September 15 - Audio Almanac

 

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Unfortunate (Mostly) Literary Happenings of Past Septembers

This post is an update of last year's Bummer Summer Part II: Awful Things That Happened in September.

September 2, 2004: A fire at the Duchess Anna Amalia Library in Weimar, Germany, destroys 12,500 irreplaceable books and damages an additional 62,000 materials, including Friedrich Schiller's death mask and 35 oil paintings of historical significance.

September 2, 2018: An air conditioner short circuits, causing a catastrophic fire at the National Museum of Brazil. The museum loses an estimated 92.5% of its collection.

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September 8, 2016: 59-year-old performer The Lady Chablis, who’s featured prominently in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt and played herself in the 1997 film based on it, dies of pneumonia at Candler Hospital in Savannah, Georgia.

September 9, 1898: French poet and literary critic Stéphane Mallarmé dies suddenly while suffering from what had been a relatively mild case of tonsillitis. While being examined by his doctor, Mallarmé has a coughing fit so severe he dies of asphyxia. He is 56 years old.

September 12, 1977: Poet Robert Lowell dies of a heart attack in a taxi cab on his way to see his ex-wife, writer and literary critic Elizabeth Hardwick.

September 15, 1958: A commuter train traveling from Bay Head, New Jersey, to Jersey City ignores warning signals and falls into Newark Bay through an open bridge lift. The crash kills 48, including Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s brother-in-law James Carmalt Adams.

September 18, 1961: United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld and 15 others die when their Transair Sweden DC-6 aircraft crashes in what was then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). Hammarskjöld had been traveling to Katanga, a disputed state that broke off from the Congo after Congo gained its independence from Belgian colonial rule. The cause of the crash is disputed. It may have been caused by pilot error, although some have speculated that it was shot down to assassinate Hammarskjöld.

September 18, 1988: Poet/filmmaker Kathleen Collins dies of breast cancer at the age of 46.

September 20, 1989: The last fluent speaker of the Kamassian language, Klavdiya Zakharovna Plotnikova-Andzhighatova, an approximately 105-year-old woman, dies. Kamassian is one of the Samoyed languages of the Ural Mountains. In fact, it was the last of the Samoyed languages to go extinct.

September 23, 965: Al-Mutanabbi, a courtly poet of the Abbasid Caliphate who wrote in Arabic, dies in what is now Iraq. His birth date is not known, but he was thought to be about 50 years old at the time of his death. He died in a fight with a group of assailants who were insulted by one of his poems.

September 23, 1939: Sigmund Freud dies of cancer of the jaw. He had been diagnosed with epithelioma of the mouth in 1923, and although the tumor had been surgically removed, the surgery was incomplete. By 1939, the cancer that had spread to his jawbone was so painful, and also inoperable, that Freud asked his personal physician to give him a life-ending dose of morphine. 

September 23, 1973: Chilean poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and is in his fifth day of hospitalization. He calls his wife to let her know he isn’t feeling well and dies a few hours later, officially of heart failure. 

Some have speculated that Neruda may have been poisoned in the hours before his death. Chile’s coup d’etat that ended the term of democratically-elected socialist President Salvador Allende had happened on September 11th. Neruda had been Allende’s ambassador to France and his home had already been searched by the military forces of coup leader General Augusto Pinochet. Neruda famously told Pinochet’s troops that the only dangerous thing they would find was poetry.

September 23, 1994: Psycho writer Robert Bloch dies of cancer of the esophagus and kidneys at the age of 77.

September 24, 2007: Camera operator Conway Wickliffe is killed while filming stunts for the movie The Dark Knight. He is the passenger in a pickup truck driving parallel to a stunt car; the driver misses a turn and the truck crashes into a tree.

September 26, 1937: Blues musician Bessie Smith dies of traumatic injuries she suffers in a car accident. She was the passenger in a car driven by her boyfriend Richard Morgan. Morgan, driving along U.S. Route 61 toward Clarksdale, Mississippi, misjudges the speed of a truck he’s coming up on and swerves at the last moment to avoid rear-ending the truck but sideswipes it instead. Since Smith is in the passenger seat and possibly has her hand and/or forearm sticking out of the passenger-side window, she sustains severe crush injuries to the right side of her body and a partially amputated arm. Surgeons at Clarksdale’s African-American hospital surgically amputate Smith’s arm. She never regains consciousness following surgery.

