To Daffodils
by Robert Herrick

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer's rain;
Or as the pearls of morning's dew,
Ne'er to be found again.

"To Daffodils" by Robert Herrick. Public Domain. (buy now)

On this day in 1881 Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross.

When Clara was only 10, her brother David fell off the roof of the family barn. At first he seemed fine, but the next day he developed a headache and fever. The doctor diagnosed "too much blood" and prescribed the application of leeches to help draw out the extra blood. Clara took over as her brother's nurse and spent two years at his bedside applying leeches (though David did not get any better until he tried an innovative "steam therapy" several years later).

As a girl Clara was shy and had a stutter and her worried mother asked a phrenologist (phrenologists, who were fairly common in the 1800s, examined the bumps on a person's skull as a way to determine their personality traits) to help her. The phrenologist said that she was shy and retiring and that the solution to her problem was to become a schoolteacher. Barton did not want to teach but she began teaching in 1839 at the age of 18. She overcame her shyness, became a sought-after teacher, and believed in the value of her work. She once said, "I may sometimes be willing to teach for nothing, but if paid at all, I shall never do a man's work for less than a man's pay."

Several men proposed to Barton but she remained single her whole life, at one point telling her nephew that on the whole she felt that she had been more useful to the world by being free from matrimonial ties.

In 1854 she gave up teaching and took a job in the United States Patent Office in Washington, D.C. She worked hard, got promoted, and within a year was making a salary equal to the men in the office (which angered the men). She left Washington for three years when the administration changed but she returned in the early 1860s and resumed her job in the Patent Office. By 1861 war was breaking out, and when supporters of the Confederacy attacked Union soldiers in Washington, D.C., Clara helped nurse wounded soldiers in the same way she had nursed her brother when they were young.

During one of the first major engagements of the war, the Battle of Bull Run, the Union suffered a staggering defeat and as Clara read reports of the battle she realized that the Union Army had not seriously considered or provided for wounded soldiers. She began to ride along in ambulances, providing supplies and comfort to wounded soldiers on the frontlines.

After the war she traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, where she learned about the International Red Cross and its mission to be a neutral organization that helped wounded soldiers. When Barton returned to the United States she pressed for the creation of a national branch of the Red Cross. But many people thought there would never again be a war as monumental and devastating as the Civil War and didn't see the need for the Red Cross. Barton finally convinced the Arthur administration that the Red Cross could be used in other crises.

The American Red Cross was officially incorporated on this day, with Barton as its president.

Clara Barton said, "I may be compelled to face danger, but never fear it, and while our soldiers can stand and fight, I can stand and feed and nurse them,” and she said, "The door that nobody else will go in at, seems always to swing open widely for me."

She also said, "Everybody's business is nobody's business, and nobody's business is my business."

 It is the birthday of one of the most frequently quoted writers in the English language: Alexander Pope (books by this author), born in London in 1688. He was forbidden from attending school because he was Catholic, but that didn't slow him down. An aunt taught him to read and he taught himself the rest, learning French, Italian, Latin and Greek on his own. He is best known for his translations of Homer. He's also credited with creating the English-style garden that favored natural, free-flowing lines over rigid, geometric landscaping. Pope kept an English-style garden at his villa in Twickenham, which he purchased with money from his translations of Homer.

Pope said, "Words are like leaves and where they most abound / Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found,” and he said:
"Sir, I admit your
general rule,
That every poet is a fool;
But you yourself may serve to show it,
That every fool is not a poet."

On this day in 1932, Amelia Earhart became the second person and first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, traveling from Newfoundland to Northern Ireland in 21 hours.

It's the birthday of jazz pianist and bandleader Thomas "Fats" Waller, born in New York City (1904). A minister's son, Waller played the organ and sang in the choir of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem. He later began playing organ for movie theaters and vaudeville shows. Waller wrote the score for the musical Hot Chocolates (1929), which was produced on Broadway. He went on to make more than 500 recordings and compose 450 songs.

It was on this day in 1951 that the Ninth Street Show opened in New York, the first art exhibition of the Abstract Expressionists. The poster advertising the show was designed by Franz Kline, who usually painted large black brushstrokes on white backgrounds. It listed the names of the 61 artists who were going to be in the show, and most of the poster was taken up by the words "9th St." in his typical style and, below it, "Exhibition of paintings and sculpture."

Ninth Street referred to an old store that the artists were leasing at 60 East Ninth Street in Manhattan. Kline, Conrad Marca-Relli, and John Ferren all had studios on the same street. They teamed up with the art dealer Leo Castelli, and they rented out the store, a vacant barber shop, for $70 a month. Castelli said, "It took about three days to install the show because artists came in and complained about the placement of their works. The show had a big sign on canvas which covered the whole front of the building. The opening was on a warm May day. There was a great crowd."

Each of the 61 artists had one piece in the exhibit. The artists included Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Fairfield Porter, Alfred Leslie, Robert Rauschenberg, and Robert Motherwell. Some of the artists were veterans of World War II and in general they were responding to the post-war climate of the United States. The abstract expressionists built on the spontaneity of the expressionists, emphasizing the element of chance in art, which they combined with abstract, anti-figurative forms, focusing instead on communicating emotion. Abstract expressionism was the first art movement originating in America that was taken up by artists outside the country and influenced the international art community.

The New York abstract expressionists are often referred to as the New York School, a school that includes some corresponding poets like John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and Frank O'Hara. Ashbery said:

"I have probably been influenced, more or less unconsciously I suppose, by the modern art that I have looked at [...] the abstract expressionist idea that the work is a sort of record of its own coming-into-existence [...] When I was fresh out of college, abstract expressionism was the most exciting thing in the arts [...] poetry seemed quite conventional in comparison. I guess it still is, in a way. One can accept a Picasso woman with two noses, but an equivalent attempt in poetry baffles the audience."

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

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