Well-Bred & Well-Brewed

The date is July 24th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland Oregon. 

Today is the birthday of French writer Alexandre Dumas. Notable titles include The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Prince of Thieves (a Robin Hood Tale), and a version of the Nutcracker. It was Dumas’s version of the classic tale that would be adapted into the Tchaikovsky opera of the same name in 1892. Scholars estimate that Dumas’s writing, in total, amounts to about 100,000 pages. 

But Dumas’s ancestors had a rocky start. His father was the child of a Haitian slave and her French master. Luckily, Dumas’s father was brought to France as a teen to attend a military training academy and enjoyed a prestigious career. Despite Dumas’s father’s complexion, he mixed in French high society, so that by Alexandre Dumas’s birth in 1802, the Dumas family was surrounded by fellow aristocrats, scholars, and artists. 

Dumas’s connections gave him a headstart and his plays and articles were instantly well-received. He began venturing out into novels in 1838, republishing a successful play as a novel in serial form. 

Dumas also did a fair bit of traveling through Europe, particularly as power struggles commenced in France. He was able to turn his traveling into profit, publishing travel guides and articles. In addition, his tales of adventure include characters that are well-versed in Mediterranean geography. 

As Dumas’s reputation spread, his novels were translated into multiple languages. He started a production company of sorts, hiring staff to help with his writing. He came up with story lines and oversaw all final drafts, but it’s safe to assume Dumas’s staff helped write some of those 100,000 pages. Dumas was financially successful and he was known to enjoy the luxurious comforts of life. He tended to spend a bit too generously, particularly on his friends, guests, and lovers. 

Despite success, Dumas still experienced discrimination due to his ethnic background. He was quite light-skinned in comparison with his father’s complexion, but nevertheless, haters hated. The only work that alluded to Dumas’s own personal struggle with identity and race was his novel, Georges. 

The prejudice he experienced did not affect his love life. Although he was married, Dumas enjoyed numerous affairs and fathered as many as 7 children out of wedlock, some he knew of and financially supported. Additional progeny were uncovered more recently by scholars. His behavior may sound rascally, but having amorous affairs was practically expected of the French aristocracy at the time.

At his death in 1870 at the age of 68, his fame had declined as literary tastes shifted. However, his works regained popularity. It is hard to resist a classic good-versus-evil, swashbuckling adventure? In 2002 on what would have been Dumas’s 200th Birthday, his ashes were moved to the Panthéon of Paris with much pomp and circumstance. 

According to an account of Dumas from a friend of his and fellow playwright, Dumas was “the most generous, large-hearted being in the world. He also was the most delightfully amusing and egotistical creature on the face of the earth.”

Sounds like Dumas would have been tickled to know the fuss made over him, 130 years after his death. 

 
Sonnet 116 [Let me not to the marriage of true minds]

William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 

Admit impediments. Love is not love 

Which alters when it alteration finds, 

Or bends with the remover to remove. 

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark 

That looks on tempests and is never shaken; 

It is the star to every wand'ring bark, 

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. 

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks 

Within his bending sickle's compass come; 

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, 

But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 

If this be error and upon me prov'd, 

I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.

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 July 23rd, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon.

Today is the birthday of Thomas Brisbane, British-Australian governor and astronomer. 

Brisbane was born in 1775 in Scotland. After a career in the military, Brisbane served as the 6th governor of Australia in his late 40s, from 1821 to 1825. At the time Australia was called “New South Wales” and large portions of the island remained wild and unexplored by colonists. 

Halfway through Brisbane’s term as governor, a keen surveyor explored a winding river on the Eastern half of the island. The surveyor dubbed the river the Brisbane River in the governor’s honor. Years later the city along the Brisbane River would adopt the name as well. 

Brisbane was generally seen as a good governor. He acted in accordance with the rules set forth for the position and governed with a fair hand. However, he was arguably more interested in astronomy.

