‎"Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas." Marie Curie

"Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide."
So said Tecumseh, the Shawnee orator, leader, the "Shooting Star." I simply must do a book about him if only to learn more about this compelling person. 'Twas on this day 199 years ago, in what was then the Indiana Territory, that his fellow warriors clashed with U.S. forces led by future President Wm. Henry Harrison at the awful Battle of Tippecanoe. Want to learn more about this truly significant, albeit harsh and grievous deal - gee, why wouldn't you? go to: http://www.tcha.mus.in.us/battlehistory.htm

In any event, 56 years later, the curious, investigative physicist & chemist, Marie Sklodowska Curie, was born in Poland. I sort of wondered if her soul had its song prepared prior to her departure from the Blue Beyond to enter her earthly life thru the door marked 7 Nov 1867.

"The office of President is a great one; to every true American it seems the greatest on earth. And to me, as I was engaged in weaving a background of music for the pageantry of it, there came a deeper realization of the effect of that office on the man."

John Philip Sousa, composer, leader of the greatest band (1854~1932)

So, happy deathday, Catherine, the "Great" Empress of all the Russias. Her remarkable life ended, this day in 1796, the last year of Geo. Washington's Presidency. when she was 67.

Happy birthday John Philip Sousa,, who turned six years old on the day that Mr. Lincoln of Illinois was elected to the U.S. Presidency, 150 years ago today. Isn't that remarkable? If you ever, ever get the chance [maybe you could find it at the library] track down the American Experience documentary, If You Knew Sousa.

http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie/american-experience-if-you-knew-sousa/

I'm just back from a 4-hr drive across the handsome land of the Show Me, from St. Peters, Missouri, from a get-together of the MO Assoc. of School Librarians. http://www.maslonline.org/ Let us give thanks for lovers of books.

Fawkesy Dude!

"Sacredness of human life! The world has never believed it! It has been with life that we settled our quarrels, won wives, gold & land, defended ideas, imposed religions. We have held that a death toll was a necessary part of every human achievement, whether sport, war, or industry. A moment's rage over the horror of it, and we have sunk into indifference." Ida Tarbell, progressive journalist and teacher, 5 Nov. 1857 ~ 6 Jan. 1944

Miss Tarbell was born in one of many perilous times in American history, on Guy Fawkes Day when many a crowd has gathered 'round bonfires to commemorate the autumn day in London, in 1605, when Fawkes was discovered w/a cache of explosives w/ which he'd hoped to blow up the House of Lords. All part of a plan it was, to plant a Catholic on the throne of England. After all, said Mr. Fawkes, "A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy." The Britannic authorities could not have agreed more. Further illuminating Ida's declaration, they captured and tortured Fawkes, thus foiling the "Gunpowder Plot," then they hanged him. Oh - and, this appears to be the anniversary of the day in 1831 when magistrates of the Old Dominion sentenced Nat Turner to death for having raised a deadly rebellion of those trapped in servitude. (Hmmm... according to the wikibots, today marks 4 years since Saddam Hussein was sentenced to the noose & the world was relieved of his company, if not the affects of his time here.)

On an ever so much nicer note, three performers, who gave boatloads of pleasure to this unfair, wicked old world, share a birthday with the courageous, stubborn, indefatigable Ida Tarbell: Joel McCrae (1905)... do see him, if you haven't, in Sullivan's Travels. or see it again if you have. oh baybee.... Roy Rogers (1911), and Vivien Leigh (1913).

Okay, no easy thing choosing ONE nifty thing said by the man who was born on this day, 4 Nov. (my niece Kate Harness's 21st birthday), down in the "Indian Territory" [known as Oklahoma for some time now], back in 1879, when Laura Ingalls was 12, when President Rutherford B. & 1st Lady Lucretia 'Lemonade Lucy' Hayes were in the White House & Mr. Woolworth opened his first 5¢ store. But here you go and didn't the multitudes wish that he'd never gotten on that plane back in the summer of '35. God bless today's birthday dude, the smart-aleck who said:

"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."

