Almanac of Story Tellers: Langston Hughes

     Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of  February 1st.

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     It is the 32nd day of the year, leaving 333 days remaining in 2022. It is the first day of Black History Month.

    On this date in 1901, the African-American poet, novelist, and playwright Langston Hughes was born.

    His poems were lyrical works of arts that celebrated Black culture. His plays explored the Black experience in America. For 20 years, Hughes wrote a newspaper column on Black life for the Chicago Defender, a leading Black newspaper read across the United States.

    His poetry shared his experiences as a Black man in American, portraying them as the typical Black stories. As poets.org wrote of his work: "He wanted to tell the stories of his people in way that reflected their actual culture, including their love of music, laughter, and language itself alongside their suffering."

    In many ways, Hughes was an enigma. He was a private man who wrote two autobiographies. His two grandmothers had been born enslaved, and his two grandfathers had been engaged in the slave trade. 

    His poetry sometimes subtly hinted of gay love, but he never acknowledged whether he was gay, and his biographies are split on the issue. He did not like when Black people criticized each other or aired their grievances in public, yet one of his first plays, Mulatto, dealt with the color differences within the Black community. He, in turn, was sometimes criticized for the perceived uneveness in his writings.

    Hughes was born in Joplin, Mo., but his family moved often when he was young, and he was mostly reared in Cleveland. He traveled to Europe and worked as a deckhand in his youth, But when landed in New York to attend Columbia University, he fell in love with Harlem, where he lived and worked for most of the rest of his life.

    He became a part of the Harlem Renaissance and helped launch the magazine Fire!!!, which despite lasting only one issue, had an outsized influence during that time.

    Hughes died in New York in 1967.   

Almanac of Story Tellers: Norman Mailer

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 31st.

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     It is the 31st day of the year, leaving 334 days remaining in 2022. 

   

    On this date in 1923, the American author and activist, Norman Mailer, was born.

    He told stories in both the fictional world and the non-fiction world, sometimes combining the two. His debut novel, The Naked and the Dead, published in 1948, was one of the first about World War II. It was critically acclaimed and popular, making a name for Mailer in the literary world.

    But his personality -- male chauvanisitic, egotistical, and belligerent -- did not help him immediately continue nor sustain that popularity. Over the next 15 or so years, his novels were not exactly popular, and he was briefly considered to be a one-hit wonder. However, he kept writing and editing, and in 1955, helped to found The Village Voice in New York City, which became one of the longest running of the alternative papers of its time.

    It was Mailer's role in New Journalism -- blending the objectivity of traditional journalism with the subjective, creative writing of fiction -- that saw him return to the spotlight and produce his best non-fiction stories. In Armies of the Night, Mailer both observed and participated in one of the biggest demonstrations against the Vietnam War. The resulting book won him a Pulitizer prize and renewed acclaim.

    He continued his foray into New Journalism with reports on the 1968 Republican and Democratic conventions in the book, Miami and the Seige of Chicago. Of a Fire on the Moon was Mailer's reports on the exploration of the moon.

    He continued to write, and in 1979 published a book that combined fiction and non-fiction, The Executioner's Song, which told the life and death of convicted murderer Gary Gilmore in novel form. It won Mailer his second Pulitzer prize.

    Mailer, who was raised and lived most of his life in New York -- and who ran for mayor in 1969 -- died in the city in 2007.

    

Almanac of Story Tellers: Barbara Tuchman

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 30th.

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     It is the 30th day of the year, leaving 335 days remaining in 2022. 

    

    On this date in 1912, the historian and author Barbara Tuchman was born.

    Tuchman brought vivid details and a literary style of story telling to her history books, which won her two Pulitzer prizes. She wrote about international behavior, war, and diplomacy.

    Tuchman's books were popular with the general public, and U.S. politicians of the mid-20th Century often sought gravitas by citing her books as being on their reading lists.

    Her best known book, The Guns of August, published in 1962, earned her her first Pulitzer. It's a detailed account of the beginning of World War I, including descriptions of  Germany's invasion of  France. Historians praised her analysis of the miliary errors that helped led to the intractable trench warfare.

    In addition to the period before and following the first World War, Tuchman also wrote about the events, people, and life in 14th Century France. She wrote about U.S.-Chinese policy between the two world wars in Stillwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945, which won her her second Pulitzer.

    She died at her home in Greenwich, Conn., in 1989

Almanac of Story Tellers: Germaine Greer

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 29th.

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      It is the 29th day of the year, leaving 336 days remaining in 2022. 

