Almanac of Story Tellers: Black History Month

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, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of February 1st

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    It is the 32nd day of the year, leaving 333 days remaining in 2023.

   

Carter G. Woodson, one of the men
 behind Black History Month 

    Today is the start of Black History Month, an event that began in 1926 with a celebration of Black History Week.

    A Black historian and a Black minister conceived the idea to tell the stories of Black life and history, and it has caught on in countries around the world. In the 1960s, it evolved into Black History Month.

    Historian Carter G. Woodson and the Rev. Jesse E. Moorland founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History in September 1915. Then in 1926, the group sponsored a Negro History Week in the second week of February, to coincide with the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. 

    The organization became the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History. In 1976, U.S. President Gerald Ford issued an official proclamation for Black History Month, and now the proclamation mentions a specific theme.

    The theme for 2023 is Black Resistance. It's fitting, given the history of February 1st. On this date:

• In 1865, President Lincoln signed the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery in the United States.

• 
  In 1960, four Black college students -- Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, Ezell Blair Jr., and David Richmond -- staged a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., to protest segregation and its refusal to serve Black people. It led to a serious of sit-ins, and in July, the store, along with most others in the chain, began to serve Black customers. In 2002, a monument to the four men was erected on the campus of the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University, which the men attended.

• In 1998, Lillian Fishburne became the first African-American woman to become a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy.

Book Review: Quantum Girl Theory

 

•  Author: Erin Kate Ryan
• Pub Date: 2022

• Where I bought this book: Joseph-Beth, Norwood, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I liked the title, and the plot of a missing girl who finds other missing girls 

***

   This book tries really hard, but it turns out a muddled mess.

    Oh, it has its strong points. It's a great concept -- a women, who disappeared as a teen-ager, spends her life running and searching for missing girls. But it really doesn't know what it wants to do.

    Is it a tale ripped from the headlines of 1946? Is it a broadside against violence against women and the havoc and ruined lives it reaps? Is it a character study of how women rebel against that violence, and the harm that comes to them and society? Is it a tale of racism and questions about why some missing girls are searched for and others seem to disappear without anyone caring?

    Or is it a woman who has the gift of Sight, who can see and feel and experience the terror of being stalked and assaulted, and lives her life in fear of its  recurring?

    Yes, it's about all of them. Well, it tries to be. But over a short 257 pages, it roams and rambles, introduces new characters every chapter, mixes memory and reality, jumps around in time, and altogether just can't seem to keep a solid narrative for long.

    Indeed, it often reads like a collection of interconnected short stories. And as individual stories, they are quite good. The problem comes when you try to figure out what is happening and follow the overall story.

    It just doesn't seem worth it.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Paddy Chayefsky

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, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of January 28th

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    It is the 28th day of the year, leaving 337 days remaining in 2023.

    On this date in 1923, the author Paddy Chayefsky was born in New York City.

    He told his stories about the lives of ordinary people, the kind you would pass on the street and not notice. He told of their loves, their lives, and their failures. He did so with natural dialogue, dramatic pathos, and literary realism.

    His talent stretched across all the media available to him in the middle of the 20th Century -- radio dramas, Broadway performances, television mysteries, and movie screen adaptations. He also wrote a novel, Altered States: A Novel.

    He won awards in several media, including three Oscars and a posthumous induction into the Television Hall of Fame.

    Many of Chayefsky's ideas came from his early life in the Bronx, and some critics believe his pre-eminent work, the movie Network, portrays some of his own personality. The satirical view of the television industry include a news anchorman who rages during a climatic scene that he is "mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore." Chayefsky was known for his volatile temper.

    He began his career writing radio dramas for Theater Guild on the Air, in 1951. He soon switched to television, and was a premier writer during the "Golden Age of Television" in the mid-1950s. Among his scripts were Holiday Song and Marty.

    Some of his TV scripts he later adapted into longer film productions, including Marty, which won four Academy Awards in 1955, including best picture, and a best adapted screenwriting nod for Chayefsky. He also wrote the movie scripts for As Young As You Feel, The Goddess, Paint Your Wagon, and The Hospital.

