Almanac of Story Tellers: Mary Roach

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 March 15th

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    It is the 78th day of the year, leaving 287 days remaining in 2023.

 

  On this date in 1959, the science writer Mary Roach was born in Elna, N.H.

    She writes her stories about oddball topics in science, with surprising humor, diligent research and revealing interviews, and finding an inventive umbrella for a variety of topics about space, animals, or the human body.

    For instance, her first book, Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers, tells tales about how scientists use dead bodies to study live bodies. It includes stories about cadavers being used as crash-test dummies, the history of the study of medicine and its use of dead bodies, and how they are disposed of. She tells about grave-robbing, decomposition, and the ethics of it all.

    She later turned to the study of live people who have been uniquely but severely during times of war, or during the practice for war. Grunt: The Curious Science of Life at War, tells how doctors and other researchers find ways to heal some of the most hideous of injuries, or improve lives for those who haves lost specific body parts or functions. 

    Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void explores how people train to be astronauts or to fly into space.

    After graduating from Connecticut's Wesleyan University, Roach worked as a freelance copy editor in San Francisco. She fell into science writing while working as a publicist for the San Francisco Zoo. 

    Her early articles appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle's Sunday magazine, and she later would write for magazines across the country, including at The New York Times, GQ, Vogue, Discover, and Sports Illustrated for Women.

    She lives and writes in California. Her latest book, published in 2021, is Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Laws.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Ben Okri

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 March 15th

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    It is the 74th day of the year, leaving 291 days remaining in 2023.

    On this date in 1959, the Nigerian-British poet and novelist Ben Okri was born in Minna, Nigeria.

    He tells his stories with a realism and surrealism that transcend political and spiritual boundaries. But while they show Africans in harmony with the spiritual world, they also depict the social and political strain of the modern African country as it changes with the world.

    Although his poetry, novels, and short stories have been categorized as magical realism, Okri has rejected this term, saying it is used because critics do not understand his heritage or Africans' perceptions of reality.

I grew up in a tradition where there are simply more dimensions to reality: legends and myths and ancestors and spirits and death. ... I'm fascinated by the mysterious element that runs through our lives. Everyone is looking out of the world through their emotion and history.

    He published his first novel, Flowers and Shadows, in 1980, followed by The Landscapes Within the following year. Both used surrealism to depict how society changed in an African country as the modern world brought corruption and politics.

     During the 1980s, Okri published several short story collections about the ties between the physical and spiritual world, and was the poetry editor of West Africa magazine.

    In 1991, he won the Booker Prize for The Famished Road. Part of a trilogy with Songs of Enchantment and Infinite Riches, Okri again tied together the spiritual and physical worlds, this time using a spiritual child narrator living in an unnamed African country, thought to be his native Nigeria.

    The novel has inspired musical numbers, plays and movies, and was read and quoted by President Clinton before and during his 1998 trip to Africa.

    Okri has published dozens of novels, short story collections, and works of poetry, and his books have won several international awards. He has been awarded the Order of the British Empire.

    He continues to live and write in London.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Wanda Gág

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 March 11th

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    It is the 70th day of the year, leaving 295 days remaining in 2023.

    On this date in 1893, the artist and author Wanda Gág was born in New Ulm, Minn.

 

    She told her stories in words and drawings. She wrote and illustrated books, especially for children. She drew pictures that were beautiful, dynamic, and simple. 

    Her art has been shown around the country, including in the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 

    With all her talent and creativity, she is perhaps best know for a children's book, Millions of Cats, which she wrote and illustrated. Published in 1928, it remains the oldest such book still in print, and remains a part of the childhood canon.

    In the book, Gág pioneered the double-page spread, engaging readers by continuing the story over two full pages of a drawing and text. It is now a common style in children's literature.

    She was a two-time recipient of both the Newberry Honor and the Caldicott Honor. The University of Minnesota presents the Wanda Gág Read Aloud Book Award each year. Her childhood home has been restored into a museum and interpretive center for her work.

