The Story of Writing

Spillane created the hard-boiled detective Mike Hammer and he brought to life a world that millions of readers dived into, reading book after book just to see what would happen next. He wrote more than 40 novels and they’ve sold more than 225 million copies.

A b/w photo of Mickey Spillane, appearing on an episode of ABC's "Columbo," circa 1974

“Nobody reads a book to get to the middle.”
-American writer Mickey Spillane, born on this day in 1918

#WriterSky #BookSky #History #BOTD

“She walks among the loveliness she made, Between the apple-blossom and the water— She walks among the patterned pied brocade, Each flower her son, and every tree her daughter.” –Vita Sackville-West, "The Land," 1926

Happy Vita Sackville-West's birthday!

Grow your garden. Bloom like flowers. Take lovers. Write about (some of) it. Make it all beautiful:

Her best-known written work may be The Land, though she published more than a dozen collections of poetry and 13 novels. Sackville-West was also quite close to Virginia Woolf, and is considered the inspiration for the main character in Woolf’s popular book "Orlando."

An undated, uncredited b/w photo of Vita Sackville-West. Image source: The Paris Review

“I sing once more The mild continuous epic of the soil.
- English writer and gardener Vita Sackville-West, born on this day in 1892.
#WriterSky #BookSky #Poet #History #BOTD

These people were to be taken to the Americas where they would be sold as slaves. While at sea, the Africans took over the ship, killed the captain, and demanded the crew return to Africa. But the crew set a course northward, where U.S. authorities took custody of the Amistad. The Africans aboard the ship sued for their freedom. A movement to end slavery had begun in the U.S. about 10 years earlier and the story of the abducted Africans garnered intense interest. The Supreme Court ruled that the Africans were justified in killing the Amistad’s captain and that as free people, they should not be imprisoned or become slaves. Those Africans abducted on the Amistad who wanted to go back to Africa received donations to help them return home.

On this day in 1841, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in The Amistad case. The Amistad was a ship and it carried African men and women who had been taken aboard against their will.
#Slavery #Freedom #History #OTD

Smith also called on governments to not interfere with the resulting free market that the people would create. The book has become a kind of capitalist bible. A study conducted in 2016 found that The Wealth of Nations was the second most cited economics book – published before 1950. The most cited, though, was Das Kapital, by Karl Marx.

Portrait of the political economist and philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) by an unknown artist, circa 1800s. Image source: National Galleries .org

On this day in 1776, the landmark book "The Wealth of Nations" was published. Written by Scottish economist Adam Smith, it argues that national policies allowing individuals to pursue their self interests will, eventually, build greater wealth.
#WriterSky #MoneyGuy #Economics #Finance #History #OTD

We are a funny species:

“When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in the warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as twenty thousand feet below the seafloor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.” –John McPhee, "Annals of the Former World," 1998

Happy John McPhee's birthday!

Whatever it is, say it so clearly that you make people smile:

He has written about seemingly everything, from oranges to the thinking of a nuclear engineer. But McPhee’s writing stands apart from that of his contemporaries. His nonfiction borrows the intimacy of fiction, which is partly the result of the depth of McPhee’s research and his questioning.

He began working at The New Yorker in the 1960s and taught writing at Princeton for decades. Some of the current crop of America’s most accomplished writers, including The New Yorker’s editor, David Remnick learned their trade in McPhee’s classes. He has written more than 30 books and was nominated four times for the Pulitzer Prize. It was awarded to McPhee in 1999, for Annals of the Former World.

An undated, b/w photo of writer and teacher John McPhee Photo credit: Office of Communications, Princeton University Image source: Brittanica

“I'm addicted to the entire planet. I don't want to leave it.”
-American author John McPhee, born on this day in 1931

#WriterSky #BookSky #Teacher #BOTD

An undated and uncredited photo of writer Juana de Ibarbourou of Columbia Image source: Poets.org

It is the birthday in 1892 of Uruguayan poet and author Juana de Ibarbourou. At the age of 17, she published a piece titled “Women’s Rights.” She became a well-respected author on feminism and naturalism.
#WriterSky #BookSky #History #BOTDW

It was printed under the pen name “Justice and Humanity,” though it was widely believed to have been written by Thomas Paine. He authored the pamphlet Common Sense, which came out a few months later and extolled the righteousness of America’s fight for independence from England.