    Chayefsky died in 1981.

Book Review: The Wordy Shipmates

•  Author: Sarah Vowell
• Pub Date: 2008

• Where I bought this book: Joseph-Beth, Norwood, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I heard the author on NPR once, and she seemed amazing 

*******

    You might not think that a history book exploring the lives of some of the earliest immigrants to the United States -- the somber Puritans who came to Boston in the 1600s because the religious figures in England were not strict enough -- would make for a witty, rollicking tale of adventure and petty in-fighting.

    But you would be wrong.

    Vowell's tale, complete with the letters and journals of the men -- and the few women -- who made an impact on the Massachusetts Bay Colony, is a joy to read. It's history come alive, as reported by a somewhat snarky, knowledgeable reporter who, with a wry grin sadly shakes her head at the goings on.

    She brings in popular culture -- from the Brady Bunch to Bruce Springsteen, to Thanks, an oddball situation comedy that lasted six episodes in 1999 -- to help show how we've gotten it all wrong and entirely misunderstand the point of the first English colonists and their relationships with each other and the native culture. When one of them, John Winthrop, spoke about building a "city on a hill," they also missed the point, much like candidate Ronald Reagan misinterpreted Winthrop and Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. in 1984.    

In the U.S.A., we want to sing the chorus and ignore the verses, ignore the blues.

      So, Vowell aims to set us straight. Chockful of primary sources, she covers the Puritans' voyage from their leaving of England in 1630 to their first years in what they called New England. The title is acknowledgement that the Puritans weren't stuffy, ignorant people, (well, they tended to be stuffy, but ...) but serious men and women who knew their religion, had a specific interpretation of their Bible, and could argue and explain exactly what they wanted and why. Along with fighting evil and burning Indians, they wrote and collected books and created colleges of learning.

    And they did it their way.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Jerome Kern

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, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of January 27th

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    It is the 27th day of the year, leaving 338 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1885, the American composer Jerome Kern was born.

    He told his stories on the stage and screen, composing the musical accompaniment for more than 100 plays and movies. He was one of the most accomplished composers of the early 20th Century, and his musical innovations helped make musical theater a serious form of art, particularly his work on Show Boat.

    His music had a natural flow and his melodies a folksy rhythm that helped move along the action in the plays. Many of his songs, including Ol' Man River, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, and Long Ago (and Far Away) are classics of musical theater.

    He later turned to film with equal success, including eight Academy Award nominations, which produced two Oscars. 

    Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia, the founder of the Grateful Dead, was named after him.

    Kern's earliest compositions were for musicals in London, where he worked with the famed lyricist P.G. Wodehouse. His first work on Broadway was with the production The Echo in 1910. That same year, he is credited for writing some of the featured songs and music in Our Miss Gibbs.

    By 1912, he was credited with his first full musical score, in The Red Petticoat. 

    He created at least one show a year in Broadway in the 1920s, working with Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach. By the end of the decade, he was also working in Hollywood, where he wrote songs and music for Gloria Swanson, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

    He died in 1945.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Jules Feiffer

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, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of January 26th

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    It is the 26th day of the year, leaving 339 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this day in 1929, the cartoonist and author Jules Feiffer was born in New York.

    He is a whirlwind of story telling -- whether in drawings of pen and ink, in animated films, in movie screenplays, in graphic novels, writing scripts for the theater, or books for children, or for adults.

    But, perhaps, he is best known as a political cartoonist for one of the original underground newspapers, The Village Voice, but he stature became so renowned that he was syndicated across the country, and eventually became a monthly cartoonist for that old grey lady, The New York Times.

    For the most part, Feiffer's cartoons are as literary as they are artistic. They contain multi-panel drawings, often of a single figure, with dense lines of monologue. Any change in the figure's expression is subtle, and in correlation with the script.

