The Writer's Almanac from Saturday, June 29, 2013
The Writer's Almanac from Saturday, June 29, 2013
The text of this poem is no longer available.
"Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith" by Mary Oliver, from West Wind. © Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
On this day in 1613, the original Globe Theatre burned down. It was built by Shakespeare's acting company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, in 1599. It was a round, wooden building with thatched-roof balconies for the gentry. A cannon was fired during a performance of Henry VIII to mark the King's entrance, the thatched roof caught fire, and the whole theater was lost in an hour. It was rebuilt the next year, but taken down in 1644 to make space for tenements, after the Puritans closed all theaters. A replica, the new Globe Theatre, was built in the mid-1990s.
On this day in 1921, Edith Wharton became the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize, for her novel The Age of Innocence. Sinclair Lewis's Main Street won the first vote, but it was considered too offensive by some prominent Midwesterners. Wharton lived in Paris during World War I, and she said, "I found a momentary escape in going back to my childish memories of a long-vanished America, and wrote The Age of Innocence."
It was on this day in 1956 that President Eisenhower signed the Federal Highway Act, which established the Interstate Highway System.
As a general during World War II, Eisenhower was impressed by Germany's autobahn system, and he decided that the United States needed something comparable. After the war, the economy was booming, and Eisenhower decided the time was right to push through the Interstate Highway System. It was the largest public works project in American history. It took longer than expected to build — 35 years instead of 12 — and it cost more than $100 billion, about three times the initial budget. But the first coast-to-coast interstate highway, I-80, was completed in 1986, running from New York City to San Francisco.
It was a great boon for hotel and fast-food chains, which sprung up by interstate exits. It was also a boon for suburban living, since commuting was faster and easier than before. But it was not necessarily good for American literature. When John Steinbeck took a cross-country trip with his dog and wrote Travels with Charley (1962), he only traveled on the interstate for one section, on I-90 between Erie, Pennsylvania, and Chicago, Illinois. He wrote: "These great roads are wonderful for moving goods but not for inspection of a countryside. You are bound to the wheel and your eyes to the car ahead and to the rear-view mirror for the car behind and [...] at the same time you must read all the signs for fear you may miss some instructions or orders. No roadside stands selling squash juice, no antique stores, [...] no farm products. When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing."
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"When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing."
John Steinbeck's observation on traveling Eisenhower's Autobohn (I-90) in 1962 seems prescient about the American electorate in 2024. The self indulgent focus of the American electorate on what is in (or not in) their wallet has blinded them of the beauty of the by ways and backroad of America that form the backbone of the "American Experiment" I fear that, similar to 1860, we are in a position where that "last great hope" of democracy for our world is in danger of being extinguished.
Where is our Prairie Lawyer to save us from the demons that lurk inside?
What has happened to Garrison Keillor’s narration for TWA? I had recently renewed my subscription and he’s no longer there. The new fella is kind of flat. Pretty disappointing.