Almanac of Story Tellers: Harper Lee

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 April 28th

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    It is the 118th day of the year, leaving 247 days remaining in 2022.

    On the date in 1926, the novelist Harper Lee was born in Monroeville, Ala.

 

     Her best-selling novel, To Kill A Mockingbird, is perhaps the ultimate one-hit wonder in the literature category. Oh, but what a wonder it was.

    Years in the making, with help from several dedicated literary agents and the incomparable writer Truman Capote, Lee's book was finally published in 1960s. The novel -- set in the Deep South in the early years of the Great Depression -- shows the struggles of the principles of racial justice from the point of view of the narrator, a young white girl nicknamed Scout. It tells the tale of her father, Atticus Finch, a white lawyer who defends a Black man charged with molesting a white girl.

    Unlike most one-hit wonders, it has become a classic, a story beloved by young girls and lawyers, and one that remains part of the American literary canon.

    It was an immeidate best seller, and it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. A movie adaption the following year, with Gregory Peck in the lead role, was similarly admired. Peck won the Oscar for playing Finch, and the film was nominated for eight Academy Awards.

    The book continues to play a role in America life. Many attorneys cite its themes of justice, equality, and integrity as why they went to law school. It is regularly read -- and just as often, regularly sought to be banned because of its racially charged language -- in the public schools.

    It appears on many lists of the 20th Century's greatest novels. In 2006, British librarians ranked it first in a list of books every adult should read.

    After a few years in the public eye after her book was published, Lee withdrew and stopped granting interviews. She wrote a few columns, but did not write another book. A second novel, Go Set a Watchman -- originally termed a sequel but later seen as a first draft of Mockingbird -- was published shortly before her death under questionable circumstances about whether she agreed to do so. 

    Lee died in 2016 in her hometown.

Almanac of Story Tellers: August Wilson

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 April 27th

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    It is the 117th day of the year, leaving 248 days remaining in 2022.

  

    On this date in 1945, the playwright August Wilson was born in Pittsburgh, Pa.

    Wilson, who was biracial, told the stories of Black Americans in the 20th Century in his Pittsburgh Cycle, 10 plays he wrote that were mostly set in the city's Hill District, the neighborhood in which he was born and raised.

    

    Wilson had a complex home life -- his mother was Black; his father, who was mostly absent, was white, and his stepfather was Black. He grew up in a Black neighborhood, but moved to a white suburb as a teen-ager. His family was the target of racial harassment, and Wilson was falsely accused of plagiarism, which caused him to leave school. He was mostly self-taught by spending his time in the local libraries.

    Those experiences were a major theme in his plays. They often showed strong women, and explored the Black cultural experience.  "My mother's a very strong, principled woman," he wrote. "My female characters ... come in a large part from my mother." Wilson, who was originally named after his father, took his mother's birth surname as his own. 

    One of his strengths as a writer was his dialogue, which caught the expressions and dialect of whatever decade he was writing about. Other themes included supernatural experiences -- one character was said to be 248 years old, but whether that was figurative or literal was never explicit -- migration of Black people across the country, the systematic exploitation of Black people, and the question of racial identity,

    The plays in his cycle were not a series, as such, nor were they written in order.. Sometimes, though, they had the same character appear at a different stage in life. A previous character might be kin to a new character. 

    Two of the plays, Fences, and The Piano Lesson, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in, respectively, 1987 and 1990. Wilson was the co-founder of the Black Horizons Theatre in Pittsburgh. After wilson lived and worked for a decade in St. Paul, Minn., the mayor declared May 27, 1987, as "August Wilson Day." 

    Wilson died in 2005 in Seatle, Wash.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Anita Loos

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 April 26th

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    It is the 116th day of the year, leaving 249 days remaining in 2022.

 

    On this date in 1888, the screenwriter and novelist Anita Loos was born in Sisson, Calif.

    Loos told her stories as one of the early screenwriters for films back in the silent era. She was known for her expressive and witty "intertitles" -- cards and printed words that forwarded the action in silent films.

    She was the first woman writer to be hired by the legendary filmmaker D.W. Griffith. He produced her script, The New York Hat, into the 1912 movie of the same name, starring Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, and an uncredited Lillian Gish.

    Loos is credited with finding and writing the persona of the early film star, Douglas Fairbanks. Her wry and entertaining use of intertitles and subtitles reached its high point in the film His Picture in the Papers, which gave Fairbanks his first starring role.

