Commencement Address

by Linda Pastan

If you live on the cutting edge,
surely you’ll get cut.

If you live the simple life,
it won’t be simple.

If you sit at a desk composing words
the alphabet will mock you,

or you’ll drown in the currents
of the page.

Work hard. Be lazy.
Money will come and go

like green leaves in their season.
But don’t forget

the wise man and the fool
are blood brothers.

At the end
what matters

is the sun, the moon:
arterial red, bone white.
 

“Commencement Address” by Linda Pastan, from Insomnia. © W. W. Norton, 2015. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

It's the birthday of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (books by this author), born Mary Godwin in London, England (1797). She is famous as the author of Frankenstein (1818), which is considered the first science fiction novel ever written.

It begins: "It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. ... It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs."

It's the birthday of the journalist and humorist who said, "The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion." Molly Ivins (books by this author), born in Monterey, California (1944) and raised in Houston, Texas.

Molly Ivins once said: "I am not anti-gun. I'm pro-knife. Consider the merits of the knife. In the first place, you have to catch up with someone in order to stab him. A general substitution of knives for guns would promote physical fitness. We'd turn into a whole nation of great runners. Plus, knives don't ricochet. And people are seldom killed while cleaning their knives."

She went to Smith and to Columbia's School of Journalism and spent years covering the police beat for the Minneapolis Tribune (the first woman to do so) before moving back to Texas, the setting and subject of much of her life's writing. In a biographical blurb she wrote about herself for a website, she proclaimed, "Molly Ivins is a nationally syndicated political columnist who remains cheerful despite Texas politics. She emphasizes the more hilarious aspects of both state and national government, and consequently never has to write fiction."

Ivins especially liked to poke fun at the Texas Legislature, which she referred to as "the Lege." She gave George W. Bush the nickname "Shrub" and also referred to him as a post turtle (based on an old joke: the turtle didn't get there itself, doesn't belong there, and needs help getting out of the dilemma). She had actually known President Bush since they were teenagers in Houston. She poked fun at Democrats, too, and said about Bill Clinton: "If left to my own devices, I'd spend all my time pointing out that he's weaker than bus-station chili. But the man is so constantly subjected to such hideous and unfair abuse that I wind up standing up for him on the general principle that some fairness should be applied. Besides, no one but a fool or a Republican ever took him for a liberal." Clinton later said that Molly Ivins "was good when she praised me and painfully good when she criticized me."

She went on to write several best-selling books, including Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush — which was actually written and published in 2000, before George W. Bush had been elected to the White House. Ivins later said, "The next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please, pay attention."

Molly Ivins died of breast cancer in 2007 at the age of 62. She once wrote: "Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that."

Today is the birthday of British physicist Ernest Rutherford, born in Brightwater, New Zealand (1871).

He discovered the concept of radioactive half-life, and that atoms of one radioactive element could spontaneously turn into another. He is probably best known for developing a model of the atom, after discovering that most of the mass of an atom is concentrated in its tiny nucleus.

He said, “All science is either physics or stamp collecting.”

It was on this day in 30 B.C. that Queen Cleopatra of Egypt killed herself with a snake she had smuggled into her chamber where she was held captive by Octavian, formerly the political rival of her lover Mark Antony. Octavian had defeated Cleopatra and Antony at the Battle of Actium and had taken Cleopatra prisoner. When Cleopatra learned that Octavian planned to parade her as part of his triumphant return to Rome, she planned her own suicide. For centuries, it was assumed that the snake she used was an asp, but it is now thought that the snake was an Egyptian cobra.