    On this date in 1938, the feminist intellectual and author Germaine Greer was born in Melbourne, Australia.

    Greer, a champion of individual female sexuality, told that story in her first book, The Female Eunuch. The theory that she explored was that both men and women worked to oppress women. Instead of seeking reform or equality in a male-dominated society that set aside specific roles for women and men, women need to look inside themselves for their own, personal liberation.

    She said neither the traditional nuclear family, nor the idea of a passive, feminine woman was good for men, women, children, or society,  

Privileged women will pluck at your sleeve and seek to enlist you in the "fight" for reforms, but reforms are retrogressive. The old process must be broken, not made new. Bitter women will call you to rebellions, but you have too much to do. What will you do?

    The book was immediately popular, has never been out of print, and is one of the most important texts in modern feminism. Greer has continued to speak out in her own unique way, and criticize others -- including some of the stalwarts of the movement -- on their ideas of feminism.

    Greer attended and graduated from universities in Australia before moving to Cambridge, England, for her doctorate. She lectured and lived in Italy for a time, has traveled frequently through the United States, but has lived mostly in England.

    In addition to The Female Eunuch, Greer has written other books on feminism, including Sex and Destiny and The Whole Woman. Other books include Wife of Shakespeare, a revisionist biography of Anne Hathaway; White Beech: The Rainforest Years, dealing with her efforst to restore part of a rainforest she bought; and Whitefella Jump Up, about aboriginals in Australia.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Yale Daily News

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 28th

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    It is the 28th day of the year, leaving 337 days remaining in 2022.

      

    On this date in 1878, the Yale Daily News began publishing in New Haven, Conn. It has done so continuously since then, making it the oldest independent college daily in the United States.

    The newspaper, staffed and run by students at Yale University, covers the university campus, the city of New haven, and the state of Connecticut. It tells news stories and publishes five days a week while the university is in session, with an abbreviated summer publication schedule. 

    The Daily News is distributed throughout the Yale campus and New Haven. 

    It boasts a staff of nearly 300, including its print and web editions. It has won numerous college, state, and local journalism awards, 

    Among its alumni is Gary Trudeau, the creator of the Doonesbury strip. Trudeau began drawing the strip while working at the Daily News. The strip then was called Bull Tales, and some of its early characters lived on in Doonesbury. William F. Buckley Jr. wrote for and served as chairman of the newspaper.    

Almanac of Story Tellers: Lewis Carroll

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 27th.

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      It is the 27th day of the year, leaving 338 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1832, the British mathematician and writer who went by the name Lewis Carroll, was born in Duresbury, England.

    Carroll is known for his nonsense verse, but mostly for two children's books he wrote: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Both are considered classics of their genre. They are still read regularly today, and have been adapted for the stage, screen, and in animation.

    Carroll, born Charles Dodgson, is a figure whose life has been adapted since his writing days. He originally was seen as an uncle and university tutor who took children on picnics and day trips and told them stories, But sometime after his death, he began to be seen as something more sinister, as a man who took nude photos of young girls and may even have taken advantage of then. The fact that no evidence ever suggested  licentious or predatory behavior on his part toward the girls -- particularly Alice -- didn't stop the suggestions.

    Anyway, in addition to his abilities as a mathematician -- he wrote several scholarly books on the topic under his birth name -- and as a story teller, Carroll also was a skilled photographer and a passable artist.

    He first started telling the tales of Alice while on picnics with the children of a pastor, Henry Liddell. One of those children was a young girl named Alice, who was enchanted that the character shared her name. She asked Carroll to write down his stories, and he did, adding to them as he wrote.

    Eventually, he gave the bound writings, with artwork he drew himself, to Alice, who passed them around with her friends. They caught the attention of George MacDonald, one of the better known children's authors of the time. He encouraged Carroll to find a publisher.

    The poem, Jabberwocky, part of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, is one of Carroll's nonsense poems. He also wrote The Hunting of the Snark, considered the finest example of such work.

    Carroll died in 1898 in Guildford, England.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Apollo Theater

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 26th.

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      It is the 26th day of the year, leaving 339 days remaining in 2022.

    

It's Showtime at the Apollo! 

     That's because on this date in 1934, the historic theater on 125th Street in the heart of New York City's Harlem re-opened. And this time, it not only was dedicated to showcasing the best of Black stories and culture, but it also actually allowed Black patrons in for the first time.

    That's right, the nation's premier entertainment venue for Black artists was once a segregated, whites-only burlesque theater.

