The Story of Writing

It's National Beer Day in the US, and the birthday club includes the internet (really), William Wordsworth, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and Billie Holliday - with a reading from Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood."

The birthday club includes Marion McEwen Crabbe, Leonora Carrington, Ram Dass, and Homer Aridjis - with a reading from one of Carrington's artist statements.

The Petition of Compromise was submitted to Spain - striking a blow for independence, and the American Birth Control League was incorporated by Margaret Sanger. The birthday club includes Algernon Charles Swinburne, Barbara Holland, and Pharrell Williams - with a reading from Swinburne's "The Garden of Proserpine."

NATO forms and the birthday club includes Muddy Waters and Maya Angelou - with a reading from Angelou's poem "Still, I Rise."

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. gives his last speech, the Panama Papers are published, and it is Washington Irving's birthday. This episode includes a reading from Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

The birthday club includes Giacomo Cassanova, Hans Christian Andersen, Emile Zola, and Camille Paglia - with a reading from Cassanova's memoir "The Story of My Life."

T. S. Eliot's "The Wasteland" and why he called April "the cruelest month," we look at the origins of April Fool's Day, and it is Milan Kundera's birthday - with a reading from his classic "The Unbearable Lightness of Being."

The U.S. Motion Picture Production Code goes into effect, the Civilian Conservation Corps is established, and the birthday club includes Johann Sebastian Bach, John Fowles, Judith Rossner, and Marge Piercy - with a reading from Fowles' "The Magus."

The US buys Alaska, one of the world's most all-encompassing drug treaties is signed, and the birthday club includes Anna Sewell, Carl Lutz, Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, Shahla Sherkat, Marie-Christine Koundja, and Tobias Hill - with a reading from Sewell's "Black Beauty."

Canada is created, the US 23rd Amendment is ratified, and the birthday club includes Sheila Kitzinger, Eric Idle, Alec Wilkinson, Jo Ann Mapson, and Evelyn C. White - with a reading from Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass."

The birthday club includes Maxim Gorky, Nelson Algren, Iris Chang, and Jennifer Weiner - with a reading from Algren's "Chicago: City of the Make."

Congress overcomes a Presidential veto to pass the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the birthday club includes Jane Colden, Charles Mackay, Jelena Dimitrijević, and Louis Simpson - with a reading from Mackay's "No Enemies."

Egypt and Israel sign their first peace treaty and the birthday club includes, Frenchwoman Julie Victoire Daubie, Robert Frost, Joseph Campbell, Viktor Frankl, and Tennessee Wiliams - with a reading from Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning."

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire erupts, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke to Civil Rights marchers who just reached Montgomery, Alabama, and the birthday club includes Flannery O'Connor and Gloria Steinem - with a reading from O'Connor's "Wise Blood."

The birthday club includes Matilda Joslyn Gage and Lawrence Ferlinghetti - with a reading from Gage's book "Woman, Church, and State."

Patrick Henry gives his speech "Give me liberty or give me death!" Bishop Oscar Romero asks for peace in El Salvador and the birthday club includes Akira Kurosawa and Subhadra Joshi - with a reading from Henry's speech.

The first treaty is signed between Indigenous people and European-Americans, SCOTUS rules that single people can have contraceptives, and the birthday club includes Louis L'Amour, Stephen Sondheim, George Benson, and Andrew Lloyd Webber - with a reading from George Eliot's masterwork "Middlemarch."

Tennessee passes a law prohibiting the teaching of human evolution in schools, the first Comic Con, and the birthday club includes Dorothea Beale, Son House, and Forrest Mars, Senior, and Solomon Burke - with a reading from Beale's "Work and Play in Girls' Schools."

Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes her landmark novel (in two volumes) and it is Henrik Ibsen's birthday - with a reading from his well-known play "A Doll's House."

The birthday club includes Minna Canth, Philip Roth, and Clara Breed - with a reading from Breed's "Americans with the Wrong Ancestors."

The New York Conspiracy of 1741 begins and the birthday club includes Wilfred Owen, Fred Shuttlesworth, and John Updike. This episode includes a reading of Owen's poem "Anthem for Doomed Youth."

The birthday club includes Bayard Rusin, Nat King Cole, and Penelope Lively - with a reading from Lively's "Moon Tiger."

The birthday club includes Ethel Anderson, Erik P. Kelly, Henny Youngman, Ursula Goodenough, and Jorge Ramos - with a reading of one of Youngman's longest jokes.

The Ides of March, indulgences for non-Anglican Christians in England, US President Lyndon B. Johnson says "We Shall Overcome," and the birthday club includes "Lightnin'" Hopkins and Kate Bornstein - with a reading from Alexandre Duma's "The Man in the Iron Mask."

Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge is created and the birthday club includes Arthur O'Shaughnessy, Albert Einstein, Billy Crystal, and Ben Cohen - with a reading from O'Shaughnessy's "Ode."