This is the archive for November 2009
From wikipedia:
Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks (November 30, 1912 – March 7, 2006) was a groundbreaking American photographer, musician, poet, novelist, journalist, activist and film director. He is best remembered for his photo essays for
Life magazine and as the director of the 1971 film
Shaft.
View Gordon Parks' photographs, free from the Library of Congress.
Posted by courier at 06:05 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Morrison Remick Waite, nicknamed "Mott" (November 29, 1816 – March 23, 1888) was
He was born at Lyme, Connecticut, the son of Henry Matson Waite, who was a judge of the Superior Court and associate judge of the Supreme Court of Connecticut in 1834–1854 and chief justice of the latter in 1854–1857.
Morrison was a classmate of Lyman Trumbull at Bacon Academy in Colchester, Connecticut. He graduated from Yale University in 1837 with the 1876 Democratic presidential nominee, Samuel J. Tilden. At Yale, he became a member of the Skull and Bones Society and was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa Society in 1837, and soon afterwards moved to Maumee, Ohio, where he studied law in the office of Samuel L. Young. He was admitted to the bar in 1839. He served one term as mayor of Maumee. He married Amelia Warner in 1840. He had three sons with her — Henry Seldon, Christopher Champlin, Edward T, and one daughter Mary F. In 1850, he moved to Toledo, and he soon came to be recognized as a leader of the state bar.
Read a New York Times story from March 24, 1888 regarding the sudden death of Morrison Waite.
Posted by courier at 02:04 PM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Richard Nathaniel Wright (September 4, 1908 – November 28, 1960) was an American author of novels, short stories and non-fiction.
Wright, the grandson of slaves, was born on a plantation in Roxie, Mississippi, a tiny town located about 22 miles east of Natchez, in Franklin County. Wright's family soon moved to Memphis, Tennessee. While in Memphis, his father Nathaniel, a former sharecropper, abandoned them. Wright, his brother, and mother Ella, a schoolteacher, soon moved to Jackson, Mississippi, to live with relatives. In Jackson, Wright grew up and attended public high school. Here, he formed some of his most lasting early impressions of American racism before eventually moving back to Memphis in 1927, where he became acquainted with the works of such literary figures as H. L. Mencken.
Read Richard Wright's file from the FBI, which investigated Wright due to his membership in the Communist Party.
Posted by courier at 12:38 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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Mary Edwards Walker (November 26, 1832 – February 21, 1919) was a feminist, abolitionist, prohibitionist, spy, prisoner of war, surgeon and the only woman to receive the Medal of Honor.
Born in Oswego, New York, the daughter of Alvah and Vesta Walker, Mary Walker taught school as a young woman to earn enough money to pay her way through Syracuse Medical College where she graduated as a doctor in 1855. She married a fellow medical school student, Albert Miller, and they set up a joint practice in Rome, New York. The practice did not flourish, as female doctors were generally not trusted or respected at that time.
Read more about Mary Edwards Walker at medalofhonor.com
Posted by courier at 12:31 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Benjamin Barr Lindsey (November 25, 1869 - March 26, 1943) was an American judge and social reformer, born in Jackson, Tennessee. He was educated in the public schools at Jackson and at Notre Dame, Indiana. His father died when he was 18, leaving him the sole support of his mother and her three younger children. He obtained employment in a real-estate office in Denver, Colorado, where he studied law in his spare time. In 1894, he entered the practice of law in Denver.
Read Judge Ben B. Lindsey's introduction to Madeleine, an Autobiography, free from the University of Pennsylvania.
Posted by courier at 03:43 PM. Filed under: In Quotes
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Laurence Sterne (November 24, 1713 – March 18, 1768) was an English novelist and an Anglican clergyman. He is best known for his novels The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, and A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy; but he also published sermons, wrote memoirs, and was involved in local politics. Sterne died in London after years of fighting tuberculosis.
Read The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne, one of
three of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.
Posted by courier at 12:36 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Sir Arthur Wing Pinero (24 May 1855- 23 November 1934) was an English dramatist.
Born in London, the son of a Sephardic Jewish solicitor (John Daniel Pinero), Arthur Wing Pinero studied law before going on the stage.
Read The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith by Arthur Wing Pinero, one of
two of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.
Posted by courier at 12:25 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Hoagland Howard "Hoagy" Carmichael (November 22, 1899 – December 27, 1981) was an American composer, pianist, singer, actor, and bandleader. He is best known for writing "Stardust" (1927), "Georgia On My Mind," and "Heart and Soul", three of the most-recorded American songs of all time.
Alec Wilder, in his study of the American popular song, concluded that Hoagy Carmichael was the "most talented, inventive, sophisticated and jazz-oriented" of the hundreds of writers composing pop songs in the first half of the 20th century.
Learn more about Hoagy Carmichael, and listen to him and others perform his songs, free from Hoagy.com, the offical website of Hoagy Carmichael.
