An Offering for Mr. Bluehart
by James Wright

That was a place, when I was young,
Where two or three good friends and I
Tested the fruit against the tongue
Or threw the withered windfalls by.
The sparrows, angry in the sky,
Denounced us from a broken bough.
They limp along the wind and die.
The apples are all eaten now.

Behind the orchard, past one hill
The lean satanic owner lay
And threatened us with murder till
We stole his riches all away.
He caught us in the act one day
And damned us to the laughing bone,
And fired his gun across the gray
Autumn where now his life is done.

Sorry for him, or any man
Who lost his labored wealth to thieves,
Today I mourn him, as I can,
By leaving in their golden leaves
Some luscious apples overhead.
Now may my abstinence restore
Peace to the orchard and the dead.
We shall not nag them any more.

“An Offering for Mr. Blueheart” by James Wright from Above the River: The Complete Poems © 1990 by Anne Wright. Published by Wesleyan University Press and reprinted with permission. (buy now)

It's the birthday of comedian and actor Bob Newhart (books by this author), born in the Austin area of Chicago (1929). Newhart started out as an accountant before he began doing stand-up comedy in the 1950s. He became known for his deadpan style and slight stammer. He said: "I've been told to speed up my delivery when I perform. But if I lose the stammer, I'm just another slightly amusing accountant."

Newhart appeared on The Dean Martin Show 24 times and The Ed Sullivan Show eight times, but his big breakthrough came when his comedy album The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart won the 1960 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It was the first comedy album to make it to No. 1 on the Billboard charts, beating out Elvis Presley and The Sound of Music cast recording album. He went on to act in several television sitcoms, including The Bob Newhart Show, in which portrayed a Chicago psychologist named Robert Hartley. Newhart said: "The reason [the character] was a psychologist is [because] much of my humor comes out of reaction to what other people are saying. A psychologist is a man who listens, who is sympathetic."

In 2006, Newhart published his memoir, I Shouldn't Even Be Doing This, which was nominated for a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album.

Newhart once said: "I think you should be a child for as long as you can. I have been successful for 74 years being able to do that. Don't rush into adulthood; it isn't all that much fun."

It's the birthday of the avant-garde composer John Cage, born in Los Angeles, California (1912). He wrote pieces of music to be played on a variety of objects, including flowerpots, scrapped hoods of old cars and other pieces of junk. Then he began tinkering with a piano, shoving objects under the strings, including screws, bolts, spoons, clothespins, and even a doll's arm. He said, "Just as you go along the beach and pick up pretty shells that please you, I go into the piano and find sounds I like."

He kept adding new sounds into his compositions. His piece "Water Music" (1952) required a piano, a radio, whistles, water containers, and a deck of cards. He finally decided he wanted to explore silence, so as an experiment he entered a completely soundproof chamber at Harvard University. Instead of hearing nothing, he heard the sound of his own circulation and his nervous system. Afterward, he said, "No silence exists that is not pregnant with sound." The experience inspired him to write his most famous piece,"4'33" (1952), in which the performer was instructed to sit silently at a piano for 4 minutes, 33 seconds, to draw attention to all the sounds being made by the audience members and the world around them.

James Glaisher and Henry Tracey Coxwell broke the world record for altitude on this date in 1862. Glaisher was a British meteorologist, and he wanted to investigate what happened to water vapor at different altitudes. The country had just been through a period of extended drought, and there was much interest in studying rain in particular, and weather in general. In order to get high enough into the atmosphere, Glaisher needed to go up in a balloon. That’s where Coxwell came in. The son of a naval officer, he was an avid and accomplished balloonist as well as a scientist. He built a balloon especially for Glaisher’s project: it was 55 feet wide and 90 feet high. The men and their instruments rose steadily, but they were unprepared for what they would experience above the clouds. At an altitude of five miles, Coxwell started to feel short of breath, and Glaisher had trouble reading his instruments. At 29,000 feet, Glaisher lost consciousness from lack of oxygen, and the balloon continued to drift higher — they later estimated that it rose to 37,000 feet before Coxwell was able to release gas from the balloon and bring the balloon back to earth. Barely conscious himself, with his hands turning black from the extremely cold temperatures, he pulled the release line with his teeth.

On this day in 1957, Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road was published by Viking Press (books by this author). The Beat Generation classic was based on road trips Kerouac made with his friend Neal Cassady in the late 1940s. Kerouac started writing the novel on April 12, 1951, and finished on April 22. He taped together sheets of tracing paper to create a 120-foot-long scroll.

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