May 20

Events:

May 19th –20th Kingston NH The New Hampshire Renaissance Faire  At Three Maples Farm ; from 10 to 5 PM each day. A portion of the proceeds raised is donated to charity.   Tickets for this event are: $12.50 for adults and $8.00 for kids from ages 5 -12.  Kids age 4 and under will be free.  3 Maples Renaissance Corporation   44 Tucker Road   Kingston, NH 03834   http://www.nhrenfaire.com   giazz.comcast.net

 For more information, http://www.nhrenfaire.com

Born:

May 20

William Thornton, 1759 - March 28, 1828 architect (Capitol building, Wash DC)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/greatphotographicon/3321076525/

Dolley Madison  (1768 – 07/12/1849)  US first lady (4)

http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/madison/

William Congreve 1772 – 16 May 1828) English inventor and rocket artillery pioneer

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/people/mr-william-congreve

Honoré de Balzac (1799-08/18/1850) French writer -novels and short stories

http://kirjasto.sci.fi/balzac.htm

http://www.amazon.com/Honoré-de-Balzac/e/B000AQ3NH6/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_4?qid=1337506332&sr=8-4

John Stuart Mill (1806 – 05/08/1873) English philosopher, economist

http://www.bartleby.com/people/Mill-JS.html

Frédéric Passy 1822-1922- French economist/pacifist; co-winner of 1st Nobel Peace Prize (1901)

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1901/passy-bio.html
Antoinette Brown Blackwell 1825-1921  clergy (1st ordained US female minister)

http://www.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/OYTT-images/NettyBlackwell.html
James William Reilly 1828 -1905 Brigadier General (Union volunteers),

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=5893716

Sigrid Undset   (1882-1949), Norwegian novelist Nobel Prize for Literature1928

http://kirjasto.sci.fi/undset.htm

Margery Allingham (1889 or 1904 – 06/30/1966) English writer

http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/margery-allingham.htm

Adela Rogers St. Johns  (1894 – 08/10/1988)  US journalist

http://looking-for-mabel.webs.com/adelarogersstjohn.htm

James Stewart  (1908 – 07/02/1997)  US actor

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000071/

http://www.meredy.com/jimmystewart/beau.htm

Gardner F[rancis] Fox, 1911 - December 24, 1986 US, sci-fi author (best known for creating numerous comic book characters for DC Comics

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?1305

George Gobel  (1919 – 02/24/1991)  US comedian

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0323597/

Cherilyn Sarkisian LaPiere  (1946 – )  Armenian/part Cherokee and French.-US singer, actor

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000333/bio

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/cher-p3881

William Michaelian, 1956- American novelist and poet

http://www.william-michaelian.com/

Behind the Building

We hid. Talked. Laughed. Smoked cigarettes.

Drank rum and coke. Made promises.

Kept each other warm. Lied. Tried. Cried.

Said good-bye. Came back a thousand times.

Then one day the building was gone.

And everyone in town could see us there.

It was cruel. That’s what it was. Some froze.

Others ran. A few held up our hands.

Now we’re gone too. Scattered to corners.

Crevices. Behind the baseboards. Under the sink.

Bars. Offices. Stores. Mental wards. Cemeteries.

Wherever people go when light shines hard upon them.

To hide while their shells harden. Or to sing.

William Michaelian

[From Songs and Letters, first published September 11, 2007.]     posted at Recently Banned Literature

http://donnafleischer.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/behind-the-building-a-poem-by-william-michaelian-recently-banned-literature/

Jane Wiedlin   (1958 – )  US singer (Go-Gos)

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-go-gos-p80468

Anthony Wayne Tony Stewart, 1971 - American race car driver

http://www.tonystewart.com/

What is it to believe? Being a carer

A cradle rockin

Passed:

May 20

Christopher Columbus   (08/26/1451 –1506)   Italian explorer

http://www.columbusnavigation.com/

Thomas  Sprat  Sept 20, 1635  -1713  English Restoration  Anglican Bishop Dean Scholar/poet  - Fellow Royal Society