September 29, 1902: French writer Émile Zola dies of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a blocked chimney flue in his home. The manner of his death may have been accident, assassination, or suicide. He’s 62 years old.

September 29, 2010: A 24-year-old man whose family says he suffers from mental illness pours gasoline on himself and sets himself on fire near the statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Longfellow Square in Portland, Maine. The man is critically injured but survives. Coincidentally, the date the statue was unveiled to the public was also September 29th, in 1888.

September 30, 1962: Paul Guihard, a journalist for France’s Agence France-Presse, is in the U.S. covering African-American student James Meredith’s attempt to enroll in the whites-only University of Mississippi. White students on the campus start a riot, during which Guihard is shot through the back, piercing his heart. 

His shooting is never solved. Guihard is considered the only journalist to have been killed during the U.S. civil rights movement.

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Unfortunate (Mostly) Literary Happenings of Past Februaries

Previous Installment in the "Bummer" Series: Bummer New Year

February 1, 1891: Newspaper publisher Ignacio Martínez is assassinated by two men in Laredo, Texas, because they disagree with his newspaper’s criticism of Mexican president Porfirio Díaz.

February 2, 2014: Actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who played Truman Capote in Capote, dies of an apparently accidental overdose of prescription medicine and heroin.

February 3, 1959: “The Day the Music Died,” when early rock and roll musicians Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson were all killed in a plane crash outside Clear Lake, Iowa. The musicians had performed at Clear Lake’s Surf Ballroom and were on their way to their next show in Minnesota. This accident is remembered in poetic form through the Don McLean song “American Pie,” recorded on May 26, 1971. 

February 7, 1497: On Shrove Tuesday in Florence, followers of the monk Girolamo Savonarola burn art, books, their cosmetics, fancy clothes, playing cards, and other cultural objects they associate with sin in the so-called Bonfire of the Vanities. Sadly, irreplaceable ancient art and manuscripts were lost to this religiously-fueled war on anything that represented luxury. 

Ironically, Savonarola will later be excommunicated and convicted of heresy by the Roman Catholic Church. As punishment, he is hanged and his body burned in the same plaza where the Bonfire of the Vanities occurred. It will be forbidden for any Christian to possess copies of Savonarola’s writings. 

February 10, 2005: Playwright Arthur Miller dies of bladder cancer.

February 11, 1963: Poet Sylvia Plath, who struggles with clinical depression, dies by suicide, inhaling gas by placing her head inside an unlit gas stove. She is 30 years old.

February 11, 2012: 48-year-old singer/actress Whitney Houston is found unresponsive in the bathtub of her room at the Beverly Hilton hotel. Paramedics attempted CPR but are unable to revive her. The Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office attributes her death to atherosclerotic heart disease, cocaine use, and drowning. (Ok, this one's not really "literary." I'll allow it.) 

February 12, 1980: Two days after 34-year-old Patricia Frazier of Texas saw a CBS network TV broadcast of the movie The Exorcist, Frazier kills her 4-year-old daughter Khunji and cuts out her heart. According to Dr. Leon Morris, a psychologist who spoke with Frazier after the crime, Frazier believed Khunji was possessed by demons and trying to harm her (Patricia). A jury of her peers finds Patricia Frazier not guilty by reason of insanity.

February 13, 1945: U.S. and U.K. forces drop incendiary bombs on Dresden, Germany, causing fires with the intention of destroying munitions factories in that city. A second round of bombs are dropped in the early hours of February 14th, calculated to hamper the efforts of rescuers on the scene of the first round of bombings and fires. It’s estimated that between 22,000 and 25,000 Germans are killed, almost all of them civilians.

Author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is there as an American prisoner of war being held by the German army. The experience forms the basis of his science fiction novel Slaughterhouse-Five.

February 14, 1929: In what becomes known as the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, Al Capone’s gangsters line up seven members of Bugs Moran’s rival gang and machine gun them to death. Police arrive in time to find one survivor, Frank Gusenberg, suffering from 14 bullet wounds. They ask Gusenberg to name his killer, but Gusenberg refuses before he succumbs to his injuries.