    In 1925, she published her first novel, Gentleman Prefers Blondes, a comedic satire on the state of relations between men and women. She got the idea for the work while on a train ride with several friends, including the writer H.L. Mencken, whom she watched closely as he tried to attract the attention of a young blonde woman. 

    During her days in Hollwood, Loos wrote more than 150 movie scripts. She also wrote the adaptation of Gigi for the theater. Its opening on Broadway in 1951, with Audrey Hepburn in the title role, helped make her a star.

    Loos died in 1981 in New York.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Edward R. Murrow

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 April 25th

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    It is the 115th day of the year, leaving 250 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1908, the pioneering radio and television journalist, Edward R. Murrow, was born in Greensboro, N.C.

    In the beginning, Murrow was the voice of radio journalism on CBS News, particularly as it related to telling the stories of World War II. His live reports, with dramatic eyewitness accounts, gave Murrow and radio news credibility during its early day.

    Later, in fits and starts, often against his will, he became the voice and face of television journalism, reporting and hosting such shows as See It Now, a magazine/documentary program that covered controversial topics, and Person to Person, an interview show.

    Today, he is mostly remembered for his part in exposing the lies and unsavory tactics of Sen. Joe McCarthy and his witch hunts for supposed communists during the Red Scare of the 1950s. After Murrow broadcasted a program on McCarthy, the senator responded, and Murrow responded with his own editorial statement.

    Since he made no reference to any statements of fact that we made, we must concluded that he found no errors of fact. He proved once again that anyone who exposes him, anyone who does not share his hysterical disregard for decency and human dignity and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution, must be either a communist or a fellow traveler.

    After Murrow resigned from CBS News in 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed him to head the U.S. Information Agency, hoping Murrow's dignity and credibility would follow him to the agency.

    During his career, Murrow won several Peabody Awards, and George Polk Awards, along with other radio and TV reporting awards. He was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame. The Radio Television Digital News Association annually gives out the Edward R. Murrow Award for "outstanding achievement in electronic journalism."

    Murrow died in 1965 in Pawling, N.Y. 

Almanac of Story Tellers: Robert Penn Warren

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 April 24th

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    It is the 114th day of the year, leaving 251 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 1905, the poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren was born in Guthrie, Ky.

    He was a writer, a critic, and a literary scholar who taught at Yale University. He was a Rhodes Scholar, founded and edited The Southern Review, one of the foremost literary magazines of its time, and won three Pulitzer Prizes.

    His long narrative poem, Brother to Dragons, published in 1953, tells the story of the brutal murder of a slave by two cousins of Thomas Jefferson. His first novel, Night Rider, tells the story of the tobacco wars in Kentucky at the beginning of the 20th Century. 

    While most admired in his lifetime as a poet -- he was named the first U.S. Poet Laureatte in 1986 -- he is perhaps best known as the author of All The King's Men, a tragic literary-political novel that focuses on an idealistic turned cynical young man whose lust for power corrupts him and those around him. 

    Loosely based on the life of Louisiana Gov. Huey P. Long, the novel hammers home its theme that one's actions have consequences, and one must take responsibility for what one does. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

    Warren's own politics charged over time, as did his poetic style. As a young man, he contributed to the southern agrarian manifesto, I'll Take My Stand, writing in favor of racial segregation. But in later years, he supported racial intergration, and in 1965 published Who Speaks for the Negro, a series of interviews with Black Civil Rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X.

    Poets.org, a website that publishes biographies of poets, writes that as Warren's political views progressed, so did his poetry. It became less formal and more expansive, but continued to address the same issues as his novels. Promise: Poems, 1954-1956, won Warren his first Pulitzer for Poetry. Now and Then: Poems, 1976-1978, gave him his second Pulitizer for Poetry and his third overall.

    He is the only person to win a Pulitzer for both fiction and poetry.

    Warren died in 1989 in Stratton, Vt. 

Almanac of Story Tellers: Halldór Laxness

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 April 23rd

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    It is the 113th day of the year, leaving 252 days remaining in 2022.

 

   On this date in 1902, the Icelandic novelist Halldór Laxness was born in Reykjavic, Iceland.

    He told stories of the Icelandic people in a creative and modern style, first influenced by Christianity, then by socialism, and later by Icelandic sagas and folklore. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1955.