    One common drawing is a woman, who would dance for the topic of the day. Sometimes it would be a political figure -- Richard Nixon was a hapless target -- with a satirical, often cynical, comment or position.

    One of his most famous cartoons was Good Bobby, Bad Bobby, in which Robert Kennedy would attempt to justify his often contrasting positions and actions in his public life.

    He has written some 35 books, plays, and movie scripts. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his cartoons in 1986. He also won an Academy Award for Munro, a short animated film that tells the story of a four-year-old boy who is somehow drafted into the army, and no one notices his age until he starts crying. 

    The cartoonist said it was a way to vent his rage at the obtuse way the military reacts to criticism, even of obvious wrongs.

    Feiffer lives in New York.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Virginia Woolf

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, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of January 25th

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    It is the 25th day of the year, leaving 340 days remaining in 2023.

 

    On this date in 1882, the writer Virginia Woolf was born in London.

    She told her stories with a feminist touch, in poetry and prose that had a modernist non-linear style that helped to create the stream-of-consciousness genre. She wrote novels and biographies, and critical essays that received both intellectual and popular acclaim.

    Her essays dealt with political culture and its power, artistic freedom, literary works, and women's writing, social class and status.

    She started writing at a young age -- she wrote her first story when she was 8, and, until the death of her mother when Virginia was 13, she would write up witty accounts for her family newspaper. 

    Her first novel, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915. Her two best known novels, Mrs. Dalloway and To The Lighthouse, came out two years apart, in 1925 and 1927.

    Mrs. Dalloway is a day-in-the-life story of an upper-class woman planning a party. The novel travels back and forth in time, and compares the main character's life with that of a man watching her, a veteran suffering from his time in World War I. To The Lighthouse tells of a woman's difficulty creating art while struggling to carry on her daily life.

    That novel relates to Woolf's most famous essay, A Room of One's Own, published in 1929. It explores the idea that to create, or write, a woman "must have money and a room of her own." It discusses the history of women writers and the difficulties they had to overcome.

    The title is often mimicked in modern culture. It is the name of a bookstore in Madison, Wis., that specializes in feminist and LGBT writings. The 1992 movie about the All American Girls Professional Baseball League was titled A League of Their Own (as is the followup streaming TV show). A podcast featuring several women writers and reporters from Amazing Avenue talking about the New York Mets and other baseball topics is called A Pod of Their Own.

    Woolf died in 1941.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Marie Manning

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 a story of January 22nd.

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    It is the 22nd day of the year, leaving 343 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1872 (or maybe 1873), the newspaper writer Marie Manning was born. And in 26 years or so, the advice to the lovelorn column would be created.

    She told her stories as advice and answers. The questions came from thousands of people. And Manning, who when her story-telling advice began in 1898 went by the name of Beatrice Fairfax, offered cautious, if sometimes unconventional, answers.

    It was unconventional because she was, well unconventional. She was one of the early women in journalism, and at more than six-feet tall, skinny with a pompadour of long brown hair, she stood out. She also took little guff from her editors or sources.

    It was cautious, though, because her gig was new. Working at the New York World, she was a part of the city desk, covering crime and interviewing presidents. But moving on to a better paying stint at the New York Evening Journal, she had been relegated to the "women's desk."

     So when the chance came to answer a few letters that readers had sent in, Manning leapt at the task. And she was good at it.

    She is believed to be the first modern U.S.-based advice columnist. Oh sure, there were a few in the distant past. The Athenian Mercury, a bi-weekly, London-based newspaper in the late 17th Century, started the trend. A few other journals over the years kept the format of readers asking questions and experts answering them, but most questions were about the scientific or political matters of the day. 

    "Ask Beatrice Fairfax "dealt with love. And within weeks of starting the column, the Evening Journal was getting thousands of letters a day. Beatrice was pictured as a coy young woman who would advise "on the troubles of the heart."

    After Manning resigned from the newspaper in 1920, the column continued with another writer.  Manning returned sometime after the stock market crashed in 1929, and continued writing the column until her death in 1945.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Lucy Gives Birth

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 a story of January 19th.