    But the original owners' 30-year lease ran out, the theater needed repairs, New York leaders frowned upon the entertainment then provided, and the growing Black community in Harlem soon became a sought-after audience.

    And what a showtime it was. For the next 40 years, it presented some of the leading Black talent in stage shows, concerts, comedy acts, amateur nights, and other productions. Some of the legendary performers included Aretha Franklin, Benny Carter and his Orcestra, Otis Redding, Moms Mabley, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, B.B. King, Thelonius Monk, Ella Fitzgerald, Pearl Bailey, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, and Count Bassie.

    Lionel Hampton brought his 16-piece band to the Apollo. Josephine Baker made her Apollo debut the week before Christmas in 1951. Sidney Poitier starred in The Detective, the first dramatic performance at the theater. Showtime at the Apollo was first recorded in 1955.

    In 1976, the theater closed for several years. Then in May 1985, it reopened with a TV special, Motown Salutes the Apollo. Amateur Night was revived, and Showtime at the Apollo was relaunched as a weekly TV show.  

Almanac of Story Tellers: Robert Burns

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 25th.

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     It is the 25th day of the year, leaving 340 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1759, the man who became the national poet of Scotland, Robert Burns, was born.

    One of his greatest narrative poems is Tam 'o Shanter, aabout a farmer who likes to get drunk with his friends. Like many of his poems, it is written in a combination of Scots and English. It begins thusly: 

        When chapman billies leave the street,

        And droughy neibors, neibors meet,

        As market days are wearing late,

        And folk begin to tak the gate,

        While we sit bousing at the nappy,

        An' getting fou and unco happy,

        We think na on the lang Scots miles,

        The mosses, waters, slaps and stiles,

        That lie between us and our hame,

        Where sits our sulky, sullen dame,

        Gathering her brows like gathering storm,

        Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.

     Burns was brought up in a tenant-farming family, and the life of hardship and hard manual labor had an effect on both his physical abilities and his writing sensitivities. In the class-ridden society of the late 18th Century Scotland, he could never rise above his raising and poor education, and his poetry shows his distaste for the wealthy elite and their religion and Calvinistic morals.

    It also showed his unique technical capabilities in language, his satire and his wit, and his hold on the people of Scotland.

    He wrote in a "light" Scots dialect, a combination of Scots and English. 

    Burns was also a song writer and song collector, best known for his version of Auld Lang Syne. The song now is considered a traditional tune for New Year's Eve, although it says nothing about the anniversary and instead is is a song about two old friends remembering times past. Burns never claimed authorship of the song, and denied he had written it, but scholars insist it is his. The Scottish air in which he wrote the words is not how it is traditionally sung today.

    He is considered a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and his influence on Scottish literature is pronounced. He is a cultural icon in his country, and the Scottish television station STV ran a poll in 2009 that named him the greatest Scot. 

    He died in 1796.

Book Review: A Darker Shade of Magic

 

• Author: V.E. Schwab

• Where I bought this book: Roebling Books and Coffee, Newport, Ky.

• Why I bought this book: A tale of many Londons intrigued me.

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    Sometimes, when you're reading a novel with magical inspirations, you just have to let go and forge ahead. You may not completely understand what is happening or why it is taking place, so you keep reading, enjoy the moment, and hang on for the ride.

    Trust the author. She know where she is going. She will take you there. And you will like it.

    Such is the case with this mesmerizing, bizarre, and oddly enchanting book, first published in 2016. I didn't know when I picked it up that it's the first in a series. I have since learned it's a trilogy, and the next two books are in the TBR Stack.

    I fell in love with the story, along with its remarkable and compelling characters. Those include Kell, a foremost practictioner of the art of magic, and Lila, an edgy, cunning castaway living on the streets of London.

     Actually, Lila lives in one of the four Londons -- Grey London, the dullest and most realistical of the Londons with King George III at its helm and of its magic gone. Meanwhile, Kell lives in Red London as the magic emissary for the Maresh Empire. He is one of the few remaining Antari, who can travel between the various Londons. 

   Except for Black London. No one goes there because nothing exisits but pure evil.

    Kell does visit White London, though, where trouble is brewing. White London has evil magic, and is run by those who are selfish and cruel.

    That's because, as Kell explains, magic is in the blood. Literally. Red is the color of magic in balance, of harmony between power and humanity. Black is the color of magic without balance, without order, without restraint. (I'm not sure how White fits into this scheme, unless it's what happens to magic as it's going bad.)

    Anyway, the story has Kell being not only an emissary, but a smuggler between the Londons. This is illegal, and could bring about severe punishment if he is caught. But Kell does it for fun, partly because he is bored.

