Another long hiatus. Hey, I’m busy!
Today in History:
- 1812: Charles Dickens is born. Fights broke out on the docks as people waited for the arrival of the latest installment of his work, including the criminally overlooked Pickwick Papers. For all the mammoth size of some of his works, they were often filled with pithy observations, such as:
“No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.”
“…there are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.”
“Mrs. Joe was a very clean housekeeper, but had an exquisite art of making her cleanliness more uncomfortable and unacceptable than dirt itself.”
and one I should keep in mind:
“A word in earnest is as good as a speech.”
- 1867: Laura Ingalls Wilder is born. Remember how freaky looking that witchy Nellie Oleson was? And Mary Ingalls may be the source of my semi-secret infatuation with blind women…
- 1885: Sinclair Lewis is born. I really should read some of his books.
- 1882: The last official bare-knuckles boxing match takes place in Mississippi. Glad that boxing is no longer a brutal sport with people trading an infinitesimal shot at riches for most of their brain functions.
- 1914: Charlie Chaplin makes his first appearance as The Tramp in the short film Kid Auto Races at Venice. Was Robert Downey Jr. amazing as Chaplin or what?
- 1964: The Beatles arrive at JFK for their first American tour. I still love all the sappy Beatles songs the best: “In My Life,” “Yesterday,” etc.
- 1979: For the first time since it is discovered, Pluto moves inside the orbit of Neptune (tell me again how it’s not a planet? And note my restraint in making no jokes about Uranus).
Events:
For math geeks, today is e day. Don’t hold back!
And today marks the Lunar New Year, aka the Chinese/Mongolian/Vietnamese/Korean/Cambodian/Thai/Singaporean New Year
From Today’s Reading:
“Holding Hands”
After weeks of yearning
half-taps and near-grasps,
my sweaty palm found hers
and we made a leaky basket
of our interlaced fingers
and that was it, hallelujah,
finally we were holding hands
in public, we were shaking
sideways on a visual contract
everybody could understand,
I was hers and she was mine,
the two of us had begun
becoming one clasped flesh,
now we were happily coupled
from the supple wrists down,
we were carrying the pet
with two backs between us
as if we’d never before
squeezed another human
in such a meaningful way,
as if she had never seized
her tall anxious mother
when first learning to walk
or cross a lethal street,
that firm grip saving her,
as if I would never clutch
a dying father’s calluses
in cardiac intensive care
and feel our shared pulse,
the mutual prayer of blood,
as if she and I would never
tire of each other’s touch
and try to figure out how
to escape this embarrassing
collision of crinkled skin,
this padded cage of bones,
these too-long opened fists
before somebody passing by
mistook for love our resigned
inability to quite let go.–Michael McFee
