This is the archive for May 2012
From Wikipedia:
John Albion Andrew (May 31, 1818 – October 30, 1867) was a U.S. political figure. He served as the 25th Governor of Massachusetts between 1861 and 1866 during the American Civil War. He was a guiding force behind the creation of some of the first U.S. Army units of black men—including the famed 54th Massachusetts Infantry.
John A. Andrew was born in Windham, Maine. His father, Jonathan Andrew was a descendant of an early settler of Boxford, Massachusetts and a small but prosperous trader in Windham. His mother, Nancy Green Pierce, was a teacher at Fryeburg Academy. John Albion was the eldest son. His mother died in 1832.
Read more about John Albion Andrew, free from Project Gutenberg.
Posted by courier at 11:55 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Cornelia Otis Skinner (May 30, 1899 – July 9, 1979) was an American author and actress.
Skinner was the daughter of the actor Otis Skinner and his wife Maud (Durbin) Skinner. After attending the all-girls' Baldwin School and Bryn Mawr College (1918–1919) and studying theatre at the Sorbonne in Paris, she began her career on the stage in 1921. She appeared in several plays before embarking on a tour of the United States from 1926 to 1929 in a one-woman performance of short character sketches she herself wrote. She wrote numerous short humorous pieces for publications like
The New Yorker. These pieces were eventually compiled into a series of books, including
Nuts in May, Dithers and Jitters, Excuse It Please!, and
The Ape In Me, among others.
Read more about Cornelia Otis Skinner and her work.
Posted by courier at 09:54 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Harry Gordon Frankfurt (born May 29, 1929) is an American philosopher. He is professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University and has previously taught at Yale University and Rockefeller University. He obtained his B.A. in 1949 and Ph.D. in 1954 from Johns Hopkins University. His major areas of interest include moral philosophy, philosophy of mind and action, and 17th century rationalism. His 1986 paper
On Bullshit, a philosophical investigation of the concept of "bullshit", was republished as a book in 2005 and became a surprise bestseller, leading to media appearances such as Jon Stewart's
The Daily Show. In 2006 he released a companion book,
On Truth, which explores society's loss of appreciation for truth.
Watch Harry Frankfurt on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Posted by courier at 08:15 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Papa John Creach (b. John Henry Creach, May 28, 1917, Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania; d. February 22, 1994, Los Angeles, California) was a blues violinist who played for Jefferson Airplane (1970–1975), Hot Tuna, Jefferson Starship, Jefferson Starship - The Next Generation, the San Francisco All-Stars (1979–1984), The Dinosaurs (1982–1989), and Steve Taylor. Creach was also a frequent guest at Grateful Dead concerts.
Creach began playing violin in Chicago bars when his family moved there in 1935, and eventually joined a local cabaret band, the Chocolate Music Bars. Moving to Los Angeles in 1945, he played in the Chi Chi Club, spent time working on an ocean liner, appeared in several films, and performed as a duo with Nina Russell.
Listen to Papa John Creach, free from wolfgangsvault.com.
Posted by courier at 07:33 PM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Julia Ward Howe (May 27, 1819 – October 17, 1910) was a prominent American abolitionist, social activist, and poet, most famous as the author of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic".
Born Julia Ward in New York City, she was the fourth child of banker Samuel Ward and occasional poet Julia Rush Cutler. Among her siblings was Samuel Cutler Ward. Her father was a well-to-do banker. Her mother, granddaughter of William Greene (August 16, 1731 – November 30, 1809), Governor of Rhode Island and his wife Catharine Ray, died when Julia was five after having borne seven children by the age of 27.
Download the ebook of Modern Society by Julia Ward Howe, free in a variety of versions from gutenberg.org.
Posted by courier at 08:54 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
William Otto Miessner (May 26, 1880 - May 27, 1967) was an American composer and music educator.
Born in Huntingburg, Indiana, Miessner was the son of Charles Miessner and Mary Miessner (née Reutepohler). He graduated from Huntingburg High School in 1898. He earned a diploma from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, where he studied music theory with A. J. Gantvoort, piano with Frederick Hoffman, and singing with Adolph Devin-Duvivier. He later pursued further studies in New York with Frederick Bristol (singing), A. J. Goodrich (harmony and counterpoint), and Edgar Stillman Kelley (composition). He also studied voice in Berlin, taking lessons in 1910 with Alexander Heinemann. He then taught music from 1900 until 1904 at a school in Boonville, Indiana, before going to Connersville to teach elementary and high school music; he stayed there from 1905 until 1909. Miessner has been quoted as saying that "The idle mind is the devil’s workshop. But this is my workshop and I’ll not tolerate an idle mind as long as there’s excitement in music."
