EIGHT   EVENTS:   January 10, , 7pm – 9pm Breaking New Grounds, Portsmouth, featuring: TBA ... Stone Pigeon  Two featured readers followed by an open mic.   January 10th at 6:30pm, Conway Public Library  the feature will be the Mountain Storytellers Guild. Poets, writers, acoustic musicians and storytellers of al ages are welcome -  and, of course, listeners, too! "Olga Morrill" <omorrill.conway.lib.nh.us   January 10, Henniker: Students in the New England College MFA program in poetry will each read or perform their original work. At 7:30 p.m., the Great Room, Simon Center, New England College (www.tygerburning.blogspot.com).   Jan 11 Newmarket; 7PM; Zion Hill Spoken Word Featuring JONATHAN STOKER!  with the ethereal flute of Cynthia Chatis  Stone Church Newmarket  Open Mic follows   Jan 11 Hampstead 7 p.m., Songs of Old New Hampshire,   Jeff Warner offers songs and stories from  the 18th and 19th centuries.    Contact: Louise Pryor, 329-5921  Hampstead Library, 9 Mary E. Clark Rd.   January 12  Exeter   Chris Elliott  & Tami Truax  After, open mike!   The Water Street Bookstore  125 Water Street  Exeter  778-9731   Jan. 13, Hampstead:  Poet Becky Dennison Sakellariou is featured reader at the Frost Farm’s Hyla Brook Reading Series.  The Series continues at BeanTowne Coffee House (www.beantownecoffee.com), 201 Rte 111, Hampstead.  The program opens with a reading by Hyla Brook poet Melissa Juchniewicz, beginning at 6:30pm and concludes with an Open Mic from 7:30-8:30pm. Free and open to the public.  For further information, email Robert Crawford at bobik9.aol.com.       BIRTHDAYS:   Baltasar Gracian  y Morales (1601 – 12/06/1658)  Spanish Baroque writer, philosopher and scholar   http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/gracian.htm       http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/baltasar_gracian.html   [William] Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), English novelist /modern detective novel   http://www.wilkiecollins.com/   http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/collins.htm   Francisco González Bocanegra (1824-1861; Mexican poet   http://www.issste.gob.mx/website/comunicados/nosotros/octubre2000/francisco.html   John G. Neihardt (1881) US Writer,Poet,Teacher   http://theotherpages.org/poems/2001/neihardt0101.html   http://www.iblist.com/author5114.htm   http://www.neihardt.com/   http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16793/16793-h/16793-h.htm   [Margaret] Storm Jameson   (1891 – 09/30/1986)  English writer   http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/j/storm-jameson/   http://www.c-s-p.org/flyers/9781847181824-sample.pdf   http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wjameson.htm   Dennis Yates Wheatley (1897-1977), British thriller and occult novelist known as 'The Prince of Thriller Writers' http://www.denniswheatley.info/contents.htm   Peter Arno  (1904 – 02/22/1968)  US cartoonist   http://www.artnet.com/artist/156244/peter-arno.html   Horace Smith  (1913 – 01/25/1986)  US writer   http://thinkexist.com/quotation/courage_is_the_fear_of_being_thought_a_coward/208168.html   Sembène Ousmane (1923-2007) Senegalese writer and film director http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ousmane.htm   [Alfred] Charles Tomlinson, CBE (1927), British poet, translator, and artist   http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth56892206078ba2A64FLtO336B44B   Ko Un (1933) Prolific South Korean poet   http://othervoicespoetry.org/vol11/un/bio.html   Sunlight   It's absolutely inevitable! So just take a deep breath and accept this adversity. But look! A distinguished visitor deigns to visit my tiny north-facing cell. Not the chief making his rounds, no, but a ray of sunlight as evening falls, a gleam no bigger than a screwed-up stamp. A sweetheart fit to go crazy about. It settles there on the palm of a hand, warms the toes of a shyly bared foot. Then as I kneel and, undevoutly, offer it a dry, parched face to kiss, in a moment that scrap of sunlight slips away. After the guest has departed through the bars, the room feels several times colder and darker. This military prison special cell is a photographer's darkroom. Without any sunlight I laughed like a fool. One day it was a coffin holding a corpse. One day it was altogether the sea. A wonderful thing! A few people survive here. Being alive is a sea      without a single sail in sight.   http://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/K/KoUn/index.htm   Charles Osgood  (1933 – )  US telejournalist   http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0651872/   http://www.nndb.com/people/651/000023582/   Alexandra Ripley, née Braid (1934-2004) American novelist http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9405E2DB1438F934A15752C0A9629C8B63   Graham Chapman  (1941 – 10/04/1989)  English comic, actor   http://pythonline.com/meet/chapman   Stephen [William] Hawking (1942), English physicist and author http://www.hawking.org.uk/index.php/about-stephen   http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article7107207.ece   Terence Dean 'Terry' Brooks (1944) American fantasy writer   http://www.terrybrooks.net/   http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/b/terry-brooks/   David Bowie  (1947 –)  English singer, songwriter http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000309/               PASSED:   Galileo Galilei  (02/15/1564 –1642)  Italian scientist, astronomer   http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06342b.htm   Paul Verlaine  (03/30/1844 –1896)  French writer   http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/verlaine.htm   http://poetry.poetryx.com/poets/670/       Le Faune           An ancient terra-cotta Faun,      A laughing note in ’mid the green,   Grins at us from the central lawn,      With secret and sarcastic mien.       It is that he foresees, perchance,      A bad end to the moments dear   That with gay music and light dance      Have led us, pensive pilgrims, here.   Translated by Gertrude Hall   Online text © 1998-2011 Poetry X. All rights reserved.   Robert Baden-Powell  (02/22/1857 –1941)  English military, Boy Scouts founder   http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Baden_Powell_Lord_Robert.html   Kenneth Patchen (1934-72) US Poet,Artist,translator   http://www.connectotel.com/patchen/   http://www.concentric.net/~lndb/patchen/patchclr.htm           SITES:   http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/exclusive-merle-haggard-on-his-kennedy-center-honor-meeting-obama-and-oprah-and-more-20101228   http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/index.html   http://id.mind.net/~sirjames/sirjames/home.html   http://kishinev.info/monuments_en/   http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30421   http://local.yahoo.com/info-46200898-mel-flanagan-s-irish-pubcafe-rochester   http://www.askthebuilder.com/   http://www.pplp.org/   https://computation.llnl.gov/casc/sundials/main.html   http://www.turtlebay.org/sundialbridge       BONUS POEM:   ← Doppelganger   zane takes a bullet in the chest →   Garden Piece       This is not a document of barbarism, we said                                                               but the weather was fine   and the girls/women were in swimsuit ads                                                           or at least we thought   they were, but from our position on the dirty                                                           parterre, really all   that could be seen were the fibrous wires                                                           holding everything together.       Those fibrous wires, they said, are surely but                                                           chainlinks in a larger   fence, but the goods, tainted as they were, couldn’t be                                                           sold, so we didn’t reply.   A new start, really, was all we were looking for                                                           and our study of homiletics   definitely contributed to that, though the inbreaking                                                           remained unbroken.       So what, you might say, as they did, there’s nothing                                                           new under the sun,   which, anyway, was gone from its hegemonic position.                                                           Meanwhile, on the parterre,   the tulips were thoroughly roasted. Odoriferous, we                                                           laughed and held our noses.   Everything vegetates, this is known. The cycle of nature,        we said, remains unbroken.       Penelope Aira   http://www.cordite.org.au/