The location of New South Wales (Australia) afforded Brisbane the opportunity to study the Southern skies. As the incoming governor, he constructed an observatory and brought with him plenty of astronomical instruments and a library of relevant books.

Published studies on the skies of the Southern Hemisphere were few and far between at the time. For the 75 years previous Brisbane’s work, little had been published on the heavens of the South. Brisbane re-published work of his predecessors in the field and built upon it substantially.

When Oxford University awarded Brisbane an honorary degree for his contributions, he could not have been prouder. It was more special to him than any of his military awards or promotions. 

When his term as governor of Australia ended, Brisbane left his instruments and books at the observatory he founded and headed home for Britain. He hoped the observatory would continue the work he started for the “furtherance of Science.”

Once home he promptly set to work on constructing a new observatory near his home to continue pursuing his love of astronomy.

And today is the birthday of Étienne-Louis Malus, French physicist, engineer, and mathematician.

Malus was born in 1775 in Paris and enjoyed a short military career before finding he was drawn to mathematics, particularly physics. He investigated and experimented almost exclusively with light and light waves. He is responsible for identifying Malus’s law, which not being a physicist, I only partially understand. 

His work is the basis for polarized lenses, which are lenses that reduce or eliminate reflection. He discovered the formula for polarization but in the early 1800s, the materials he needed to make such lenses did not exist. 

His work on polarization and light reflection and refraction are also the basis for 3D glasses. 

For his contributions to science, Malus’s name was inscribed on the Eiffel tower along with 71 other significant scientists.

Riding Down from Bangor
Louis Shreve Osborne

Riding down from Bangor, on an eastern train,

After weeks of hunting, in the woods of Maine;
Quite extensive whiskers, beard, moustache as well,
Sat a student fellow, tall and slim and swell

Empty seat behind him, no one at his side,
Into quiet village, eastern train did glide.
Enter aged couple, take the hindmost seat
Enter village maiden, beautiful, petite.

Blushingly she faltered, “Is this seat engaged?”
Sees the aged couple, properly enraged;

Student’s quite ecstatic, sees her ticket through,

Thinks of the long tunnel, thinks what he will do.

Pleasantly they chatted, how the cinders fly!
Till the student fellow, gets one in his eye.

Maiden sympathetic, turns herself about,

“May I if you please sir, try to get it out?”

Then the student fellow, feels a gentle touch

Hears a gentle murmur, “Does it hurt you much?”

Whiz! Slap! Bang! Into tunnel quite,

Into glorious darkness, black as Egypt’s night.

Out into the daylight glides that eastern train,
Student’s hair is ruffled, just the merest grain,
Maiden seen all blushes, when then and there appeared,
A tiny little earring, in that horrid student’s beard.

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

The date is July 22nd, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon.

Today is the birthday of Emma Lazarus, American poet and activist. Verses from her poem “The New Colossus” are on a plaque under the Statue of Liberty. 

She was born in 1849 in New York City, the fourth of seven children. Her father was a successful merchant and sugar refiner, and the family had the means to educate Emma and her siblings privately at home.

She took to poetry at an early age. Having studied the German and French languages and classic literature, by the age of 15, Emma was happily penning English translations of the works of Alexandre Dumas, Heinrich Heine, and Victor Hugo. She also experimented writing her own verse around the same time. 

Emma’s father was so taken with his daughter’s work that he had her poems and translations printed privately for family and friends. The warm reception led to a commercial printing of Emma Lazarus’s first book, Poems and Translation in 1867, when Emma was just 22. The work attracted the attention of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who became a mentor to the budding poet as well as a friend.  

The success of her first book of poetry led to a call for more. Her poems were printed in popular journals and she published a handful of additional collections of her own work. 

She caught the activism bug after following the news of the mistreatment of Jews in Russian pogroms. Lazarus herself was Jewish. She hailed from a long line of Portuguese Jews. Her ancestors fled to escape persecution at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition in the first half of the 1600s. They landed in New York City, when New York was still New Amsterdam.

