Going to Heaven
by Emily Dickinson

Going to heaven!
I don't know when,
Pray do not ask me how,--
Indeed, I'm too astonished
To think of answering you!
Going to heaven!--
How dim it sounds!
And yet it will be done
As sure as flocks go home at night
Unto the shepherd's arm!

Perhaps you're going too!
Who knows?
If you should get there first,
Save just a little place for me
Close to the two I lost!
The smallest "robe" will fit me,
And just a bit of "crown";
For you know we do not mind our dress
When we are going home.

I'm glad I don't believe it,
For it would stop my breath,
And I'd like to look a little more
At such a curious earth!
I am glad they did believe it
Whom I have never found
Since the mighty autumn afternoon
I left them in the ground.


"Going to Heaven" by Emily Dickinson. Public domain. (buy now)

On this day in 1802 Ludwig van Beethoven published the "Moonlight" Sonata. Its official title is Sonata No. 14 in C Sharp Minor, Opus 27, No. 2. He was never happy about the sonata's popularity. He said, "Surely I've written better things."

On this day in 1873, Congress enacted the Comstock Law making it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" materials (including books) through the U.S. mail system. It was under the Comstock Law that James Joyce's Ulysses was barred from the mail until the court finally determined that it was not obscene.

It's the birthday of the poet James Merrill (books by this author), born in New York City (1926). His father was the founder of Merrill Lynch. At age eight James was already writing a poem a day. He had a large trust fund so he never had to worry about a job. He had time to write and he traveled widely. He used a Ouija Board to write his book-length poem Divine Comedies (1976), which won the Pulitzer Prize.

It was on this day in 1875 that the opera Carmen appeared on stage for the first time at the Opéra-Comique in France. Georges Bizet died of a heart attack just three months after the opera's debut. He was worn out from rehearsals. Carmen is still the most popular French opera of the 19th century.

It's the birthday of This American Life host Ira Glass (books by this author), born in Baltimore (1959), who started working in radio, by his own account, "totally by accident." He was 19, had just finished his freshman year of college, and was looking for a summer job with an ad agency or a TV station. He searched all over Baltimore and couldn't find anything, but someone at a rock 'n' roll station knew someone at NPR's headquarters in Washington and gave Ira a phone number and said, "They're kind of a new organization, so call."

He managed to talk his way into an internship despite the fact he'd never once listened to public radio. He started out as a tape cutter and as a desk assistant, graduated from Brown University, and continued working for public radio as a newscast writer, editor, producer of All Things Considered, reporter, and substitute host.

With each story he did he would incorporate specific elements that would either play up his strengths or make him work on improving his weaknesses. He was a really good tape cutter and he'd always put in a least one or two tape-to-tape transitions, where the story would go from one quote to the next without any intervening narration. He didn't like the way he sounded on tape, and he invented a whole series of stories where he interviewed people and then cut himself out of the tape completely.

As he went on he found that the most interesting stuff came out when the interviewer was chatting, seemingly casually, with the interviewee. Now he says, "If I had to give just one piece of advice to beginning reporters about the single-fastest way they could improve their stories, it'd be to get themselves into the quotes. Asking tough questions. Cajoling the interviewee. Joking with the interviewee. Thinking out loud."

In 1995 he launched This American Life. In its first seasons he managed to convince a lot of otherwise reluctant stations to carry his show because if they did, they could also use the entertaining pledge-drive skits that he created and produced, which always brought in lots of money for stations.

With This American Life he's done stories about babies switched at birth, about frenemies, and poultry, and mind games, and guns, and infidelity, and the devil, and highway rest stops, and credit default swaps.

Ira Glass said in an interview:

"It's hard to make something that's interesting. It's really, really hard. ... Basically, anything that anyone makes. ... It's like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that's written or anything that's created wants to be mediocre. The natural state of all writing is mediocrity. It's all tending toward mediocrity in the same way that all atoms are sort of dissipating out toward the expanse of the universe. ... So what it takes to make anything more than mediocre is such an act of will. ... That feels exactly the same now as it did the first week of the show."

He's the editor of an anthology called The New Kings of Nonfiction (2007).

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

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