Posted by courier at 03:50 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Mollie (or Molly) Steimer (November 21, 1897 – July 23, 1980) was born as Marthe Alperine in Tsarist Russia. She immigrated to the United States with her family at the age of 15. She became an anarchist and activist who fought as a trade unionist, an anti-war activist and a free-speech campaigner.
Learn more about Mollie Steimer.
Posted by courier at 04:57 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Howard Duane Allman (November 20, 1946 – October 29, 1971) was an American lead guitarist.
Allman is noted for his slide guitar skills. In 2003 Rolling Stone magazine named Duane Allman as number two on their list of the greatest guitarists of all time, trailing only Jimi Hendrix.He was a noted session musician, was a founding member and the leader of The Allman Brothers Band, and also had a major role on the album
Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, by Derek and the Dominos, a 1970-71 band led by Eric Clapton. His nickname, "Skydog," was given to him by soul singer Wilson Pickett to replace his earlier nickname, "Dog." Pickett was acknowledging that Duane was always up, always cheerful.
Hear Duane Allman perform "Goin' Down Slow," free from youtube.com.
Posted by courier at 12:09 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
William Ashley "Billy" Sunday (November 19, 1862 – November 6, 1935) was an American athlete who, after being a popular outfielder in baseball's National League during the 1880s, became the most celebrated and influential American evangelist during the first two decades of the 20th century.
Born into poverty in Iowa, Sunday spent some years in an orphanage before working at odd jobs and playing for local running and baseball teams. His speed and agility provided him the opportunity to play baseball in the major leagues for eight years, where he was an average hitter and a good fielder known for his base-running.
Take an online tour of Billy Sunday's home.
Posted by courier at 04:47 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (November 18, 1787 – July 10, 1851) was a French artist and chemist, recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype process of photography.
Daguerre was born in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, Val-d'Oise, France. He apprenticed in architecture, theater design, and panoramic painting. Exceedingly adept at his skill for theatrical illusion, he became a celebrated designer for the theater and later came to invent the Diorama, which opened in Paris in July 1822.
Read Daguerre (1787–1851) and the Invention of Photography, free from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Posted by courier at 04:02 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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Eric Gill (February 22, 1882 – November 17, 1940) was a British sculptor, typographer and printmaker , mostly in engraving.
Gill was born in 1882 in Brighton, Sussex (now East Sussex). In 1902 he attended classes, studying lettering under the calligrapher Edward Johnston at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London.
See examples of Eric Gill's artwork, free from the Tate Gallery.
Posted by courier at 12:24 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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Charles Chesnutt (June 20, 1858 – November 15, 1932) was an African American author and political activist best known for novels and short stories exploring racism and other social themes.
Life
Chesnutt was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Andrew Jackson and Ann Maria (Sampson) Chesnutt, both "free persons of color" from Fayetteville, North Carolina. His paternal grandfather was a white slaveholder. Issues of miscegenation, "passing", and racial identity would influence his writing throughout his career.
Click here to read The Marrow of Tradition, by Charles Chesnutt, one of
seven of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.
Posted by courier at 12:44 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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Jawaharlal Nehru (November 14, 1889 – May 27, 1964) was a senior political leader of India's struggle for independence and served as its first Prime Minister. Popularly referred to as Panditji (Scholar), Nehru was also a writer, scholar and amateur historian, and the patriarch of India's most influential political family.
Read Toward Freedom: The Autobiography of Jawaharlal Nehru, free from the Internet Archive.
Posted by courier at 12:23 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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Clementine Paddleford as a girl.
Adapted from the library at Kansas State University' archives:
Clementine Paddleford, (September 27, 1898 – November 13, 1967) was an American food writer active from the 1920s through the 1960s, writing for several publications, including the New York
Herald Tribune, the New York
Sun, The New York
Telegram,
Farm and Fireside, and
This Week magazine. A Kansas native, she lived most of her life in New York City, where she introduced her readers to the global range of food to be found in that city. She was also a pilot, and flew a Piper Cub around the country to report on America's many regional cuisines.
For much more about Clementine Paddleford, go to the Kansas State University library's site.
Posted by courier at 12:03 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Wilma Glodean Rudolph (June 23, 1940 – November 12, 1994) was an American athlete and three time Olympic champion.
Rudolph was born in Clarksville, Tennessee and at early age it was discovered that she, the 20th of 22 children, had polio. Her mother took her to a hospital for blacks 50 miles from their home twice a week, and at age 12, she could walk normally again — and she decided to become an athlete. She lost many of her early races. Slowly she went from last, to second from last, to first in all her races.
See Wilma Rudolph win her 100 meters race versus Russian opponents, plus other stories of the day, in a Universal International newsreel from 1962, free from the Internet Archive.