In 1881, at the age of 36, Emma Lazarus personally observed the arrival of Jews from the pogroms in Russian to the ports in New York. They were tired, poor, and without any ties to the new country. She founded a school to help the immigrants get on their feet. It’s likely this experience inspired some of the versus in her poem “The New Colossus.”

A collection of poems as well as some of Lazarus’s prose were published in 1888, about a year after her death by cancer at age 42.

And today is the birthday of Óscar de la Renta, Dominican-American fashion designer.

De la Renta was born in 1932 in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. He was the youngest and only boy of seven children. He left the Dominican for Spain to study painting at 18. While there de la Renta began drawing clothes for newspaper advertisements and fashion houses to make extra money.

His sketches caught the eye of the wife of the U.S. Ambassador to Spain who commissioned him to design a gown for her daughter. From there, de la Renta realized his passion for fashion. 

De la Renta went on to work under Cristóbal Balenciaga and Antonio del Castillo, before founding his own eponymous fashion house. He dressed the likes of Jackie Kennedy and numerous celebrities and socialites. He served as an unofficial ambassador of the Dominican Republic and held a diplomatic passport.  De la Renta passed away at the age of 82 in 2014 at his home in Connecticut.

The New Colossus

Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

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

The date is July 18th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon. 

On this day in 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention, also known as the Women's Rights Convention began in Seneca Falls, New York. It was a gathering of women and men and their goal was to come out with a Declaration of Sentiments. Notable attendees included Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Amy Post, Amelia Bloomer, Eunice Newton Foote, and Frederick Douglass. 

Going into the Convention, there was a question as to whether or not to include the right to vote in the Declaration of Sentiments. After a spirited debate among the ladies and handful of gentlemen, Elizabeth Cady Stanton penned it in. 

Today is the birthday of Alice Moore Dunbar Nelson, African American poet and journalist. 

Alice was born in 1875 in New Orleans to mixed race parents. She grew up entrenched in Creole culture, but noticed that because of her fairer skin she was quite isolated, particularly as a child. She was not white enough for the whites, but not black enough for the blacks. 

She enrolled in a teacher training program and became a teacher upon graduating in 1892 at the age of 17. In her spare time she began writing, honing her skills and producing her first book of short stories in 1895, titled Violets and Other Tales.

She married three times. Her first marriage was to fellow poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, who we got to know back on his birthday in June. Paul Dunbar was taken with Alice Moore after seeing her picture and her writing in an issue of the Boston Monthly Globe. He started courting her through letters in 1895. Two years later the pair finally met in person and married the next year when Alice was 23, settling in Washington, D.C.

The pair were compatible, but after Paul’s diagnoses of tuberculosis, things when South. Or rather they went West. Alice moved to Colorado with Paul on doctor’s orders. Also on doctor’s orders, Paul had begun drinking whiskey regularly. Sadly, the ‘whiskey prescription’ had turned Paul into an alcoholic and he became abusive toward Alice. Alice left Colorado and Paul for Delaware in 1902.

She continued teaching and writing on the side, and briefly attended Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. Paul died in 1906, freeing Alice from any commitment, and she married again in 1910 to a professor and successful doctor from Howard University. This married again ended in separation and then divorce. 

Her third marriage was to another poet, Robert J. Nelson, who was also an activist. Alice’s writing began to trend more toward journalism. Her fiction and poetry turned more biting in their social critics of America, and she became active in civil rights and women’s suffrage.

Her marriage to Nelson was a happy one and he seemed to give Alice plenty of independence, which suited her well. 

We have lots of information on Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson thanks to the diaries she kept. In 1984, her journals were published in the book Give Us Each Day, offering insight not only onto Alice’s personal thoughts and feelings, but also onto what life was like for an African-American woman. 

Today’s poem is simply titled “Sonnet” by our birthday poet Alice Dunbar Nelson. I’ve held on to this one for a few months and am very glad to be sharing it with you today. 

Sonnet

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

I had not thought of violets of late,      

The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet

In wistful April days, when lovers mate

And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.       

