Beauty
By Linda Gregg

There she was on Entertainment Tonight.
Someone had caught a glimpse of Bardot
after all these years. Brigitte Bardot
running through the trees, across a meadow,
a dog running with her. The hair still long.
Then another part showing her on the patio,
aged. (Sun-damaged, we say.) The violation
of beauty never happens just once.
When my father heard his beloved dog
had chased and killed the rancher’s sheep,
he went right out and shot it. Because,
he said, once they ran with the pack
and tasted blood, it would never stop.


Linda Gregg, “Beauty” from All of It Singing: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2008 by Linda Gregg. Used by permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of Graywolf Press, www.graywolfpress.org. (buy now)

Today is the birthday of Gene Autry, born Orvon Grover Autry, near Tioga, Texas (1907). He starred in more than 40 movies, making his silver screen debut as part of a quartet in the movie In Old Santa Fe (1934) and became nationally known as the original "singing cowboy," often riding his own horse, Champion. He left Hollywood during World War II and served as a transport pilot, flying risky missions over the Himilayas near Burma. After the war he started his own production company when the film studio wouldn't dissolve his contract for military service.

He never had any children of his own but was admired by kids across the country who knew him from his long-running radio shows for CBS. In response Autry wrote the Ten Cowboy Commandments, in which he advised young listeners that a cowboy must "be gentle with children, the elderly, and animals," "help people in distress," and "never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage." In Johnny Cash's tribute song to the singer, he recalls that "in the eyes of a poor little country boy he made the world look better to me."

Today is the celebrated birthday of the Spanish poet, novelist, and playwright Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (books by this author), born in Alcalá de Henares (1547). Little else is known about his early days but at the age of 22 he joined the military, taking part in the Christian campaign against the Ottoman Empire. In 1571 he was wounded in battle, gaining praise for his bravery but losing the use of his left hand for life. He recovered from the worst of it and soon returned to the front.

In 1575 Cervantes was sailing for Barcelona where he hoped to secure a captain's appointment when his ship was hijacked by pirates. For the next five years Cervantes was held as a slave in Algeria. He attempted escape four times and, after scraping up a hefty ransom, his family finally secured his release. In his written account of his captivity for the courts, referred to as his Infomación de Argel, Cervantes found the basis of the modern novel that he would later be known for. He unfolded the story of his own struggle and personal heroism through multiple witnesses, and with multiple readers in mind, all the while maintaining a persuasive central voice.

After his release he tried repeatedly to secure a post outside of Spain, dreaming of the rich cultural heritage of Naples. Nothing materialized and he began work on his first novel, Galatea (1585), a romance that went largely unnoticed. He struggled financially and began writing for the theater in hopes of gaining a steady income, once taking a loan against seven scripts on the condition from the lender that they each be "one of the greatest ever written in Spain." They didn't get him booed off the stage, but they weren't successes. He spent two decades working as a tax collector and roaming the Spanish countryside as a purchaser for the Spanish navy, and he was jailed numerous times for bankruptcy and shady business deals.

He continued writing and in 1605 part one of Don Quixote was published in Madrid, to instant critical acclaim. Satirizing the popular romantic stories of the day, the novel tells the tale of a nobleman filled with chivalry and longing for adventure, who was also a fool. The work gave him an international reputation as an author but it wasn't a financial windfall and Cervantes continued looking for a way out of Spain with no success.

At 65 he finally hit his creative stride, releasing his Novelas Ejemplares, a collection of 12 short tales, credited as the invention of the Spanish short story. Next came his poem Viaje del Parnasso (1614), and Ocho Comedias y Ocho Entremeses (1615), and, after promising it for almost a decade, the second part of Don Quixote (1615). The complete book is now regarded as the first modern Western novel and one of the greatest works of fiction. William Faulkner told an interviewer that he read it every year "as many do the Bible."

