| Excerpts from "How to be Perfect"
by Ron Padgett Get some sleep. Eat an orange every morning. Be friendly. It will help make you happy. Hope for everything. Expect nothing. Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room
before you save the world. Then save the world.
Be nice to people before they have a chance to behave badly. Don't stay angry about anything for more than a week, but don't
forget what made you angry. Hold your anger out at arm's length
and look at it, as if it were a glass ball. Then add it to your glass
ball collection. Wear comfortable shoes. Do not spend too much time with large groups of people. Plan your day so you never have to rush. Show your appreciation to people who do things for you, even if
you have paid them, even if they do favors you don't want. After dinner, wash the dishes. Calm down. Don't expect your children to love you, so they can, if they want
to. Don't be too self-critical or too self-congratulatory. Don't think that progress exists. It doesn't. Imagine what you would like to see happen, and then don't do
anything to make it impossible. Forgive your country every once in a while. If that is not
possible, go to another one. If you feel tired, rest. Don't be depressed about growing older. It will make you feel
even older. Which is depressing. Do one thing at a time. If you burn your finger, put ice on it immediately. If you bang
your finger with a hammer, hold your hand in the air for 20
minutes. you will be surprised by the curative powers of ice and
gravity. Do not inhale smoke. Take a deep breath. Do not smart off to a policeman. Be good. Be honest with yourself, diplomatic with others. Do not go crazy a lot. It's a waste of time. Drink plenty of water. When asked what you would like to
drink, say, "Water, please." Take out the trash. Love life. Use exact change. When there's shooting in the street, don't go near the window. Ron Padgett, excerpts from "How to be Perfect” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2002 by Ron Padgett. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.coffeehousepress.org. (buy now)
The first large field trial of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine began on this date in 1954. Dr. Jonas Salk was leading the Virus Research Lab at the University of Pittsburgh when the March of Dimes approached him in 1947. They asked him to lead efforts to research and develop an effective vaccine. He discovered there were about 125 different strains of the polio virus; these could be grouped into three basic types. A vaccine needed to provide immunity to all three types to be considered effective. His chief competitor, Albert Sabin, was working on a live-virus form of the vaccine; Sabin claimed Salk’s vaccine wasn’t strong enough and called him “a mere kitchen chemist.” But Sabin’s vaccine took a long time to develop, and was still unstable, so the March of Dimes backed Salk’s method instead. Salk was so confident in the safety of his vaccine that he used himself and his children as early test subjects. All of them, including several other adult volunteers, produced antibodies to the virus without contracting polio. By this time, there was tremendous pressure to find an effective way to control the disease: 1952 saw the worst outbreak in America’s history, with nearly 60,000 cases reported; more than 3,000 people died and more than 21,000 were left disabled. Salk knew that he needed to begin testing his vaccine on a large scale, and quickly. He set up a makeshift lab in the gymnasium of Arsenal Elementary School in Pittsburgh, and personally administered his vaccine to 137 schoolkids. A month later, he announced that the first trial was a success, and he soon expanded his efforts across the country. By the time the vaccine was announced to be safe and effective in 1955, 1.8 million schoolchildren had received the vaccine. In 1952, 60,000 people contracted polio in the United States alone; 60 years later, in 2012, polio cases numbered only 223 in the entire world.
It’s the birthday of scholar and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois (books by this author), born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts (1868). Du Bois was the first African-American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He decided to write about racism and the African-American experience. He published a landmark book, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1899). The book popularized Du Bois’s phrase “the talented tenth,” a term describing the likelihood of one in 10 black men becoming leaders of their race. He also wrote The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of essays (1903). In 1905, Du Bois met with 30 other African-American scholars, artists, and activists in Canada, near Niagara Falls, to discuss the challenges that people of color faced. The men had to meet in Canada because blacks were not allowed rooms at white-run U.S. hotels. It took a few years, but from this first meeting sprang the formation of the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (1909), which still exists today to fight racism and bridge cultural divides.
It was on this day in 1940 that Woody Guthrie (works by this artist) wrote the lyrics to “This Land Is Your Land” — now one of America’s most famous folk songs. The melody is to an old Baptist hymn. Guthrie wrote the song in response to the grandiose “God Bless America,” written by Irving Berlin and sung by Kate Smith. Guthrie didn’t think that the anthem represented his own or many other Americans’ experience with America. So he wrote a folk song as a response to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America,” a song that was often accompanied by an orchestra. At first, Guthrie titled his own song “God Blessed America” — past tense. Later, he changed the title to “This Land Is Your Land,” which is the first line of the song. Although Guthrie wrote the words to the song in his notebook on this day in 1940, he didn’t perform it until 1944, and it was several years more still before he published it in a book of mimeographed folk songs. The song really took off in the 1960s. Bob Dylan did a famous version, and it became a popular anthem during the Civil Rights movement.
It’s the birthday of William L. Shirer (books by this author), born in Chicago, Illinois (1904). After graduating from college, he expected to spend two months in Europe. He stayed for more than 20 years and became one of America’s most outstanding war correspondents. He spent much of his early career in Vienna, Berlin, and Prague, reporting on the Nazis’ rise to power. After the war, Shirer was labeled a communist sympathizer and couldn’t find work as a journalist. In desperation to make a living, he began The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (1961). It was the first historical overview of Nazi Germany for general readers, and it became one of the best-selling nonfiction books of the decade. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® | 
