The Writer's Almanac from Thursday, June 20, 2013

The Writer's Almanac from Thursday, June 20, 2013

"Sonogram" by Paul Muldoon, from The Annals of Chile. © Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994.

ORIGINAL  TEXT AND AUDIO - 2013

Eighteen-year-old Alexandrina Victoria became Queen of England on this date in 1837. "Drina," as she was known to her family, had a fairly quiet childhood. She kept a diary, so we know a lot about her private life. She was a lively and sometimes mischievous child, and she was well educated, but her mother was overprotective and kept her isolated at Kensington Palace in London.

When she was born, she was fifth in line for the throne behind her uncles and her father, and no one expected her to become a monarch. But one by one, her uncles and their heirs died, and by 1830, she was heiress presumptive, next in line for the crown. The dawn hours of June 20, 1837, brought the news her uncle King William the Fourth died, and she was now a queen. Her first demand was that she be given a room of her own and stop having to share with her mother.

On this date in 1840, Samuel Morse received a patent for his system known as "Morse code." During a demonstration of one of his early telegraph machines, he met Alfred Vail, a young mechanical engineer, who became his assistant.

The telegraph works by sending an electromagnetic signal over a wire. Morse had an idea that the current could be used to move a pencil along a moving strip of paper, but Vail simplified it by suggesting a cheaper and more practical alternative: an arm that would bounce up and down, tapping out messages. It was actually Vail, not Morse, who came up with the first dot-and-dash system of language, with each letter and number being made up of a different combination of long and short sounds or flashes. Vail's first message using his code was, "A patient waiter is no loser." But Morse was the better known of the two inventors, and it was his name on the patents, and that's why we call it "Morse Code" and not "Vail Code."

It's the birthday of American playwright Lillian Hellman, born in New Orleans (1905).

At the age of 26, she wrote The Children's Hour — which premiered on Broadway in 1934 — about a pompous boarding school student who damaged the reputations of the two school directors by accusing them of having a lesbian relationship. The play was a sensation on Broadway but it was banned in many places, including Boston, Chicago, and London. When it was shunned by the Pulitzer Prize committee because of its content, critics formed the New York Drama Critics Circle Award as a way to honor it.

During the McCarthy hearings, Hellman's longtime lover, the detective writer Dashiell Hammett, went to jail because he was a member of the Communist Party. Hellmann offered to accompany him, but he refused. When she was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1950, she refused to name names. She read a prepared, and now famous, speech in which she said: "To hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions."

It's the birthday of poet Paul Muldoon, born in Portadown, Ireland (1951). His father dug ditches for a living, and could barely read or write. The only book his family owned was The Junior World Encyclopaedia, so it became Muldoon's favorite book. He began to write poems in grade school as a way to get out of one of his teacher's weekly essay assignments.

After college, Muldoon began publishing books of poetry and supporting himself by working as a television producer for the BBC. He says that his influences are John Donne, Robert Frost, William Butler Yeats, and rock 'n' roll.

He's the author of many collections of poetry, including Moy Sand and Gravel (2002), which won the Pulitzer Prize, and Maggot (2010).

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

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CHICAGO THEATRE

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