    Gág died in 1946.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Andrea Levy

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 March 7th

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    It is the 66th day of the year, leaving 299 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1956, the British author Andrea Levy was born in London.

    She told her stories about living the British-Jamaican experience, using the voices of Black Caribbean women and families living in London during the middle of the 20th Century, and Black soldiers with ancestors from the Caribbean colonies returning home to England after fighting in World War II. She told about the racism they encountered, the pain of emigration, and their trying to survive in a sometimes hostile country.

    But she also told the stories of the native British who interacted with the newcomers, as she sought to understand how imperialism affected lives on both parts of the colonial divide.

    In her early 20s, Levy was working as a costume designer, when, attending a diversity conference, she was asked to designate herself as Black or white. She thought of this as a rude awakening, and when she began to read on the subject, found few books by Black women with her background. She decided to write her own stories.

    Her first novel, published in 1994, Every Light in the House Burnin', is semi-autobiographical tale about a Jamaican family living in 1960s London. Her next book, Never Far From Nowhere, is about two sisters from Jamaica growing in public housing in London in the 1970s. It was longlisted for the Orange Prize, a major literary award in the United Kingdom.

    Levy's most recognized novel in 2004's Small Island, which uses four voices to tell the story of post-war emigration from the Caribbean to Britain. Hortense and Gilbert are a Black couple who move from Jamaica to London in 1948, and Queenie and Bernard become their landlords after renting a house to them.

    That book won the Orange Prize, along with two other major awards, The Whitbread Book of the Year, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

    Her last novel, The Long Song, returns to the 19th Century to tell the stories of the last days of slavery in the Caribbean through the voice of an elderly Black woman who experienced a life of slavery before a brief bout of freedom.

    Levy died in 2019.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Tom Wolfe

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 March 2nd

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    It is the 61st day of the year, leaving 304 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1930, the author Tom Wolfe was born.

    He told his stories in fiction and non-fiction, and sometimes a combination of both. He was a proponent of New Journalism, who sought to involve himself into his non-fiction. He chronicled the hippies, yippies and Merry Pranksters in the 1960s in books with titles such as The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, then turned himself into a serious novelist to critique the emergence of yuppie culture in the 1980s.

    He was a newspaperman and magazine writer, and wrote about the first astronauts in The Right Stuff.

    After obtaining a doctorate in American studies from Yale, Wolfe wrote for newspapers. including The Washington Post and the old New York Herald Tribune. He also wrote for magazines such as Esquire, for which he penned an unusual feature article on the car culture of California. Written in the New Journalism style of using literary techniques in his writing, the story was a hit, and later became the focus -- and title -- of a collection of stories in his first book -- The Kandy Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.

    He wrote his first novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, in the old style -- a take on Dickens and other early novelists who published their work in installments, on deadline, as they wrote each chapter. Wolfe's work -- about class, racism, and greed in New York City -- was first published in Rolling Stone starting in 1984. Wolfe then heavily re-wrote it, and published it as a novel in 1987.

    He wrote three additional novels on contemporary American culture, which received praise for their insight and criticism for their pretentiousness.

    Wolfe died in 2018.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Carlo Goldoni

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 25th

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    It is the 56th day of the year, leaving 309 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date, the Italian playwright, Carlo Goldoni, was born in Venice.

    He told his stories with wit and charm and realism, a rich use of the Venetian language, and the use of tightly constructed plots. His plays portrayed the emerging middle class of the time, giving them an honest assessment of themselves.

    He is often considered the founder of Italian realistic comedy.

    He was born what was then the Kingdom of Venice. His first love was the theater, and despite training in the law, he began writing plays at the age of 16. After a time of actually practicing law, he returned to the theater, writing plays in French, but mostly in the Italian-Venetian dialect. He also wrote occasionally for the opera.

    His first play, the tragedy, Amalasunta, was a flop. Indeed, many of his early works were in the old style. But in his 1750 play, La Pamela, he did not use the traditional masked characters of the commedia dell'arte style.