February 14, 1989: Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, issues a pronouncement urging faithful Muslims to assassinate Salman Rushdie. Rushdie’s magical realist novel The Satanic Verses depicts a fictional version of the Prophet Mohammad as a character, which the Ayatollah considers blasphemous.

February 15, 1998: 89-year-old war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, struggling with ovarian and liver cancer and failing eyesight, chooses to end her own life by swallowing cyanide.

February 17, 1673: French playwright Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, who wrote under the pen name Molière, suffers a tuberculosis-induced pulmonary embolism while performing in his own play The Invalid. He finished out the show, but was carried immediately home afterward, where he died.

February 18, 1718: French-born English writer Peter Anthony Motteux dies of apparent autoerotic asphyxiation inside a brothel, although the circumstances of his death were considered suspicious at the time. This may be the oldest recorded case of autoerotic asphyxiation.

February 19, 2013: The body of Canadian student and tourist Elisa Lam is discovered in the water tower atop the Stay on Main hotel in Los Angeles, California. Lam is believed to have entered the tank of her own volition and accidentally drowned, possibly while experiencing the effects of withdrawal from her psychiatric medications.

February 25, 1983: Playwright Tennessee Williams dies of an apparently accidental overdose of the barbiturate medication Seconal.

February 26, 2015: Australian author Jessica Ainscough, age 29, dies of a rare cancer, epithelioid sarcoma. In 2008, her doctors suggested amputating her affected left arm at the shoulder, which would have given her a greater than 50% chance of surviving for ten years or more. Ainscough chose to treat her cancer with alternative therapies rather than having the amputation. She used the alternative treatments for six years, only returning to conventional medical treatments near the end of her life when she developed a tumor that bled continuously for ten months.

February 28, 1916: The Turn of the Screw author Henry James dies of pneumonia.

February 29, 1960: Melvin Purvis II, the FBI agent who shot and killed John Dillinger (and who was played by Christian Bale in Public Enemies), dies by suicide.

Now, after all that bad news, if you want to take a little Public Enemies sidebar and learn about the song "Blue Moon," read here. 

And you can always read my work in progress, Erin O'Riordan's Almanac, on Ko-fi.

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September 1: Walden and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

SEPTEMBER

Sep*tem"ber, n. Etym: [L., fr. septem seven, as being the seventh month of the Roman year, which began with March: cf. F. septembre. See Seven.]

Defn: The ninth month of the year, containing thirty days.

SEPTEMBRIST

Sep*tem"brist, n. Etym: [F. septembriste.]

Defn: An agent in the massacres in Paris, committed in patriotic frenzy, on the 22d of September, 1792.

September 1, 1846: “Already, by the first of September, I had seen two or three small maples turned scarlet across the pond, beneath where the white stems of three aspens diverged, at the point of a promontory, next the water. Ah, many a tale their color told! And gradually from week to week the character of each tree came out, and it admired itself reflected in the smooth mirror of the lake. Each morning the manager of this gallery substituted some new picture, distinguished by more brilliant or harmonious coloring, for the old upon the walls.” 

- Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Saturday, September 1, 2001: We left the house at precisely 8 a.m., driving east along the I-90/I-80 toll road. We stopped twice, once for breakfast at Hardee’s and again to stretch our legs and get hot beverages from Starbuck’s. We arrived in Cleveland around noon. 

We walked from our downtown Holiday Inn hotel to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. From the ceiling hung the cars that U2 used as stage props during the Zooropa tour. On the lower level we saw a Jimi Hendrix exhibit; I was most interested in his drawings and the handwritten lyrics to his songs. We perused the collection of stage and album cover outfits worn by everyone from Dave Matthews to Madonna, including Madonna’s wedding dress from her “Like a Virgin” video. We saw Jim Morrison’s baby book (donated by his parents) and the not-terribly-impressive art of the lost Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe. 

On the second floor we saw recording equipment from Sun Records, an exhibit about disc jockeys, and the covers of Rolling Stone and other music magazines. The largest exhibit was about John Lennon. Many of its photos and artifacts were on loan from Yoko Ono, so not much came from the Beatles years. Instead we saw pictures of John as a schoolboy, a few report cards, pictures of his teachers, and his drawings of make-believe characters. A cute set of photos showed John, Yoko, and their little son Sean on vacation in Japan. 