William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers (1879-1935)

“Autumn, the year's last, loveliest smile.” so wrote the poet, William Cullen Bryant, born in Massachusetts on the 3rd of November, 1794, the year of the so-called Whiskey Rebellion. man oh man, we Americans have always gotten our knickers twisted over taxes, never liked paying the club dues. John Trumbull painted his grand and famous [grandly, famously crowded] painting, commemorating the signing of the Dec. of Ind. that year....As to Wm. C. B.'s notion of smiling nature, I reckon I'd counter w/ a white December morning. Here's a link to Wm.'s Thanatopsis:

http://www.poetry-archive.com/b/thanatopsis.html

Me, I'll read it later. That's one long-ass 'pome'

It's the birthday, too, of Anastasia's big sister Olga, the Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna Romanov, one of Czar Nicky's lovely, photogenic, doomed daughters, who no more asked to be born into their coddled lives [or did they? guess we'll find out on the other side] than did their stubborn, shy parents and all the infants of the masses. Olga, I find, was born when my grandmother, Eulah Brown of Cameron, MO, was two years old. ...

“All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife” Daniel Boone, born on the 2nd of November, according to the old calendar, in 1734... Duchess Maria Antonia was born on Dan'l's 21st birthday over in Austria, unaware, of course, that she'd be known in France as Marie Antoinette, doomed queen, having been dispatched into political wedlock. Long many a year was born on Dan'l's 21st birthday, swell author Natalie Kinsey-Warnock, b. 2 Nov, quite a few years after that... http://www.kinsey-warnock.com/

Here, here's a bit o' me Dan'l Boone book in honor of the old Pathfinder:

AS LONG AS PEOPLE HAVE HAD EYES & MINDS, they've used them to gaze & wonder what they might see if they ventured out beyond the edge of town. But not everybody had the gumption or, in some cases, the misfortune to leave the familiar and chance the mysterious. Off they'd go, all sorts of hardy folks, into the woods, on rivers, across deserts, and over the seas. Thanks to them, we have stories, and one of the best is that of trailblazer Daniel Boone. He tramped many a mile, gathering up knowledge about young America's frontier, storing all that he learned behind his keen blue eyes.

We Americans are, on the whole, a restless bunch, descended from travelers. When ancestors of the folks Daniel Boone knew as "Indians" came east from Asia to North America, they might well have found paths made by who knows who or what. Over the ages, descendants of these prehistoric pioneers and newcomers from across the Atlantic Ocean crisscrossed the continent, tracing new trails. Old roads morphed and networked into canals, railroad tracks, city streets, and multi-lane highways where, nowadays, cars and trucks zip along at 70 MPH. We speed through the clouds in jets, thousands of feet above where beasts and people trudged through the wilds, following in the footsteps of Daniel Boone. We still do.

introduction to The Trailblazing Life of DANIEL BOONE & How Early Americans Took to the Road [National Geographic, 2007]

http://www.amazon.com/Trailblazing-Daniel-Americans-Harness-Histories/dp/1426301456/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1288716129&sr=8-1

Housewarming

"On Saturday afternoon, November 1, 1800, four horses pulled a coach along mud-rutted, stump-stubbled Pennsylvania Avenue and up to an unfinished sandstone mansion, the biggest house in America. Sixty-five-year-old John Adams stepped out and gazed up at his new home, which would be forever known as the White House. His wife and granddaughter, 4-year-old Susanna, arrived two weeks later, having gotten lost in the 'Forest and woods' on the way.

In their new home, they kept close to the fireplaces. The lofty, hardly finished rooms smelled of smoke, damp plaster, sawdust, and paint. Abigail, who didn't want citizens gawking at the First Family's linen drying in the yard, would have laughed to know that her East Room clothesline would become a White House legend.'

I wrote and more than once rewrote this passage for p. 32 of my book The Revolutionary John Adams, published in 2003 (a very different time, publishing-wise) by the National Geographic. Man oh man, I loved working on this book about one of the most fascinating American families, pondering John and Abigail's partnership, their valiant efforts and separations and prickly personalities. I don't at all mean to be turning this here blog into some infomercial, but oh well...

210 years ago today. Golly, imagine settling into that cold barn down in Washington City.

http://www.amazon.com/Revolutionary-John-Adams-Cheryl-Harness/dp/0792254910/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1288622095&sr=8-1

Just imagine - that's what I always do and lemme tell you, it sure as heck makes the reading of history a damned sight more interesting than one might think. And researching? Oh baybee -- do check out http://www.whitehouse.gov/about/history/ and treat yourself to reading William Seale's splendid [two volumes!] history of The President's House

http://www.amazon.com/Presidents-House-History-Set/dp/0801885973/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288622704&sr=1-2

And just imagine - apart from managing the complex affairs of state, mourning the loss of their son Charles, John and Abigail doing their best to settle into that cold barn [the power was out & wouldn't be on for another 80 years or so] down in the hardscrabble beginnings of 'Washington City ' 210 years ago today. Me, I'm going to put on another sweater. Long live the Republic. Vote tomorrow.