best-selling author of children’s books. Her book The Little White Horse won a Carnegie Medal in Britain for children’s books in 1946. She wrote sixteen books and many more short stories. Of her last book, The Child from the Sea, she said “I seemed to give it all I have to give…and so I know I can never write another novel, for I do not think there is anything else to say.” 

Everyone Sang

Siegfried Sassoon

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

And I was filled with such delight

As prisoned birds must find in freedom

Winging wildly across the white

Orchards and dark green fields; on; on; and out of sight.

Everyone’s voice was suddenly lifted,

And beauty came like the setting sun.

My heart was shaken with tears and horror

Drifted away ... O but every one

Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.

I’m your host Virginia Combs, wishing you a good morning, a better day, and a pleasant evening. 

The date is April 23, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru. 

On this day in 1516 the Reinheitsgebot was signed into law in Bavaria in what is present day Germany. The literal translation of Reinheitsgebot is “purity order” and it had to do with a very German thing: beer. It mandated that beer could only be made of barley, hops, and water. The order also made recommendations for punishing those that dared serve or sell impure beer and set guidelines for the price of beer in Bavaria. 

The Reinheitsgebot was expanded to include a handful of herbs and spices around 1550. Yeast wasn’t recognized as a separate ingredient and was added to the list when it was discovered later on. 

Some historians and critics argue that the Reinheitsgebot stunted the development of the German beer scene, though it certainly has given a strong identity to German beer. In 2015, the Reiheitzgebot was revised yet again, this time to allow beer to more broadly contain natural ingredients. 

Today is the birthday of Annie Easley, mathematician and rocket scientist for NASA. She was born in 1933 in Birmingham, Alabama and defied odds for African-American females at the time, graduating as valedictorian of her high school and going on to attend university. While back in Birmingham, taking some time off from school, she registered to vote. The Jim Crow Laws required African American voters to pay a fee and take a literacy test. She was charged two dollars and after taking the test, decided to help her fellow African Americans prepare for the overtly lengthy test.  

Annie started working for NASA while in Cleveland, after reading a newspaper article about other females working as “computers” there. She completed an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Cleveland State University while working at the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory and continued increasing her knowledge and skills through courses offered and run by NASA. 

During her time with NASA she worked on creating and applying computer code to more accurately assess power technologies for rocket propulsion and flight. Her work was built on by later rocket scientists and physicists for launching rockets and satellites into space.

When speaking on how she dealt with discrimination in the work place Annie said: “When people have their biases and prejudices, yes, I am aware. My head is not in the sand. But my thing is, if I can't work with you, I will work around you. I was not about to…walk away. That may be a solution for some people, but it's not mine.”

Today is the birthday of 15th President, James Buchanan.  He served one term from 1857 to 1861, and remains the only bachelor president in America’s history. Historians often look at Buchanan as the worst president in our history, as he failed to hold the union together, and by the end of his term, with Lincoln’s future presidency confirmed, South Carolina succeeded from the Union. 

Buchanan had wanted to be remembered as a George Washington, but his attempts to appease both the North and South only seemed to increase the polarization of the two. Certainly, he was faced with one of the toughest times in history to be president. 

And today is the birthday of Max Planck. Max was born into a highly educated family in what is present day Germany. He became a physicist in the hopes of understanding the building blocks of the world, despite a professor advising against the field as ‘limited.’ In 1918, he received a Nobel Prize for his discovery of quantum theory.  His contemporaries included Robert Andrews Millikan, Walter Nernst, Max von Laue, and Albert Einstein. 

Pirate Story

Robert Louis Stevenson

 Three of us afloat in the meadow by the swing,   

  Three of us aboard in the basket on the lea.   

Winds are in the air, they are blowing in the spring,   

  And waves are on the meadow like the waves there are at sea.   

Where shall we adventure, to-day that we’re afloat,

  Wary of the weather and steering by a star?   

Shall it be to Africa, a-steering of the boat,   

  To Providence, or Babylon, or off to Malabar?   

Hi! but here’s a squadron a-rowing on the sea—   

  Cattle on the meadow a-charging with a roar!

Quick, and we’ll escape them, they’re as mad as they can be,   

  The wicket is the harbour and the garden is the shore.

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 April 22nd, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru.

Today is Earth Day. The first official Earth Day was celebrated across the United States in 1970. The day came out of a desire to raise awareness and respect for the environment following the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill which killed over 10,000 birds and sea fauna. The April date was specifically chosen to fall during the school year in the hopes it would lead to increased education in schools. And on that first Earth Day in 1970, the majority of participants who stepped outside into the sunshine were children, teens, and young adults from elementary school to college. 

And on this day in 1876 the Philadelphia Athletics faced off against the Boston Red Stockings in the first game of the National League. It ended up being the only game that day as the other 3 scheduled games were rained out in their cities. At the time, the National League was changing up the way teams operated. Player contracts were altered, and the team or ‘club’ was give some much needed oversight that would help them maintain core groups of players for full season(s), whereas in other leagues, players would often jump to a better paying team mid-season. The National League still exists today as part of the MLB, though many of the ‘clubs’ have changed names and locations. As such, that first National League game in 1876 is often said to be the first MLB game in history. 

Today is the birthday of German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Kant who said “Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.”, is one of the fundamental philosophers to know in any 101 Philosophy course. Kantian Ethics theorizes that to determine if an action is moral or not, you have to look at the intention of the action, not solely the outcome of the action. His advice for how to live a moral life, goes more or less like this: “Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.”

Today is also the birthday of Ruth A. M. Schmidt, American geologist and paleontologist. A lesser known pioneer for women in science, she received her doctorate in geology from Columbia University in 1948. During WWII, she became the first woman graduate student to teach a class of all-male students at Columbia, as most of the male graduate students had been drafted into military service. 

Ruth worked for the United States Geological Survey (USGS) for 20 years. She resigned when a request to change departments was denied. Her superior said they were looking for “hearty new male PhDs” to fill the position instead. 

Ruth soldiered on in Anchorage, Alaska, where she had already founded the Alaska Geological Society and was keen to continue research in the area. 

She was in the field with a group of research students from the University of Alaska, Anchorage during the Great Alaska Earthquake. She, three students, and a US Forest Service scientist were on a glacial lake when the 9.2 earthquake rocked Alaska on down to California for a solid 5 minutes. Fortunately, none of the party fell into the freezing water as the iced cover on the lake was 3-feet thick. 

During the rebuilding of the earthquake she and her team of researchers studied the aftermath and worked to identify possible future risks, so as to avoid them during the rebuilding process. She was inducted into the Alaska Women’s hall of Fame in 2015, just one year after her death in 2014. 

The Violet

Jane Taylor

Down in a green and shady bed

A modest violet grew;

Its stalk was bent, it hung its head,

As if to hide from view.

And yet it was a lovely flower,

Its colors bright and fair;

It might have graced a rosy bower,

Instead of hiding there.

Yet there it was content to bloom,

In modest tints arrayed;

And there diffused a sweet perfume,

Within the silent shade.

Then let me to the valley go,

This pretty flower to see;

That I may also learn to grow

In sweet humility.

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