The thought of violets meant florists’ shops,          

And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;

And garish lights, and mincing little fops

And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine. 

So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed, 

I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams;            

The perfect loveliness that God has made,— 

Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.

And now—unwittingly, you’ve made me dream

Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam.

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

The date is July 18th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon. 

Today is the birthday of Nelson Mandela, South African political leader and first president of South Africa. 

He was born the son of an African chief in 1918, though he did not live like a prince. As a young boy he played out in fields and herded cattle. It wasn’t until he was seven that he attended school – and only because it was a Christian school and his mother was a devote Christian. At his first school he acquired the name “Nelson,” bestowed upon him by a teacher. 

As he continued his education, he began to be exposed to the imperialist dynamic in South Africa. On one hand certainly imperialism was a disruption of natives’ way of life, however Mandela also saw the opportunities it brought, namely educational institutions. 

As the ruling power in South Africa began to tighten its grip and spiral into deep racism, Mandela and a group of like-minded peers, set to work on a plan to take a stand against the government. 

Before he was able to do too much though, Mandela and his political party allies were arrested, tried and unjustly thrown in jail for a life. Mandela did not let confinement stop him – he took it in stride. The inmates of Mandela’s political prison, continued to educate themselves during their time, forming the “University of Robben Island.” Each member took turns lecturing on their area of expertise and the group debated topical socio-political issues. 

In 1961, after 18 years in prison, a judge overturned the conviction and Mandela and his peers were released from jail. Outside, tension had escalated and Mandela had to go ‘underground’ as he organized a movement to change the state.

Mandela would struggle in the fight to realize a democratic South Africa for decades. His perseverance was finally rewarded with a Democratic nation in the 1990s, and furthermore he was elected the first president of the new government in 1994 at the age of 76. 

On a related note it is also International Nelson Mandela Day. The day aims “to bring together people around the world to fight poverty and promote peace, reconciliation and cultural diversity.”

And today is the birthday of Shirley Strickland, Australian athlete and Olympic medalist.

Shirley’s father before her was physically gifted, and qualified for the Olympic Games in 1900, but did not have enough money to buy a plane ticket to get to Paris. Shirley was born in 1925, and from an early age showed signs of athletic prowess. As a freshman in high school, she won a series of athletic events, earning a scholarship. 

After graduating college in 1946, she started to seriously consider running. She had a reputation as a standout hurdler and sprinter in college and finding a coach was no trouble. She competed in the Australian national competitions in 1947 and crushed it. She went on to win three Olympic Gold Medals, one Silver, and three Bronze, making her the most medaled Australian runner. 

Later in life she dipped her toes into politics while raising her four children with her husband.

I know I am but summer to your heart (Sonnet XXVII)

Edna St. Vincent Millay 

I know I am but summer to your heart,

And not the full four seasons of the year;

And you must welcome from another part

Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.

No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell

Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;

And I have loved you all too long and well

To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring.

Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,

I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums, 

That you may hail anew the bird and rose

When I come back to you, as summer comes.

Else will you seek, at some not distant time, 

Even your summer in another clime.

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

The date is July 17th, Wednesday and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon.

As the Northern Hemisphere enters the heat of July, it seems appropriate that on this day in 1902 Willis Carrier in Buffalo, NY submitted drawings for what would be the first air conditioner. He determined that, to work, an Air Conditioner machine must do four things:

1.     Control temperature

2.     Control humidity

3.     Control air circulation, and

4.     Cleanse the air.

Indeed, a large part of how Carrier’s air conditioner worked had to do with dew point depression. As a resident of Western New York, and more largely the East Coast, Carrier would have known all too well how suffocating a hot AND humid day can be. After fiddling with the contraption for a few years, Carrier received a patent for the first working air conditioner in 1907.  