The Thomas Paine Historical Society dug into this and used a few different methods of author attribution, as this type of research is called. And according to the historic society, “Justice and Humanity” was the pen name for Samuel Hopkins, a minister and theologian. He was one of the first abolitionist ministers and, again, according to The Thomas Paine Historical Society, Hopkins’ Congregationalist Church was the first in the American colonies to publicly denounce slavery.

Samuel Hopkins wrote another, similar article in 1776 that noted the hypocrisy of fighting for liberty while owning slaves. There are no records of public responses to Hopkins’ pieces on the abolition of slavery. Some historians say this is an indication of the public’s lack of interest in emancipation in pre-Revolution America. Others believe that concerns over the institution of slavery in the mid-1770s were overshadowed by the immediate, practical necessities of the Revolutionary War.

Link to the Thomas Paine Historical Society article on author attribution of the article "African Slavery in America": https://thomaspaine.org/studies-in-thomas-paine/the-author-attribution-of-african-slavery-in-america/

On this day in 1775, the article titled “African Slavery in America” ran in a Philadelphia newspaper. It is considered one of the first published pieces in the American colonies that called for freeing all slaves and ending slavery.
#Abolition #Emancipation #History #OTD
Link in image ALT text:

He is a urine-soaked sock of a man. A fleck of excrement on an unwanted boot.

How can anyone like or support such an imbecilic mockery of a human?

This is so great!
A 1908 perspective on women doing what men do.
Click through to the blog for a closer look at the vignettes in the illustration:

“Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.”

—Arthur Schopenhauer, “Psychological Observations”, Parerga and Paralipomena

That’s awesome!
Thanks for posting

“Those who would legislate against the teaching of evolution should also legislate against gravity, electricity and the unreasonable velocity of light, and also should introduce a clause to prevent the use of the telescope, the microscope and the spectroscope or any other instrument of precision which may in the future be invented, constructed or used for the discovery of truth.” –Luther Burbank, letter to the San Francisco Examiner, 1922

Happy Luther Burbank's birthday!

Choose reality, understand it, and write about it:

An uncredited color photo of author Bret Easton Ellis, circa 2019. Image source: Literary Hub

“Is evil something you are? Or is it something you do?”
-Bret Easton Ellis was born on this day in 1964. He is best known for his books "Less Than Zero" and "American Psycho." Both feature privileged characters who have little to no humanity or ethics.
#WriterSKy #BookSky #BOTD

An undated color photo of Erika Mitchell, aka E. L. James, author of "Fifty Shades of Grey" Image source: IMDB

“I'd like to bite that lip.”
-Erika Mitchell - better known by her pen name E. L. James - was born on this day in 1963.
She is known for her book "Fifty Shades of Grey" and the trilogy it became. Her writing revolves around themes of romance, power dynamics, and sexuality.
#WriterSky #BookSky #BOTD

Wow.
It's almost like trimp & co. don't think or read.
Shocking.

At his piano, he began playing a simple theme with one finger. He felt it had an insistent quality and added orchestration – including a snare drum – but the first half of Bolero is that insistent theme. And then, all hell breaks loose. The music fits the kind of passion- ate movement most associated with ballet or flamenco. When the piece premiered in 1928 at the Paris Opera, the audience couldn’t contain themselves. They began stamping their feet and cheering. One woman yelled out “Madman! Madman!” When Ravel heard about this, he said, “That lady. She understood.”

A b/w photo portrait of composer/conductor Maurice Ravel. Photo credit: Photos.com/Jupiterimages Image source: Britannica

French pianist, composer, and conductor Maurice Ravel was born on this day in 1875. He wrote his best-known piece, "Bolero," after his friend, the actress and dancer Ida Rubinstein asked him for a Spanish-inspired ballet.
#MusicSky #WriterSky #History #BOTD

Throughout a career that spanned more than 50 years, he developed some 800 strains and varieties of plants. Many were flowers. His work led him to produce a catalog that offered his new, hybridized plants, then he wrote about a wide range of topics including child rearing, scientific methods, and atheism.