Learn more about W. Otto Meissner.
Posted by courier at 12:32 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Theodore Roethke (May 25, 1908 – August 1, 1963) was an American poet, who published several volumes of poetry characterized by its rhythm, rhyming, and natural imagery. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1954 for his book,
The Waking, and he won the annual National Book Award for Poetry twice, in 1959 for
Words for the Wind and posthumously in 1965 for
The Far Field.
Roethke was born in Saginaw, Michigan and grew up on the west side of the Saginaw River. His father, Otto, was a German immigrant, a market-gardener who owned a large local 25 acre greenhouse, along with his brother (Theodore's uncle). Much of Theodore's childhood was spent in this greenhouse, as reflected by the use of natural images in his poetry. The poet's adolescent years were jarred, however, by his uncle's suicide and by the death of his father from cancer, both in early 1923, when Theodore (Ted) was only 15. These deaths shaped Roethke's psyche and creative life.
Visit Gawow.com to learn more about Theodore Roethke and his work.
Posted by courier at 07:32 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Joan Micklin Silver (born May 24, 1935) is an American director.
She was born in Omaha, Nebraska and received her B.A. From Sarah Lawrence College.
Her early low budget film
Hester Street received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for actress Carol Kane. Her 1977 film
Between the Lines was entered into the 27th Berlin International Film Festival. She is also known for the film
Crossing Delancey which was released in 1988 and stars Amy Irving. She also conceived and directed the musical revue
A... My Name Is Alice with Julianne Boyd.
Read more about Joan Micklin Silver.
Posted by courier at 08:08 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Margaret Wise Brown (May 23, 1910 – November 13, 1952) was a prolific American author of children's literature, including the books Go
odnight Moon and
The Runaway Bunny, both illustrated by Clement Hurd.
The middle child of three whose parents suffered from an unhappy marriage, Brown was born in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, and in 1923 attended boarding school in Woodstock, Connecticut, while her parents were living in Canterbury. She began attending Dana Hall School in Wellesley, Massachusetts, in 1926, where she did well in athletics. After graduation in 1928, Brown went on to Hollins College in Roanoke, Virginia.
Visit MargaretWiseBrown.com.
Posted by courier at 10:32 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Self Portrait, Mary CassattMary Stevenson Cassatt (May 22, 1844 – June 14, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists.
Cassatt (pronounced ca-SAHT) often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.
See more of Mary Cassatt's paintings, free from the Webmuseum.
Posted by courier at 07:34 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Simon Fraser (20 May 1776 – 18 August 1862) was a fur trader and an explorer who charted much of what is now the Canadian province of British Columbia. Fraser was employed by the Montreal-based North West Company. By 1805, he had been put in charge of all the company's operations west of the Rocky Mountains. He was responsible for building that area's first trading posts, and, in 1808, he explored what is now known as the Fraser River, which bears his name. Simon Fraser's exploratory efforts were partly responsible for Canada's boundary later being established at the 49th parallel (after the War of 1812), since he as a British subject was the first European to establish permanent settlements in the area.
Read Simon Fraser's journal, free from the Quesnel Museum.
Posted by courier at 12:00 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Hồ Chí Minh (19 May 1890 – 2 September 1969), born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Tất Thành and Nguyễn Ái Quốc, was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader who was prime minister (1945–1955) and president (1945–1969) of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). He was a key figure in the foundation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in 1945, as well as the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the Việt Cộng (NLF or VC) during the Vietnam War.
Read Ho Chi Minh's obituary, free from the New York Times.
Posted by courier at 12:06 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Carl Mydans (May 20, 1907 – August 16, 2004) was an American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration and
Life magazine.
Mydans became devoted to photography while in college at Boston University. While working on the
Boston University News as an undergraduate, his first reporting jobs were for
The Boston Globe and the
Boston Herald. After college, he went to New York as a writer for
American Banker and then in 1935 to Washington to join a group of photographers in the Farm
Security Administration.