Particularly interesting was a set of collages John made from magazine clippings. He gave them to friends, including Ringo Starr and George Harrison, for their birthdays. Another portrayed various cute, naked men and was a birthday card John made for Elton John. 

On a much sadder note, the exhibit included the paper bag containing John’s clothes that the coroner gave Yoko after John’s murder. The museum even displayed the blood-stained glasses he’d been wearing when he died. 

Another fascinating object was a white telephone which, supposedly, Yoko will occasionally call. How I hoped she would call! I would have told her how I admired her when I read her introduction to She’s a Rebel by Gillian G. Gaar. The phone did not ring. 

After the Hall of Fame we walked along Lake Erie, taking in a beautiful pink sunset.

Saturday, September 1, 2007: Mom and I went to Plymouth, Indiana, for the annual Blueberry Festival, as I wrote about previously on this blog.

September 1, 2019, Indianapolis: We went to Greenwood Park Mall, where we had lunch at TGI Friday’s. Afterward we stopped at Home Depot. Tit wore his Slaughterhouse-Five t-shirt from Out of Print. The cashier told us about the years he spent volunteering at the Kurt Vonnegut Library and Museum and the one time he met Kurt Vonnegut. The cashier told Vonnegut, “You remind me of one of my drunk old uncles,” to which Vonnegut is said to have replied, “Could be.”

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Thoughts on 'Go Set a Watchman'

On Thursday, August 13th, Mr. Elingtin and I visited the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library at 340 N. Senate Avenue, in the heart of downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. The book I took with me to read in the car was Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee. It is the second novel she published, although she wrote it before her iconic To Kill a Mockingbird.

The docent at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library told me he was still deciding whether or not to read this book. I understand this impulse. From the moment those of us of a literary bent read the first chapter as published in the Wall Street Journal, it was apparent our long-serving image of Atticus Finch as a force for colorblind morality would be altered by his character development in this book.

I read To Kill a Mockingbird once, either in the sixth or seventh grade, as assigned to me in junior high. I liked the book then and it's stayed with me ever since.  I think many people who didn’t conform to strict gender stereotypes have identified with the tomboyish Jean Louise “Scout” Finch over the years. I’m among them. (I’m not the most “girlish” of girls, although I do love glitter and pink things.)

I decided before GSAW came out that I would have to have it immediately. To that end, during my lunch hour on Tuesday, July 14, I went to Forever Books and paid full retail price for a brand-new hardcover copy. I had, after all, waited more than 20 years for a second Harper Lee novel. (It wasn't the longest possible wait, since the novel was originally published in 1960, the year my parents each turned 8.) As soon as I finished Paper Towns, I started GSAW.

Titular Allusion: The Jewish Bible, Isaiah 21:6. In the King James version, “For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.” In the novel, the watchman is literally a “citizens’ council” of highly dubious intent and, figuratively, Scout’s conscience.

The bit of character development that Scout Finch – aged 26 – undergoes in the novel is discovering that the father she idolizes has feet of clay. He belongs to the citizens’ council whose purpose is to counter the actions of the NAACP, and he sits by, tacitly affirming its virulently racist rhetoric.

Scout’s reaction to learning about her father’s hidden racism is to become violently physically ill, take to bed for 12 straight hours, then to lash out at the members of her family who approve of what she considers morally abhorrent behavior. Scout’s natural instinct, nurtured in her by Atticus during the first 25 years of her life, is to judge people by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.

While many will be disappointed with Atticus in his old age, one could make the case that Scout remains essentially the same person she was at age 10 (her age in TKAM, set in the mid-1930s). She’s still stubborn, independent, not overly burdened by societal views of traditional femininity, brilliant, creative, and empathetic. Atticus has changed, but Jean Louise is still the Scout we know and love.

Another of the pleasures of this novel is in its several flashbacks to the 1930s, when Scout was still a girl and her older brother Jem was still alive. (We learn he’s died suddenly from the same heart defect that killed the Finch children’s mother.) These are highly amusing, including an incident in which Scout fundamentally misunderstands where babies come from and plans to kill herself, under the mistaken impression that she’s pregnant.

