The Writer's Almanac from Thursday, January 9, 2014
The Writer's Almanac from Thursday, January 9, 2014
"Hello Central" by Ron Padgett from Collected Poems. © Coffee House Press, 2013.
ORIGINAL TEXT AND AUDIO - 2014
It was on this day in 2001 that Apple Computer introduced iTunes. Since that day, more than 10 billion tracks have been downloaded from the iTunes store. Six years later, on this day in 2007, Apple unveiled the iPhone. Afterward, they made available a software development kit, the set of tools enabling a person to create a third-party application, or iPhone "app." There are now more than 1,000,000 iPhone apps, with 60 billion downloads — helping people do things like learn Japanese, train for marathons, monitor infant diaper activity, access news stories, find cookbook recipes, keep time with a metronome, make espresso and boost productivity.
It's the birthday of Cassandra Austen, born in Hampshire, England (1773). She was a good watercolor painter, and she was extremely close to her sister, novelist Jane Austen. Neither one of the two sisters ever married and they shared a bedroom all of their lives. When they were apart from each other — when one traveled to visit distant relatives and the other stayed home — they wrote letters, hundreds of them. And it's from these letters between the Austen sisters that scholars have been able to piece together many of the details about Jane Austen's life.
We also know what Jane Austen looks like because of drawings by her sister Cassandra. One of Cassandra's illustrations of Jane is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®
The Padgett piece is not a poem - it's two prose paragraphs.
Any day that starts with Ron Padgett is a good day.