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    It is the 19th day of the year, leaving 346 days remaining in 2023.

    On this date in 1953, Little Ricky Ricardo was born on national television. Some 44 million Americans watched I Love Lucy that night as the fictional child of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz entered the show.

    It was the ultimate mixing of stories of truth and fiction. 

    In reality, Ball actually did give birth that day to a son, named Desi Arnaz Jr. His father, Desi Arnaz, was Ball's husband in real life. On the show, he was also her husband, and his character was named Ricky Ricardo.

    Also in reality, Lucy Goes to the Hospital which was episode 16 of the second season, was filmed three months before it aired. So the writers got it right -- their prediction that Ball's child was a boy was proven correct.

    The real boy, Arnaz Jr., followed in his parent's footsteps and had a career as an actor and musician.

    When Ball became pregnant, the popular show took a daring move for the time -- it decided to show her pregnancy on the program, and make it part of the I Love Lucy world. This was during a time when married couples on television were always shown to sleep in separate beds. Even the Ricardos slept in twin beds.

    After the birth, the child was written into the show, named Enrique Alberto Ricardo IV and dubbed "Little Ricky." He was played by several actors, including two sets of twins. Once he was past the infant years, he was played by an actor credited as Richard Keith.

    Little Ricky appeared in 29 episodes of the program, including the series finale, The Ricardos Dedicate a Statue, which aired in 1957.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Shari Lewis

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 a story of January 17th.

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    It is the 17th day of the year, leaving 348 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1933, the puppeteer and television host Shari Lewis was born.

    She told her stories with her sock puppets, the most famous one being Lamb Chop. Although almost all of their work was done with children as the main audience, Lamb Chop once got to speak before a more influential group -- the U.S. Congress. During Lewis' testimony in 1993 concerning a bill to protect children's television programming, she asked for, and received, permission to have Lamp Chop say a few words. (It's true. It's in Congressional Record.)

    At an early age, Lewis showed a flair for ventriloquism, and her father -- Abraham Hurwitz, dubbed the ""official magician" of New York City by Mayor LaGuardia -- encouraged the talent by hiring a coach for her.

    When she was 19, she won the top prize on the TV show, Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. Five years later, she was on Captain Kangaroo, introducing Lam Chop to the world. Several TV performances later, Lewis had her own TV show, The Shari Lewis Show, which premiered in 1960.

    Her career as a TV host was similar to that first show -- corny jokes, her puppets, and live skits. While hosting her show, she appeared on several other programs, including Car 54, Where are You?, and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. British TV soon came calling, and she appeared on BBC shows such as Royal Variety Performance.

    But she stayed involved in children's TV in America, hosting Lamb Chop's Play Along and The Charlies Horse Music Pizza in the 1990s

    Over her career, she won 12 Emmy Awards, seven Parents' Choice Awards, a Peabody Award, and a Kennedy Center Award for Excellence and Creativity.

    Lewis died in 1998.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Susan Sontag

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 a story of January 16th.

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    It is the 16th day of the year, leaving 349 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1933, the writer and critic Susan Sontag was born.

    She told her stories mostly in essays, critiquing political and cultural issues in wide-ranging, insightful writing in influential magazines that brought her acclaim. She often melded "high" and "low" culture, noting that both are needed for art to survive.

    One of her first essays, Notes on "Camp," published in Partisan Review in 1964, was on this topic. It discussed, as a serious philosophical issue, the culture of art within the gay community. It later was published in her first collection, Against Interpretation. 

    Born in New York and reared in Long Island, Tucson, Ariz., and the Los Angeles area, she attended Berkeley, the University of Chicago, and Harvard, obtaining degrees in literature and philosophy from the latter two. She began her career teaching at various colleges, including Sarah Lawrence College and Rutgers and Columbia University.

    

    Then she became a full-time author, writing novels and criticism.

    While she mainly considered herself a novelist and fiction writer, it was her criticism and other essays on topics such as war, human rights, and AIDS, along with photography and the media. In addition to Partisan Review, she was published in The New York Review of Books and Commentary.

