Almanac of Story Tellers: Nellie Bly

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  May 5th

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    It is the 125th day of the year, leaving 240 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1864, the crusading journalist Nellie Bly was born as Elizabeth Jane Cochran in Cochran's Mills, Pa.

 

    She was one of the first people to tell her stories in the world of investigative journalism, a genré she helped launch. She regularly reported on hard news and international news at a time when the few other women in journalism were sent to fashion shows or society gatherings. 

    Bly began her career at The Pittsburgh Dispatch after impressing an editor with her writing skills when she penned a letter condemning an article in the paper on the topic What Girls are Good For. She later moved on to the New York World.

   It was while working for The World that Bly began reporting her best known work. She managed to check herself into the asylum in New York City, on what is now known as Roosevelt Island, by pretending to be insane.

    Her reporting  -- published in The World and a book, Ten Days in a Mad House -- of the butality and neglect in how she and the other patients were housed, treated, and cared for had immediate ramifications. A grand jury investigation led to improvements in the sub-standard conditions. 

    Bly used similar means to investigate and report on similar conditions in sweatshops and jails. She exposed bribery by lobbyists in the state legislature. 

    Such investigations brought her fame. She then went on a trip to try to beat Phileas Fogg's feat in the novel Around the World in Eighty Days.Riding ships, trains, horses, rickshaws, and other modes of transportation, she managed to cover the world in 72 days, six house, 11 minutes and 14 seconds -- all while writing it up for The World.

    Bly died in 1922 in New York.

This Week in Books: 12th Edition

     Travel Finds

    Now that I am officially retired, I have been traveling a bit. When I travel, I visit bookstores. And when I visit book stores, I buy books. 

    So I have added a few to the stack.

    

     Beasts of a Little Land, by JuHea Kim. I found this book in a quaint little bookstore inside a great vegetarian/vegan friendly resturant in Washington called Busboys and Poets. If you're ever in Washington, go there. (There are several locations; the one I vited is on U Street.) The food is wonderful. The bookstore is delightful, with a great selection you won't find elsewhere. Like the one I bought. It's about an impoverished Korean hunter, a Japanese officer, a young courtesan, an orphan boy, and a tiger. It "unveils a world where friends become enemies, enemies become saviors, heroes are persecuted, and beasts take many shape." It spoke to me. I am ready to listen.

 

    We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland, by Finan O'Toole. Ireland has changed dramatically in the past quarter century, and this book says it will explain why. O'Toole is a newspaper guy, one of the premiere historians of Ireland, as well as a political commentator. I have read some of his stuff. It's quite good. I am hoping this book will further enlighten me.

    Poguemahone, by Patrick McCabe. This is a strange one, from a place called Greedy Reads in Annapolis, Md. It's a book-long, free-verse telling of a family's history. It is compared to Ulysses -- both the original Greek myth and the wee story by James Joyce. It was called "a drinking song (and) punk libretto." So let's rock.

    This is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. I found this at after words, a fun used book store somewhere in Chicago. I am not familiar with the authors, but a random science fiction novel is always a good buy, and this seemed to fit the bill.

    A Passage North, by Anuk Arudpragasam. This was shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize, which is a good enough reason for me to pick it up at Half Price Books. That required little travel, because it's within a few miles of my house.

    Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo," by Zora Neale Hurston.  Another book that's been on my to-buy list for a while. I recently did an Almanac of Story Tellers article on Hurston and was intrigued by the books she wrote, this one in particular. It's written in dialect, and said to be hard to read. It's been on my list since, and when I spied it at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, I picked it up.

Almanac of Story Tellers: The First Grammy Awards

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  May 4th.

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    It is the 124th day of the year, leaving 241 days remaining in 2022.

 

    On this date in 1959, the first Grammy Awards were handed out in separate ceremonies in Beverly Hills, Calif., and New York City. Both were broadcast over ABC.

    The Grammy is awarded to those who tell their stories in song. Among the first winners were Ella Fitzgerald (best jazz performance and best pop performance), Frank Sinatra (best album photography), and David Seville and the Chipmonks (best children's recording and best comedy performance). 

