Looking West from Laguna Beach at Night
by Charles Wright

I've always liked the view from my mother-in-law's house at night,
Oil rigs off Long Beach
Like floating lanterns out in the smog-dark Pacific,
Stars in the eucalyptus,
Lights of airplanes arriving from Asia, and town lights
Littered like broken glass around the bay and back up the hill.
 
In summer, dance music is borne up
On the sea winds from the hotel's beach deck far below,
"Twist and Shout," or "Begin the Beguine."
It's nice to think that somewhere someone is having a good time,
And pleasant to picture them down there
Turned out, tipsy and flushed, in their white shorts and their turquoise
       shirts.
 
Later, I like to sit and look up
At the mythic history of Western civilization,
Pinpricked and clued through the zodiac.
I'd like to be able to name them, say what's what and how who got
       where,
Curry the physics of metamorphosis and its endgame,
But I've spent my life knowing nothing.


“Looking West from Laguna Beach at Night” from NEGATIVE BLUE: SELECTED LATER POEMS by Charles Wright. Copyright © 2000 by Charles Wright. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. (buy now)

It's the birthday of singer-songwriter Roger Miller, born in Fort Worth, Texas (1936). He was raised by his aunt and uncle in Erick, Oklahoma, after his father died and his mom couldn't support her three boys during the Depression. The family never had much money, and Miller grew up picking cotton and doing other chores around the farm. Singer and actor Sheb Wooley lived in the same small Oklahoma town, and married Miller's cousin. Wooley bought Miller his first fiddle, taught him guitar chords, and encouraged Miller's own show biz dreams. Impatient for success, Miller stole a guitar when he was 17. He repented and turned himself in the next day, and enlisted in the Army to avoid serving time. He served in the Korean War and later told people, "My education was Korea, Clash of '52."

He began his songwriting career in the late 1950s. He started recording his own material a few years later. He's best known for "King of the Road" (1965), but he also had No. 1 hits with "Dang Me" (1964) and "England Swings" (1966). He said that his favorite of all his songs was "You Can't Rollerskate in a Buffalo Herd." He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1995, three years after his death.

Today is the birthday of cartoonist and author Lynda Barry (books by this author), born in Richland Center, Wisconsin (1956).

She's the creator of Ernie Pook's Comeek, a weekly strip that ran in alternative newspapers for nearly 30 years. Her friend Matt Groening was also penning a strip called Life in Hell. He would later go on to create The Simpsons. The market for Barry's comic dried up in 2008, so she moved on to other projects. Now, she sells original artwork on the Internet and travels around the country giving workshops called "Writing the Unthinkable." She markets the seminars to nonwriters: "bartenders, janitors, office workers, hairdressers, musicians and ANYONE who has given up on 'being a writer' but still wonders what it might be like to write."

Barry is also the author of several books and graphic novels, including Cruddy (2000) and The Good Times are Killing Me (2002), which was also made into a play.

It's the birthday of Antarctic explorer and author Apsley Cherry-Garrard (books by this author), born in Bedford, England (1886). He's the author of the Antarctic travelogue The Worst Journey in the World (1922). His book is about a search for the eggs of the emperor penguin in 1912. He and his two companions traveled in near total darkness and temperatures that reached negative 77.5 degrees Fahrenheit. He wrote, "Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time which has been devised."

It's the birthday of playwright Christopher Durang (books by this author), born in Montclair, New Jersey (1949). He was raised Roman Catholic, went to a high school where he was taught by monks, and thought he might become a monk himself. Instead, he became a playwright, and when he was 28 years old, he had his first big success with the play Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You (1979). He went on to write Beyond Therapy (1981), Baby with the Bathwater (1983), and Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (2012), which won the 2013 Tony Award for best play.

It's the birthday of the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov (books by this author), born in Petrovichi, Russia (1920). His family immigrated to the United States when he was three years old, and his parents opened a candy shop in Brooklyn. He spent most of his time working in the family store, and he was fascinated by the shop's newspaper stand, which sold the latest issues of popular magazines. When his father finally relented and let him read pulp fiction, Asimov started reading science fiction obsessively.

He started writing science fiction as well. He published his first story when he was 18, and published 30 more stories in the next three years. At age 21, he wrote his most famous story after a conversation with his friend and editor John Campbell. Campbell had been reading Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature, which includes the passage, "If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which has been shown!" Asimov went home and wrote the story "Nightfall" (1941), about a planet with six suns that has a sunset once every 2,049 years. It's been widely anthologized and many people still consider it the best science fiction short story ever written.

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

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