1813 – The first pineapples were planted in Hawaii (And you thought they were native to Hawaii, didn’t you? I know I did).
1903 – Alan Paton, South African writer and author of Cry, the Beloved Country, was born. Some quotes from Paton follow.
“But there is only one thing that has power completely, and this is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power.”
“The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that things are not mended again.”
“There is a hard law. When an injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive. ”
“The truth is, our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions.”
1907 - The Church of God, headquartered today in Cleveland, Tennessee, and with roots going back to 1886, officially adopted its current name. The Church of God is the original “holy roller” church, and was also the church of my childhood and youth.
1952 – The Bollingen Prize for poetry was awarded to Marianne Moore. Below is her poem “The Past is the Present.”
If external action is effete
and rhyme is outmoded,
I shall revert to you,
Habakkuk, as when in a Bible class
the teacher was speaking of unrhymed verse.
He said – and I think I repeat his exact words -
“Hebrew poetry is prose
with a sort of heightened consciousness.” Ecstasy affords
the occasion and expediency determines the form
1959 – The Bollingen Prize for poetry was awarded to Theodore Roethke, Below is his poem “The Right Thing.”
Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will-
The right thing happens to the happy man.
The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;
The hill becomes the valley, and is still;
Let others delve that mystery if they can.
God bless the roots!-Body and soul are one!
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.
Child of the dark, he can out leap the sun,
His being single, and that being all:
The right thing happens to the happy man.
Or he sits still, a solid figure when
The self-destructive shake the common wall;
Takes to himself what mystery he can,
And, praising change as the slow night comes on,
Wills what he would, surrendering his will
Till mystery is no more: No more he can.
The right thing happens to the happy man.
1984 – The Supreme Court reinstated a $10 million award to Karen Silkwood’s family. To read about her life and death, I suggest clicking here.
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