In another great scene, Scout, Jem, and their summer neighbor Dill (whom Lee based on Truman Capote – another author of American classics, although sadly he is no longer with us, unlike Ms. Lee) play a game of pretend. They pretend to have a religious revival, much to the dismay of Dill’s aunt/temporary guardian. She catches Dill dressed as the Holy Ghost (wearing a bed sheet with eye holes cut out) and attempting to baptize the Finch children in a goldfish pond. Atticus, as it happens, had the pastor over to dinner that night, but rather than being dismayed by his children’s antics, Atticus merely conceals himself on the back porch to laugh out of the pastor’s earshot.

So, although it has us rethinking everything we thought we knew about the moral character of Atticus Finch, I say go ahead and read Go Set a Watchman. It’s still a pleasure to spend further time with Scout Finch. Some will also be able to make the case that Calpurnia’s character is developed in further depth than the way we saw her in To Kill a Mockingbird.

Sidebar: Truman Capote died in 1984 (I was 7) in the midst of a battle with liver cancer, compounded by years of alcohol and drug abuse. I remember reading “A Christmas Memory” in elementary school and being disappointed to learn that Capote was no longer living. Visiting my classroom during this discussion the school principal, Mr. John Farthing, told us (non-judgmentally) that Capote was gay. He recounted to us a bit about the famous Black and White Ball and Capote’s flamboyant personality. I read Breakfast at Tiffany’s shortly after that. I still have my first copy.

By the way, one may also visit the preserved mid-Victorian home of the poet James Whitcomb Riley while visiting Indianapolis. I haven’t, and I fear it would bore Mr. Elingtin to death if I did.

We did, however, go to the Indiana State Fair. Neither of us had ever been to it before. It had everything you’d expect an agricultural fair to have, including an enormous number of booths serving foods of questionable nutritional value. Okay, I admit it: I had a sandwich made with a pressed pork patty, dill pickles, and barbeque sauce. (It wasn’t great. I’d have been better off with a nice Greek salad or even some fried okra from the Jamaican food booth. I’d also considered some French-style beignets and/or a peach cider slush.)

The Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library is small, but worth visiting. I got to type on Vonnegut’s personal typewriter, as visitors are encouraged to do. The current exhibit focuses on the Mother Night film, and a typewriter belonging to Nick Nolte is on loan, but visitors are not allowed to type on it.

For further reading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/29/books/bookstores-plan-rollout-for-next-harper-lee-novel.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/13/books/the-invisible-hand-behind-harper-lees-to-kill-a-mockingbird.html

http://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/books-and-literature/book-blog/article_a0f1ec1b-ae96-5fd5-9069-ca252937a2d5.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/67442-first-chapter-of-harper-lee-s-go-set-a-watchman-published.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/67482-early-reviews-hype-watchman-interest.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/67484-authors-reflect-on-to-kill-a-mockingbird.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/67508-historic-day-one-sales-for-watchman.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/columns-and-blogs/soapbox/article/67521-rethinking-to-kill-a-mockingbird.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/67578-watchman-cements-1-spot.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/67645-watchman-sells-220k-in-week-two-stays-put-at-1.html

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/67620-watchman-print-king-of-the-digital-era.html

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/07/15/how-should-schools-deal-with-the-new-atticus-finch

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/13/harper-lee-third-novel-lawyer-tonja-carter

Thoughts on Veterans Day 2013

Veterans Day Pictures - Quotes - Photobucket

(I know they're silly, but I absolutely love the retro-style, patriotic pin-ups. See this post for other examples.)

In the U.S., we call November 11th "Veterans Day," and in Canada it's known as "Remembrance Day." For a lovely Remembrance Day post that incorporated Canadian poet John McCrae's immortal World War I poem "In Flanders Field," please visit Mumfection. I'd like to extend a heartfelt thank you to all U.S., Canadian and allied veterans for their service to our way of life.

My husband, Tit Elingtin, is a Navy veteran, and so is my Uncle Lee. So was my grandfather, who was wounded at Pearl Harbor when he was a mere 17 years old. Actually, both of my grandfathers served in the Navy in WWII. My mom's dad once told me his military job was to "sit at a desk and smoke cigarettes," but I'm certain there's much more to the story than that. I believe my mom's dad served in the European theater.