Air conditioners use a a LOT of energy.  An article from 2012 estimated that a car’s A/C will use around 3kw or 4 horsepower from the engine therefore decreasing the miles per gallon or kilos per liter ratio. In recent years there has been a call to rethink air conditioners. The use of refrigerants in A/C unit cause damage to the Earth’s ozone layer and emit potent greenhouse gases. A bit ironic that the thing that can keep us cool, also contributes to making the planet hotter. 

Today is the birthday of Angela Merkel, current German Chancellor. She is often considered the de facto leader of the European Union. 

It may be hard to separate Merkel from European politics now, but there was a time when politics wasn’t on her mind at all – in her younger days she was studying for a doctorate in chemistry.

Merkel was born in 1954 in Hamburg Germany, in what was “West Germany” at the time. Merkel’s father, a Lutheran pastor, moved the family from West Germany to East Germany when Angela was just a baby to take a pastorage outside of Berlin. 

When Merkel was a teen, she joined the communist youth movement in East Germany, in order to gain access to higher education. Teens and young people who were not a part of the “voluntary” movement were routinely denied acceptance to colleges and universities. 

Merkel attended University in Leipzig where she learned to speak Russian fluently and was a stand-out in her mathematics classes. After graduation, she received an assistant professorship at an engineering school and was asked by the Soviet-controlled government to report on her colleagues. She used the excuse that she would be a lousy spy and terrible at keeping secrets to get out of the request. 

She moved along and received a doctorate for her thesis on quantum chemistry at age 31. She continued to work as a researcher and published papers until November 1989. 

What happened then? The Berlin Wall came down, and that seemed to be the catalyst for Merkel’s political career. Perhaps having been under the thumb of a surveillance state for so long, Merkel was determined to see the future be free. 

Babylon

Robert Graves

The child alone a poet is:

Spring and Fairyland are his.

Truth and Reason show but dim,

And all's poetry with him.

Rhyme and music flow in plenty

For the lad of one-and-twenty,

But Spring for him is no more now

Than daisies to a munching cow;

Just a cheery pleasant season,

Daisy buds to live at ease on.

He's forgotten how he smiled

And shrieked at snowdrops when a child,

Or wept one evening secretly

For April's glorious misery.

Wisdom made him old and wary

Banishing the Lords of Faery.

Wisdom made a breach and battered

Babylon to bits: she scattered

To the hedges and ditches

All our nursery gnomes and witches.

Lob and Puck, poor frantic elves,

Drag their treasures from the shelves.

Jack the Giant-killer's gone,

Mother Goose and Oberon,

Bluebeard and King Solomon.

Robin, and Red Riding Hood

Take together to the wood,

And Sir Galahad lies hid

In a cave with Captain Kidd.

None of all the magic hosts,

None remain but a few ghosts

Of timorous heart, to linger on

Weeping for lost Babylon.

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 July 16th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon.

On this day in 1935 the world's first parking meter was installed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in the USA. 

As much as parking meters are an accepted evil of city parking today, the first parking meters were welcomed. The population in Oklahoma had risen with the discovery of rich oil fields, and with people and money came a rise in vehicles. In 1913 the number of cars in and around Oklahoma City was about 3000. By 1930, that number had reached an estimated 500,000! Downtown Oklahoma City was a mess with everyone jostling for open spaces and staying as long as they liked. Restaurants  and retailers complained about lost business.

The first parking meters were installed on one side of the street on a main thoroughfare downtown, and by the next day requests for more meters from retailers on the opposite side of street poured in. The meters had timers and were coin operated. They successfully brought in revenue for the city, as well as sorting out the parking mess, and quickly spread to other cities facing the same problem! 

Today is the birthday of Sheri S. Tepper, American writer. Her works of science-fiction jarred readers and gave females representation in a genre typically populated by men and historically sexist. Her novels, of which she over 35, gained a reputation as “eco-feminist” for their themes of parallel oppression of women and nature (the environment). 

Born in 1929 in Colorado, Sheri Tepper was married by 20 and divorced with two kids less than ten years later. She worked multiple jobs as a single mother, managing to write a few poems and short stories along the way. Later in her career, she worked as Executive Director of a Planned Parenthood Branch in Colorado, which possibly helped reinforce her gender-equal perspective. 

