The date is December 4th, Wednesday, and today I’m traveling from Auckland, New Zealand to Los Angeles, California and then Los Angeles, CA to Portland, OR. Phew. This week I’ll be on hiatus, check out Monday’s episode, December 2nd for the whole scoop! The Walrus and the Carpenter Lewis Carroll The sun was shining on the sea, Shining with all his might: He did his very best to make The billows smooth and bright— And this was odd, because it was The middle of the night. The moon was shining sulk...
Dec 04, 2019•5 min•Ep. 160
Hiatus Week Day 2: A belated autumnal poem to explain the Indian Summer phenomenon. The date is December 3rd, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Auckland, New Zealand. This week I’ll be on hiatus, check out Monday’s episode, December 2nd for the whole scoop! Legend of The Indian Summer Kate Harrington I have learned a simple legend, Never found in books of lore, Copied not from old tradition, Nor from classics read of yore ; But the breezes sang it to me With a low and soft refrain, While...
Dec 03, 2019•5 min•Ep. 159
The date is December 2nd, Monday, and today I’m traveling from Port Vila, Vanuatu to Auckland, New Zealand. This week I’ll be on hiatus, which may sound ridiculous considering the number of episodes I have to catch up on, but if you then consider that each episode takes me about 3 hours from research to writing to publication, I need time, that with working, I don’t always have. So this hiatus week will be a recurring thing I do to help me stay on top of episodes while I figure out how to produc...
Dec 02, 2019•6 min•Ep. 158
The date is November 29th, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu. And today is the birthday of Louisa May Alcott, American writer. Louisa May was born to a small family in 1832 in what is now Philadelphia, PA. They didn’t stay long there. The family would move to Boston shortly following Dad’s dream of founding a Transcendentalist school. The family would move 22 times in 30 years, mostly in and around New England. While Alcott’s father was a man of high-minded ideals, he w...
Nov 29, 2019•5 min•Ep. 157
View this episode on our website. The date is November 28th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu. Today is Thanksgiving in America. It is a time for families and friends gather together to share a meal and spend the day reflecting on all the wonderful things, tangible and intangible, that have come our way over the past year. So today I will just share a poem :) Thanksgiving Ella Wheeler Wilcox We walk on starry fields of white And do not see the daisies; For blessings ...
Nov 28, 2019•3 min•Ep. 156
Check out this episode on our website. The date is November 27th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu. Today is the birthday of Fanny Kemble, British actress and writer. Fanny was born to an acting dynasty in 1809 and as such received her education in Paris in music and theater as a child, branching out to study literature and poetry in her teen years. She returned to London and set to work writing her own plays while performing in nearly all of Shakespeare’s classics ...
Nov 27, 2019•5 min•Ep. 155
Check out this episode on our website. Charles Schulz basically made a killing with Peanuts! A fiercely independent American surgeon shares a birthday with the cartoonist. Poem by Lewis Carroll. The date is November 26th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu. Today is the birthday of Charles M. Schulz, American cartoonist. Charles Schulz had been working on his Li’l Folks cartoon for a few years before Peanuts evolved from it. Li’l Folks started out as a mostly one-panel ...
Nov 26, 2019•5 min•Ep. 154
Check out the show's website. The date is November 25th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu. On this day in 1947, Hollywood studios in Los Angeles California instituted the first blacklist. Ten writers and directors under suspicion of communist sympathies were all fired from their respective posts and movie and TV studios were instructed not to hire them. The Hollywood Ten as they are known were requested to testify in front of the House of Un-American Activities. On the...
Nov 25, 2019•5 min•Ep. 153
Check out today's episode on our website. The date is November 22nd, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu. On this day in 1995, Toy Story premiered in theaters. Toy Story was the first feature-length film created completely using computer-generated imagery. It took around 5 years and $30 million to make. It was a worthy investment as Toy Story grossed nearly $380 million at the box office worldwide, was nominated for three Academy Awards and two Golden Globes, and launched...
Nov 22, 2019•5 min•Ep. 152
Don't forget to check out our website! The date is November 21st, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu. Today is the birthday of Catharina Questiers, Dutch writer. Catharina was born in 1631 in Amsterdam where she lived her whole life. She focused her efforts on plays and poetry and is speculated to be the youngest person to write Dutch plays and have them professionally produced. Catharina Questiers gained public noteriety when her play, based on the structure of the po...