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poets/sprat-thomas

Alexander Ross (c. 1590–1654) Scottish writer Poet and controversialist.

http://www.electricscotland.com/history/other/ross_alexander.htm

Thomas Warton the younger (Jan. 9, 1728-1790) Eng. poet laureate from 1785 and author of the first history of English poetry,

http://www.nndb.com/people/141/000103829/

Marquis de Lafayette  (09/06/1757 – 05/20/1834) French soldier, statesman

http://www.lucidcafe.com/library/95sep/lafayette.html

Joseph Blanco White  07/ 11/ 1775   - 1841   English /Spanish   Romantic Man of letters theologian and poet

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poets/white-joseph-blanco

Mary Ann Lamb (3 December 1764 –1847), English writer, the sister and collaborator of Charles Lamb.

 http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6568

http://archive.org/search.php?query=%22Mary%20Lamb%22

John Clare   July 13, 1793 1864  English Romantic  writer  / Poet

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poets/clare-john

Waldo Williams, 1904-71 Welsh poet

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/waldo-williams

Prayer for Silence

Heal my noise, O God.
Drown the bayonet-
Fit tides of volume
Rising within the
Skull from chin to crown.

Silence my violence,
O God, within the
Gnarly thorns of your
Bloody shalom. Find
Me in paradise.

Be still all my wars,
Lion of Judah.
By an outstretched arm,
Sullied by nail's round
Socket, wash me clean.

http://resident-theology.blogspot.com/2009/05/sunday-sabbath-poetry-waldo-williams.html

Alan Dunn (08,11,1900–1974) was a cartoonist known for his work in The New Yorker.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?90593

Gilda Radner  (06/28/1946 –1989)  US comic actor (SNL;

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0705717/

Source: Poetry (April Stephen Jay Gould, 1941- 2002 American paleontologist

http://www.nndb.com/people/641/000024569/

Sites:

http://www.youtube.com/

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/323/323-h/323-h.htm

http://marijuanastateuniversity.com/default.aspx

http://www.luciet.com/

http://www.concordmonitor.com/

http://www.ncis.navy.mil/Pages/publicdefault.aspx

History:

May 20

1927, the "Lone Eagle,"Charles A(gustus) Lindbergh, The Spirit of St. Louis took off alone from muddy Roosevelt Field on Long Island.

http://www.charleslindbergh.com/plane/index.asp

1932 Amelia Earhart leaves Newfoundland 1st woman fly solo across Atlantic

http://www.ninety-nines.org/index.cfm/amelia_earhart.htm

1937 W. H. Auden's Spain was published

http://www.todayinliterature.com/

http://www.cyberpat.com/shirlsite/essays/spain.html

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPauden.htm

Bonus Poem:

Night among the Thousand Islands

1Mysterious falls the moon's transforming light

2 On lichen-covered rock and granite wall,

3Comes piercing through the hollows of the night

4 The loon's weird, plaintive call.

5Like some great regiment upon the shore

6 The stalwart pines go trooping up the hill,

7And faintly in the distance o'er and o'er

8 Echoes the whip-poor-will.

9Like silhouettes the dreaming islands keep

10 Their silent watches, mirrored in the tide,

11While in their labyrinthine aisles some deep,

12 Still mystery seems to hide.

13From out the shadows dim against the sky

14 Come stealing shadow-ships not made of men,

15Faint phantom-barques that slowly drifting by

16 Are swallowed up again.

17While silently beneath, the river flows,

18 Unfathomed, dark, a great resistless tide,

19Within its bosom deep the virgin snows

20 From many a mountain-side.

21And, drifting with the current, how we feel

22 The haunting witchery of Beauty's spell!

23The world we left behind seems all unreal.

24 Where such enchantments dwell.

25The vexing cares that overfill our days

26 Slip stealthily away, and we are wooed

27Back to the healing, half-forgotten ways

28 Of peace and solitude.

                                   Helena Jane Coleman (1860-1953)

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poet/611.html