    She won dozens of awards for her work, including a MacArthur award, a National Book Award, a George Polk Award, and the Jerusalem Prize. In their digital archives of her writings, The New York Review of Books calls her "one of the most influential critics of her generation."

    She died in 2004.

Almanac of Story Tellers: LL Cool J.

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 a 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 1968, the rapper and hip-hop artist LL Cool J was born in New York as James Todd Smith.

    He tells his stories with a beat -- creating those beats with a couple of turntables to sample records, an audio mixer, and an ever-present drum machine. The beat is needed to accompany his rapping -- hard and fast, with agile rhymes and pleasingly arrogant phrases.

     Indeed, the first record he sold was titled I Need a Beat; it sold more than 100,000 copies and helped launch his professional career.

    Indeed, LL Cool J has a number of firsts in the rap/hip-hop genre: He was one of the first artists signed by Def Jam, the pioneering records company; his first album, Radio, was an original rap Top 10 seller; he is the first rap artist to be on American Bandstand, and the first such artist awarded a Kennedy Center honor.

    He has had mainstream success and a longevity that many of his contemporaries lacked. Radio -- considered among his best work -- was released in 1985. Two years later, he released Bigger and Deffer, which was critically acclaimed and outsold Radio.

    His versatility allowed him to begin acting, with TV roles in In the House and NCIS: Los Angeles, as well as film roles in Edison and Any Given Sunday.

    He is a two-time Grammy Award winner and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2021.

Almanac of Story Tellers: First Live Public Radio Broadcast

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 a story of January 13th.

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    It is the 13th day of the year, leaving 352 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1910, the first live public radio broadcasting took place in New York City.

    It told the stories of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, two classic Italian operas. More importantly, the operas arose from a live showing at the New York Metropolitan Opera, with the songs performed by, among others, tenor Enrico Caruso, who became an international superstar largely because of recordings.

    The performance was recorded by the Lee de Forest Radio Telephone Company at the Metropolitan Opera. Microphones were suspended above the stage, and members of the press and public, stationed at various locations around the city, picked it up on open telephone lines and sent it, potentially, around the world.

    In actuality, few radio receivers existed at the time, but those in and around New York City -- including on ships in the city's harbor -- did manage pick it up. But let's face it, the sound wasn't great. The microphones were unable to hear and playback most of the singing. Static made what could be sent out uneasy on the ears.

    The New York Times, reporting on the event, said the interference "kept the homeless song waves from finding themselves."

    Still, the event is credited with ushering in the era of radio and live broadcasting. Waiting for the daily newspaper to arrive was out: turning on the dial and getting instant news was in. 

Almanac of Story Tellers: Charles Perrault

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 a story of January 12th.

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    It is the 12th day of the year, leaving 353 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this day in 1628, the French poet and author Charles Perrault was born in Paris.

    He told stories of ancient times, but with a twist -- instead of reciting what we now call Fairy Tales in the oral tradition, he wrote them down. In doing do, he helped create the new literary genre, turning old folk tales into stories mostly for children, although adults enjoyed them as well.

    Born into a wealthy family, he studied as a lawyer, and became a poet and author. He helped found the Académie Française, and took an active role in its promotion of the arts and its literary debates. 

    Late in his 60s, he published his first book of Fairy Tales, which he called Histoires ou Contes du Temps passé, with the subtitle, Les Contes de ma Mère l'Oye. (In English, Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals and Tales of Mother Goose.) They included such stories as Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Little Tom Thumb, and Puss In Boots.

    Perrault both modernized and retold the stories in simple language that was appropriate for children. For instance, his version of Little Red Riding Hood was a cautionary tale, advising children, particularly young girls, not to trust older men. In his version of the tale, Little Red jumped into the bed with the wolf, and was eaten.

    Many of the stories later found their way into the version of the German tales of the Brothers Grimm.

    Perrault died in Paris in 1703.    