Nov 21, 2019•5 min•Ep. 151
The date is November 20th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu. Today’s episode is brought to you by the generous, the warm-hearted, the green-thumbed Candy P. or Oregon. Today is the birthday of Selma Lagerlöf, Swedish writer. Lagerlöf was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature, receiving the award in 1909 at the age of 51 “ in appreciation of the lofty idealism, vivid imagination and spiritual perception that characterize her writings .” Lagerlöf was quie...
Nov 20, 2019•5 min•Ep. 150
The date is November 19th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Port Vila, Vanuatu. Today is the birthday of Hiram Bingham III, American professor and explorer. Born in Hawaii to arguably successful missionaries, Hiram Bingham III would hold on to his father’s work ethic and adventurous spirit, though he would not be quite so pious or humble. In fact, It was Hiram Bingham III who felt that, “If a man were going to work that hard, someone ought to know about it.” Hiram left Hawaii for the ma...
Nov 19, 2019•5 min•Ep. 149
The date is November 1st, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Sydney, Australia. On this day in 1955, the Vietnam War began. It would last 19 years and be a massive stain in the history of American international affairs. It is also known in some parts of Vietnam as the War of American Aggression or simply the American War. History books may call it the Second Indochina War. The fight over Vietnam started earlier with the First Indochina War, also known as the Anti-French Resistance War. At ...
Nov 01, 2019•5 min•Ep. 137
The date is October 31st, Thursday, and today I’m traveling from Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon in Vietnam to Sydney, Australia. Today is Halloween for most of the globe. Halloween is typically celebrated with costume dressing, trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins, bobbing for apples and general mischief. Many people believe that Halloween traditions have sprouted out of a Christian festival, but its true roots are not that simple. Halloween is indeed a Christian name: it is a shortened version of “All ...
Oct 31, 2019•5 min•Ep. 136
The date is Wednesday, October 30th, and today I’m coming to you from Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon in Vietnam. Today is the birthday of Elizabeth Madox Roberts, American writer. Elizabeth grew up in Springfield, Kentucky in the late 1800s. She attended the University of Kentucky briefly, dropping out on account of poor health. Roberts was gravely disappointed as she wholeheartedly enjoyed literature and philosophy. She moved back home, taking up a career in teaching. In 1910, Elizabeth had had enough...
Oct 30, 2019•5 min•Ep. 135
The biggest (most priceless) jewel heist happens at the American Museum of Natural History. It’s arguably also the easiest. Poem by Robert Frost. The date is October 29th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon in Vietnam. On this day in 1964, the biggest jewelry heist in history took place at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Notable gems stolen included the 563-carat sapphire Star of India, the 100-carat DeLong Ruby, and the 16-carat Eagle Diam...
Oct 29, 2019•5 min•Ep. 134
The date is Monday, October 28th, and today I’m traveling from Vung Tau to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. Today is the birthday of Edith Head, American costume designer. Prolific from the 1940s through the 1970s, Edith was nominated for 35 Academy Awards, and won 8, a record that has yet to be topped. Costume design was actually Edith’s second career. She received a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in French from UC Berkeley and Stanford University, respectively. She taught French at the high scho...
Oct 28, 2019•5 min•Ep. 133
The date is September 10th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Tejakula, Bali. Today is also our 100th episode! On this day in 1960, Abebe Bikila became the first sub-Saharan African to win an Olympic gold medal, and the first Ethiopian gold medalist. It was the Summer Olympics in Rome and Abebe Bikila had just bought a new pair of shoes a week earlier for the marathon. The shoes, to his disappointment gave him awful blisters and so Bikila decided he would just run without shoes. That’s r...
Sep 10, 2019•5 min•Ep. 100
The date is September 9th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Tejakula, Bali. Today is the birthday of Colonel Harland David Sanders, American businessman, founder of KFC. Sanders was born in 1890 in southern Indiana, not far from the Indiana-Kentucky state line. His mother was a devout Christian and it was perhaps her warnings about the evils of drink that led Sanders to be vehemently against alcohol consumption his whole life. (Her preaching against cursing, however, did no good.) Sander...
Sep 09, 2019•5 min•Ep. 99
The date is September 6th, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Tejakula, Bali in Indonesia. Today is the birthday of Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, French military leader and political influencer. Lafayette, as he is known in the States, was instrumental in the American Revolutionary War and the French Revolution both in the second half of the 1700s. The first part of Lafayette’s life was of true comfort. He was born to wealthy aristocratic parents in 1757. His upbringing and educ...