    In his lifetime, he wrote more than 20 novels, eight plays, two books of poetry, and a number of short stories, travelogues, essays, and memoirs.

    He was influenced by writers such as Upton Sinclair, Ernest Hemingway, and Bertolt Brecht.

    Perhaps his best known books are those he wrote in the 1930s, detailing various lifestyles of the people of Iceland. The first two, Þú vínviður hreini, and Fuglinn í fjörunni, are about an independent young woman living in a poor fishing village. The third, Sjálfstætt fólk, is about the fortunes and misfortures of small farmers over the years.

    Laxness then delved into the historical and mythological sagas of Iceland, including a heroic folk poet. Those novels, when translated into English, have titles such as The Bell of Iceland, The Happy Warriors, and Paradise Reclaimed. These books speak of the stubborness and love of learning that are the pride of Iceland natives throughout their centuries of living in a harsh Northern climate. 

    His books are currently being translated into English, which has renewed an interest in his writings.

    Laxness, who also lived in Europe and in the United States in his early years, re-settled in Iceland in 1929. He died in Reykjavic in 1998.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Army-McCarthy Hearings

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 April 22nd

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    It is the 112th day of the year, leaving 253 days remaining in 2022. 

   

    On this date in 1954, the Army-McCarthy hearings began in Washington, and were seen by millions of people in the United States on live television. The ABC and DuMont networks told the story for 36 days, offering gavel-to-gavel coverage. NBC showed the hearings in part.

    The stations were rewarded with explosive testimony throughout the hearings, which focused on communism, favoritism, and blackmail.

    Senator Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisc., had spent years alleging that communists had infiltrated large segments of the government, the U.S. military, and particular the U.S. Army. He had grown increasingly reckless in his accusations, which were taking hold and helping to fuel the so-called "Red Scare."

    On day 30 of the hearings, though, the tide turned and millions saw McCarthy's comeuppance as it happened.

    Joseph Welch, a special counsel for the U.S. Army, upbraided McCarthy for his indiscriminate charges of communism. Welch responded testily as McCarthy continued attacking Welch and his young aide.

Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. ... Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

 

     Welch then got up and walked out of the hearing, and many in attendance stood and applauded. The comments hit home. Although the hearings lasted a few more days, McCarthy politcally was finished. 

    Public opinion turned on him quickly. Later in the summer, a fellow Republican offered a motion of censure on McCarthy. The Senate passed it, and when the new Congress began the following year, McCarthy had been stripped of his chairmanship.

    His influence was gone, and while he continued to allege communist ties in many, people had stopped listening. Three years after the hearings, McCarthy died.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Charlotte Brontë

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 April 21st

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    It is the 111th day of the year, leaving 254 days remaining in 2022. 

Charlotte, in a portrait
 by her brother, Branwell

    On this date in 1816, the novelist and poet Charlotte Brontë was born in Yorkshire, England.

    She is best known for her novel, Jane Eyre, which helped define a new truthfulness in the Victorian-era novel. It was the the most popular in its time of any of the novels of the Brontë sisters, and it remains a classic and part of the canon of English literature.

    Charlotte and her two sisters who survived into adulthood were published novelists and poets. But they still died young -- Anne at 29; Emily, who wrote Wuthering Heights, died at 30. Charlotte lived the longest, but was just 38 when she died from complications from pregnancy.

    The sisters first combined on a book of poetry published under pseudonyms, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Publishers then asked for a set of three-volume novels from the trio. Emily submitted Wuthering Heights, and Anne authored Agnes Grey. Charlotte's first submission, The Professor, was rejected, so she quickly finished Jane Eyre, which she had been working on.

    It was a hit. Jane Eyre was written as an autobiography of a young girl, an orphan and governess to a Mr. Rochester, growing up in the England of the time. The novel focused on Jane's moral and spiritual development, then a unique take for a female character. 

    It contains satire and social criticism, along with discussions of class, religion, feminism, and female sexuality. It is considered one of the great British romance novels.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Daniel Chester French

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 April 20th

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    It is the 110th day of the year, leaving 255 days remaining in 2022. 

   

    On this date in 1850, the sculptor Daniel Chester French was born in Exeter, N.H.

    French told his stories in bronze and stone.

    His best known work is the sitting figure of Abraham Lincoln, carved in white Georgia marble, the resides as part of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. He worked with architect Henry Bacon to design the memorial, and the Piccirilli Brothers of New York carved it, with French handling the finishing touches.