It wasn’t until Tepper was in her fifties that she became a published author of novels. Her first novel was released in 1983 and her last in 2007. Her novel Grass was nominated for both a Hugo Award and Locus Award and her novel Beauty won the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel in 1992. Other notable works include The Gate to Woman’s Country and The Margarets.

Tepper passed away in 2016 at the ripe old age of 87. 

Extraterrestrial Trilogue on Terran Self-Destruction

Sheri S. Tepper (published as Sheri S. Eberhart)

Three creatures sat on the sands of Mars,

And the first, to the ancient twiddling bars

That the second played in a twalreg flute

Sang a canal lay most convolute,

While the third, with his horn in the sand, sat mute,

Considering the stars. 

At last the second stilled his fife,

And the third twonged out (his voice was rife

With a hint of fear) “Do you know that there,

Where the third planet spins in its veil of air,

I’m convinced there’s a spot, a jot, a hair,

A widge, perhaps, of life.”

The first began and amusement dance,

While the second, fourth eyes crossed, askance,

Skibbed with extreme severity,

“You ought to watch your tongues,” quoth he.

“One should not affront the Deity

By mentioning such chance.

“For years our scientists have spent

Their time in the establishment

Of reasons why the life we know

Could not exist above, below,

Or anyplace but here! They show

That fact self-evident.”

Just then their eyes were caught, aghast,

For where the air-veiled planet passed

A ball of fire has blossomed wide,

And holocausts together vied

To rip the ravens globe aside

With nothing left at last. 

Murmured the first, “You will allow,

By every old and sacred vow,

This proves my point and proves it well.

Those pyrotechnics must compel

You to recant!” The third said, “Hell,

It doesn’t matter now.”

And they sat back down on the sands of Mars

To hear the ancient, twiddling bars 

Of a Martian dirge on the twalreg flute,

In torches old and dissolute,

While the third, with his horn in the sand, sat mute,

Considering the stars. 

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 July 15th, Monday, and today I’m traveling from Bend, Oregon to Portland, Oregon in the USA.

Today is the birthday of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, Dutch artist. He is considered the most important artist in Dutch history, and one of the great visual artists in art history. 

Born in 1606 in the Dutch Republic, now the Netherlands, Rembrandt was the ninth child of a miller father and baker mother. Rembrandt dropped out of secondary school at the age of 14 to become the apprentice to a painter in Leiden. 

Rembrandt studied painting for three years as an apprentice, following it up with a short six-month apprenticeship in Amsterdam. Unlike most of his artist peers who further honed their artistic skills by studying in Italy, Rembrandt never left the Netherlands. 

By the tender age of 18, Rembrandt set up a studio in his hometown of Leiden, refining his art while teaching other artists. His break came when his paintings caught the eye of a statesman. The statesmen began setting Rembrandt up with commissions from the Dutch Imperial Court, the Hauge. With this, Rembrandt was able to move to Amsterdam, a booming bustling city. 

From there Rembrandt’s reputation grew, and so did his income. Although Rembrandt saw financial success with his paintings and etchings, he still lived paycheck to paycheck. He just had very large paychecks. He enjoyed spending money on collecting art and rarities, and the home he and his wife had bought had a big mortgage attached to it. Toward the end of his life he would have to sell most of his collections and move to a smaller home to repay a few of his large debts.

During his lifetime Rembrandt became revered in Europe as a great artist, not through his paintings, but through his etchings. Rembrandt’s preferred etching method was a simple etching needle and copper plates. He could etch one copper plate and make multiple prints from it. They were less expensive and physically smaller than his paintings, allowing for wider circulation throughout the continent. Given the difficult task that etching is, the detail and alertness captured in Rembrandt’s etching, speak to his skill and reputation as art history’s greatest etcher. 

A Musical Instrument

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

What was he doing, the great god Pan,

 Down in the reeds by the river?

