Young and Old
by Charles Kingsley

When all the world is young, lad,
And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen;
Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad,
And every dog his day.

When all the world is old, lad,
And all the trees are brown;
And all the sport is stale, lad,
And all the wheels run down;
Creep home, and take your place there,
The spent and maimed among:
God grant you find one face there,
You loved when all was young.
 

"Young and Old" by Charles Kingsley. Public Domain. (buy now)

It's the birthday of novelist and short-story writer Jean McGarry (books by this author), born in Providence, Rhode Island (1952). She grew up in a working-class Catholic family, and when she entered Harvard she became the first person in her family to attend college. She worked as a journalist for The Pawtucket Times and the Detroit Free Press. She said: "The main thing about a newspaper is what not to say. There is a vast area that is too personal, critical, or controversial. There's probably more fiction in an obit than any other writing." She went back to graduate school and became a professor and writer. Her books include Airs of Providence (1985), The Courage of Girls (1991), Dream Date (2002), Ocean State (2010), and No Harm Done (2017).

She said, "Bad men make for more interesting stories."

It's the birthday of William Humphrey (books by this author), born in Clarksville, Texas (1924). He left Texas as a young man to try and make his way as a playwright in New York City. He bounced from job to job until he found work as a goatherd in rural New York, tending goats and chickens in return for a place to live and $25 a month. In the solitude there, he began writing stories. He hadn't graduated from college himself, but on the strength of three published stories and a good interview, he got a job teaching at Bard College. Eventually, he was able to write full-time, mostly stories and novels about life in small-town Texas, including Home from the Hill (1957), The Ordways (1965), and September Song (1992).

He said, "There is nothing on earth harder than being humorous, nothing worse when you fail."

It's the birthday of writer Amy Bloom (books by this author), born in New York City (1953). She worked with pregnant teenagers and autistic kids, and she said, "I realized that I didn't find other people's problems as boring as many people seem to." So she decided to make a living from it. First she worked as a psychotherapist, but she found herself wanting to write, and she began writing short stories. Her first collection, Come to Me (1993), got great reviews and was nominated for a National Book Award. She continued to write, and her books include Love Invents Us (1997),  Where the God of Love Hangs Out (2009), and White Houses (2018).

She said: "There are no general stories. One doesn't hear general stories as a therapist. One hears unbelievably specific, intimate, detailed stories. There is no big picture. There is only this particular moment in this particular life."

It's the birthday of novelist Richard Powers (books by this author), born in Evanston, Illinois (1957). When he was in his early 20s, he was working as a computer programmer in Boston. He spent every Saturday at the Museum of Fine Arts, where admission was free in the morning, and one day he saw a photograph from 1914 of three farm boys headed to a dance. He was so inspired that he quit his job on Monday and spent the next two years writing his first novel, Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance (1985). He thought those two years would be a break before he went back to real work, but the novel did so well that he was able to remain a full-time writer. His novels include The Gold Bug Variations (1991), Operation Wandering Soul (1993), The Echo Maker (2006), Orfeo (2014), and The Overstory (2018), which was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize.

He said, "The single most useful trick of fiction for our repair and refreshment: the defeat of time. A century of family saga and a ride up an escalator can take the same number of pages. Fiction sets any conversion rate, then changes it in a syllable."

It's the birthday of poet Carolyn Wells (books by this author), born in Rahway, New Jersey (1862). She contracted scarlet fever when she was six years old, and it left her almost completely deaf for the rest of her life. She worked as a librarian and went on to be a very prolific writer, publishing more than 170 books. She wrote crime fiction, humorous poetry, and children's books. Her books include Idle Idylls (1900), The Nonsense Anthology (1902), The Clue (1909), The Technique of the Mystery Story (1913), and an autobiography, The Rest of My Life (1937).

She wrote:
The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry;
The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy;
The books that people talk about we never can recall;
And the books that people give us, oh, they're the worst of all.

It's the birthday of Paul McCartney, born in Liverpool, England, in 1942. His father, Jim, was a cotton salesman who occasionally led "Jim Mac's Jazz Band" on the trumpet and piano. He was 15 years old when he went to a church festival, and he saw an older boy, something of a troublemaker, who was singing on stage with his skiffle band. The boy kept getting the words wrong and making up new lyrics as he went along. This was John Lennon, and Paul got a chance to impress him after the show with his mastery of "Twenty Flight Rock." He later recalled: "I also knocked around on the backstage piano and that would have been 'A Whole Lot of Shakin'' by Jerry Lee. That's when I remember John leaning over, contributing a deft right hand in the upper octaves and surprising me with his beery breath. It's not that I was shocked, it's just that I remember this particular detail." Lennon later invited McCartney to join his band, the Quarrymen, and one of music's great partnerships was born.

On this day in 1812, Congress declared war on Great Britain. The War of 1812, as it came to be known, was triggered in part by the Napoleonic Wars between Britain and France. Neither of the two squabbling nations wanted the United States to trade with its rival; Britain went a step further by seizing U.S. citizens off of American ships and impressing them into service with the Royal Navy. This didn't sit well with Americans, who were irritated with the British for not withdrawing from territory around the Great Lakes, and for supporting the Indians in conflicts with settlers in the northeastern United States. President Jefferson first tried to put pressure on Great Britain through its pocketbook, with trade embargoes; these ended up devastating the American shipping economy without doing much to hurt either Britain or France. Finally, in 1812, President Madison signed a Declaration of War, which was narrowly approved by Congress. Unknown to the United States, Britain had agreed to repeal the offending trade orders two days before, but the news didn't reach our shores for nearly a month.