| Crickets
by Sue Owen Some summer nights you
can hear them getting all
worked up over this idea
of cheerfulness and song. Deep in the grasses where
they hide, there is a need
to be heard in the darkness,
even if their voices are so small they sound
like a door creaking on
its hinge, or the squeak
a drawer makes when it opens up at last.
It seems as if the damp
air and dew are trying
to hold their song down out of sheer gravity,
but neither dampness nor
darkness makes them stop.
In fact, the crickets like to show off their song,
to let it lift up off
the earth the way that
all notes rise to the stars, and float up through the
thick night, as if their
joy itself were the only light
we needed to follow. “Crickets” by Sue Owen from The Yellow Shoe Poets: Selected Poems 1964-1999. © Louisiana State University Press, 1999. Reprinted with permission. (buy now) It's the birthday of Jonathan Franzen (books by this author), born in Western Springs, Illinois (1959). Jonathan Franzen said: "I come from a kind of old-fashioned Midwest, and I live in a technocorporate, postironic, cool, late-late-late Eastern world. The two worlds hardly ever talk to each other, but they're completely, constantly talking to one another inside me. [...] I have my parents talking to me in my head and then other parts of myself talking back. I think this is potentially an interesting conversation." Today is the birthday of poet Ted Hughes (books by this author), born in West Riding, Yorkshire (1930). He became noteworthy as a poet in 1957 with the publication of his first collection, The Hawk in the Rain. During a time when most poets were confining themselves to quiet, domestic verses, Hughes wrote about dramatic mythological themes, and often tried to write from the point of view of animals, especially Crow, who features in several of his books. He married poet Sylvia Plath in 1956; she committed suicide in 1963. He administered her literary estate, but didn't talk about her publicly until Birthday Letters (1998), his collection of poems about Plath and their relationship. It's the birthday of actress and playwright Mae West (books by this author), born in Brooklyn, New York (1893). She became famous for her quippy innuendoes and double entendres. Some of her more notable quotes include: "A dame that knows the ropes isn't likely to get tied up." And, "Between two evils, I like to pick the one I haven't tried before." And, "I used to be Snow White, but I drifted." Today is the birthday of American soldier, politician, and folk hero David — better known as "Davy" — Crockett, born in Greene County, Tennessee (1786). He was first elected to the state legislature of Tennessee in 1821, and the U.S. House of Representatives in 1827, where he served three nonconsecutive terms in all. He was defeated in 1835 by a peg-legged lawyer named Andrew Huntsman, and gave up politics, saying, "Since you have chosen to elect a man with a timber toe to succeed me, you may all go to hell and I will go to Texas." He left the next day, and he was killed at the Battle of the Alamo the following year. Today is the birthday of German-born economist, journalist, and author Sylvia Nasar (books by this author), born in Rosenheim, Bavaria (1947). She's best known for her 1998 biography of mathematician and Nobel Prize-winning economist John Forbes Nash Jr. A Beautiful Mind (1998) tells the story of Nash's struggle with severe mental illness, and it inspired a movie of the same name, which came out in 2001. It's the birthday of journalist and author Eric Schlosser (books by this author), born in New York City (1959). He was an aspiring playwright and wrote two plays drawn from American history, and in 1994 he got his first journalism job, writing for The Atlantic Monthly. He made a name for himself with his first book, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (2002). The book, which reveals disturbing practices in the fast food, factory farming, and meatpacking industries, evolved out of a two-part article he wrote for Rolling Stone in 1998; the article prompted a flood of letters to the magazine. On this date in 1982, the first compact discs for commercial release were manufactured in Germany. CDs were originally designed to store and play back sound recordings, but later were modified to store data. The first test disc, which was pressed near Hannover, Germany, contained a recording of Richard Strauss's An Alpine Symphony, played by the Berlin Philharmonic. The first CD commercially produced at the new factory and sold on this date was ABBA's 1981 album The Visitors; the first new album to be released on CD was Billy Joel's 52nd Street, which hit the stores in Japan — alongside the new Sony CD player — on October 1. The event is known as the "Big Bang of digital audio." | 