In the Bus
by Grace Paley

Somewhere between Greenfield and Holyoke
snow became rain
and a child passed through me
as a person moves through mist
as the moon moves through
a dense cloud at night
as though I were cloud or mist
a child passed through me

On the highway that lies
across miles of stubble
and tobacco barns our bus speeding
speeding disordered the slanty rain
and a girl with no name      naked
wearing the last nakedness of
childhood breathed in me
                   once    no
                   once    two breaths
a sigh    she whispered    Hey you
begin again
                      Again?
again     again    you'll see
it's easy    begin again    long ago

IN THE BUS by Grace Paley from Begin Again. Farrar, Straus and Giroux © 2000. Used by permission of Union Literary, LLC. (buy now)

 It's the birthday today of painter Paul Klee, born on this day near Bern, Switzerland (1879). He went to Munich and became part of group of Expressionist artists known as Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group. He made drawings that he described as "taking a line for a walk," and he often featured blocks of color behind characteristically spare figures, spidery lines, and whimsical squiggles. He painted, etched, and drew on a wide range of materials — glass, plywood, cotton, silk, newspaper, celluloid, pieces of tablecloth, fraying burlap, and lined notebook paper.

Klee said, "Art should be like a holiday: something to give a man the opportunity to see things differently and to change his point of view."

It's the birthday of jazz musician Fletcher Henderson, born in Cuthbert, Georgia (1897). He attended Atlanta University, majoring in chemistry and mathematics, then moved to New York City to find work as a chemist. Instead, he was hired to play piano on a Hudson River boat, and several years later (1924), he formed the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra. His innovative arrangements, which emphasized the horns and left room for improvised solos between arranged passages, shaped a new sound for big band jazz. 

It’s the birthday of Methodist hymn writer Charles Wesley, born in Epworth, England (1707). He followed his brother John to Oxford, where he started out as a good student but also a fun-loving troublemaker.

He stayed in Oxford for several years, working as a tutor. John finally convinced Charles to be ordained so that he could join in on a mission to the North American colony of Georgia; but the mission was a total failure, and a depressed Charles went home after about a year, leaving John behind. He wrote in his journal that as he was leaving, he told his employer: “I have no worldly hopes. I have renounced the world. Life is bitterness to me.” The voyage home was miserable. Wesley was severely ill, and he disliked the captain, who gave away his cabin. Wesley wrote of the captain: “The first sight I had of him was upon the cabin-floor, stark naked, and dead drunk.”

Things improved for Wesley once he got home to England. In 1738, he had the religious awakening he had been waiting for. He wrote in his journal that day: “I felt a violent opposition and reluctance to believe; yet still the Spirit of God strove with my own and the evil spirit, till by degrees he chased away the darkness of my unbelief. I found myself convinced, I know not how [...] I went to bed still sensible of my own weakness, (I humbly hope to be more and more so), yet content of Christ’s protection.”

A few days later, John Wesley had a similar conversion, which he described with the famous line: “I felt my heart strangely warmed.” With their newfound conviction, the brothers were determined to bring their religion to regular people. They traveled around the countryside on horseback, preaching to coal miners at mines, to prison inmates, and to anyone who gathered in the open air to see them. En route to Georgia, the Wesley brothers had met a group of Moravians, and were inspired by their simplicity and faith. They were also amazed at how they sang together, and how during some of the worst storms at sea, when everyone else was frightened, the Moravians stayed calm and sang peacefully. That sort of group singing was not practiced in the Church of England. When Charles Wesley began writing hymns, he was not intending them to be sung in the fancy, ritualized setting of a church, but out in the open air or in a meeting house.

While John continued to travel and preach, Charles eventually settled down — his health was suffering from all the traveling, and he was very happily married, and the father of young children.

Wesley published more than 4,400 hymns during his lifetime, and left behind several thousand more. His hymns include “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing,” “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,” “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing,” and “Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown.” 

It’s the birthday of the British short-story writer Saki (books by this author), born Hector Hugh Munro in Akyab, Burma (1870). Burma — now Myanmar — was a British colony, and his father was a police officer there.

He went to good schools and then, like his father, he joined the police force in Burma. But he got a bad case of malaria, and he only lasted two years. Back at home, he decided to try his hand at journalism, and he wrote for several newspapers. He published The Rise of the Russian Empire (1900), inspired by Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; and The Westminster Alice (1902), a parody of Lewis Carroll’s work. Then he started writing short stories, and that is what we remember him for. They were usually short — fewer than 3,000 words — because he wrote them to be published in newspapers. They made fun of the stifled, upper-class Edwardian society he had been raised in. He had published many short stories and a couple of novels when he enlisted in the British army at age 46. He was killed by a German sniper in 1916, and his last words were: “Put that bloody cigarette out.”

It's the birthday of the baseball legend Ty Cobb, born in Narrows, Georgia (1886). His father was a teacher, principal, publisher, and state senator, and he had imagined that his son would follow in his footsteps, or maybe become a doctor or lawyer. He finally gave his blessing to Cobb's career choice, but he warned him: "Don't come home a failure." Three weeks before 18-year-old Cobb made his debut with the Detroit Tigers, his mother shot and killed his father outside their bedroom window, thinking he was an intruder.

Cobb was furious at the hazing he received from his teammates; he said, "I was just a mild-mannered Sunday-school boy, but those old-timers turned me into a snarling wild-cat." Cobb became one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Nothing stood in his way — legend has it that he would sit in the dugout where the other team could see him and sharpen the spikes on his shoes, then slide feet-first into each base. He was so mad when he thought the spring training field wasn't in top condition that he beat up the groundskeeper, then choked the groundskeeper's wife when she intervened. He attacked a heckler in the stands and almost killed him, and was finally hauled off the man by an umpire and a police officer. The Detroit Free Press described Cobb as "daring to the point of dementia." He still has the highest lifetime batting average of all time.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

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