    For the completed work, which measures 30 feet high, French first created a clay, and then several plaster models. The final statute was unveiled in 1922.

    It was not the first statue French designed -- and not even the first he did of Lincoln. That monument -- cast in bronze, and nearly eight feet high on a six-foot base -- stands at the state Capitol Building in Lincoln, Neb.

    His first work was the Minute Man statue in Concord, Mass. That work, depicting an American minuteman ready to join the forces in the Revolutionary War, was cast in bronze from 10 cannonballs from the U.S. Civil War. It was completed in 1874.

    French also designed the Four Continents, four separate memorials sculpted from marble to depict the continents of Africa, America, Asia, and Europe, that sit outside the Alexander Hamilton Customs House in New York City.

    French died in 1931 in Stockbridge, Mass.  

Almanac of Story Tellers: Mae West

 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 April 19th

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    It is the 109th day of the year, leaving 256 days remaining in 2022. 

   

    On this date in 1927, the playwright, screenwriter, and actress Mae West was sentenced to 10 days in jail for writing and starring in her play, Sex. With time off for good behavior, West served eight days on Welfare (now Roosevelt) Island.

    The reporting of, and the noteriety of, a woman being jailed on an obscenity charge helped West's career. She was a little known playwright at the time, and the resulting publicity gave her attention and recognition as a "bad girl."

    Still, while the the critics had panned Sex, it had played to sold-out crowds on Broadway and was the most popular play of its time. It was West's first starring role, and she was also the show's director. But conservative and religious critics enventually forced police to raid Daly's 63rd Street Theater and charge West with corrupting the morals of youth.

    After her days in jail, West continued to write and star in Broadway plays about sexually liberated and independent women. Her plays were popular with the public, but continued to receive mostly scathing reviews from the male-dominated critics of the day.

    Later, she turned to the silver screen, continued her feminist persona, and became one of the movies' more popular and bawdy female stars, as well as a top screenwriter. By the 1930s, she was one of the biggest movie stars in the country, although her movies continued to be heavily edited by the censors.   

    She is credited with writing 19 plays and at least seven movies, including My Little Chickadee, with W.C. Fields.

    West died in 1980 in Los Angeles.  

Almanac of Story Tellers: Robert Christgau

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 April 18th

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    It is the 108th day of the year, leaving 257 days remaining in 2022. 

   

    On this date in 1942, the rock music critic Robert Christgau was born.

    Christgau told his stories through the art of criticism, explaining and praising and critiquing music, mostly rock music, mostly for The Village Voice in its heyday years of the 1960s-1980s and beyond.

    He is generally recognized as the first, full-time rock music critic. He spent 37 years at The Voice, becoming one of the nation's premiere music critics. In one article he wrote in the 1970s, he called himself one of the nationa's "rock critic establishment," and wondered if that bode well for rock music. The other members included Dave Marsh and Jon Landau.

    Christgau wrote his Consumer Guide columns, which started in 1969, throughout his career. They were short and pithy album reviews based on a letter grade. But they packed information into a single paragraph, with wit, distinctive insight, and sometimes, well disguised scorn. For instance, here is his 1973 review of Bob Dylan's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid soundtrack.

    

 At least the strings on this sountrack are mostly plucked and strummed, rather than bowed en masse, but it's still a soundtrack: two middling-to-excellent new Dylan songs, four good original Bobby voices, and a lot of Schmylan music.

  

   He later expanded the guides into three books, one each for the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. 

    Christgau wrote for a number of publications throughout his career, including The Newark Star-Ledger (where he began as a police reporter),  Newsday, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and a number of smaller or web-based journals. He outlasted at least two of them: The Village Voice (now an online, quarterly publication), and Blender magazine, which folded in 2009.

    He was born and still lives in New York. He writes when he wants to, on his own website 

Almanac of Story Tellers: Spike Milligan

   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 April 16th

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    It is the 106th day of the year, leaving 259 days remaining in 2022. 

    On this date in 1918, the writer, comedian, and actor Spike Milligan was born in Ahmednagar, India, while it was under British rule. 

 

    Milligan is perhaps best remembered for perfecting the form of the absurdist, surreal comedy skit show, debuting Q... in March 1969 with co-writer Neil Shand. The show was a major influence on the work of the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus. 