    Lila -- remember Lila? -- lives and works on the street. She and Kell find each other, for better or for worse, and must work together keep the magic in balance and save Red London. It's tough for both of them.

    It's a wild ride. Hang on and trust the writer. You'll find it worth your while.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Edith Wharton

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 24th.

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     It is the 24th day of the year, leaving 341 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1862, the Pulitzer prize winning novelist Edith Wharton was born.

    Wharton was raised in wealth and privilege, but with all the strictures placed on women of her age and status. Except for her writing -- and the basic fact that she did write and publish her work -- Wharton rarely lived outside her predetermined station in live.

    And her books mirrored her life. She wrote of the wealthy of the Gilded Age in the late 19th Century, and the pain of the restrictions of the choices it forced on people, particularly in their personal lives. 

    She was a natural reader and story teller -- at a young age she would walk around with a book of empty pages and pretend to read as she created her own stories. But while she was a voracious reader all her life, her mother forbade her to read a novel until she turned a certain age, a restriction she adhered to.

    Indeed, Wharton did not write and publish her first novel, The Valley of Decision, until she was 40. But once she started, she wrote prodigiouly, penning 10 movels over the next 11 years, and 15 in all. Her second novel, The House of Mirth, gained her fame and critical acclaim. In that novel, she authored a recreated version of the rigid society she lived in, and analyzed its reactions to social change.

    In 1920, she wrote The Age of Innocence, for which she won the Pulitzer price for literature. She was the first woman so honored. In the novel, Wharton, then 58 and in the aftermath of World War I, looked back on the years of her childhood and wrote somewhat sympathetically about the Gilded Age.

    By then, she was living most of her time in France, where she died in 1937. 

Almanac of Story Tellers: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 23rd.

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     It is the 23rd day of the year, leaving 342 days remaining in 2022.

     On this date in 1986, the first group of artists were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

    If Rock 'n' Roll music is known for anything, it's telling stories. And that first group not only told stories of teenage love, tragedy, and history, they also told the story of Rock 'n' Roll. It simply would not exist without that collection of performers, singers, songwriters, musicians, and composers. 

    They were: Chuck Berry, James Brown, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley. 

    All were seminal performers from the early days of Rock 'n' Roll. Several on the list are credited with being inventors of the art form. They came from a variety of musical backgrounds, including gospel, blues, soul, and country. Most performed in the middle of the 20th Century, but had their roots in music from earlier times. 

    Several in the group died young, including Holly and Cooke. Others performed at their ceremony, including Berry, Domino, and Lewis, who participated in a legendary jam session along with Keith Richard, Neil Young, Chubby Checker, and others.

    The ceremony ended when Berry, then 59 and nicknamed "The Father of Rock 'n' Roll," performed his signature and inventive move, and duckwalked across the stage playing his hit, Roll Over Beethoven, as the all-star band performed behind him.

Almanac of Story Tellers: D.W. Griffith

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 22nd.

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     It is the 22nd day of the year, leaving 343 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1875, the groundbreaking film director D.W. Griffith was born in Kentucky. 

    Griffith was a pioneering director in the silent era who developed or improved upon many of the now-basic techniques of film-making and camera work. His influence on the industry reverberates to this day.

    He found actors who became mainstays of the silent screen, including Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, and Lionel Barrymore.

    But along with his contributions, Griffith also exhibited major flaws. He never was able to make the transition to the "talkie" movies -- the only two he made were considered flops. And his debut movie, Birth of a Nation, while praised for its innovation, was harshly criticized for its blatant racism and hagiographic portrayal of the Ku Klux Klan.

    Even during its premiere in 1915, the film was controversial and sparked demonstrations and protests. Efforts were made to ban its showing. 

    Still, it remains a mainstay of Hollywood history, mostly because of its inventive filming techniques. Griffith refined the close-up and the scenic long shot, along with the fade-in and fade-out. He introduced the use of cross-cutting -- editing and mixing scenes scenes shot at various locations to give the illusion that separate actions were happening together. He reframed shots at various angles to change perspectives.

    In his second movie, Intolerance -- generally recognized as the best film of the silent era -- Griffith used what is now a Hollywood mainstay -- the spectacular and opulent setting.

    Griffith died in Hollywood in 1948

Book Review: Same Sun Here

• Authors: Silas House and Neela Vaswani

• Where I bought this book: The 2021 Kentucky Book Fair, Lexington

• Why I bought this book: Silas House signed it.

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    Two strong writers have put together a pleasant read from the fictional correspondence between dissimilar yet emotionally connected youngsters.