I was thinking about my mom's late father, Marion (known within the family as Blackie because of his black hair and relatively dark complexion; he was of Russian and Polish descent), when Tit and I went to a family wedding on Saturday. My grandfather's older brother Joseph, who's been deceased for many years, has a grandson named Adam, and Adam married a woman named Andrea. Now that Andrea has my grandfather's last name, her married name is the same as my mom's maiden name, since my mom is also named Andrea. (Different middle names, though.)

Andrea and Adam had a photobooth at the their wedding. I added the hearts on PicMonkey.

Appropriately enough, Veterans Day is also the birthday of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. The author was born in Indianapolis in 1922. Sadly, he is no longer with us. Vonnegut was an army veteran who survived the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by British troops. He turned this horrifying experience into the brilliant novel Slaughterhouse-Five. It remains one of the best war novels ever.

Of course, I also highly recommend reading James Jones' war trilogy. From Here to Eternity tells you what it's like when a war is imminent, The Thin Red Line tells you what it's like to be in the middle of a war, and Whistle tells you about the after-effects. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Veterans Day Pictures - Quotes - Photobucket

OHP! My Favorite Quotes

...is on Labor Day vacation this week, but will return to its regularly scheduled programming next Monday. In the meantime, let's link up with The Vintage Apple for Oh, How Pinteresting!


Have I ever mentioned that if I had to stranded on a desert island with just one book, I would want that book to be Wuthering Heights?

This is such great advice.

My fellow Hoosier learned this sentiment from his father and uncle. A wise family, those Vonneguts.

Another wise one is that Lemony Snicket.

Sorry, hubby, but this is so true. I would marry the shizz outta Bob Witt, Matthew Clairmont, vampire Bill Compton, Finnick Odair...

Nobody ever suspects the butterfly.

Thank Goddess.

I leave you with the words of John Waters. This is just one of the many reasons why I adore him.

Being Midwestern Rules! Pt. 2 ~ Indiana

On Mondays I hook up with Pinning! at A Night Owl Blog/Baxtron{Life}. 

On Wednesday, it's Oh, How Pinteresting! at The Vintage Apple. 

Being from the Midwestern United States is hella cool - I think I proved that with my Nebraska post. I'm not from Nebraska; I'm from Indiana. We've got some pretty cool people, too. If you lived through the '80s, you might think of him when you think of Indiana.

http://cheers.wikia.com/wiki/Woody_Boyd

No, this is not young Haymitch; it's the character Woody Boyd from Cheers. Woody Harrelson? Not actually from Indiana. Or even Midwestern - he's a native Texan.

But these people are actually from Indiana.

Probably the coolest, most sophisticated, urbane individual to come from the Hoosier state? Cole Porter. The moment you realize you're from Indiana and so is Cole Porter is a very good moment indeed.

James Dean was from Indiana. Here he's reading The Complete Poetical Writings by James Whitcomb Riley, a 19th century poet also from Indiana.

When I say I hope to die and ascend to bisexual heaven and sit at the right hand of James Dean, amen, you may think I'm being facetious. I'm not. (Religion - it's complicated.) This is Photoshopped, but still - James Dean kissing Marlon Brandon. 

Old Hollywood screwball comedy queen - and lost love of Clark Gable's life - Carole Lombard was from Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Fun Fort Wayne fact: its library system has the world's second-largest collection of genealogical records, after the Mormon collection in Salt Lake City, Utah. I visited FW's main downtown library once and had a bagel in its coffee shop.

Steve McQueen, so cool there's a Sheryl Crow song about him, was from Indianapolis. His grandson, Steven R. McQueen, plays Jeremy on The Vampire Diaries.

McQueen's hometown is also the hometown of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. If you can find a greater 20th century American writer, read him or her or them.

Other writers from Indiana include Phillip Jose Farmer (who sometimes wrote as "Kilgore Trout," a fictional writer invented by Kurt Vonnegut), Meg Cabot (The Princess Diaries), and Theodore Drieser. Drieser wrote An American Tragedy, the basis for the movie A Place in the Sun.

