| A little Madness in the Spring
by Emily Dickinson A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown— Who ponders this tremendous scene—
This whole Experiment of Green—
As if it were his own! “A little Madness in the Spring...” by Emily Dickinson. Public domain. (buy now)
It's the birthday of poet Ted Kooser (books by this author), born in Ames, Iowa (1939). He said, "I had a wonderfully happy childhood," and, "All this business about artists having to have terrible childhoods doesn't play with me." He started writing poetry seriously as a teenager. He said: "I was desperately interested in being interesting. Poetry seemed a way of being different." His first poem was published because his friends sent one of his poems to a teen magazine behind his back. He wanted to be a writer, but he flunked out of graduate school. So he took the first job he was offered, at a life insurance company, and he worked there for 35 years. He said: "I believe that writers write for perceived communities, and that if you are a lifelong professor of English, it's quite likely that you will write poems that your colleagues would like; that is, poems that will engage that community. I worked every day with people who didn't read poetry, who hadn't read it since they were in high school, and I wanted to write for them." Every morning, he got up at 4:30, made a pot of coffee, and wrote until 7. Then he put on his suit and tie and went to work. By the time he retired in 1999, Kooser had published seven books of poetry, including Not Coming to Be Barked At (1976), One World at a Time (1985), and Weather Central (1994). He resigned himself to being a relatively unknown poet, but he continued to write every morning. Then, in 2004, he got a phone call informing him that he had been chosen as poet laureate of the United States. He said: "I was so staggered I could barely respond. The next day, I backed the car out of the garage and tore the rearview mirror off the driver's side." He turns 81 today. His latest collection is Kindest Regards: New and Selected Poems (2018), published by Copper Canyon Press.
It's the birthday of writer Howard R. Garis (books by this author), born in Binghamton, New York (1873). His most famous character is Uncle Wiggily, a gentlemanly old rabbit who always wears a suit and a silk top hat. Garis was a reporter for the Newark Evening News and he wrote hundreds of children's books, many of them as a ghostwriter. He published his first Uncle Wiggily story in a newspaper in 1910, and it was so popular that he ended up publishing an Uncle Wiggily story six days a week for more than 30 years. By the time he retired, he had written more than 10,000 stories about the rabbit. He wrote, "Half the fun of nearly everything, you know, is thinking about it beforehand, or afterward."
It's the birthday of the "First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald, born in Newport News, Virginia in 1917. She loved to sing and dance as a child and when she was 16 she entered a contest at the Apollo Theater. She had a dance routine worked out and walked on stage wearing ragged clothes and men's boots, but she froze up. Later she said, "I got out there and I saw all the people and I just lost my nerve. And the man said, 'well, you're out here, do something!' So I tried to sing." She won the contest and soon became a celebrity across all of New York. She joined Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington as the only performers who could draw audiences at the Apollo from south of 125th Street. Ella Fitzgerald said, "The only thing better than singing is more singing."
It's the 71st birthday of the poet and journalist James Fenton (books by this author), born in Lincoln, England (1949). His poetry collections include Put Thou Thy Tears Into My Bottle (1969); A German Requiem (1981); Dead Soldiers (1981); and Yellow Tulips (2012). Some of his journalism has been collected in All the Wrong Places: Adrift in the Politics of Asia (1989). James Fenton said: "The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mineshaft. You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation."
It's the anniversary of the 1719 publication of Daniel Defoe's novel The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (books by this author). It is the story of a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote island before he is rescued, and it is considered one of the first English novels. When it was published, Defoe was 59 years old, and it was his first novel. He published several minor pamphlets, including one that satirized high-church Anglicans, and he was arrested for seditious libel. After that, Defoe shamelessly wrote convincing pamphlets advocating the views of whoever was in power and wanted to pay him. He never published under his own name. But Robinson Crusoe was a phenomenal best-seller, going through four editions in its first year alone. The book's success did not bring Defoe lasting financial security, and at the age of 70, he died poor in a run-down boardinghouse, probably trying to avoid a debt collector.
And on this day in 2003, the Human Genome Project announced that it had finished identifying and mapping the genes in human DNA. The project began in 1989; it's the largest single investigation in modern science, and it was completed ahead of schedule and under budget. A parallel project in the private sector, run by Craig Venter and his company Celera Genomics, was undertaken in 1998. The company intended to patent 100 to 300 genes, but President Clinton declared in 2000 that the genome sequences could not be patented, and that the research should be given freely to the scientific community. Celera's stock plummeted and the biotechnology sector was sent reeling. The project yielded some surprising findings. Scientists expected to find that humans had more than 100,000 genes; it turns out we have only around 30,000 — about the same as mice. The genes themselves are mostly similar to mice and other mammals too, with only a few exceptions. The gene sequence is published on the Internet and available to the public. The next phase of the research, the International HapMap Project, aims to establish a list of common genetic variants, since everyone's DNA — with the exception of identical twins and clones — is unique to them. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® | 