    House's River Justice is a 12-year-old boy, the son of a coal miner in Eastern Kentucky. Meena Joshi is a 12-year-old immigrant from India, living in New York City's Chinatown. As part of a school assignment, Meena randomly selects River to be her pen-pal, and the pair begin to explore each other, their backgrounds, their lives, and their thoughts about their places in the world.

    It's a compelling read that shows the best of today's younger generation -- thoughtful, mindful, and caring. They discover they have many things in common, and while Meena's young childhood in India gives her some insight into River's rural Kentucky life, he is forever asking questions about New York's urban lifestyle and Meena's role in it.

    This is a book written like it is by young adults, for young adults.

    House writes River's letters. His language is remarkable. He uses the Eastern Kentucky dialect subtly, easily capturing the rhythms and tones of his home. He gives River his distinctive Appalachian inflections -- yes, you can hear him speaking.

    Vaswani is House's equal in presenting Meena's outgoing yet thoughtful pre-teen voice. Like any 12-year-old girl, she has to ability to change tone within seconds. One sentence she write as foot-stomping angry, and the next returns as the calm, compassionate friend.

    As they learn about each other, they find their worlds are being threatened. Meena sees her neighborhood changing and casting aside some who have lived in their rent-controled apartments their entire lives. The cause is the landlord's desire to increase their rent or force them out and sell the apartment for a high profit. To make the apartments unliveable for the current residents, they withhold servuves or refuse to perform routine maintenance. 

    Likewise, River sees his beloved mountains and woods being destroyed to bring out more coal. The coal barons are literally stripping away the mountaintops to get to the coal seams, in the process dumping toxic waste wherever they can -- usually in the rivers and streams.

    The difference is the landlords are deliberately being cruel, while the coal barons don't care.

    Both youths explain what is going one and how they and their communities are fighting it as best they can. So at its best it's a hopeful story, one befitting the authors who are telling it in the voices of the youths who are living it.

Almanac of Story Tellers: First American Novel

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 21st.

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    It is the 21st day of the year, leaving 344 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 1789, The Power of Sympathy, believed to be the first American novel, was published in Boston.

    It was sold as a cautionary tale against the "fatal consequences of seductions (and) to inspire the female mind with a principle of self complacency." Hrrmph.  

    The novel told a sordid tale of love, incest, death, and suicide. Using the epistolary style -- a series of letters -- it told a tale about a Thomas Harrington, who falls in love with a woman named Harriot Fawcet, and they engage to wed. But his father objects, letting them know for the first time they are brother and sister. Harriot falls ill before the wedding, and dies. Depressed, Thomas whinges a lot before taking his own life.

    The author was surprisingly anonymous in that first printing, by Isaiah Thomas and Company, and remained so for some 105 years. Originally, the author was thought to be Sarah Wentworth Apthorp Morton, a contemporary poet whose family scandal a few years earlier was thought to mirror the novel. Also, Morton's poetry was popular and widely acclaimed. 

      Power of Sympathy neither sold widely nor was acclaimed widely. History tells us the actual writer was William Hill Brown -- an uncle of the poet -- and it was his debut novel.

    Two hundred and twenty six years later, a saucy review in The Paris Review said "you won't find it on many (any?) short lists for the Great American Novel. To speak with the kind of prudence it so sternly advocates: the passing centuries have hidden its charms."  

    Brown wrote a second novel dealing with incestuous love -- Ira and Isabelle, which was published posthumously in 1807.

    

Almanac of Story Tellers: Lead Belly

   Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 20th.

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    It is the 20th day of the year, leaving 345 days remaining in 2022.

 

     On this date in 1888, the folk-singer and songwriter Huddie William Ledbetter -- known to friend and foe alike as Lead Belly -- was born in Louisiana. He was the grandson of slaves and the son of sharecroppers.

    With little schooling and no formal training, Lead Belly became an extraordinary talent who composed dozens of songs, and memorized and  sang hundreds of others that he learned during his itinerant tours of the country. He inspired musicians as diverse as the Clancy Brothers, The Animals, and Kurt Cobain. His recordings are in the Library of Congress; many are considered standards of their genrè.

    He wrote or recorded Rock Island Line, Goodnight Irene, Midnight Special, Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen, and Where Did You Sleep Last Night. 

    He also served time in prison for murder, assault, and other crimes. An oft-told story says he once so impressed Texas Gov. Pat Neff with his voice and a song he wrote for him that Neff granted him parole.