Posted by courier at 12:30 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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Johann Christoph Friedrich
von Schiller
From wikipedia:
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (November 10, 1759 – May 9, 1805), usually known as Friedrich Schiller, was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and dramatist. During the last several years of his life (1788–1805), Schiller struck a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, with whom he discussed much on issues concerning aesthetics, encouraging Goethe to finish works he left merely as sketches; this thereby gave way a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism. They also worked together on
Die Xenien (The Xenies), a collection of short but harshly satiric poems in which both Schiller and Goethe verbally attacked those persons they perceived to be enemies of their aesthetic agenda.
Read Love and Intrigue by Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, one of
45 of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.
Posted by courier at 12:11 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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Guillaume Apollinaire
From wikipedia:
Guillaume Apollinaire (August 26, 1880 – November 9, 1918) was a poet, writer, and art critic born in Italy. Among the foremost poets of the early 20th century, he is credited with coining the word surrealism and writing one of the earliest works described as surrealist, the play
Les Mamelles de Tirésias (1917). Two years after being wounded in World War I, he died at 38 of the Spanish flu during a pandemic.
Read Alcools by Guillaume Apollinaire, in French, free from Project Gutenberg.
Posted by courier at 12:53 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Morley Safer (born November 8, 1931 in Toronto, Canada) is a reporter and correspondent for CBS News.
Safer began his journalism career as a reporter for various newspapers in Canada and England. Later, he joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a correspondent and producer.
Watch Morley Safer discuss safety in the shower, free from YouTube.com
Posted by courier at 12:45 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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Leo Tolstoy commonly referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy (September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910) was a Russian novelist, writer, essayist, philosopher, Christian anarchist, pacifist, educational reformer, vegetarian, moral thinker and an influential member of the Tolstoy family.
Read Letter to a Hindu, which spurred a friendship between Tolstoy and Gandhi, one of 20 of his works available in several languages, including Tagalog, free from Project Gutenberg.
Posted by courier at 12:47 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Suleiman I (6 November 1494 – 5/6/7 September 1566) was the tenth and longest-reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, from 1520 to his death in 1566. He is known in the West as Suleiman the Magnificent and in the East, as the Lawmaker, for his complete reconstruction of the Ottoman legal system. Suleiman became a prominent monarch of 16th century Europe, presiding over the apex of the Ottoman Empire's military, political and economic power. Suleiman personally led Ottoman armies to conquer the Christian strongholds of Belgrade, Rhodes, and most of Hungary before his conquests were checked at the Siege of Vienna in 1529. He annexed most of the Middle East in his conflict with the Persians and large swathes of North Africa as far west as Algeria. Under his rule, the Ottoman fleet dominated the seas from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
Read The government of the Ottoman Empire in the time of Suleiman the Magnificent (1913) by Albert Howe Lybyer, free from archive.org.
Posted by courier at 12:26 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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Eugene Debs
From wikipedia:
Eugene Victor Debs (November 5, 1855 – October 20, 1926) was an American labor and political leader, one of the founders of the international labor union, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and five-time Socialist Party of America candidate for President of the United States.
Visit eugenevdebs.com, the official site of the Eugene V. Debs Foundation
Posted by courier at 12:28 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Eden Phillpotts (4 November 1862 – 29 December 1960) was an English novelist, poet, and dramatist. He was born in India, educated in Plymouth, Devon, and worked as an insurance officer for 10 years before studying for the stage and eventually becoming a writer.
He was the author of many novels, plays and poems about Dartmoor. His Dartmoor cycle of 18 novels and two volumes of short stories still have many avid readers despite the fact that many titles are out of print.
Read Phillpotts' The Grey Room, one of
six of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.
Posted by courier at 12:10 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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André Malraux
From wikipedia:
André Malraux (November 3, 1901 - November 23, 1976) was a French author, adventurer and statesman preeminent in the world of French politics and culture during his lifetime.
Read André Malraux and the Challenge to Aesthetics by Derek Allan
Posted by courier at 12:33 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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Daniel Boone
From wikipedia:
Hannah Höch (November 1, 1889 – May 31, 1978) was a German Dada artist. She is best known for her work of the Weimar period, when she was one of the originators of photomontage.
She was born Johanne Höch in Gotha, Germany. From 1912 to 1914 she studied at the College of Arts and Crafts in Berlin under the guidance of Harold Bergen. She studied glass design and graphic arts, rather than fine arts, to please her father. She worked for the Red Cross in 1914, at the start of World War I. In 1915 she entered the graph class of the National Institute of the Museum of Arts and Crafts. Also in 1915, Höch began an influential friendship with Raoul Hausmann, a member of the Berlin Dada movement. Höch's involvement with the Berlin Dadists began in earnest in 1919. After her schooling, she worked in the handicrafts department for Ullstein Verlang. The influence of this early work and training can clearly be seen in her later work involving references to dress patterns and textiles. From 1926 to 1929 she lived and worked in the Netherlands.
View examples of Hannah Hoch's work.
Posted by courier at 12:47 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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