Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 122
March 29, 2010
March 26, 2010
Happy "Frost Day"
"I had a lover's quarrel with the world."
How about a national holiday today, celebrating poetry, in honor of Robert Frost –born March 26, 1874.
Apples, birches, hayfields and stone walls; simple features like these make up the landscape of four-time Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Frost's poetry. Known as a poet of New England, Frost (1874-1963) spent much of his life working and wandering the woods and farmland of Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire. As a young man, he dropped out of...
March 16, 2010
The Power of the Press: My Lai and Seymour Hersh
On March 16, 1968, in a small Vietnamese village, "something dark and bloody" took place.
On November 12, 1969, journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story of the massacre in My Lai during the Vietnam War. Hersh won a Pulitzer Prize for the story. It was a story that changed history.
Dropped into the village by helicopter that March day in 1968, the men of Charlie Company found only the old men, women, and children of My Lai. There were no Vietcong, and nothing to suggest that My Lai was a...
March 12, 2010
Don't Know Much About Jack Kerouac
Lots of people, including Bob Dylan, say he changed their lives. Born this date, March 12, in 1922, Jack Kerouac.
Born Jean-Louis Kerouac in down-and-out Lowell, Massachusetts, Jack Kerouac was a central figure among the so-called "Beat Generation" of writers—in fact, he coined the term "Beat." In the nineteen-fifties, an era marked by conformity, the Beat writers believed in breaking the mold, and as writers, they valued spontaneity and intuition, impulsiveness and free expression. Along...
March 11, 2010
Defending "terrorists": What would the Founders do?
In the midst of all the "Tea Party" chatter these days, it is a tad surprising that the anniversary of another significant Boston event went largely unnoticed last week. It was, after all, 240 years ago on March 5, 1770, that the Boston Massacre took place.
And what was the "Boston Massacre" class?
A mob of unemployed, angry (and probably three-sheets to the wind) dockworkers got into a shouting match with some of the much-hated British soldiers then quartered in Boston –and competing for...
March 3, 2010
TODAY IN HISTORY: Birth of an Anthem
On March 3, 1931, The Star Spangled Banner, with words written in 1814 and set to an old drinking song, became the national anthem.
It was September 13, 1814, American was at war with England for the second time since 1776. Francis Scott Key was an attorney attempting to negotiate the return of a civilian prisoner held by the British who had just burned Washington DC and had set their sights on Baltimore. As the British attacked the city, Key watched the naval bombardment from a ship in...
March 2, 2010
Seuss Day!
If your book was turned down by more than 40 publishers, "what would you do?"
If you were Theodor S. Geisel, get a friend to publish the book. Thus was born Dr. Seuss. Actually born on this date, March 2, 1904, Theodore Seuss Geisel first turned his knack for words and pictures to advertising and editorial cartoons. But Dr. Seuss influenced entire generations of children with his nonsensical poems that put "See Spot run" on the endangered species list.
So what do you know about Seuss? Heaven ...
February 27, 2010
Don't Know Much About John Steinbeck
Born on February 27, 1902 in Salinas, California in 1902, was a writer I consider a major personal influence.
John Steinbeck built his reputation writing about the struggles of down-and-out people: Dust Bowl farmers and pearl divers, prostitutes, jobless migrants, and Depression-era hobos. Before his death in 1968, Steinbeck became one of America's most popular storytellers and among his many works are the epic classic The Grapes of Wrath and the brief but memorable Of Mice and Men.
In later y...
February 22, 2010
Washington's "Confession"
Today is George Washington "real" birthday.
By now, I hope we all know that the cherry tree story is a legend, made up by a pseudobiographer but chiseled into American folklore.
But there is a true story about a young George Washington that most of us never hear. It is the story of his first actual military experience and his signing of a "murder confession." It is not only more interesting than the cherry tree story but a lot more revealing.
The incident began in late May 1754, with...
February 18, 2010
"He told the truth, mainly." –Huck Finn
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
–Notice at the opening of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
America doesn't have a national holiday to honor a writer. But if we did, maybe it should be one devoted to Samuel Langhorne Clemens, born in Missouri on November 30, 1835. And maybe we could make it today, February 18, in honor of Huck Finn.
Adventures...