    In 1750-51, writing for Teatro Sant'Angelo, Goldoni produced some 16 plays, including I pettegolezzi delle donne (Women's Gossip), Il bugiardo (The Liar) and Il vero amico (The True Friend), all written in different styles. But over the next 10 years, writing for various theater companies, he began to find his own style and voice, and increasingly used realistic characters. foregoing the stilted style and repetitive dialogue in favor of a more descriptive and robust voices.

    His style sometimes caused controversy in the theater world, and for a time he lived and worked in France.  

    He died in 1793

Almanac of Story Tellers: Ishmael Reed

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 22nd

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    It is the 53rd day of the year, leaving 312 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1938, the writer Ishmael Reed was born.

    He tells his stories, often about the oppressed fighting their oppressors, with sardonic language, satire, and unorthodox political and racial commentary. He injects ironic humor into his prose and poetry, exposing human excesses and absurdities and turning stereotypes upside down.

     His writings combine standard English with language from the streets, music, film, and African-American culture, combining their dialect, slang, and rhythms to create a language that is familiar, yet unique.

     One poem, written in 2007, questions the tired views of the cowboys and the Indians.

                    The pioneers and the indians 

                    disagree about a lot of things

                    for example, the pioneer says that

                    when you meet a bear in the woods

                    you should yell at him and if that

                    doesn't work you should fell him

                    The indians say that you should

                    whisper to him softly and call him by

                    loving nicknames

                    No one's bothered to ask the bear

                    what he thinks

    Reed's first novel, written in 1967, was The Freelance Pallbearers, about the Bukka Doopeyduk, who revolt against their despotic leader, Harry Sam, the ruler of the nation of Harry Sam. Perhaps his best known novel is Mumbo Jumbo, published in 1972, about a voodoo priest in Harlem battling the Wallflower Order, which is dedicated to wiping out the jes grew virus, a personification of ragtime, jazz, polytheism, and freedom.

    One of Reed's plays, The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, staged in 2019, critiques the author of the musical Hamilton, in part by having historical figures not in the musical confront Miranda about the omissions. He also says Miranda whitewashes Hamilton's views and actions, along with those of George Washington.

     While living in New York City in the 1960s, Reed co-founded the underground newspaper, The East Village Other. Moving to the west coast in the 1970s, he taught at Berkeley for 35 years. He has written a dozen novels and seven collections of poetry.

    His novels have been nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1998, he was awarded the genius grant from the John T, and Catherine C. MacArthur Foundation. 

    Reed lives in Oakland, Calif.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Dr. Dre

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 18th

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    It is the 49th day of the year, leaving 316 days remaining in 2023.

 

    On this date in 1965, the rapper Dr. Dre was born.

    He tells his stories while he helped invent new forms of rap and hip-hop music, particularly in the genre now known as gangsta-rap. It includes explicit descriptions of street violence and drug dealing. He also helped create part of the West Coast style, which used a synthesizer, heavy, plodding beats, and samplings from 1970s funk.

    He has since moved mostly to the business side, finding and recruiting new artists, and founding such companies as Death Row Records, Aftermath Entertainment and Beats Electronics.

    He was born as Andre Romell Young of musically inclined parents, who broke up when he was a young child. He first found fame as a 20-year-old with the group World Class Wreckin' Cru, and later with N.W.A., where he helped perfect the violence of gangsta rape.

    With fellow rappers Eazy-E and Ice Cube, they released Straight Outta Compton, which told of the violent street life that Dr. Dre grew up with. One of their popular early recordings was Fuck tha Police, which brought the group a warning letter from the FBI.

    Dr. Dre then went solo, releasing The Chronic's, which garnered him his first Grammy Award for Let Me Ride.

    While keeping a hand on the performing side, he also produced albums, including Snopp Dogg's debut album Doggystyle; he formed Death Row Records and signed 2Pac, and later started Aftermath and signed Eminem. He continues to perform, including at the halftime show of Super Bowl LVI in 2022, for which he won an Emmy Award.