    Q... itself was an expansion of The Goon Squad, a BBC radio show that Milligan wrote and starred in.    

    In addition to his radio and television comedy sketches, Milligan was a poet, novelist, and playwright. He also wrote a seven-volume memoir about his years serving in the British military in World Was II, titled Adolf Hitler: My Part in his Downfall.

    The memoirs are unusual, including tales of his war wounds, a nervous breakdown and transfer to a lesser job, excepts from his diaries, comedy sketches, and absurd memos from high Nazi officials. He was criticized that some of the material was false; Milligan scoffed at the notion, saying it was obvious which parts were true and which were made up.

    He responded, in part, by titling one of the volumes, Mussolini: His Part in My Downfall.

    He also wrote the play, The Bedsitting Room, the novel, Puckoon, about an Irish village that was split when the border with Northern Ireland was drawn, and nonsense poems such as On the Ning Nang Nong, voted the UK's best nonsense poem, ahead of writers such as Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear.

    Milligan died in 2002 in East Sussex, England.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Leonardo da Vinci

  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 April 15th

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    It is the 105th day of the year, leaving 260 days remaining in 2022.  

    On this date in 1452, the personification of the Renaissance humanist ideal, Leonardo da Vinci, was born near Vinci, Italy, in what was then the Republic of Florence.

   

    Leonardo epitomized the polymath, a word that seemed invented to describe him. He told stories regarding just about every field imaginable. 

    He was -- big intake of air here -- an artist, painter, sculpter, writer, theorist, draughtsman, architect, engineer, cartographer, inventor, and a scientist with expertise in anatomy, botany, astronomy, and paleontology. 

    Leonardo was inspired by an unlimited desire for knowledge, and his ability to see -- nay, his saper verdere, knowing how to see -- was the remarkable nature of his life. His creativity was beyond compare, and he used his abilities to study nature itself.    

    After his death, many of his notebooks were found -- some 13,000 pages worth -- increasing the awe in which he was held. Leonardo's drawing including flying machines, designs for wings, war machines, a helicopter, solar power, and shoes for walking on water. He studied plants, rock formations, whirlpools, and the faces of babies.

    His art -- which include The Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and The Vitruvian Man -- is  considered among the greatest in history. His anatomical drawings were centuries before his time in his knowledge of the skeleton, and the muscular and vascular systems. Heck, he even draw a picture of a fetus in utero.

    Above all, Leonardo's intellect was considered not only far above being a mere mortal, but he was also seen as a gracious, pleasant, and vivacious man. 

    He died in 1519 in the Kingdom of France.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Robert Doisneau

 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 April 14th

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    It is the 104th day of the year, leaving 261 days remaining in 2022.   

    

    On this day in 1912, the photographer Robert Doisneau was born in Gentilly, France.

    Doisneau told stories about the streets of Paris through his photography. 

        He took pictures of children at play and adult going about their normal activities. He ensuired people would look their best; he refused to take photos that debased or humiliated. his subjects. He photographed an array of people, places, and events. He would contrast the maverick element with the conformist. His pictures showed a sense of humor, anti-establishment values, and humanism.

    He had his professional start in the early days of the advertising business, and he photographed cars and beautiful models. He took photos of the French resistance during World War II, when he also helped forge passports and other documents. But through it all, he always returned to his first love -- photographing ordinary children and adults in the streets.

    It was an unusual career for his time and place. He was a shy and humble man, and he did not like speaking with people. And in France at the time, it was illegal to take photos or other images of a person without permission.

    

Le Baiser de l'hôtel de ville

    

    His most famous photo is Le baiser de l'hôtel de ville, which shows a couple kissing in front of the busy Parisian city hall. He saw the couple kissing and waited until they finished, then asked them to kiss again. They complied.

    Doisneau died in suburban Paris in 1994.

Almanac of Story Tellers: John Thomas Biggers

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 April 13th

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    It is the 103rd day of the year, leaving 262 days remaining in 2022.

   
    On this day in 1924, the artist John Thomas Biggers was born in Gastonia, N.C.

Photo by the Charlotte Observer

John Biggers at an exhibition in his hometown in 1999

    Biggers told his stories of racial and economic injustice through his art. He was best known for creating murals that celebrate African-American and African culture.

Victim of the City Streets #2
(1946)

    He was an arts educator who helped create and spent 34 years running the arts program at Texas Southern University in Houston, a historically Black college. He earned a doctorate from Pennsylvania State Univerity. 