    Lead Belly often sang with a 12-string guitar, on which he composed many of his songs. He also played the accordian, piano, mandolin, and harmonica. Sometimes, he just clapped, stomped his feet, or used his voice to set the rhythm.

    His legacy continues. Bob Dylan said he became a folk singer after listening to a Lead Belly album with the song Cotton Fields. "That record ... transported me into a world I'd never known. ... Like I'd been walking in darkness and all of the sudden the darkness was illuminated."

    George Harrison said without Lead Belly, the Beatles would not have existed. Van Morrison went further, saying if not for Lead Belly, the entire 1960s music scene would never have happened.

    Lead Belly died in New York in December 1949.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Janis Joplin

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 19th.

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    It is the 19th day of the year, leaving 346 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1943, the American blues, folk, and rock 'n' roll singer Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas.

    She is considered one of the top singers of the 1960s scene and perhaps the best white blues singer ever. She sang songs that told stories -- Me and Bobby McGee, about a love that ended after being "busted flat in Baton Rogue"; Cry Baby, about a women telling her man she will always wait for him, and Mercedes Benz, about the rejection of the empty promise of consumerism. It was a rare song she wrote, and it was the last song she recorded.

    Joplin died in Los Angeles on Oct. 4, 1970, of a drug overdose.

    She had long struggled with alcoholism and addiction. She had an unhappy children, in which she said she was bullied and ostracized. After a year of college, she wandered off to San Francisco, where she sang, played music, and did drugs. She recovered, returned to Texas, and returned to college.

    But her voice -- she was influenced by Leadbelly and Bessie Smith, among others -- was heard and remembered. The band Big Brother and the Holding Company urged her to return to California and became their lead singer. She did, and she was noticed in the San Francisco music and hippie scene in the late 1960s.

    She was a phenomenal singer, known for her vocal range, and her fierce and uninhibited stage presence, Her raucous blues singing boosted the band, and her performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival is legendary. Big Brother's next album hit the top of the charts.

    Joplin soon formed her own band. But she started using drugs again. While recording her album Pearl, she suffered an overdose, and was found dead in her hotel room.

    The album, released a few months after her death, was a best-seller.

Almanac of Story Tellers: A.A. Milne

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 18th.

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    It is the 18th day of the year, leaving 347 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1882, the English author A.A. Milne was born in London. He told children's stories  through his Winnie the Pooh character, and the 100 Acre Wood -- based on the Five-Hundred Acre Wood near Milne's house in East Sussex.

    Milne was an accomplished playwright and poet when he created the Pooh character for his son, Christopher Robin. Yep, the  human in the series is named after Milne's son, which later created hard feelings in the family. Indeed, most of the characters are based on and named after the stuffed animals (seen at right) the younger Milne played with.

    And while Christopher Robin Milne also had a stuffed bear named Winnie, the title character in the books actually was named after a bear at the London Zoo. Pooh came after a swan Christopher named.

    Milne's introduction of the then-unamed Winnie the Pooh came in a poem he wrote in 1924, and republished in his book, When We Were Very Young, the following year. Pooh was named in a Christmas Eve story in 1925. Winnie-the-Pooh, and later, The House at Pooh Corner. with a collection of nursery rhymes, Now We Are Six, were written over the nex few years. All were illustrated by E.H. Shepherd. 

    After that, Milne was done with Winnie the Pooh and children's stories. He did not enjoy that his son had received so much attention because of the books, and because the boy was growing older, Milne felt he had run out of original material. He returned to writing plays, poems, and mystery novels. 

    But his heirs sold the rights to his charcters to the Walt Disney Co., which has used them in comics, cartoons, and animated stories, continuing to this day. 

    Milne died in 1956 at his home in England.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Miguel de Cervantes

 Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 16th.

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    It is the 16th day of the year, leaving 349 days remaining in 2022.

 

  On this date in 1605, the genre-busting novel Don Quixote was published in Madrid, Spain. 

    The genre it busted was the novel. It is generally credited as being the first modern novel in Western literature.

    

    Francisco de Robles, a Spanish publisher and bookseller, bought the rights to the written stories that Miguel de Cervantes called  El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, and known as Don Quixote, Part 1. Part 2 came out a decade later, although it is unclear whether Cervantes planned to write the second part or was inspired to do so by the positive reaction to his work.

    It remains one of the most widely read books in the world, and one of the most translated. Most copies in its first printing were sent to the Americas, in the belief that demand would be higher there. How many copies remain is unknown; one sold in 1988 for $1.5 million. The first illustrated version, translated into English and published in 1687, was presented here.   