Almanac of Story Tellers: Jerome Bixby

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 a story of January 11th.

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    It is the 11th day of the year, leaving 354 days remaining in 2022

   

    On this date in 1923, the writer Jerome Bixby was born in Los Angeles.

    He told his stories --fantastical, imaginative, terrible, and filled with horror -- in short stories and screenplays. Most of his works were science fiction or horror, sometimes a combination of the two, or in the genre known today as speculative fiction.

    His earliest collection, in 1964, was titled Devils Scrapbook. It came out when he was most popular, having worked as a writer for the original Star Trek television series.

    But perhaps his best known story and screenplay, It's a Good Life, was shown on the original Twilight Zone, and as one of the episodes in Twilight Zone: The Movie, which came out in 1983. It is considered one of the best science fiction stories of all time. 

    It tells the story of a young boy who could read minds, and had whisked away his hometown, all alone, somewhere out into space. People could only think good thoughts about him, regardless of what was happening, or Anthony would banish them out to the cornfield on the edge of town and space. (A follow-up, It's Still a Good Life, was shown on the new Twilight Zone series in 2003. It again stars Bill Mumy as Anthony and Cloris Leachman as his mother. Mumy's daughter, Liliana, plays his young daughter in this sequel.)

    In the 1950s, Bixby wrote for or edited a number of science fiction anthology magazines, including Planet Stories, Planet Comics, Galaxy Science Fiction, and Thrilling Wonder Stories.

    Bixby died in 1998.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Rod Stewart

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 a story of January 10th.

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    It is the 10th day of the year, leaving 355 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 1945, the singer-songwriter and musician Rod Stewart was born in London.

    As a songwriter, he knows how to find stories. On his first successful album as a solo performer, he told the world with its title: Every Picture Tell A Story. He was full of good stories on that album: Maggie May, a  No. 1 hit written with Martin Quittenton, the title track, written with Ronnie Wood, and the mostly acoustic Mandolin Wind, written by Stewart.

    As a singer with a distinctive raspy voice, he can belt out the tunes, whether they are blues, folk, soul, or rock 'n' roll. In his later career, he put out a series of albums based on the Great American Songbook -- hits from the early years of the 20th Century.

    He got his start singing with some local London bands, but by the mid 1960s he was singing with the Jeff Beck Group, which included Wood, a future Rolling Stones guitarist. Stewart and Wood then joined up with several members of Small Faces to create the new group, Faces.

    During this time, Stewart put out a couple of solo albums before hitting it big with Every Picture ... The next album, Never a Dull Moment, and its breakout single, You Wear it Well, also reached No. 1 status in several countries.

    Stewart's live performances are critically praised. He continues to record albums, with the latest  being The Tears of Hercules, which includes nine songs he has writing credits on. 

    He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice, as a solo artist in 1994, and with the group Faces in 2012. He was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2006.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Brian Friel

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

Today is the story of January 9th

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    It is the ninth day of the year, leaving 356 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1929, the Irish playwright Brian Friel was born in Omagh, Northern Ireland.

    He told his stories of Irish history on the stage, writing about colonization and wars, and the impact they had on the people, families, communities, and memories of Ireland. He was known for his language skills, his character development, and his ear for dialogue.

    He also wrote short stories, publishing several collections. With the actor Stephen Rea, he founded the Field Day Theatre Company in Derry.

    But it was his plays, often set in the fictional small Irish town of Ballybeg -- whose literal translation from Irish is small town -- that gained him fame. He was called the "Chekhov of Ireland," and perhaps the best Irish playwright of his times.

    His first play, Philadelphia, Here I Come!, concerned a young man from Ireland who was moving to the United States. It first appeared in Dublin, later in London's West End, and on Broadway in New York, where it was nominated for a Tony Award for best play.