Learn more about Carl Mydans, free from digitaljournalist.org.
Posted by courier at 08:00 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Archibald Cox, Jr., (May 17, 1912 – May 29, 2004) was an American lawyer and law professor who served as U.S. Solicitor General under President John F. Kennedy. He became known as the first special prosecutor for the Watergate scandal. During his career, he was a pioneering expert on labor law and also an authority on constitutional law.
The Journal of Legal Studies has identified Cox as one of the most cited legal scholars of the 20th century.
Cox was the son of Archibald and Frances Perkins Cox. His mother was the sister of Maxwell Perkins, an editor at the publishing house of Charles Scribner's Sons. A native of Plainfield, New Jersey, Cox attended the Wardlaw School, and St. Paul's School. He graduated from Harvard College in 1934 and from Harvard Law School in 1937 where he was a member of Phi delta phi legal fraternity. He was a clerk for U.S. Judge Learned Hand of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. After his clerkship, he joined the Boston law firm of Ropes, Gray, Best, Coolidge and Rugg, now known as Ropes & Gray. During World War II, he was appointed to the National Defense Board, and then to the Office of the Solicitor General.
Learn more about Archibald Cox, free from Columbia University.
Posted by courier at 08:21 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Louis "Studs" Terkel (May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008) was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for The Good War, and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.
Terkel was born to Samuel Terkel, a Russian Jewish tailor and his wife, Anna Finkelin in New York City, New York. At the age of eight he moved with his family to Chicago, Illinois, where he spent most of his life. He had two brothers, Ben (1907–1965) and Meyer (1905–1958).
Visit StudsTerkel.org.
Posted by courier at 07:46 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Lyman "L." Frank Baum (May 15, 1856 – May 6, 1919) was an American author of children's books, best known for writing
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He wrote thirteen novel sequels, nine other fantasy novels, and a host of other works (55 novels in total, plus four "lost" novels, 82 short stories, over 200 poems, an unknown number of scripts, and many miscellaneous writings), and made numerous attempts to bring his works to the stage and screen. His works predicted such century-later commonplaces as television, laptop computers (
The Master Key), wireless telephones (
Tik-Tok of Oz), women in high risk, action-heavy occupations (
Mary Louise in the Country), and the ubiquity of advertising on clothing (
Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work).
Read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, free from Project Gutenberg.
Posted by courier at 07:43 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Sidney Bechet (May 14, 1897 – May 14, 1959) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer.
He was one of the first important soloists in jazz (beating cornetist/trumpeter Louis Armstrong to the recording studio by several months and later playing duets with Armstrong), and was perhaps the first notable jazz saxophonist of any sort. Forceful delivery, well-constructed improvisations, and a distinctive wide vibrato characterized Bechet's playing.
However, Bechet's mercurial temperament hampered his career, and not until the late 1940s did he earn wide acclaim.
Listen to Sidney Bechet's performance in The Sheik, free from redhotjazz.com.
Posted by courier at 08:57 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Georges Braque (13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th century French painter and sculptor who, along with Pablo Picasso, developed the art style known as Cubism.
Georges Braque was born on 13 May 1882, in Argenteuil, Val-d'Oise. He grew up in Le Havre and trained to be a house painter and decorator like his father and grandfather. However, he also studied artistic painting during evenings at the École des Beaux-Arts, in Le Havre, from about 1897 to 1899. In Paris, he apprenticed with a decorator and was awarded his certificate in 1902. The next year, he attended the Académie Humbert, also in Paris, and painted there until 1904. It was here that he met Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia.
See examples of Georges Braque's art, free from the Museum of Modern Art.
Posted by courier at 08:46 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Lincoln Ellsworth (May 12, 1880 – May 26, 1951) was an polar explorer from the United States.
He was born on May 12, 1880 to James Ellsworth and Eva Frances Butler in Chicago, Illinois. He also lived in Hudson, Ohio as a child.
Lincoln Ellsworth's father, James, a wealthy coal man from the United States, spent US$100,000 to fund Roald Amundsen's 1925 attempt to fly from Svalbard to the North Pole. The craft were forced down onto the ice short of their goal, and the explorers spent 30 days trapped on the surface.
Learn more about Lincoln Ellsworth.