    Cervantes' story was considered a comic work, or a parody of the chivalric romances then popular. It features an aging knight who, inspired by his reading of such works, set out on his own adventures. He rode his old horse, Rocinante, and brought along his trusty squire, Sancho Panza . Cervantes played the pair off each other, as Quixote was the dreamer, while Panza was the practical character. 

    The novel featured a large group of characters and diverse perspectives and themes, including irony and  comedy. 

    It has inspired ballets, operas, songs, plays, movies, paintings, drawings, and other forms of story telling. Its themes have been copied many times over. Its central character became a word, quixotic, meaning "exceedingly idealistic, unrealistic, and impractical." A related phrase, "tilting at windmills," which describes scenes from the novel where Quixote literally fought windmills, imagining them as his enemies. 

    The phrase has become a common trope, and was used so often it is now considered a cliché.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Earnest Gaines

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 15th.

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    It is the 15th day of the year, leaving 350 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1933, the American author Earnest Gaines was born.

    Gaines' method of story telling though his novels was to elevate the oral traditions of black voices, and to portray the African-American experiences in the rural south after the U.S. Civil War.

    One of his first novels, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, told the story of an African-American woman who was born a slave in the 1860s, and who lived until the modern Civil Rights era in the 1960s. The novel explored an extensive period of changes in Black life and culture, told from one woman's perspective but encompassing many fictional and historical figures.

    Gaines also wrote  A Lesson Before Dying, which shows an intellectual Black man's discussion with a young, impoverished and mentally disabled Black man sentenced to death after being wrongly convicted of murder. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1993.

     A Gathering of Old Men tells the tale of a group of elderly Black men trying to thwart a wrongful conviction of a Black man who, in self-defense, shoots the bigoted owner of a former plantation.

    In these and other books, Gaines drew on his family's experiences as sharecroppers on an old plantation in rural Louisiana. Though he was born years after slavery was outlawed, Gaines grew up in poverty and his family lived in the former slave quarters on the land.

    From 1981 to 2004, Gaines was a writer in residence at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. He was a MacArthur Fellow. He was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2000 and the National Medal of Arts in 2012. In 2000, the French inducted him into the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres after he taught the first creative writing class offered in France at the Université Rennes 2 in Brittany in 1996.

    Gaines died in 2019 at his home in Oscar, La. 

Book Review

The Underground Railroad, by Colin Whitehead

• Where I bought this book: The Book Loft, Columbus, Ohio
• Why I bought this book: It is written by Colin Whitehead

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    Whitehead takes the Underground Railroad literally.

    

    He imagines it as a subway, with underground tracks,  cobbled together train cars, and live conductors. It has hiddens entrances, stations, and a schedule.

    Moreover, he imagines some of the stations leading to havens for escaped slaves -- a place for them to stay, work, and put together a life of normalacy, in a town where Black people can grow and succeed, and raise a family.

    But this is no feel-good fantasy. Real life intrudes, even in their free towns. White supremacists hate Black success. They hound and harass them. Slaves catchers make a career of chasing them. The escapees from slavery fear being forced back to the savagery of their previous lives or the torture that will end them.

    Make no doubt, this is a painful, fearful book to read. The descriptions of the daily humiliations, sufferings, and agonies of the enslaved are difficult to read. One is presented with the inhumanity of the enslavers and those who support and defend them. The entire callous system that brought about and sustained chattel slavery is shown for the cruel, merciless abyss is was.

    The story is told throught the eyes of Cora, an enslaved person. Because her mother successfully escaped -- or at least ran, and was never caught -- Cora's life is particularly difficult, She is an outcast even among the other enslaved. The overseer on the plantation selects her for particular harassment, and others condemn her to the hob, a portion of the slave camps for the unfavored. 

    She describes her life on the plantation, the deaths, the punishments, and the rapes and assaults. She longs for her mother, but simultaneously hates her for running off and leaving her. When Cora is offered an opportunity to flee by a fellow slave named Caesar, she takes it. 

    The book follows her on the Underground Railroad. She describes the efforts by her enslaver to recapture her, and by the slave catcher Ridgeway to kidnap and return her to her life of hell. Even the towns along the Underground Railroad, which appear to offer refuge, are an illusion that hide a insidious scheme to keep the enslaved from ultimate freedom.

    One finds it easy to root for Cora, who shows tenacity to get what she wants, and overcomes much of her suffering. Her compelling story is a testament to her character, and by extension, the character of her fellow enslaved people.