    He also has won six Grammy Awards. He lives in Los Angeles.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Gregory Mcdonald

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 15th

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    It is the 46th day of the year, leaving 319 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1937, the novelist Gregory Mcdonald was born.

    He told his stories in scintillating and rugged dialogue, spoken by characters with wit and a roguish charm. The stories were mysteries, mostly, but also character sketches, adventures, and musical tales.

    His career as a writer could be considered a reversal of many biographies. Working as a high school teacher in 1964, he wrote Running Scared, a novel about a college student's suicide. He used this to obtain a reporting job at the Boston Globe, where he worked for seven years.

    He returned to novels in 1974, penning Fletch, a ribald tale about drugs, sex, and murder on the police beat. It was a hit, winning the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America. He followed that with Confess, Fletch in 1976.

    That also won an Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original, becoming the first time a novel and its sequel won back-to-back awards.

 

A selection
 of Mcdonald's books
in my library

  Fletch soon was adapted for the movie screen, with Chevy Chase in the leading role. Mcdonald went on to write nine novels about Irwin Maurice Fletcher -- who as a journalist, investigator and cad, used the byline I.M. Fletcher (get it?) -- along with four  books about a spinoff character, Inspector Francis Xavier Flynn (who somehow happens to be the only inspector in the entire Boston Police Department).

    In all, Mcdonald wrote 26 books, including Love Among the Mashed Potatoes, about a male advice columnist in the 1970s; the Times Squared Quartet, four books about time that were published out of sequence; and the Skylar series, about the cultural differences between the South and the North in the United States.

    Mcdonald died in 2008.  

Almanac of Story Tellers: Carl Bernstein

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 14th

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    It is the 45th day of the year, leaving 320 days remaining in 2023.

    On this date in 1944, the investigative reporter Carl Bernstein was born.

   

    He tells his stories about politicians -- some of them corrupt, which means he must do a lots of digging. He is best known for digging into the political story of our time, Richard Nixon and Watergate, which led to the only presidential resignation in U.S. history.

    Along with Bob Woodward, a fellow reporter at The Washington Post, they broke the story of the Watergate conspiracy. They told how Nixon and his aides covered up the story of how and why his 1972 re-election campaign broke into Democratic headquarters in the Watergate office complex.

Bernstein and Woodward

    Woodward and Bernstein, then young reporters at The Post, were often alone in their quest to investigate the Nixon administration's actions. Backed only by their newspaper, they uncovered dozens of presidential activities that shocked the nation, led to Congressional investigations, grand jury indictments, and a House committee voting to impeach the president. Nixon resigned before that action took place.

    The pair and their newspaper won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for Public Service.

    Bernstein started working at 16 as a copy boy for the old Washington Star. He then worked as a reporter for The Elizabeth (N.J.) Daily Journal before returning to Washington as a reporter for The Post.

      He wrote two books with Woodward after the Watergate sage: All The President's Men, the story of what happened and how; and The Final Days, about the president's resignation. 

    In the years after Watergate, Bernstein has continued working as a journalist and commentator, mostly in television news. He has written books on Hillary Clinton and Pope John Paul II. His most recent book is a memoir, Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom.

    He lives in New York.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Lydia Maria Child

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 11th

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    It is the 42nd day of the year, leaving 323 days remaining in 2023.

    On this date in 1802, Lydia Maria Child, an author, abolitionist, and advocate for American Indians, was born in  Massachusetts.

    She wrote stories about those who were outcasts from society, rejected for their sex or race, subjected to discrimination, slavery, or slaughter. At a time when a woman was relegated to a private existence, and stories about Americans were positive and gung-ho, she wrote poems and books and leaflets about the horrors of slavery and the massacre of natives.

    Her first novel, written at the age of 22, was Hobomak, A Tale of Early Times. It tells the story of the early Puritan settlers of Massachusetts from a woman's perspective -- a woman who rebels against religious and racial bigotry by marrying a Native American, and later an Episcopalian. Its subject matter scandalized her friends and neighbors, but somewhat surprisingly, also helped to make it a success.