Sep 06, 2019•5 min•Ep. 98
The date is September 5th, Thursday, and today I’m traveling from Jakarta to Bali in Indonesia. Today is the birthday of Robert Fergusson, Scottish poet. He enrolled at the University of St Andrews in Scotland in 1765 at the age of about 15. While there, Fergusson narrowly escaped expulsion, made important connections and honed his writing skills. When his father passed away in 1768 he moved back home to help support his mother. He got involved in the bohemian scene in Edinburgh and began contri...
Sep 05, 2019•5 min•Ep. 97
The date is September 4th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Jakarta, Indonesia. On this day in 1781, 44 Spanish settlers officially founded El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de los Ángeles, known today as Los Angeles, California. Compared to other settlements, los Ángeles was specifically a municipal settlement: not a Catholic mission base or strategic military settlement. It was the second pueblo in the Spanish colonization of Alta California, just after San Jose. The settlers wer...
Sep 04, 2019•5 min•Ep. 96
The date is September 3rd, Tuesday, and today I’m traveling from Tokyo, Japan to Jakarta, Indonesia. Today is the birthday of Lev Semenovich Pontryagin, Soviet mathematician. In 1922 or ‘23 at age 14, an explosion of a small cooking stove left Lev Pontryagin blind. His parents were not well-off by any means, but his mother, Tat'yana Andreevna, insisted Lev continue his studies. She dedicated herself to helping Pontryagin adjust to his new situation as blind. In particular, she would read to him ...
Sep 03, 2019•5 min•Ep. 95
The date is August 30th, Friday, and today I’m traveling from Portland, OR to Los Angeles, CA. In honor of Labor Day on Monday, today we’re taking a look at how we got Labor Day. No one is sure who exactly the first person to propose the idea was, but anyone who has worked has probably, at one point, had the idea that everyone that works should have a day off. The first recorded group to hold a specifically Labor Day picnic in honor of all their workers was the Central Labor Union in New York Ci...
Aug 30, 2019•5 min•Ep. 94
The date is August 29th, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR. Today is the birthday of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr, American physician and writer. Born in 1809, he had the good fortunate to attend small but good schools in Boston. From a young age, Holmes was noted as a very talkative lad. It was the only sticking point for his secondary school teachers, who admired his quick mind. At sixteen Holmes enrolled at Harvard University. He carried on his love for reading and chatting...
Aug 29, 2019•5 min•Ep. 93
The date is August 28th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR. On this day in 1963 Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” Speech as part of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. MLK addressed a crowd of approximately 250,000 from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The whole March is generally regarded as the impetus for the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a Reverend, MLK’s speech contained plenty of language from the Christian Bible. It...
Aug 28, 2019•5 min•Ep. 92
The date is August 27th, Tuesday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR. On this day in 1927 in Canada, five women filed a petition to the Supreme Court of Canada. Their petition asked, "Does the word 'Persons' in Section 24 of the British North America Act, 1867, include female persons?" The five women were Emily Murphy, Irene Marryat Parlby, Nellie Mooney McClung, Louise Crummy McKinney and Henrietta Muir Edwards. They are sometimes known as “The Famous Five” or “ The Valiant Five.” Th...
Aug 27, 2019•5 min•Ep. 91
The date is August 26th, Monday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR. Today is the birthday of Zona Gale, American writer. Zona Gale upon returning to her small hometown in Wisconsin at the age of 28, she found it rife with material. She moved home and devoted herself full-time to writing. Gale attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison, WI receiving a Bachelor’s and Master's in literature. Before settling back into her hometown she wrote for newspapers in New York City and Wiscon...
Aug 26, 2019•5 min•Ep. 90
The date is August 23rd, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR. On this day in 1944, King Michael of Romania ousted the military dictatorship and declared war on Germany, switching sides from Axis to Allies. At the onset of the war, Romania monarch Carol II, Michael’s father, was forced to abdicate after a military coup. Ion Antonescu (eyon Antonescuu)became dictator and had Michael crowned as king, though he only served as a figurehead. Antonescu allied with Nazi Germany in WWII...
Aug 23, 2019•5 min•Ep. 89
The date is August 22nd, Thursday, and today I’m coming to you from Portland, OR. Today is the birthday of Ray Bradbury, American author. Bradbury is best remembered for his novel Fahrenheit 451 . When Ray was 14, the Bradbury family moved to Los Angeles from their small town in Illinois. Ray’s father had been out of work and was searching in booming Southern California. When his father came home one day and announced he’d found a steady full-time job, Ray was ecstatic. The young Bradbury had al...
Aug 22, 2019•5 min•Ep. 88