Today is the birthday of the Italian-born American physicist Enrico Fermi (books by this author)  born in Rome (1901). He grew up close to his older brother, Giulio, the two spending their time dismantling small machines and engines together. Fermi was a professor of theoretical physics by 26 and began a series of experiments bombarding various elements with neutrons. Though unaware that a strange phenomenon he created in the lab was the splitting of the atom, Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in 1938. The night before he was notified by the committee, Nazis in Germany began to openly attack Jewish citizens. Anti-Semitic laws had recently been passed in Mussolini's Italy and Fermi feared for his Jewish wife and family. He used the occasion of the prize to escape Italy and took a job at Columbia University. Later that year it was leaked that German scientists had succeeded in performing nuclear fission and the scientific community quickly went abuzz with the possible consequences of this breakthrough. Fermi's colleague Leó Szilárd drafted a letter warning President Roosevelt of the possibility it could be weaponized and urged research at home. Federal funding was granted and Fermi was asked to join the new Manhattan Project in Chicago. It was here that he and Szilárd successfully constructed the first nuclear furnace on American soil in a squash court under the football stadium of the University of Chicago.

Fermi is considered to have begun the "atomic age" when on December 2, 1942, he created the first controlled self-sustaining nuclear reaction. He would later conduct research at Los Alamos and personally witness the Trinity test of the first nuclear bomb. He supported the use of nuclear weapons during World War II but later expressed concern over the more powerful hydrogen bombs saying, "Such a weapon goes far beyond any military objective and enters the range of great natural catastrophes. [...] It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light."

He was known by colleagues for his modesty and ability to think both theoretically and practically. He disliked complicated theories and his method of approximation when there is no obvious data is now called the "Fermi method." He died at the age of 53 from stomach cancer, along with two assistants that worked with him on the first nuclear reactor.

It’s the birthday of Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell (books by this author), born in London (1810), the author of Cranford (1853), North and South (1855), and Mary Barton (1848). She wrote under the name “Mrs. Gaskell,” which was the Victorian convention for women writers who were married. Gaskell’s novels plumbed the depths of the social classes; she was a Unitarian Christian and often worked with the poor. Her own childhood, while not financially bereft, was troubled and often lonely: her mother died when she was young and her father sent her to live with an aunt. Gaskell later told a friend that if it hadn’t been for her aunt’s love and companionship, “I think my child’s heart would have broken.” Her older brother joined the Merchant Navy and often sent her modern books and descriptions of his life at sea which she found thrilling. He disappeared, though, during an expedition to India in 1827 and was never heard from again.

She began writing in earnest after the death of her son, Willie, resulting in her first novel, Mary Barton (1848). She wrote to a friend, “I took refuge in the invention to exclude the memory of painful scenes which would force themselves upon my remembrance.” She published the novel anonymously but it received so much critical praise, and sold so well, that she determined to write as “Mrs. Gaskell” for the remainder of her life. The novel also shocked many readers for its unflinching examination of the life of the lower classes; its publication became the catalyst for social reforms. Charles Dickens was such an admirer of the novel that he requested Mrs. Gaskell write for his magazine Household Words. He addressed her affectionately as “Dear Scheherazade,” after the storyteller in Arabian Nights. Their relationship suffered, though, because Dickens was a stickler for deadlines and Mrs. Gaskell often missed them, sending him work weeks late and many pages over length.

Gaskell became close friends with novelist Charlotte Brontë, who was so shy she hid behind a curtain during a party Gaskell held in her honor. When Brontë died in 1853, she spent two years collecting information and gathering letters for a biography. The resulting book, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857), is now considered a touchstone for Brontë scholars.

On writing, Gaskell was convinced one needed to reach a certain age before becoming a great writer. She told one young novelist, “When you are forty, and if you have a gift for being an authoress, you will write ten times as good a novel as you could do now, just because you will have gone through so much more of the interests of a wife and mother.”

It’s the birthday of the author of the Inspector Morse mysteries, Colin Dexter (books by this author), born in Lincolnshire, England (1930). He attended Cambridge University where he earned his master’s degree in Classical Studies. On a rainy vacation in 1972 Dexter read two mystery novels. He decided he could do better and three years later he published Last Bus to Woodstock (1975), his first Inspector Morse novel. Inspector Morse is educated and charming, but he’s often morose and he has a weakness for beer and women.

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

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