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.