    He is widely acclaimed for the complex murals he designed and painted across the United States, particularly in the south, but also in northern cities such as Minneapolis. During his time as dean of the arts department at TSU, Biggers started a mural program that required students to paint a mural. Some 114 murals now dot the campus.

    He believed that self-dignity and racial pride could be achieved through art. He created striking images of unidealized figures coping with poverty and despair. He would celebrate and draw the lives of  African-Americans with the everyday items that are important in southern Black culture -- shotgun houses, gourds, and patchwork quilts.

Shotgun, Third War #1
(1966)

        After visting western and Central Africa during a UNESCO-funded study, he began using African themes in his work. A visual diary of his travels was published in book form in 1962.  Ananse: The Web of Life in Africa contained 89 drawings and commentary that he hoped to show was intrinsically African.

    Biggers worked primarily in conté crayons and oil paints. His style was influenced by American realism and European modernism. His murals came from the Mexican school. 

    His later work was influenced by his travels in Africa, particularly by the matricachal diestic systems he saw there. His work became more stylized and symbolical; his drawings more allegorical.

    Biggers died in 2001 in Houston.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Beverly Cleary

   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 April 12th

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    It is the 102nd day of the year, leaving 263 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 1916, the children's author Beverly Cleary was born.

    A librarian by trade, Cleary started writing books for children because she was tired of being unable to find books they requested -- simply tales about their lives and concerns and frustrations they wanted to read and could related to. In short, she said, they said they wanted stories about children "like us."

    Her first book, published in 1950, was Henry Huggins. The school-aged boy and his dog, Ribsy, lived on Klickitat Street in Portland, Ore., near where she was raised. The book describes Henry's adventures in his neighborhood and with his dog.

    She wrote several books in the series, with titles such as Henry and the Paper Route, and Henry and the Clubhouse.

    Cleary also wrote a series about one of Henry's neighbors, Ramona Quimby. Her series, about a young girl from nursery school to the fourth grade, dealt with some serious issues, such as a parent losing a job and the death of a family pet.

    Ramona is portrayed as a mischievous child who is someimes seen as an annoying pest, but is also shown sympathetically as one girl just trying to grow up and mature. By the time the series ends, Ramona is still imaginative and rambunctious, but more able to control her emotions. 

    Cleary was praised for taking the concerns of children seriously, and writing about them with gentle humor. She won numerous awards, including a National Book award in 1981, and the Newbery Medal in 1984. At the time of her death, she was regularly termed a  "beloved children's writer."

    

    She died in 2021 at the age of 104 at her home in California.    

Almanac of Story Tellers: Lew Wallace

      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 April 10th

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    It is the 100th day of the year, leaving 265 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 1827, Lew Wallace, who wrote Ben-Hur, was born in Brookville, Ind.

    Wallace was a Union general in the U.S. Civil War, the governor of the New Mexico Territory, a U.S diplomat, and a story teller who wrote poems, novels, and biographies. But it was his novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ that became one of the most influential novels of the 19th Century, and by some standards, has been one of the best-selling books ever.

    In addition, Ben-Hur has been adapted for the movie or TV screen at least six times, including the 1959 production that starred Charlton Heston and won 11 Academy Awards. It has been adapted for the theater, despite the difficulty of staging the chariot races. 

     The novel, published in 1880, got a slow start, but by word of mouth -- including praise from several presidents of the United States -- began to find an audience. It became, by some accounts, the best-selling novel in the United States when it passed Uncle Tom's Cabin, until it itself was passed by Gone With the Wind.   

A first edition copy

    Ben-Hur tells the tale of Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish prince from Jeruselum, pairing with the story of Jesus, who lives in the same time and place. Ben-Hur is captured and enslaved by the Romans after he was betrayed by a friend who said he tried to assassinate the Roman governor of Judae. His family also was punished, and their property was seized.

    While living and working as a slave, Judah vowed revenge. He met  some good furtune, and was trained as a soldier and a charioteer.  He met Jesus Christ several times, and after witnessing the crucifixion. decided to follow Jesus and drop his plans to get even, saying they did not comply with Jesus' teachings.

     (In his later autobiography, Wallace said he believed in god, but he was not a member of any specific church or denomination.)

