My Mother Breaks Her Ankle
by Joyce Sutphen

I was there when she broke her wrist
in Paris one night as we were walking.
I had just pointed out the art deco design

on one of the doorways across the street,
so I have always felt responsible because
she was looking up instead of down

where the pavement gave way to tree roots.
I thought she'd disappeared, but right away
she was up, embarrassed that she'd fallen,

saying that her wrist hurt a little, but we should
just carry on to someplace for dinner,
but I could tell—from the way she held her arm

like a bird with a broken wing—that we had
better get back to the flat and pack for home
which we did, and she always had a bump

on her wrist and liked to tell her friends
how that happened in Paris, so when I hear
she's broken her ankle on the ice by the garage,

I think, Why not Rome, Mom, why not Istanbul?
 

“My Mother Breaks Her Ankle” Reproduced from Carrying Water to the Field: New and Selected Poems by Joyce Sutphen by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 2016 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. (buy now)

It's the day Longacre Square in Midtown Manhattan was renamed Times Square (1904) after a new building that went up to house The New York Times.

It was a neighborhood of seedy hotel rooms and dubious entertainment. But then a subway stop showed up, and then the theaters, and then the publisher of The New York Times decided to drop an electric ball there every New Year's Eve. It became a hot spot for society and a barometer for how the country was feeling.

By the 1960s, it had gone back to being the home of prostitutes and drug dealers, as in the movies Midnight Cowboy and Taxi Driver. During the 1990s, Mayor Giuliani wanted it cleaned up for tourists.

The first sign that went up with the words "Times Square" in it said: "Times Square Branch of the Mechanics and Traders' Bank." Today, Times Square tenants must display bright signs — it is required by a zoning ordinance.

On this date in 1820, exactly 200 years ago, one of the world's most celebrated pieces of art was discovered by a farmer on the Greek island of Melos — the marble statue of Venus de Milo. France paid 1,000 francs for her — about the price of a herd of goats.

Her arms were missing, but her head and beautiful face were present, and her nude torso too, with drapery sliding down the rest. It's a pose that has led art historians to believe the anonymous woman is a depiction of Venus/Aphrodite, goddess of love, beauty, and fertility.

It's the birthday of novelist Barbara Kingsolver (books by this author), born in Annapolis, Maryland (1955). She is the writer of many novels, stories, and essays, and is known for her use of extensive research.

She grew up in rural Kentucky, where her dad was the county doctor, but the family moved to the Congo for a year so he could work as a medical missionary. She was tall and thin and bookish, and she wrote in a journal, and she was good at piano. She got a scholarship to DePauw University for piano, but switched her major to biology because it seemed more lucrative. She moved to Tucson and wrote a master's thesis on termite behavior, and then ended up in technical writing.

Always she wrote stories on her own. When she developed insomnia, she took her typewriter into the closet so she wouldn't wake her husband. She wrote a novel about a woman who ends up with custody of a young Cherokee girl named Turtle. That novel was The Bean Trees (1988). She wrote two more novels, Animal Dreams (1990) and Pigs in Heaven (1993), as well as books of essays and short stories.

For years, she had a folder on her desk that she called the "damn Africa file." Eventually, she used it to write The Poisonwood Bible (1998). It was a huge best-seller, selling more than 2 million copies, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

Barbara Kingsolver said: "The best research gets your fingers dusty and your shoes dirty, especially because a novel is made of details. I had to know what a place smelled like, what it sounded like. ... There's no substitute for that. I've been steeped in evidence-based truth."

And she said, "What a writer can do, what a fiction writer or a poet or an essay writer can do, is re-engage people with their own humanity. Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger."

It's the birthday of the investigative journalist who broke the story of the My Lai Massacre to the American public: Seymour Hersh (books by this author), born in Chicago (1937).

He worked as a reporter for various wire services, including the Associated Press, and eventually as a Pentagon correspondent. When he wrote an extensive piece on chemical and biological warfare that the AP cut to just a fraction of its original size, he quit to go freelance.

He got a tip that a lieutenant, William Calley, was being court-martialed for killing innocent civilians in Vietnam. Hersh drove from base to base, waking people up to ask them where Calley was, pulling all his Pentagon strings, until he found Calley and Calley told him what happened.

Life and Look magazines refused the story, but he did finally sell it. When the story hit, it made a huge impact on the public perception of the Vietnam War, and Hersh won the Pulitzer Prize.

Since 1993, he has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker, where in 2004 he exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. He continues to stir the pot and he published his memoir, Reporter, in 2019.

When asked what the secret is to being an investigative reporter, Seymour Hersh once said: "I don't make deals, I don't party an d drink with sources, and I don't play a game of leaks. I read, I listen, I squirrel information. It's fun."

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

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