Adam Lambert was born in Indianapolis. Probably the most well-known family to come out of Indiana, though? The Jacksons. Michael, Janet and their siblings were raised in Gary, a large city just to the east of Chicago.

See? Being Midwestern is awesome. 

Why Reading the Classics is Still Important for Youth Today (Guest Post)

There is a shared culture when it comes to growing up in America, there is no doubt about that. Our country is a country that has a respect and fondness for the past, even as we keep moving forward and doing things that in the past were unthinkable. 

One of those shared cultural experiences happens in elementary school, in which most kids throughout the country are taught to read the same books. Everyone knows who Dr. Seuss is, who Rudyard Kipling is, who Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn are and who Shel Silverstein is. These are all things we become accustomed to as children, and it gives us a shared language. The process continues throughout the rest of schooling as well, as we all get older we begin reading Shakespeare, George Orwell, Frederick Douglass, Kurt Vonnegut, Oscar Wilde, John Steinbeck and dozens of others.

These books, as well as many others that are both newer and older, are considered the classics. They are considered the books that every person should read because it will shape how they look at the world, and how they act and think within that world. But, an unfortunate thing occurs when we get out of school, we stop reading. There are tons of classics out there, but we read only a few in school, and then stop doing it altogether. It is a shame because there is a lot more we can share with each other through our experiences with these classics. Learning does not stop with school, it should continue throughout life, and so should reading the classics. There are more classics out there than you can imagine, and you can spend a lifetime reading them, without reading them all. Here are some reasons why you should read the classics:

Cherish the mind

With the decrease in reading there has been a huge increase in health club memberships. In some way, this is a roundabout argument, in which humans have begun to be more obsessed with their bodies than they are with their minds. After all, when you walk down the street or step into a bar, a potential mate can not see your mind, but they can see your muscles. The mind is the key to living a long, fulfilled life, not the body. That is not to say that you should neglect the body, but rather that you should not do so in sacrifice of cultivating your mind. That is why you should read the classics.

You get a better vocabulary

In today’s text crazy world, in which vocabulary has been slaughtered at the altar, reading the classics can curb those tendencies toward monotony and the destruction of language.

About the Guest Author: William is a freelance writer for numerous publications, both online and in print, in article form and in blog form. He writes on numerous subjects, including pop culture, history and even car insurance. 

Mockingjay? Read It. Adored It. Declared It the Best of the Trilogy.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If I ever hear someone say that a female novelist can't write a war story, I am going to chuck this book at his or her head. So much pain and passion generated by the folly of war and nation-building is contained in its too-brief 390 pages, Mockingjay is as good an introduction to the grim paradox of war as Slaughterhouse-Five was a generation ago. Yes, it's even darker than the first two books (already quite dark), and yes, young people should read it anyway. Parts of it make the reader yell out, "What?!" but that's precisely the point. Katniss learns to question everything, and so must we. Brava to you, Ms. Collins, for even though a piece of my psyche has been vicariously wounded, I see the reason and the hope behind it. 

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Mockingjay is the best book in the Hunger Games trilogy. It's the best-written, the darkest, the scariest and the most true. Now excuse me while I grieve over the death of two particularly beloved fictional characters. 

Last night, I watched the Person of Interest rerun. It was the episode that introduced the hacker known as Root (dis bitch!!), and it involved a stakeout. I read Mockingjay for a while afterward. Then I went to bed and dreamed about a stakeout conducted by members of PETA, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. You know, the ones who got Taraji P. Henson to pose naked to protest fur fashions - although, in all honesty, Ms. Henson seems to rather enjoy posing naked.

It took me a while to figure out that I dreamed about PETA because I was reading about Peeta Mellark. 

The blog Books and Movies discussed who should play Finnick Odair in Catching Fire recently. I don't have much of an opinion about that - I haven't even seen the Hunger Games movie yet. At this point I care much more about the books than the movies. (P.S. I'm utterly terrified at the idea of a Fifty Shades of Grey movie - I lean toward rooting for Michael Fassbender to get the role, but I also know no actor will ever measure up to my image of Christian Grey.) I don't really like any of the author's, Carrie K.'s, choices. 