    He reportedly came up with the idea after a discussion of whether there is a god, and Wallace was upset he did not present a cogent argument. So he studied the bible, theology, and the ancient history of the Middle East.

    

     That gave him the detail, possessed by few others, to write his novel not with the myths of the times, but the accuraacy of history. His vivid detail about Jerusalem, and his knowledge about the specifics of the Jewish and emerging Christain faiths of that time, and the artifacts of the period, gave him additional credibility.   

    Wallace died in 1905 in Crawfordsville, Ind.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Barbara Kingsolver

     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 April 8th

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    It is the 98th day of the year, leaving 267 days remaining in 2022

   

    On this date in 1955, the American novelist and essayist Barbara Kingsolver was born.

    Kingsolver (one of my favorite authors) writes about people and their environments, both natural and man-made. Her stories have people coming together for social and environmental justice, and her work is often uplifting and optimistic.

    She also has written non-fiction about women in the labor movement, Holding the Line: Women in the Great Arizona Mine Strike of 1983, and about her family's attempts to live off the land in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life.

    But it is her fiction that has gained her most acclaim. She insists her novels are not biographical, but they are connected to places she has lived in and is familiar with. Her debut novel, The Bean Trees, focuses on a teen-age girl who leaves her rural Kentucky home following high school graduation to travel out West. Along the way, she meets a woman and baby; the woman soon disappears, leaving the girl to care for the Native American child.

    A later work, Pigs in Heaven, is a sequel in which the now young woman defends her adoption of the child.

    Kingsolver was raised in rural Carlisle, Ky., and attended college in Arizona.

    She also spent part of her childhood in the Congo, the setting for The Poisonwood Bible, about a family of missionaries during a time of the war of independence in the central African country. It has proved to be among her most popular works.   

    Her most recent novel is Unsheltered, a story about two families who lived in the same house during different periods of time, and their struggles to keep their home and keep it safe. She also has a book of poetry, How to Fly in Ten Thousand Easy Lessons, about life and learning.

    Her newest novel, Demon Copperhead, is planned to be published in the fall of 2022.   

Book Review: The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

• Author: Taylor Jenkins Reid

• Where I bought this book: Barnes & Noble, West Chester, Ohio

• Why I bought this book: I really don't remember, but I liked the title

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    Imagine, if you will, a Hollywood starlet -- talented, smart, and oh, so beautiful. A blonde bombshell, if you will, a combination of Marilyn Monroe and Jean Harlow, but with the wit and cunning of the smartest producer in Hollywood.

    She's a woman who is willing to do just about anything to achieve the fame and fortune she believes she deserves. An actress who knows that the tabloid reporters and the paparazzi use her, but who also knows how to use them. A performer who recognizes that her private life can advance or destroy her career, and takes that into account in every decision she makes.

    Now suppose, just for supposing's sake, that the aging starlet Evelyn Hugo wants to auction some of her famous dresses for charity. And she chooses a certain young journalist at a certain popular celebrity magazine to be the one to write about the upcoming event with a special photo shoot.

    Except -- except -- when said reporter arrives for the appointment, said Hollywood legend says she is not going to talk about the dresses, but about her life. She will speak only to this young but ambitious reporter. She'll reveal all the details, all the secrets, all the reasons. She tells the reporter they can be published in all their meticulous specificity in an authorized biography.

    But only when she is dead.

    That's how this book begins. OK, there may be a few spoilers in the above rendition. But not many. And there's a lot more to story to come.

    The book has two basic characters: Hugo and her writer (and alter-ego? protege?admirer?) Monique Grant. There are others that come and go in the book, but they are they only to say something about Hugo and Grant.

    The story is told as a biography of one of its biggest fictional stars, told in exquisite detail by the legend herself. It's a tale of Hollywood, about how the movie industry really works. It's a believeable yarn, with more glamour and seediness than we think we already know. It's a place where secrets are both open and hidden.

    But interspersed is the growing relationship between Hugo and Grant, and why the older actress chose the young writer to tell the story. Hints throughout that we will learn something awful about their connection are kind of annoying, trying to make us guess what ties them together.

    Both are strong characters. Hugo doesn't apologize for any of her choices. She may have a few regrets, but nothing major. She lived her life the way she wanted -- and needed -- and is satisfied.

    Grant is a bit more conflicted. She likes Hugo's strength and power, and would like to emulate her. But she also fears Hugo's actions were selfish and harmful.

    And therein lies the tale.