They're Taking Chocolate Milk Off the Menu,
by Kim Dower

and that's only the beginning.
I hear other junk food is at risk:
brownies, pastries, name it,
they're removing it, the only chance
fifth graders have at happiness.
The only thing I looked forward to
was chocolate milk, especially after
getting yelled at by Miss Paniotoo.
I once poured a carton over her "in"
box, watched the ink bleed down
the equation-filled pages, blurring
the names of my classmates,
never told anyone, not even Donna Nagy,
and now they're taking it off the menu.
What will our kids be forced to do?
Will they devour each other?
Eat one another's faces, run across
the handball court sword fighting
with dry straws, wasted with desire?
Word just in they're even removing
strawberry milk. We never had that.
I'm sure it didn't smell like the chocolate:
a little sour like yesterday's dessert.
We had to drink it before it turned,
when it was still cold enough
that even our mittens couldn't protect us.


Kim Dower, “They’re Taking Chocolate Milk Off the Menu,” from Slice of Moon. Copyright © 2013 by Kim Dower. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of Story Line Press, an imprint of Red Hen Press, www.redhen.org. (buy now)

W.H. Auden (books by this author) wrote a famous poem about this day, called "September 1, 1939."

It begins:
I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odor of death
Offends the September night.
Toward the end of the poem, he says, "We must love one another or die."

"September 1, 1939" became one of Auden's most famous poems.

It was on this day in 1904 that Helen Keller (books by this author) graduated from Radcliffe, the first blind and deaf student to graduate from any college anywhere.

On this day in 1773 Phillis Wheatley (books by this author) published Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral, the first book ever published by a former American slave. She was bought by a family in Boston and they found her drawing a wall with chalk. It was clear she was trying to make letters so the daughter of the family taught her to read. She started to write poetry and no publisher in America would publish it, so she went to London and published it there.

On this day in 1707 Irish writer Richard Steele (books by this author) sat in St. James Coffee House in London and wrote a love letter to Mary Scurlock, whom he wanted to marry.

"Madam — It is the hardest thing in the world to be in love, and yet attend to business. As for me, all who speak to me do find out, and I must lock myself up, or other people will do it for me.

"A gentleman asked me this morning, 'What news from Lisbon?' and I answered, 'She is exquisitely handsome.' Another desired to know 'when I had been last at Hampton Court?' I replied, 'It will be on Tuesday come se'nnight.' Pr'ythee allow me at least to kiss your hand before that day, that my mind may be in some composure. O love!

"A thousand torments dwell about thee,

Yet who would live, to live without thee?"

They got married later in 1707. It was an extraordinarily happy and close companionship, and the couple stayed married until her death in 1718. During their relationship Richard Steele wrote her more than 400 letters. During that time he also co-founded The Spectator magazine along with Joseph Addison. Steele once wrote in The Spectator, "Of all the affections which attend human life, the love of glory is the most ardent."

On this date in 1902 the silent film A Trip to the Moon was released in France. It was written and directed by Georges Méliès and it was loosely based on two novels: Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and H.G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon (1901). It ran about 14 minutes, which was considered a long feature in those days, and told a fairly simple story about a group of astronomers traveling to the Moon and meeting a group of aliens. Their spacecraft is shaped something like a bullet,  and is fired from a giant cannon. In the film's iconic shot the rocket crashes into the eye of the Man in the Moon.

Méliès was the first director to think of using the new moving picture technology to tell a fictional story and, as a professional magician, he was especially interested in the way that the new medium could be used to create illusions. He made hundreds of fantastic movies featuring special effects, mostly using stop-motion photography: He would begin to film a scene with an object (or person) in it, stop the camera, remove the object, and begin filming again, which made it appear the object had suddenly vanished. But innovative as he was, it never occurred to him to change the camera angle or move in for a close-up. He treated the frame of the film just like the proscenium of a stage and the camera like a stationary observer.

Méliès produced a black-and-white version and a hand-colored version. A copy of the colored version was discovered in 1993, almost completely decomposed; it was restored over the course of the next 18 years and premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this year, with a new score by the French band AIR.

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

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