    For a time, Child edited a children's magazine, The Juvenile Miscellany. She wrote a popular collection of advice for women under the title, The Frugal Housewife. Throughout her long life, she wrote stories for children, poems about American traditions such as Thanksgiving, and books and articles decrying slavery and the treatment of the natives. 

    In one book, The First Settlers of New England; or, Conquest of the Pequods, Narragansets and Pokanokets, she told the story -- in the voice of a mother to her child -- of the atrocities the colonists committed on the native tribes. It was not your typical treatment of the historical narrative, either then or now.

    She handled her anti-slavery activism in a similar way. In one book, she helped write one of the first stories from the perspective of a slave girl. Working with Harriet Jacobs, Child edited and promoted Jacobs's memoir, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, which is exactly what it presents itself to be. 

    After the Civil War, she worked for and wrote about efforts to assist former slaves to move into a free and equal life with their enslavers. One of her books was The Freedmen's Book, written in 1865. It has been called a primer, anthology, history, and self-help manual that includes stories and biographies of prominent Black people in history.

    

    Child died in 1880.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Richard A. Long

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 9th

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    It is the 40th day of the year, leaving 325 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On the date in 1927, Richard A. Long, a polymath who also was a student and professor of African-America art and culture, was born in Philadelphia.

    His told his stories in literate language, about many things which passed his fancy that he studied and appreciated. This included linguistics, Haitian art, foreign languages, dance history, African-American art, and  medieval literature, just to cite a few.

    He was an author of books, a public intellectual, a mainstay in the Atlanta community, and a professor and teacher at several universities, including Emory University, Atlanta University, Harvard University, and others in France and throughout Africa.

    He served on numerous boards of cultural organizations and institutions, including the national Endowment for the Arts, The Smithsonian Museum of African Art, The Society of Dance History Scholars, and the Zora Neale Hurston Festival. 

    He founded the New World Festivals of the African Diaspora, and was the U.S. committee member at the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture that was held in Lagos, Nigeria, in the 1970s.

    And he wrote scholarly books: Black Americana, published in 1985; The Black Tradition in American Dance, in 1989; Grown Deep: Essays on the Harlem Renaissance, in 1998; and its follow-up, One More Time: Harlem Renaissance History and Historicism, in 2007.

    Long died in 2013. 

Almanac of Story Tellers: Sinclair 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, in podcasts, and in books. 

Today is a story of February 7th

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    It is the 38th day of the year, leaving 327 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1885, the novelist Sinclair Lewis was born in Sauk Center, Minn.

    He told his stories in satirical novels, made realistic by the use of authentic dialogue and the genuine mores and customs of the time. His descriptions of people and places was praised for being original and convincing.

    He was the first person from the Americas to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, with the board in 1930 citing "his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters."

    Sinclair attended Yale University for five years, working a number of newspaper jobs and editing the Yale Literary Magazine. It was there he first published his own writings -- poems and short stories. In 1912, he published his first novel, Hike and the Aeroplane, under a pseudonym. He wrote several more novels during the teens.

    In 1920, he wrote Main Street, a satirical novel about small-town America as seen through the eyes of an young urban woman who moves to Gopher Prairie, Minn., after marriage. It was popular and well received by critics, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and since has become the textbook novel of small-town provincialism. 

    Two years later, Lewis wrote Babbitt, another satirical novel, this time about small-town boosterism and commercial culture. He continued to write satire, against evangelical preachers in Elmer Gantry, and the privileged and affluent in Dodsworth.

    Arrowsmith, about a doctor who struggles with the ethics and culture of science, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1926, but Lewis rejected it because, he said, the Pulitzer board prized conformity over excellence.

    His 1935 novel, It Can't Happen Here, a cautionary tale about the rise of fascism in the United States, had a revival in popularity during the presidency of Donald Trump.

    Lewis died in 1951.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Ralph McGill

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 5th

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    It is the 36th day of the year, leaving 329 days remaining in 2023.

