| Bells
by Barbara Crooker
Here, the bells are silent, blown glass hung from
branches of pine whose fragrance fills the room.
It’s December, and the world’s run out of color.
Darkness at five seems absolute outside
the nine square panes of glass. But inside
hundreds of small white lights reflect off
fragile ornaments handed down from before
the war. They’re all Shiny-Brite, some solid balls—
hot pink, lime green, turquoise, gold—some striped
and flocked. This night is hard obsidian, but these glints
pierce the gloom, along with their glittery echoes, the stars.
We inhale spruce, its resinous breath: the hope of spring,
the memory of summer. Every day, another peal
on the carillon of light,
Barbara Crooker, “Bells” from Some Glad Morning © 2019 University of Pittsburgh Press. (buy now)
It’s the birthday of Mexican artist Diego Rivera, born in Guanajuato (1886). He traveled to Italy and studied Renaissance frescoes — murals painted on plaster — and he vowed to bring that technique back to life in the 20th century. Frescoes could be displayed right in the middle of people’s daily lives rather than behind a museum’s doors, and he began painting large murals about the history and progress of humanity.
It's the birthday of novelist Mary Gordon (books by this author), born in Far Rockaway, New York (1949). She went to college at Barnard, got a master's in writing and then went to work on a Ph.D. on Virginia Woolf. She was almost finished with it but she felt like it was compromising her fiction writing. And eventually it was actually Virginia Woolf who inspired Gordon to quit her dissertation. She said she would take notes on Woolf's writing and "the rhythms of those incredible sentences — the repetitions, the caesuras, the potent colons, semicolons. I knew it was what I wanted to do." Since then she has published many novels as well as short stories, memoirs, and essays, including Final Payments (1978), The Company of Women (1980), The Liar's Wife (2014), There Your Heart Lies (2017) and most recently, Payback (2020).
Today is the birthday of the lyric poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus, better known to English speakers as Horace (books by this author), born in Apulia, Italy (65 B.C.E.). He was the son of a former slave, and he was working as a clerk of the treasury under the emperor Octavian when he met a man of letters named Gaius Maecenas. Maecenas in turn introduced Horace to a group of writers. Horace wrote a collection of satires that mostly supported Octavian’s views, and Octavian — later known as Augustus Caesar — offered him a position as his private secretary. Horace turned him down. He is most famous for his odes, which take up a diverse set of topics, including springtime, Virgil, a friend’s farm, Cleopatra’s defeat, old age, and the Roman Empire. Some of Horace’s odes have been translated by Ben Jonson, John Milton, Alexander Pope, William Wordsworth, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Robert Lowell, and even John Quincy Adams. Tennyson called the odes “Jewels five-words-long / That on the stretch’d forefinger of all Time / Sparkle for ever.” And it’s in the odes that Horace gave us carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero: “Seize the day, believing as little as possible in the morrow.”
It's the 70th birthday of nonfiction author Bill Bryson (books by this author), born in Des Moines, Iowa, on this day in 1951. He's written books about travel, language, Shakespeare, history, and science; he travels so much that his wife made him promise to write at least one book from home. That book came out in 2010; it was At Home: A Short History of Private Life. The book's topics are divided up by room, just like a house. Bryson published another book in 2010. Seeing Further: The Story of Science, Discovery, and the Genius of the Royal Society. Bryson edited and introduced the book, which is a collection of articles and essays celebrating the Royal Society's 350th anniversary. Bryson has described himself as a "cheerleader for science," and told The New Statesman: "Science has been quite embattled. It's the most important thing there is. An arts graduate is not going to fix global warming. They may do other valuable things, but they are not going to fix the planet, or cure cancer, or get rid of malaria.” Bryson’s most recent book is When Things Go Wrong: A Guide for Occupants (2019).
On this date in 1660, a professional female actress appeared on the English stage in a production of Othello. It's one of the earliest known instances of a female role actually being played by a woman in an English production. Up until this time, women were considered too fine and sensitive for the rough life of the theater, and boys or men dressed in drag to play female characters. An earlier attempt to form co-ed theater troupes was met with jeers and hisses and thrown produce. But by the second half of the 17th century, the King's Company felt that London society could handle it. Before the production, a lengthy disclaimer in iambic pentameter was delivered to the audience, warning them that they were about to see an actual woman in the part. This was, the actor explained, because they felt that men were just too big and burly to play the more delicate roles, "With bone so large and nerve so incompliant / When you call Desdemona, enter giant." Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® | 