    He wrote several plays in the 1970s and 1980s that dealt with The Troubles in Northern Ireland -- Freedom of the City, Volunteers, and Making History among them. His 1980 play, Translations, told about how the English, in an effort to destroy Irish life and culture, set about to change town and place names from the original Irish to English, 

    His best known play is, perhaps, Dancing at Lughnasa, which won a Tony Award for Best Play in 1992 and was adapted for the cinema in 1998. It tells the story of a family of five Irish women, through the eyes of a son.

    Friel, who lived in County Donegal, Ireland, for most of his life, died there in 2015.  

Almanac of Story Tellers: Charles Addams

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

Today is the story of January 7th

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    It is the seventh day of the year, leaving 358 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1912, the cartoonist Charles Addams was born in Westfield, N.J.

    He told his macabre stories in pen and ink, mostly on the pages of The New Yorker magazine, starting in 1932. The cartoons often showed grotesque humans or human-like monsters, such as vampires or zombies, in stereotypical family-type situation. One group evolved into the Addams Family.

    One cartoon, for instance, showed a man in a darkened room reading family lore to his children. The caption showed him bragging about an uncle who "left the world a little worse for his having lived in it."

    Addams also illustrated books and movie posters. His drawings were adapted to other media, including the television show, The Addams Family, which aired in the 1960s.

    His cartoons and drawings were combined into collections, beginning with Drawn and Quartered in 1942. Several more followed, with the last, Creature Comforts, being published in 1981.

    Addams died in 1988.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Kahlil Gibran

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

Today is the story of January 6

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    It is the sixth day of the year, leaving 359 days remaining in 2023.

 

    On this date in 1883, the author Kahlil Gibran was born in the Ottoman Empire, in what is now part of Lebanon.

    He told his stories, sometimes mystical, sometimes romantic, often longing, and deeply religious, in poems and prose that were sensitive and sentimental. His influences included the Bible and William Blake, and ancient Arabic writings.

    He was popular in the Arab world, where he is considered a central figure of Arabic literary modernism.

    He wrote in both Arabic and English, sometimes in direct, succinct phrases, and sometimes in prose full of symbolism. His best known work in English is The Prophet, published in 1923.

    It is a collection of essays and poetry, with stories that discuss love and family, crime and punishment, reason and passion, good and evil, knowledge, beauty, and pleasure, along with other aspects of life. While sometimes derided as simplistic, it nonetheless has been translated into more than 100 languages and is one of the best selling books of all time. It particularly caught on during the counterculture of the 1960s and the New Age movement.

    In addition to stories and poems, Gibran was also a playwright and artist. Indeed, he often considered himself a painter first, created more than 700 works.

    He died in 1931.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Waiting for Godot

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

Today is the story of January 5th

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    It is the fifth day of the year, leaving 360 days remaining in 2023.

    On this date in 1953, the play Waiting for Godot premiered at the Théâtre de Babylone in Paris.

   
    Originally written in French and titled En attendant Godoy by the Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, the play told the story of two men on a road waiting for the title character, who never appears. During the wait, the men talk and discuss their life, philosophies, and any possible reason for their existence, which they hope to learn from Godot.

    The innovative play was one of the first "theater of the absurd" works to be successful. The phrase was coined to describe certain plays and playwrights who seemed to agree with Albert Camus that human existence is essentially absurd and pointless. 

    The play is as minimalistic as one would expect from Beckett: Two acts play set in one scene, a bare field with a tree and (sometimes) a rock. Besides the two main characters, Vladimir and Estragon, a few others appear on stage: Pozzo and Lucky, and The Boy.

    Given that Beckett rarely talked about the play, interpretations have flourished: it was an allegory of the Cold War or an anti-British diatribe. It was interpreted as Freudian, existential, Christian, or autobiographical. 

    It's about the relationship between Beckett and fellow Irish writer James Joyce -- which may be fitting, given the old line that the difference between them was that Joyce left nothing out of his works, and Beckett put nothing in.

    Beckett, unsurprisingly, sometimes complained that most explanations and interpretations merely complicated the play.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Bishop James Ussher

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

Today is the story of January 4th

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    It is the fourth day of the year, leaving 361 days remaining in 2023.