    The Grammy Awards -- given for outstanding achievement in the music industry -- continue to be one of the Big 4 entertainment awards, along with the Oscar (movies), Emmy (television), and Tony (theater).

    The first Grammy Awards were given out for performances in 1958 in 28 categories -- the fewest on record. 

    As has become a tradition, the first show was full of surprises. Sinatra had the most nominations, but won his first Grammy not for signing his songs, but designing the album cover for Frank Sinatra Sings Only the Lonely. The best country & western performance went to a folk group, The Kingston Trio, singing an Appalachian murder balland, Tom Dooley. 

    And the song and record of the year awards both went to an Italian singer-songwriter, Domenico Modugno, for his international hit, Nel blu, depinto di blu. The song remains the only foreign language hit to win both categories. 

Almanac of Story Tellers: Jacob Riis

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  May 3rd

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    It is the 123rd day of the year, leaving 242 days remaining in 2022.

    On the date in 1849, the journalist and photographer Jacob Riis was born in Ribe, Denmark.

 

    Riis told the stories, in words and in pictures, of the people living in the slums in New York City's Lower East Side at the end of the 19th Century. In doing so, he opened the eyes of a city -- which didn't know about or ignored the poverty-stricken immigrants -- and helped usher in long needed reforms.

    After he emigrated from Denmark, Riis was a poor immigrant himself. In cities such as New York, Pittsburgh, and Chicago, her worked as a carpenter or at any other jobs he could find. He also scrounged for food, often going hungry, and lived either outside or at an available flophouse.

    Eventually, he found a job as a crime reporter for the New York Sun. Using his words and the new technology of flash photography, he published a story in The Sun exposing the crowded, dirty slums in which people lived and died. 

    In a subsequent book, How The Other Half Lives, published in 1890, he told more stories and printed more pictures, documenting the poverty, child labor, crime, and corruption he saw. He wrote that the story "is dark enough, drawn from the plain public records, to send a chill to any heart." He also started on a public speaking tour to show and continue his work.

    He wasn't wrong. Among those whose hearts were chilled was Theodore Roosevelt. The future president wrote simply, "I have read your book, and I have come to help." At the time, Roosevelt was Board President of New York's police department, and compelled by Riis' writing, TR ushered in many needed changes.

    Riis himself became a social reformer, urging and enabling lawmakers to pass regulations dealing with labor -- including child labor -- standards. He also fought for improved laws regarding the safety and other conditions of housing, health care, and sanitation, particularly the need for clean water.

    Riis died in 1914 in Barre, Mass. 

Almanac of Story Tellers: Benjamin Spock

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  May 2nd

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    It is the 122nd day of the year, leaving 243 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 1903, the pediatrician and author of numerous child-care books, Benjamin Spock, was born in New Haven, Conn.

    Spock single-handedly changed how stories were told between parents and their children. His first and most famous book, The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, radically altered how American parents raised their kids.

    For instance, in the time before Spock, pediatricians told parents their children should be seen and not heard. They should be on a rigid feeding schedule. Parents should not pick up their children when they cry, lest they learn to cry more often. And hugging and kissing and snuggling with one's child had been discouraged; Spock inspired more of it.

 

  Children should be heard and treated as individuals, Spock wrote. He said parents should be flexible and understanding.

    His treatise hit home with generations of World War II veterans who were raising the children of the Baby Boom. But critics roared that Spock and the parents who followed his advice were raising a nation of spoiled brats. Indeed, some even said Spock was responsible for the hippies, the anti-war protests, and the changing culture of the 1960s.

    Spock, in fact, joined the protests himself. As he aged, he grew increasingly liberal. He once was charged and convicted of counseling people to avoid the draft. (The conviction was overturned.) In 1972, Spock ran for president as the candidate of the pacifist People's Party.

    Spock gradutated  Columbia University's medical school in 1929. He was a practicing pediatrian in New York City in the 1930s and 1940s, while he was also a professor at the Cornell University medical school. He published his first book in 1946.

    Afterward, he wrote several other books on child care, including Dr. Spock Talks With Mothers, and Raising Children in a Difficult Time. He also wrote a memoir, edited by his second wife, Spock on Spock: Growing Up With the Century.

    Spock died in 1998 in San Diego.