December 20, 2018
Tuesday
8:00 p.m.
Minneapolis, MN
Test schedule
A live performance with Robin and Linda Williams at the Cedar Cultural Center
May 20, 2018
Sunday
3:00 p.m.
Lexington, MA
Lexington, MA
A live performance at the Saenger Theatre
April 10, 2018
Tuesday
8:00 p.m.
Tulsa, OK
Tulsa, OK
A live performance at the Brady Theater
March 17, 2018
Saturday
8:00 p.m.
Long Beach, CA
Long Beach, CA
A live performance at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center
March 15, 2018
Thursday
7:00 p.m.
Mobile, AL
Mobile, AL
A live performance at the Saenger Theatre
Lines from “The Song of Solomon,” King James Version. Public domain. (buy now)
I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. As the lily
among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved
among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight,
and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the
banqueting house, and his banner over me was love…
…The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the
mountains, skipping upon the hills….
…My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair
one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and
gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of
birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The
fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender
grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come
away.
It was on this day in 1431 that Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen, France. She revitalized the French army by claiming she was on a mission from God, but she was captured by the English and tried for heresy. Her trial lasted for months. Every day she was brought into the interrogation room, where she was the only woman among judges, priests, soldiers, and guards. The judges hoped to trick her into saying something that would incriminate her as a witch or an idolater, so they asked endless questions about all aspects of her life, in no particular order. They were especially interested in her childhood, and because the transcripts of the trial were recorded, we now know more about her early life than any other common person of her time.
After months of questioning, she was told that if she didn’t sign a confession, she would be put to death. She finally signed it, but a few days later she renounced the confession, and on this day in 1431, she was burned at the stake. She was 19 years old.
Joan of Arc has been portrayed in more than 20 films; the first was made by director Georges Méliès in 1899. And she’s the subject of more than 20,000 books.
It’s the birthday of the physician and novelist Abraham Verghese, (books by this author) born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (1955) to Indian schoolteachers. He’s the author of two memoirs, My Own Country (1994) and The Tennis Partner (1998). His first novel, Cutting for Stone, was a bestseller.
His novel begins:
“After eight months spent in the obscurity of our mother’s womb, my brother, Shiva, and I came into the world in the late afternoon of the twentieth of September in the year of grace 1954. We took our first breaths at an elevation of eight thousand feet in the thin air of Addis Ababa, capital city of Ethiopia. The miracle of our birth took place in Missing Hospital’s Operating Theater 3, the very room where our mother, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, spent most of her working hours, and in which she had been most fulfilled.
“When our mother, a nun of the Diocesan Carmelite Order of Madras, unexpectedly went into labor that September morning, the big rain in Ethiopia had ended, its rattle on the corrugated tin roofs of Missing ceasing abruptly like a chatterbox cut off in midsentence.”
It was on this day in 1849 that Henry David Thoreau (books by this author) self-published A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, his first book. It was an account of the two-week boating trip Thoreau had taken with his brother, John, 10 years before, from Massachusetts to New Hampshire and back.
Thoreau had always been the introverted and studious one, while John was gregarious and fun-loving. They were close; John helped pay his brother’s tuition to Harvard, and helped Thoreau open his own school when he got fired from his teaching job over his objection to corporal punishment. A few years after their boat trip, John died unexpectedly from tetanus in his brother’s arms. Thoreau decided to seclude himself and began building a cabin by the banks of Walden Pond. He lived there for two years, completing the drafts of both his A Week, often seen as a memorial to his brother, John, and a series of lectures that would eventually become the classic Walden. Since A Week was initially rejected, Thoreau was only able to publish it by paying for its printing from its sales. Four years later, after paying off the printing debt, Thoreau wrote in his journal that his publisher had delivered the remaining unsold copies to his home. He wrote, “I have now a library of nearly nine hundred volumes, over seven hundred of which I wrote myself.”
Thoreau said: “To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
And, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