    Whitehead's writing is superb. His stories alternate from Cora's tale, to the backgrounds and motivations of the enslavers, slave catchers, and others who participated in the system. His language is profound and gripping. He draws you in to the story, and with a mesmerizing narrative, compels you to stay there. Cora's detailed account is raw, riveting, and captivating. 

    He deservedly won the Pulitzer prize for this novel.

Almanac of Story Tellers: The Today Show

   Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 14th.

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    It is the 14th day of the year, leaving 351 days remaining in 2022. 

    On this date in 1952, The Today Show premiered on the National Broadcasting Company network.

    It was the first show of its kind, an early morning news program featuring various formats of story telling -- hard news with interviews and morning updates, light news features, lifestyle news, and, for a few years, a mascot.

    That mascot, a chimpanzee named J. Fred Muggs, was born two months after the show debuted. He first appeared on Today in February 1953. It had been doing poorly and brought in the chimp in an effort to spice up the ratings. It worked. The show took off, and was largely unchalleged as the top morning news show until the mid-1970s, when Good Morning America started on ABC. Still, it took that show 13 years before overtaking Today in the ratings.

    The veteran journalist David Garroway was the first host of Today. Garroway started his reporting career at KDKA radio in Pittsburgh in 1939. After a stint in the U.S. Navy during World Ward II, Garroway worked as a news readers, disc jockey, a radio host, and was one of the pioneers of the television talk show.

    Garroway hosted his programs in a relaxed manner with a conversational style, in contrast to  previous radio men who all used an authoritative voice.  He remained with the program until 1961, when he resigned and was replaced with John Chancellor.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Horatio Alger

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 13th.

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    It is the 13th day of the year, leaving 352 days remaining in 2022. 

    On this date in 1832, the American author Horatio Alger was born.

    Yes, there really was an Horiatio Alger. And yes, his version of story telling -- indeed, the only stories he told -- was what became known as the "Horatio Alger story." It was, without fail, an easy tale to grasp -- a poor young boy, preferably a street urchin, through pluck, perseverance and good luck, became a wealthy man in good standing.

    The boy, of course, was without moral failings. As a matter of fact, it was often a good deed the boy did -- saving the life of another youngster, finding and returning a large sum of money -- that directly led to his future wealth and good fortune.

    Alger's books were perfect for the era after the U.S. Civil War -- the guilded age of the late 19th Century, a time of economic prosperity that coincided with the beginning of the industrial age and a time of staggering, if unequal, wealth. 

    Alger started his career as a minister outside of Boston, where he was accused of molesting young boys. He left the church and Massachusetts and settled in New York City. In 1867, he wrote the first of his stories, Ragged Dick, or Street Life in New York with the Bootblacks, first in serial form and later published as a book. The story told of a young shoeshine boy who rose to wealth and fame.

    Similar stories followed. Alger wrote more than 100 books with the same theme, so many that his publishers sent him out west in the hope he could change his tune. The only change he made was to set the stories in the small-town west instead of the urban northest.

    As the British encyclopedia Brittanica puts it: "His books sold over 20 million copies, even though their plots, characterizations, and dialogue were consistently and even outrageously bad."

Almanac of Story Tellers: Walter Mosley

   Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of January 12th.

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    It is the 12th day of the year, leaving 353 days remaining in 2022. 

    On this date in 1952, the American author Walter Mosley was born in Los Angeles.

    He is best known as a crime-fiction/mystery novelist, although he also delves into science fiction and short stories, as well as non-fiction books.

    Many of his novels have Black protagonists; in 1990, he introduced Easy Rawlins to the world in his first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress. Rawlins is an unwilling, inlicensed private detective in the segregated Los Angeles of the 1940s and 1950s. Mosley characterizes his creation as a man who "is always willing to do what it takes to get things done in the racially charged, dark underbelly of  Los Angeles."

    And while Mosley would rather be described simply as a novelist, he also says it is important to have strong, Black men as the heroes in novels and other writings.

    "Hardly anybody in America has written about Black male heroes," he told Moment Magazine in 2010. "There are Black male protagonists and Black Male supporting characters. But nobody else writes about Black male heroes."

    He has written more than 50 books. His debut novel was made into a movie in 1995, starring Denzel Washington.

    Mosley has won four NAACP Image Awards, an O. Henry Award, and an Edgar Award for best novel for Down the River Unto the Sea. In 2018, he received an honorary National Book Award for his prodigious and compelling output. In 2016, the Mystery Writers Association of American gave him its Grand Masters Award. In 2020, he received the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the first Black man to receive the honor.

    He makes his home in New York City.