    On this date in 1581, Bishop James Ussher was born in Dublin.

 

    Ussher told his stories about the Biblical creation of the earth. Using the chronology from the Old Testament -- including reading them in the original Hebrew language -- he calculated the very day creation began.

    He did so by taking some of the actual events in the Bible, marking their dates, and creating a timeline from other events mentioned in the Bible and the genealogy of people named.

    His work showed that God began creation on Oct. 22, 4004 B.C. It started just before nightfall, he said in his works on the topic, Annales veteris testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti, and its followup, Annalium pars posterior. The volumes were published in 1650 and 1654.

    He was by no means the first and only man to dedicate part of his life to the issue of when creation started. Many others during his time were struggling with the concept, including several who proposed alternate birthdays for the Earth. 

    But perhaps because Ussher was the Primate of the Church of Ireland -- the Anglican leader in England's then-colony of Ireland -- his date was considered most godly. Indeed, it was widely accepted to be accurate, at least in the Western World, well into the 19th Century.

    Even today, "young-earth creationists" accept his work as Biblically inspired, and as a basis for the belief that the Earth is merely 6,000 years old (6,026 years old as of today, if you don't count the year zero).

    That, of course, flies in the face of scientific research and discovery showing the universe to be some 13.7 billion years old. This age has been confirmed in many ways, including by the James Webb Space Telescope, which can actually see that far back in time.

    And in this chronology, the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Cicero

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

Today is the story of January 3rd

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    It is the third day of the year, leaving 362 days remaining in 2023.

    On this date in the year 109 BCE, the Roman writer, statesman, orator, and philosopher, Cicero, was born.

    He told his stories about the Roman Republic. In doing so, he helped to upgrade Latin from a brute language to one that spoke eloquently on rhetoric, history, philosophy, law, and politics.

    He wrote letters, speeches, treatises and books. 

    He helped hold literature together. Scholars estimate that during his lifetime, Cicero was responsible for some three-quarters of the writings that emanated from that period. 

    His writings on philosophy are particularly impressive, with works ranging from his daughter's death, to the suspension of judgment, to one's moral obligations. Many of the works, as Cicero said himself, were merely the transmission of Greek thoughts; but in doing so, he gave Rome and the Western world its underpinnings of  philosophical thought and language.

    His work lives on today. Journalists use him as as easy prop to show how issues remain over time. Politicians quote him to impress themselves and others.

    Cicero's lifetime coincided with the reign of Julius Caesar. He was not part of the plot to kill Caesar, although he eventually suffered because of it. In late 43 B.C.E., he was beheaded on the orders of Marc Antony, partly because of a speech Cicero gave in the Roman Senate calling Antony "an enemy of the state" for his actions in connection with Caesar's death.   

Almanac of Story Tellers: John Hope Franklin

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

Today is the story of January 2nd

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    It is the second day of the year, leaving 363 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1915, the America historian and professor, John Hope Franklin, was born.

    He helped tell stories of the Black experience, largely introducing white Americans to the struggles and contributions to American life of Black people throughout the centuries, from the 17th Century up to the current day. He was key proponent of the formation of Black Studies Departments at universities throughout the country.

    He was instrumental in the fight to desegregate primary and secondary schools, working with Thurgood Marshall and providing the sociological evidence that forced the U.S Supreme Court to reject the separation of Black and white children in education.

    His seminal historical work was From Slavery to Freedom, published in 1947. The book weaved the stories of Black Americans into the narrative of American history. Other books he wrote included those that told the Black experiences in the years surrounding the U.S. Civil War. His autobiography, Mirror to America, was published in 2005.

    Franklin was the first person of color to serve as the chairman of a history department at a major college in the United States, heading the department at Brooklyn College from 1956 to 1964. He was a professor at Fisk University in Nashville, St. Augustine College in North Carolina, the North Carolina College for Negroes, Howard University, the University of Chicago, and Duke University. He was a visiting professor at Cambridge University.

    He was a awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995.

    Franklin died in 2009.