Posted by courier at 12:10 PM. Filed under: In Quotes
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Martha Graham
by Yousuf Karsh (1948)
(May 11, 1894 – April 1, 1991) was an American modern dancer and choreographer whose influence on dance has been compared with the influence Picasso had on modern visual arts, Stravinsky had on music, or Frank Lloyd Wright had on architecture.
She danced and choreographed for over seventy years. Graham was the first dancer ever to perform at the White House, travel abroad as a cultural ambassador, and receive the highest civilian award of the USA: the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In her lifetime she received honors ranging from the Key to the City of Paris to Japan's Imperial Order of the Precious Crown. She said, "I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It's permitting life to use you in a very intense way. Sometimes it is not pleasant. Sometimes it is fearful. But nevertheless it is inevitable."
Visit the website of the Martha Graham Dance Company.
Posted by courier at 12:16 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
James Gordon Bennett, Jr. (May 10, 1841 – May 14, 1918) was publisher of the
New York Herald, founded by his father, James Gordon Bennett, Sr., who emigrated from Scotland. He was generally known as Gordon Bennett to distinguish him from his father, and has been linked to the anachronistic expletive "Gordon Bennett!"
Bennett was educated primarily in France. In 1866, the elder Bennett turned control of the
Herald over to him. Bennett raised the paper's profile on the world stage when he provided the financial backing for the 1869 expedition by Henry Morton Stanley into Africa to find David Livingstone in exchange for the
Herald having the exclusive account of Stanley's progress.
Learn more about James Gordon Bennett, Jr.
Posted by courier at 07:31 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Henry John Kaiser (May 9, 1882 – August 24, 1967) was an American industrialist who became known as the father of modern American shipbuilding. He established the Kaiser Shipyard which built Liberty ships during World War II, after which he formed Kaiser Aluminum and Kaiser Steel. Kaiser organized Kaiser Permanente health care for his workers and their families. He led Kaiser-Frazer followed by Kaiser Motors, automobile companies known for the safety of their designs. Kaiser was involved in large construction projects such as civic centers and dams, and invested in real estate. With his acquired wealth, he initiated the Kaiser Family Foundation, a charitable organization.
Visit the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation website.
Posted by courier at 07:34 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Norman Thomas "Turkey" Stearnes (May 8, 1901 – September 4, 1979) was an African American center fielder in the Negro leagues. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2000.
Born in Nashville, Tennessee, Stearnes acquired his nickname at an early age from his unusual running style. He began his career in professional baseball in 1921 with the Montgomery Grey Sox, then played for the Detroit Stars, beginning in 1923. In 1931, the Stars failed to pay Stearnes his salary because of the Great Depression, so he moved from team to team for the remainder of his career, retiring in 1942 as a member of the Kansas City Monarchs.
Learn more about Turkey Stearnes, free from the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Posted by courier at 12:02 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Varina Banks Howell Davis (May 7, 1826 – October 16, 1906) was an American author who is best known as the second wife of President Jefferson Davis and the First Lady of the Confederate States of America.
Varina Banks Howell was born at Natchez, Mississippi, the daughter of William Burr Howell and Margaret L. Kempe. Her father was from a distinguished family in New Jersey: his father Richard Howell served several terms as Governor of New Jersey and died when William was a boy. His mother was a relative of Jonathan Edwards and Aaron Burr. As a young woman, Varina attended school in Philadelphia and got to know many of her northern Howells family; she carried on a lifelong correspondence with some, and called herself a "half-breed" for her connections in both regions.
Read a letter written by Varina Davis.
Posted by courier at 10:27 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Theodore Harold White (May 6, 1915 – May 15, 1986) was an American political journalist, historian, and novelist, known for his wartime reporting from China and accounts of the 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972 and 1980 presidential elections.
Born May 15, 1915, in Dorchester, Boston, the son of a lawyer named David White. In his book In Search of History: A Personal Adventure, White describes his life growing up as a Jew in Boston's Jewish ghetto, attending Hebrew school (where he developed an interest in Tanakh and could still recall many of its phrases decades later in their original language) and helping form one of the early Zionist collegiate organizations during his time in college. Based upon his academic achievements at Boston Latin School, from which he graduated in 1932 and where he was driven to succeed in the wake of his father's death, White received a scholarship to Harvard University in 1934.
Watch a panel discussion on the influence of Theodore H. White, free from C-Span.
