Eric Hanson's Blog, page 6

Shaw, Icarus and Keith Richards

I am reminded by today's Writer's Almanac that George Bernard Shaw died on this day in 1950. He was 94, too old to be climbing trees, but that's what he was doing. Not whimsically or playfully. He died of injuries after falling out of the tree he was pruning.

Which makes me think of Keith Richards who fell out of a palm tree while vacationing in Fiji in 2006. Richards survived, and he continues to defy the actuaries' predictions about his lifespan. Based upon his smoking and drinking and carr...

Cheerleading and Unwarranted Optimism

I learned during my random reading this morning that cheerleading was invented 111 years ago today. At the University of Minnesota of all places, which makes me either proud or embarrassed or both. There are no cheerleaders or former cheerleaders in A Book of Ages. George W. Bush's cheerleading career was edited out last fall. W. did have an interesting rollercoaster life, full of cautionary notes and alarming incidents. He might have been an excellent baseball commissioner.

It was on this day...

Stephen Crane

It's Stephen Crane's birthday. He was born in 1871 and died in 1900 at age 28. Several diseases and conditions conspired to kill him, but his life had already worn him to the bone. He went everywhere covering wars and exploring hardships, acquiring yellow fever and malaria and no doubt a level of pessimism that made it harder to survive his illnesses. A Book of Ages began with the details of his short life. I was curious about people who lived to be famous and then died young. He appears in t...

Selling a Better Afterlife

On October 31st, 1517, Martin Luther composed a ninety-five point complaint against the Catholic church and nailed it to the door of his church in Wittenberg, Germany. He was especially angry that the church charges people to see holy relics and sells "indulgences" in exchange for fewer years in Purgatory. He was 33 and had no idea what he was unleashing. Luther appears one time in A Book of Ages.

The Crash

Eighty years ago this week Wall Street laid an egg. That, at least, was the famous headline in Variety. It began on a Thursday, Black Thursday, October 24th. Thursday was followed by Black Friday. Then Black Monday, when losses set in in earnest. By the time Black Tuesday closed stocks traded on the New York Exchange had lost 17% of their value. And the slide would continue, jigging up and then dropping like a stone into 1931. The lives of millions of Americans changed dramatically. Some knew...

The Satirist's Satirist

Evelyn Waugh was born on this day in 1903. He was the second son of a prominent London publisher whom he cordially loathed. It was a childhood of mutual disappointment. In true English lower-upper-middle-class fashion Evelyn worked very hard at appearing not to try or to care and unsurprisingly failed at everything. He scorned everything valued by the society he grew up in while secretly coveting it all. He was sent down from Oxford after two years, considered becoming an illustrator, learned...

Mao Played by a Tenor

On October 27, 1987, Mao Zedong was played by a tenor wearing a Mao suit in the premier of John Adams' Nixon In China at the Houston Grand Opera. Mao had been dead for eleven years. Nixon was 74 and still living, but didn't attend, nor did Madame Mao, who was in a Chinese prison for her part in the Cultural Revolution. (The Cultural Revolution, by the way, was not a reenactment of the Italian Renaissance.) The Nixon part was sung by a baritone. My favorite number from the opera is The Chai...

John and Abigail

Twenty-eight year-old John Adams married Abigail Smith on October 25, 1764. The lawyer, founding father and second president appears five times in A Book of Ages.

I Get a Kick Out of You

On October 24, 1937, Cole Porter went for a ride at the Piping Rock Club on Long Island. The horse shied and fell on top of him, crushing both of his legs. While waiting to be rescued he passed the time trying to come up with witty lyrics to the song "At Long Last Love." He was 46, and would live the remainder of his life in constant pain. Cole Porter appears six times in A Book of Ages.

Arthur Rimbaud: Poet, Arms Dealer

On October 22, 1885, the former poet Arthur Rimbaud wrote to his mother from Ethiopia, telling her he was giving up coffee trading in favor of gun-running. Rimbaud appears three times in A Book of Ages.