The Accordion by Connie Wanek for Hannah It was the one tangible you brought home from the city, an armful of instrument, bellows and keys and buttons and a smell of antique lubrication, and a sound that poured undiminished through solid walls. You sat in your chair with its straps around your shoulders teaching yourself to play, determined to do different things differently in the tradition of your people, mixed-breeds from a dozen lands. You sat as at a dance with your partner on your lap, but it was also a baby you were coaxing to speak. I carried you that same way long ago, your infant head under my chin, your chest against my chest, my arms around you, my little marsupial. I have photos of us like that. Mother and child. And more…I can feel it physically…my arms still ache… it’s like phantom pain after an amputation, phantoms being real. You left it here with us, the accordion, debating whether to sell it, or to indulge yourself by retaining such a large artifact, as it troubled no one tucked back in your closet in its battered, leather-covered case, though neither was it useful. Except it came to us at such a time: you sat alone with it for hours before your open curtains, the music book awash in winter light, hesitations, repetitions, small masteries, and beyond you snow passed through the sieve of the pine boughs with the delicacy of grace notes. Connie Wanek, “The Accordion” from On Speaking Terms. Copyright © 2010 by Connie Wanek. Used by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org. (buy now) George Washington signed the Residence Act, establishing the site of the U.S. capital on the east bank of the Potomac River on this date in 1790. The issue had been a matter of much Congressional debate for the past few years. Washington hired a French architect and city planner named Pierre L'Enfant to design this new city. L'Enfant studied the maps of several European cities and chose what he thought were the best elements of each. He figured out where all the important government buildings would go, connected them with diagonal-running avenues, and then overlaid a grid of streets. The layout resulted in lots of little triangular spaces, which were perfect for statues and monuments. But L'Enfant grew too ambitious, and Washington fired him in 1792. The federal government began moving into Washington, D.C., in 1800, but George Washington, who died in 1799, never lived in the city that bore his name. John Adams was the first president to occupy the White House. J.D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye was published on this date in 1951 (books by this author). The novel begins, "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." Salinger had thought about Holden Caulfield for years. He carried six Caulfield stories with him when he went off to fight in World War II. The stories were with Salinger on the beach at Normandy and in the hours he spent with Ernest Hemingway in Paris. By the time Salinger began to assemble the novel The Catcher in the Rye, he had nine stories about Holden and his family. When he finished the manuscript, Salinger sent it to publisher Robert Giroux at Harcourt, Brace. Giroux was impressed with the book, and was pleased to be its editor, but he never thought it would be a best-seller. Giroux sent the book to his boss, Eugene Reynal. Reynal didn't really get it, and sent it to a textbook editor for his opinion, since it was about a prep-school boy. The textbook editor didn't like it, so Harcourt, Brace would not publish it. Rival house Little, Brown picked it up right away, and Robert Giroux quit his job and went to work for Farrar, Strauss instead. Reviewers called the book "brilliant," "funny," and "meaningful." Salinger couldn't cope with the amount of publicity and celebrity the book gave him. He moved to a hilltop home in New Hampshire and lived the rest of his life in seclusion. Many directors approached Salinger over the years, hoping to obtain the movie rights, and Salinger turned them all down. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® |