Posted by courier at 06:19 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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By Tierra Negra, Courier Special Correspondent
The evolution of our brain has come with a high cost because it now roughly consumes twenty five percent of the energy produced in the body. It has been found that is constantly making combinations of a group of length waves that ultimately indicate the state of the mind: deep thinking, half asleep, deep dreaming, etc. Such waves must thrive in a competitive space already full of information from all kind of signals sent to be captured back by a myriad of artifacts (i.e. cell phones and TV receivers).
Sometimes I compare this space to a huge board –must be my profession as a teacher, that we all suppose to use responsibly to solve our whole human kind problems. Many might go by in life without ever giving it a try when having the opportunity while few fight real hard to have a chance to write something important because is always full of old data that must be compressed and/or erased to accommodate new information. After all, does it matter if anyone is able to come up with answers when those in power are engaged in trying to maintain the status quo? My “own” theory of how our turns to the board are programed is as follows.
Posted by courier at 11:31 PM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Leo Joseph Ryan, Jr. (May 5, 1925 – November 18, 1978) was an American politician of the Democratic Party. He served as a U.S. Representative from California's 11th congressional district from 1973 until he was murdered in Guyana by members of the Peoples Temple shortly before the Jonestown Massacre in 1978.
After the Watts Riots of 1965, then-Assemblyman Ryan took a job as a substitute school teacher to investigate and document conditions in the area. In 1970, he investigated the conditions of California prisons by being held, under a pseudonym, as an inmate in Folsom Prison, while presiding as chairman of the Assembly committee that oversaw prison reform. During his time in Congress, Ryan traveled to Newfoundland to investigate the practice of seal hunting.
Read more about Leo J. Ryan, free from Freedom magazine.
Posted by courier at 12:47 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Elizabeth Earle "Betsy" Rawls (born May 4, 1928) is an American professional golfer.
Rawls was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina. After attending the University of Texas, Rawls joined the LPGA Tour in its second season in 1951. She won 55 tournaments on the tour, including eight major championships. She topped the money list in 1959 and finished in the top ten nine times between its introduction in 1957 and 1970.
Following her retirement from tournament play, she became a tournament director for the LPGA Tour.
Learn more about Betsy Rawls at the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Posted by courier at 08:04 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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Septima Poinsette Clark (May 3, 1898–December 15, 1987) was an American educator and civil rights activist. Clark developed the literacy and citizenship workshops that played an important role in the drive for voting rights and civil rights for African Americans in the American Civil Rights Movement." She became known as the "Queen mother" or "Grandmother of the American Civil Rights Movement" in the United States.
Clark was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1898. Her father, Peter Poinsette, was born a slave on the Joel Poinsette farm between the Waccamaw River and Georgetown. After the Civil War, he got a job as a caterer. Her mother, Victoria Warren Anderson Poinsette, was born in Charleston but raised in Haiti by her uncle, who took her and her two sisters there in 1864. Victoria Poinsette had never been a slave. She returned to Charleston after the Civil War and worked as a launderer. Clark's mother did not work directly for whites, and refused to allow their daughters to work in white houses in order to protect them from sexual harassment.
Listen to and read an interview with Septima Poinsette Clark, free from the University of North Carolina.
Posted by courier at 07:41 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From wikipedia:
Emma Darwin (née
Wedgwood) (2 May 1808 – 7 October 1896) was the wife and first cousin of Charles Darwin, the English naturalist, scientist and author of
On the Origin of Species. They were married on 29 January 1839 and were the parents of 10 children, three of whom died at early ages.
Read Emma Darwin's diaries.
Posted by courier at 07:53 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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From Wikipedia:
Henry Demarest Lloyd (May 1, 1847 – September 28, 1903) was a 19th-century American progressive political activist and pioneer muckraking journalist. He is best remembered for his exposés of the Standard Oil Company, which was written before Ida M. Tarbell's series for McClure's Magazine.
Henry Demarest Lloyd was born on May 1, 1847 in the home of his maternal grandfather on Sixth Avenue in New York City. Henry was the first child of Aaron Lloyd, a graduate of Rutgers College and Theological Seminary and minster of the Dutch Reformed Church, and Maria Christie Demarest.
Learn more about Henry Demarest Lloyd.
Posted by courier at 11:08 AM. Filed under: In Quotes
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