I do, however, completely agree with the YouTube commenter who gave me the idea that Michael Emerson could play Beetee. That needs to happen.

Winter Solstice Wednesday: Mother Night

In her December meditation for BBI Media, the publisher of the magazines Witches&Pagans, Crone and SageWoman, writer/musician Lisa Wersal's winter thoughts were of the divine feminine. She writes, "Even now when I am no longer a practicing Christian, I still occasionally steal into Catholic churches to meditate in quiet candlelit alcoves dedicated to Our Lady. Several other feminine divinities also now capture my attention, and their representations grace my home mantle: Tibet’s compassionate Kwan Yin, the Hindu goddess Sarasvati, who inspires creative endeavors, and Yemaya, Brazil’s 'Mother of Pearls.' I invoke their guidance, their blessings, their healing."

This Winter Solstice month, I'd like to dedicate my Wednesdays to the goddesses associated with this time of the year.

Don't worry: WIP Wednesday will continue. If you'd like to share a blurb about a current work-in-progress, contact me at erinoriordan (at) sbcglobal (dot) net. We can do both. It's a flexible blog.

"Mother Night" is the Northern European name for the longest night of the year, according to GoddessGift.com. In Norse myth, it was on Mother Night that the great goddess Frigga, goddess of beauty, love and marriage, gave birth to her son Baldur. In ancient times, the Vikings burned candles on this night each year, then stored them away to burn again when a woman went into labor, as a blessing over the birthing process.

Baldur would eventually be killed by a dart made out of a mistletoe. Frigga, who can see the future and knew that Baldur would die, made every being on the earth promise not to hurt Baldur, but she neglected the mistletoe because she thought it was insignificant. The trickster-god Loki took advantage of Frigga's oversight and tricked Baldur's blind brother into hurling the mistletoe dart, unwittingly killing the beloved young god. Frigga's tears became the mistletoe's white berries.

Frigga's ability to see the future was related to her spinning wheel, the Wheel of Fate. By the names of Holda (Holle) and Bertha (Perchta), Frigga is associated in parts of Austria and Germany with the spinning maidens who punish lazy girls and reward industrious ones at this time of year. Generally, Holda is the kindly one, and Bertha is more frightening, but Bertha is known to give gifts of apples and nuts to young women who've been industrious at the spinning wheel. The Italians in Switzerland know her as Berta and associate her with La Befana, the benign gift-bestowing witch of Southern Italy. In Christian times, Holda and Bertha were sometimes assigned the task of guiding the souls of unbaptized children.

Sometimes Frigga (or Frigg) is differentiated from the Norse goddess Freya, but often they are thought to refer to the same being. Queen of the Valkyries, amorous Freya collects dead warriors from the battlefield, taking them to her hall to feast and joust and be her lovers. I wrote about Freya in "Black Bear Skin," a short story that appeared in Divine Matches.

The bawdy story of how Freya acquired the necklace of the Brisings, an exquisite ruby-and-amber piece, by agreeing to sexual shenanigans with the dwarves who created it has come down to us through folklore as the sweet children's story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. (We'll see if Kristen Stewart can give Snow White back her bad reputation when Snow White and the Huntsman comes out.)

Frigga/Freya gave her name to Friday. Freya also lends her name to erotic e-book publisher Freya's Bower.

That's the Winter Solstice goddess tradition in Northern Europe. Next week, we travel to India to learn more about Sarasvati, then go to Japan to meet Amaterasu.

The other reference I used is an old book called Christmas Customs and Traditions: Their History and Significance by Clement A. Miles.

P.S. Mother Night is also a 1961 novel by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. He took the title from Faust:

Faust. You call yourself a part, yet whole you're standing there.

Mephistopheles. A modest truth do I declare.
A man, the microcosmic fool, down in his soul
Is wont to think himself a whole,
But I'm part of the Part which at the first was all,
Part of the Darkness that gave birth to Light,
The haughty Light that now with Mother Night
Disputes her ancient rank and space withal,
And yet 'twill not succeed, since, strive as strive it may,
Fettered to bodies will Light stay.
It streams from bodies, it makes bodies fair,
A body hinders it upon its way,
And so, I hope, it has not long to stay
And will with bodies their destruction share.