Spreading ruin and scattering ban,

Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,

And breaking the golden lilies afloat

 With the dragon-fly on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,

 From the deep cool bed of the river:

The limpid water turbidly ran,

And the broken lilies a-dying lay,

And the dragon-fly had fled away,

 Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sat the great god Pan

 While turbidly flowed the river;

And hacked and hewed as a great god can,

With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,

Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed

 To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan,

 (How tall it stood in the river!)

Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,

Steadily from the outside ring,

And notched the poor dry empty thing

 In holes, as he sat by the river.

'This is the way,' laughed the great god Pan

 (Laughed while he sat by the river),

'The only way, since gods began

To make sweet music, they could succeed.'

Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,

 He blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!

 Piercing sweet by the river!

Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!

The sun on the hill forgot to die,

And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly

 Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,

 To laugh as he sits by the river,

Making a poet out of a man:

The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,—

For the reed which grows nevermore again

 As a reed with the reeds in the river.

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 July 12th, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR. 

Today is the birthday of George Eastman, American inventor and businessman.

Eastman’s tinkering with film and cameras in his 20s led him to develop his own film and start a business that would dominate the industry. Eastman was the first to use roll film in cameras allowing for multiple pictures to be taken in succession without much ado. Roll film would be the precursor to film for motion pictures. The likes of Thomas Edison used Eastman’s film and Edison was, at least once, a house guest at Eastman’s estate in Rochester, NY.
 

George Eastman’s company Eastman Kodak made film and cameras affordable for the masses and is largely credited with promoting and spreading photography to the nation. Perhaps the most popular Kodak camera was the Brownie series camera.
 

Additionally, George Eastman is credited with the development of the city of Rochester, New York. Rochester became a boomtown as Eastman Kodak began to directly employ more and more skilled and unskilled laborers. He also ended up employing even more people indirectly as a result of his generous giving to numerous institutions within Rochester and beyond. 

Two institutions he was passionate about were dental clinics and dentist-training programs. Eastman watched his mother suffer through terrible tooth pain while he was growing up, and when he made his fortune, he vowed to never see her put through such a thing again. He donated money to kick start multiple dental clinics, including one in London, and funded a school of Dentistry at the University of Rochester.  

In total he donated over $100 million during his lifetime and at his death bequeathed his estate to the University of Rochester. Although his giving was on par with that of Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and other peers, George Eastman did not seek publicity for his generosity and made a number of large donations anonymously. Several instances of his generosity have been revealed in recent decades. 
 

And today is the birthday of Henry David Thoreau, American writer. Best known for his essay “Civil Disobedience,” Thoreau also wrote poetry and was a staunch promoter of simple living—an early Minimalist, if you will!

“Civil Disobedience” made waves as an anarchist text upon its first publication, perhaps because it was originally titled “Resistance to Civil Government.” Thoreau’s main argument is that government’s nature is to be corrupt and unjust and therefore must be ignored or overthrown via a revolution in order to preserve one’s own individual rights. 

Thoreau was vehemently opposed to slavery and American imperialism which he saw as blatant infringement upon the rights of the individual. 

His writing would influence revolutionary leaders decades later, including Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther Ming, Jr..

I Am a Parcel of Vain Strivings Tied

Henry David Thoreau

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied 

By a chance bond together, 

Dangling this way and that, their links 

Were made so loose and wide, 

Methinks, 

For milder weather. 

A bunch of violets without their roots, 

And sorrel intermixed, 

Encircled by a wisp of straw 

Once coiled about their shoots, 

The law 

By which I'm fixed. 

A nosegay which Time clutched from out 

Those fair Elysian fields, 

With weeds and broken stems, in haste, 

Doth make the rabble rout 

That waste 

The day he yields. 

And here I bloom for a short hour unseen, 

Drinking my juices up, 

With no root in the land 

To keep my branches green, 

But stand 

In a bare cup. 

