Those Hours
by Joyce Sutphen

There were moments, hours even,
when it was clear what I

was meant to do, as if
a landscape had revealed itself

in the morning light.
I could see the road

plainly now, imagining myself
walking towards the distant mountains

like a pilgrim in the old stories—
ready to take on any danger,

hapless but always hopeful,
certain that my simple belief

in the light
would be enough.

Reproduced from Carrying Water to the Field: New and Selected Poems by Joyce Sutphen by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. University of Nebraska Press © 2019. (buy now)

Today is the birthday of Charles Wesley (works by this writer) (1708), born in Epworth, Lincolnshire, England. He was the 18th of 19 children, and the third surviving son. Born prematurely, he wasn't expected to survive; he lay silently in his woolen blanket for the first two months of his life. He received his early education from his mother, who ran a schoolroom of sorts for her large family. She taught them for six hours a day. After studying at Oxford, he became an Anglican clergyman like his father and brothers before him. Along with his brother John, he co-founded the Methodist movement within Protestantism. "Methodist" was intended as an insult, because the brothers held to a strict regimen of early rising and Bible study, but the Wesleys didn't see anything wrong with being strict, so they adopted the term for themselves without protest. The Wesleys became itinerant preachers, traveling the country and speaking wherever there was an audience: in fields, prisons, and coal mines. Charles Wesley estimated he preached before almost 150,000 people over a five-year period.

His other contribution was musical, and it was significant. He wrote hymns, averaging 10 lines a day for 50 years. He wrote "Christ the Lord is Risen Today," "Love Divine, All Loves Excelling," and "O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing." He also wrote the perennial Christmas favorite, "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing." All told, he wrote more than six thousand hymns.

A quote by Wesley is carved on his monument in Westminster Abbey: "God buries his workmen, but carries on his work."

It's the birthday of playwright and humorist Abe Burrows (1910) (books by this author), born Abram Solman Borowitz in New York City. He wrote for radio and television, and, collaborating with songwriter Frank Loesser, Burrows gave Broadway two of its most popular and enduring musicals: Guys and Dolls (1950) and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961).

On this date in 1912, the Piltdown Man was presented to the Geological Society of London. Near the village of Piltdown in southern England, a laborer was digging in a gravel pit when he found a piece of what appeared to be a skull. He gave it to local archaeology hobbyist Charles Dawson, who thought it looked like some ancient human remains. Dawson brought the skull fragment, along with some other bones he found at the site, to the Natural History Museum in London. Dawson and Arthur Smith Woodward, the museum's Keeper of Geology, believed that the laborer had dug up skeletal evidence of the missing evolutionary link between apes and humans, and they brought it before the public with much fanfare. Although several scientists weighed in with their opinion that the Piltdown skull was not authentic, no one paid much attention; they seemed to want to believe that the Missing Link had been found in England. Finally, in 1953, new tests on the skull revealed the Piltdown Man to be an elaborate hoax, constructed in part from orangutan bones, and this time, people listened.

The perpetrator of the hoax has never been determined with any certainty, although theories abound. The main suspect remains Charles Dawson, who enjoyed great celebrity as the discoverer of the most important fossil in human history. It's possible that Woodward, or some other expert, was in on it, because the skull was so skillfully constructed that it fooled archaeologists for more than 40 years. Dawson isn't the only suspect, however: Many scholars point the finger at Sir Arthur Conan Doyle as the perpetrator. Doyle lived nearby and had access to the site. As a doctor and a fossil collector, he had specialized knowledge of anatomy and would have been able to get his hands on bones fairly easily. A spiritualist who spent a great deal of time and money promoting his belief in communicating with the dead, he also had a grudge against the scientific community that mocked his séances. Some people speculate that Doyle even left clues about the hoax in his novel The Lost World (1912).

It's the birthday of the artist Paul Klee (works by this artist), born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland (1879). Paul Klee died at the age of 60 from an autoimmune disease called scleroderma. He left behind about 9,000 works of art, but also the Paul Klee Notebooks, published in English as The Thinking Eye (1961) and The Nature of Nature (1973). The Notebooks are considered one of the most important written works on modern art. Klee wrote about color theory, the role of chaos in art, and the relationship between art and its subject.

During World War I, Klee wrote in his diary: "The more horrifying this world becomes (as it is in these days) the more art becomes abstract."

It's the birthday of the baseball legend Ty Cobb, born in Narrows, Georgia (1886). His father was a teacher, principal, publisher, and state senator, and he had imagined that his son would follow in his footsteps, or maybe become a doctor or lawyer. He finally gave his blessing to Cobb's career choice, but he warned him: "Don't come home a failure." Three weeks before 18-year-old Cobb made his debut with the Detroit Tigers, his mother shot and killed his father outside their bedroom window — apparently, she thought he was an intruder.

It's the birthday of film director Steven Spielberg, born in Cincinnati, Ohio (1946). When he was 11 years old, he was working on a merit badge for the Boy Scouts. His assignment was to tell a story with still pictures, but his family's camera was broken. So he used his dad's video camera, hunted up some neighborhood friends, and made a Western. It was less than 10 minutes long, but there was a robbery, a shoot-out, and plenty of ketchup for fake blood. When he showed it at the Boy Scout meeting the next week, everyone cheered and applauded, and Spielberg was so excited that he decided to keep making movies.

His films include Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T. (1982), Jurassic Park (1993), Schindler's List (1993), Saving Private Ryan (1998), Minority Report (2002),  Lincoln (2012), and Ready Player One (2018).

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

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