 

  On this date in 1898, the newspaperman Ralph McGill was born.

    As a white man writing for newspapers in the Deep South, McGill told the story of the U.S. Civil Rights movement with passion, understanding, and clarity. He opposed segregation and wrote about its harmful effects. He explained to his mostly white readers the passive and non-violent actions the Black men and women took in their struggle for equal rights, and inspired other newspapers to follow his lead.

    He wrote editorials that influenced this social change. As a columnist who was syndicated around the national, McGill attempted to explain the South to his readers, He also quietly advised Presidents Kennedy and Johnson about their actions during that time.

    Born in rural southeastern Tennessee, he was educated at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. He did not graduate because he was kicked out after writing an editorial critical of the school's administration.

    He first worked for the old Nashville Banner and later moved to the Atlanta Constitution, where he spent the majority of his career and served as executive editor, editor, and publisher. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1958 for editorial writing. In 1964, President Johnson awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

    He is the author of several books about the south, including Southern Encounters: Southerners of Note in Ralph McGill's South, and The South and the Southerner.

    McGill died in 1969.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Betty Friedan

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 4th

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    It is the 35th day of the year, leaving 330 days remaining in 2023.

   

    On this date in 1921, the author and activist Betty Friedan was born.

    She told her stories about women, their histories, their wants, and their often unfulfilled desires. Her seminal work, The Feminine Mystique, is considered the bible of the modern feminist movement that began in the 1960s. 

    Using surveys she created, compiled, and reviewed from her fellow Smith College graduates, she wrote how women's lives were lonely and desperate, caught in the illusion they should be happy and dignified because they were meant to be wives and mothers.

    After graduating from Smith College, Friedan started working as a journalist, particularly for a number of labor publications. But after marrying and becoming pregnant with her second child in 1952, she was fired. She started writing freelance articles for several magazines. After compiling her survey, she began to write articles about it, and later expanded the project into a book.

    The Feminine Mystique was popular, selling more than 1 million copies. 

    A few years later, she helped to found the National Organization for Women, dedicated to seeking full equality for women in their work, family, and lives. She supported and worked for the Equal Rights Amendment, while continuing to write about feminist movements.

    Among those later books was The Second Stage, which expanded on the idea of full equality for women and discussed issues that affected the generation after hers. These included the social and political backlash to feminism, and the need for women to be better represented in all business fields, in addition to re-defining and recognizing the value of traditional women's occupations, such as teaching and nursing.

    She received several honorary doctorates, and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1993.

    She died in 2006.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Aleksis Kivi

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 2nd

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    It is the 33rd day of the year, leaving 332 days remaining in 2023.

   

Aleksis Kivi statue
in his hometown of Nurmijävi

 On this date in 1870, Seitsemän velijestä was published, becoming what is believed to be the first novel published in the Finnish language.

    Seven Brothers (the novel's title in English) tells the story of a roguish band of young men who move to the forest outside of their town to live a life of drinking, debauchery, and adventure before returning to their community to become responsible adults. A humorous book, it is a classic form of realism and romanticism.

    It was written by Aleksis Kivi, a playwright and a poet. And although he died penniless and in an asylum, he has since become a revered figure in Finland. 

    He is considered a national icon, and one of the country's greatest writers. His works are regarded as classics and are part of the Finnish canon. A national book award is named after him. A bronze memorial stands in front of the Finnish National Theater in Helsinki.

    Kivi was born Alexis Stenvall in 1834 in Nurmijävi, in what was then the Grand Duchy of Finland.

    His first play was Kullervo, based on a tale from Finnish folklore. A collection of poems, Kanervala, published in 1866, was rejected and criticized during his life but saw new appreciation after his death for its departure from poetic conventions of the time. 

    He wrote a dozen plays, including the 1865 comedy, Nummisuutarit (in English, The Cobblers on the Heath), which won a national prize and is still performed today.

    He died in 1872.

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.

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.

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.