| This is my letter to the World...
by Emily Dickinson This is my letter to the World
That never wrote to Me—
The simple News that Nature told—
With tender Majesty Her Message is committed
To Hands I cannot see—
For love of Her—Sweet—countrymen—
Judge tenderly—of Me “This is my letter to the World...” by Emily Dickinson. Public domain. (buy now)
Dr. Michael Shadid established the first cooperatively owned and operated hospital in the United States on this date in 1931. Shadid had been born in a mountain village in Lebanon, and knew firsthand how hard it was for the poor to get good health care. He was one of 12 kids, and only three of them survived infancy. The only medical care that the village received was the occasional visit from a Beirut doctor. Shadid was inspired to get medical training himself. He went to New York when he was 16, working as a peddler to save money for his education. Ten years later, after earning his medical degree at Washington University in Saint Louis, Shadid settled in Elk City, Oklahoma. As medical technology advanced, the cost of medical care rose, and few people felt the hardship more than Oklahoma farmers. “There must exist some unknown germ, some filterable virus unknown to man, that bites certain persons in this world and turns them into reformers,” Shadid later wrote. “I’m willing to admit that I must have been bitten early and hard.” Using as his model the established Oklahoma tradition of farm cooperatives, Shadid envisioned a cooperative hospital that would be supported by the farmers’ annual membership fees. Doctors would be paid a salary out of those fees, and in return they would provide basic preventive care that poor farmers were not usually able to afford. But other local doctors were worried about losing their business. They wrote in to the newspapers accusing Shadid of fraud, and calling him a foreigner who was trying to tell Americans how to manage their health care system, even though by now he’d been in the country for 30 years. He almost lost his medical license for the unethical solicitation of patients. Doctors were reluctant to work for the Community Hospital if it meant defying the medical establishment. But the farmers who relied on the hospital rallied behind Shadid. “We think more of the few dollars invested in the Community Hospital than any investment we have ever made,” said one farmer. “I think this bunch fighting [Shadid] should be sat down so hard it would jar their ancestors for four generations.”
It’s the birthday of the first man ever to print a book in English, William Caxton, born in Kent, England (1422). He was a wealthy trader and merchant, and also a part-time linguist and translator. He was living in Cologne, Germany, when he translated a book about the history of Troy. The printing press had been invented about 25 years earlier, but it had only recently started to spread beyond Germany. Caxton realized that the new technology of printing would make the job of distributing his book a lot easier. So instead of copying the book by hand, he printed The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye in 1475. He eventually went back to England, where he established the first English printing press. He printed all the available English literature, including Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (c. 1478). For a long time, people in England called printed books Caxtons.
It’s the birthday of director Alfred Hitchcock, born in London (1899). His father was a greengrocer, and a strict man. Once, when the five-year-old Alfred misbehaved, his father sent him to the police station and they locked him in a cell for a few minutes to teach him a lesson. Hitchcock was so terrified that he was afraid of the police for the rest of his life, and he rarely drove a car so that he could not be pulled over. Hitchcock directed great suspense and horror films, including Rebecca (1940), Notorious (1946), Rope (1948), Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), and The Birds (1963). His life off the set seems to have been relatively quiet and uneventful. In 1926, he married Alma Reville, his assistant. They had a close working relationship — Alma went through every detail of each of her husband’s films, pointing out whenever the dialogue sounded slightly wrong, or there was a slight flaw in the filming. Hitchcock was rumored to fall for many of his blond leading ladies, despite a lack of affection in return; and he often remarked to interviewers and friends that he was celibate, or impotent, or both. Whatever his married life was like, he and Alma were devoted enough to each other that they remained married until Hitchcock’s death more than 50 years later. They enjoyed going to art galleries and dining out. Hitchcock said, “The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.”
It’s the birthday of American sharpshooter Annie Oakley (1860), born Phoebe Ann Mosey in a log cabin just north of what is now Willowdell, in Darke County, Ohio. Her parents were Quakers from Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Oakley had been trapping animals since she was seven and was shooting and hunting animals to support her family by the time she was eight. She sold her game to local shopkeepers, who shipped it to cities like Cincinnati. Oakley’s shooting prowess became well known in Darke County and greater Ohio. On Thanksgiving Day of 1875, the Baughman & Butler shooting act came to Cincinnati. Frank Butler, a charming Irish immigrant, bet $100 that no local could best him in a shooting match. Local shopkeepers presented Annie Oakley. Frank Butler said: “I almost dropped dead when a slim girl in a short dress stepped out to the mark with me. I was a beaten man the moment she appeared.” Oakley won and she married Butler a year later. For more than 50 years, Annie Oakley and Frank Butler traveled the world, wowing audiences with Oakley’s marksmanship. From 30 paces, she could split a playing card held edge-on, hit dimes tossed into the air, and split cigarettes from between her husband’s lips. When she joined Buffalo Bill’s Wild West traveling show (1885), she was the star attraction, earning $100 a week, more than any man in the troupe. Buffalo Bill’s troupe crossed the United States and did several European tours. Oakley met King Umberto of Italy and the Queen of England, who told her, “You are a very clever little girl.” Lakota leader Sitting Bull nicknamed her “Little Miss Sure Shot.” Oakley campaigned for women’s rights and even volunteered to train 50 women sharpshooters for the Spanish Civil War and World War I, though she was turned down both times. She said, “I would like to see every woman know how to handle guns as naturally as they handle babies.” Thomas Edison filmed Oakley and the Buffalo Bill troupe at his studio in West Orange, New Jersey, turning the film into nickelodeons. People paid five cents apiece to see Annie Oakley. She was the most famous woman in the world for a time. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® | 