Some tender buds were left upon my stem 

In mimicry of life, 

But ah! the children will not know, 

Till time has withered them, 

The woe 

With which they're rife. 

But now I see I was not plucked for naught, 

And after in life's vase 

Of glass set while I might survive, 

But by a kind hand brought 

Alive 

To a strange place. 

That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours, 

And by another year, 

Such as God knows, with freer air, 

More fruits and fairer flowers 

Will bear, 

While I droop here.

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

Today we take a look at To Kill a Mockingbird, published in 1960, and never once out of print! Poem by Effie Smith.

The date is July 11th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, Oregon.

On this day in 1960, the novel To Kill a Mockingbird was released. It was an instant bestseller and was published into ten different languages its second year in print. Since its first publication, To Kill a Mockingbird has won a Pulitzer Prize (1961), been translated into over 40 languages, and is the most widely read book among middle school and high school students. 

TKAM has been compared to Uncle Tom’s Cabin due to its timely release date, in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement. Some scholars claim it was an important book for drumming up sympathy for the African American cause, though it’s difficult to quantify its impact on the whole. 

TKAM is from the perspective of a young girl named Jean Louise Finch, who readers come to know as ‘Scout.’ The main event in the book revolved around the trial of a falsely accused black man, Tom Robinson. Tom Robinson is represented by Scout’s father, a lawyer, Atticus Finch. 

The book is largely based on the author’s own experiences in childhood. Her neighbor friend Dill is a version of Truman Capote who was indeed a neighbor and close friend of Lee’s when they were small. Truman Capote fondly remembered going to the local courthouse with Lee and watching trials play out during summers as kids. However, it’s unlikely the pair ever witnessed one of the trails that shook the Civil Rights Movement awake. 

It has been suggested that Tom Robinson, the falsely accused black man, is loosely based on Emmett Till, a black man who was murdered for engaging in a flirtatious chat with a white woman in public. Other instances of wrongly accused black men would have been well-known to Lee as a teen and 20-something, as would the prejudiced sentiments of the people in her hometown.

Some critics argue that TKAM didn’t go far enough in calling for change. Some of the main criticisms of the book now is that it treats racism with a detached perspective, the black characters are flat and two-dimensional, and the use of racial epithets is offensive. However, Civil Rights leader Andrew Young notes that the use of racial epithets is simply a true-to-life depiction of the time in which the story is set. Young has additionally said that the book "inspires hope in the midst of chaos and confusion" and is "an act of humanity" in how it shows that people can change their prejudiced perspectives.

Since its publication in 1960, To Kill A Mockingbird has never been out of print and its estimated that there are over 30 million copies in circulation. 

At the Grave of the Forgotten

Effie Waller Smith

In a churchyard old and still,

Where the breeze-touched branches thrill

              To and fro,

Giant oak trees blend their shade

O'er a sunken grave-mound, made

              Long ago.

No stone, crumbling at its head,

Bears the mossed name of the dead

              Graven deep;

But a myriad blossoms' grace

Clothes with trembling light the place

              Of his sleep.

Was a young man in his strength

Laid beneath this low mound's length,

              Heeding naught?

Did a maiden's parents wail

As they saw her, pulseless, pale,

              Hither brought?

Was it else one full of days,

Who had traveled darksome ways,

              And was tired,

Who looked forth unto the end,

And saw Death come as a friend

              Long desired?

Who it was that rests below

Not earth's wisest now may know,

              Or can tell;

But these blossoms witness bear

They who laid the sleeper there

              Loved him well.

In the dust that closed him o'er

Planted they the garden store

              Deemed most sweet,

Till the fragrant gleam, outspread,

Swept in beauty from his head

              To his feet.

Still, in early springtime's glow,

Guelder-roses cast their snow

              O'er his rest;

Still sweet-williams breathe perfume

Where the peonies' crimson bloom

              Drapes his breast.

Passing stranger, pity not

Him who lies here, all forgot,

              'Neath this earth;

Some one loved him—more can fall

To no mortal. Love is all

              Life is worth.

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