What I learned in elementary school was
that all the famous people. successful people,
brilliant people, leaders, scientists, artists, inventors, athletes
yes, all the poets and other writers
are dead. Who keeps the world turning?
What I Learned
Tag history
The Unicorn
I prefer the mythical horse with horn.
Figuratively something desirable but difficult to obtain.
Rather than a billion-dollar start-up company definition.
Leave the myths alone. Set unicorns free.
Stop unraveling the tapestry threads of history.
Unicorn tapestry www.metmuseum.org/art/
1066
One of the dates from history class
that stuck – William the Conqueror from Normandy
defeats British at the Battle of Hastings.
It changed the language. Adieu German.
Bonjour Latin and French. Hello Middle English.
“Normans Bayeux” Battle of Hastings – Tapestry de Bayeux Wikimedia Commons.
Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America
This day in 1672, Anne Bradstreet died.
America’s first published poet, married at 16,
off to the New World to write
about her husband, children, God – this woman
eventually discontent with her Puritan woman’s life.
Her first and only volume of poetry was The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, published in England in 1650. Her poems received a positive reception in both the Old World and the New World.
poetryfoundation.org/bio/anne-bradstreet
“Memorial marker for Anne Dudley Bradstreet in the Old North Parish Burial Ground,
North Andover, Massachusetts” by Sarnold17 –
Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
The Blood
The seventh son of the seventh son,
though I am distanced by a castle,
mountains, an ocean and centuries,
I hold the history, proud and ashamed,
known, unknown, buried and born. Son. Father.
Mary Had a Little Lamb
The Wizard of Menlo Park, New Jersey,
from telegraph to telephone to gramophone,
thinking he could record the human voice.
Stylus-made impressions on strips of paraffin paper.
Letters (gramma) given a new voice (phone).
Thomas Edison with his second phonograph, photographed by Mathew Brady in Washington, April 1878 (LOC)
“Edison immediately tested the machine by speaking the nursery rhyme into the mouthpiece, ‘Mary had a little lamb.’ To his amazement, the machine played his words back to him.” from a History of the Edison Cylinder Phonograph from the Library of Congress
Writing the Day 