Category Archives: On This Day

Josh White, singer of “the fighting blues”

Posted on February 11, 2026 by sheila

You could call [Josh White] the minstrel of the Blues, except that he is more than a minstrel of the Blues… Josh is a fine folksinger of anybody’s songs — southern Negro or southern white, plantation work songs or modern … Continue reading →

Posted in Music, On This Day | 2 Comments

“I love to lose myself in other men’s minds. Books think for me.” — Charles Lamb

Posted on February 10, 2026 by sheila

Charles Lamb was friends with everyone. He knew Coleridge from childhood, Wordsworth, William Hazlitt (great writer and portrait painter – Hazlitt did the painting above), Lamb met Keats, he was inner circle with these guys. He was different, though. He … Continue reading →

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“All my work is about uncovering, especially uncovering of voices that speak without governance, or that speak without being heard.” — Seamus Deane

Posted on February 9, 2026 by sheila

“So broken was my father’s family, that it felt to me like a catastrophe you could live with only if you kept it quiet, let it die down of its own accord like a dangerous fire … I felt we … Continue reading →

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“If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks.” – Happy Birthday, Brendan Behan

Posted on February 9, 2026 by sheila

“Shakespeare said pretty well everything and what he left out, James Joyce, with a judge from meself, put in.” – Brendan Behan Brendan Behan, Irish playwright, IRA man, was born in Dublin on this day, 1923. He lived a life … Continue reading →

Posted in On This Day, Theatre, writers | Tagged , , | 13 Comments

For James Dean’s Birthday

Posted on February 8, 2026 by sheila

Some links: For Library of America: I wrote about East of Eden … an essay I had been waiting to write for almost my whole entire life. For my Substack, a re-post of the piece I wrote in 2013 on … Continue reading →

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“Since we do float on an unknown sea I think we should examine the other floating things that come our way very carefully.” — poet Elizabeth Bishop

Posted on February 8, 2026 by sheila

“All the intellectuals were communist except me. I’m always very perverse so I went in for T.S. Eliot and Anglo-Catholicism.”– Elizabeth Bishop Elizabeth Bishop, born on this day, is one of my favorite poets. She didn’t write all that many … Continue reading →

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“The only people who ever called me a rebel were people who wanted me to do what they wanted.” — Nick Nolte

Posted on February 8, 2026 by sheila

It’s Nick Nolte’s birthday. He has always been one of my all-time favorites, and despite the odds – or maybe because of the odds – and his personal struggles – it’s a thrill that he is still with us, still … Continue reading →

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“Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.” — Charles Dickens

Posted on February 7, 2026 by sheila

DICKENS MISCELLANIA: QUOTES AND APPRECIATIONS My favorite Dickens? Oliver Twist was my gateway drug. I read it when I was 11. Because I was obsessed with the movie. Tale of Two Cities came next. Read when I was 15 in … Continue reading →

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“For I, the chiefest lamp of all the earth…” — Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine

Posted on February 6, 2026 by sheila

Maybe this is him. I’m armed with more than complete steel, The justice of my quarrel. — Christopher Marlowe, Lust’s Dominion. Act iii. Sc. 4. Playwright, poet, prodigy, agent in Her Majesty’s secret service: the incomparable Christopher Marlowe was born … Continue reading →

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“Guilt pins a fig-leaf; Innocence is its own adorning.” — poet Anne Spencer

Posted on February 6, 2026 by sheila

Anne Bethel Scales Bannister Spencer was yet another poet-librarian, like Dudley Randall, and many others. As the daughter of a librarian, I am always drawn to these particular journeys, since libraries are not just buildings, they are symbols, and librarians … Continue reading →

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