A b/w photo of botanist Luther Burbank Photo credit and source: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

“Listen patiently, quietly and reverently to the lessons, one by one, which Mother Nature has to teach, shedding light on that which was before a mystery, so that all who will, may see and know.”
-American horticulturist Luther Burbank, born on this day in 1849
#WriterSky #Botanist #History #OTD

At Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, police ordered demonstrators to disperse. One minute and five seconds after a two-minute warning was announced, the police advanced, wielding clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas. The reporting and images of Bloody Sunday’s violence shocked the nation. In response to the events in Selma, President Johnson promised to write a voting rights act that would protect people of color when going to the polls and casting a ballot. Johnson finished writing the bill in eight days. Congress debated the legislation for nearly six months, but after some political arm-twisting by Johnson, the House and Senate eventually passed it. The President signed the Voting Rights Act into law on August 6th, 1965.

A black-and-white photo of John Lewis (foreground) being beaten by a state trooper in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965. The future congressman suffered a fractured skull. Photo credit: Associated Press Image source: Politico

On this day in 1965, more than 500 people marching for the right to vote in Selma, Alabama were attacked and beaten by police.
This was Bloody Sunday.

#VotingRights #AntiRacist #PoliceBrutality #CivilRights #History #OTD

I love how the color of the dog's coat matches the color of the cliffs on the cover.

This needs to be a bumper sticker and/or embroidered on pillows, hearts, etc.

Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) speaks during a press conference. (Photo by David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)

Rep Stansbury: “The president & his admin can’t explain a legal justification for an eminent threat that gave them the authority to use the military—

They can’t provide an explanation of their war plan — they can’t explain why they’ve killed over 200 civilians — the president needs to be impeached”

YouTube video by sanny blues Ruthie Foster - Woke Up This Morning

This song has been doing a lot of heavy lifting in my life for quite a while now:

Marquez is considered a pioneer of magical realism or writing fantastical details as if they were ordinary parts of any story. He credited his grandmother’s storytelling for this aspect of his writing. From an early age, Marquez was impressed with his grandmother’s ability to tell him about the most improbable things as if they were irrefutable fact. Marquez is best known for his novels Love in the Time of Cholera and 100 Years of Solitude. When he died in 2014, the president of Columbia said Marquez was “the greatest Colombian who ever lived.”

An undated b/w photo of author Gabriel García Márquez Photo credit: Patrick Curry Image source: The Paris Review

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”
-Columbian writer Gabriel García Márquez, born on this day in 1927

#WriterSky #BookSky #MagicalRealism #History #BOTD

In the U.S. Civil War, the soldiers said it was a rich man's war, but a poor man's fight.

It's been true of almost every war fought by the U.S., the Revolutionary War and WWII are notable exceptions.

“Accordin' to some authorities, a person, before they get married, should ought to look up your opponent's family tree and find out what all her relatives died of. But the way I got it figured out, if you're sure they did die, the rest of it don't make no difference. In exception- able cases it may be all right to take a girl that part of her family is still livin', but not under no circumstances if the part happens to be a unmarried sister named Bessie. We was expectin' her in about two weeks, but we got a card Saturday mornin' which says she'd come right away if it was all the same to us, because it was the dull season in Wabash society and she could tear loose better at the present time than later on. Well, I guess they ain't no time in the year when society in Wabash would collapse for her not bein' there, but if she had to come at all, the sooner it was over the better. And besides, it wouldn't of did us no good to say yes or no, because the postcard only beat her here by a few hours.” –Ring Lardner, "Three Kings and a Pair," 1917

Happy Ring Lardner's birthday!

Find the funny:

He began writing as a sports columnist and demonstrated a skill at satire that eventually endeared him to some of the most well-known authors of his time. Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, and F. Scott Fitzgerald praised his writing, possibly because Lardner wrote things like, “Mr. Fitzgerald is a novelist. Mrs. Fitzgerald is a novelty.”

An undated b/w photo of writer Ring Lardner Photo credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images Image source: Encyclopedia Brittanica

It is the birthday of the author who wrote,
“Are you lost, Daddy?” I asked tenderly.
“Shut up,” he explained.”
-American storyteller extraordinaire Ring Lardner, born on this day in 1885

#WriterSky #BookSky #Satirist #Humorist #History #BOTD

The play titled Cyrano de Bergerac, written by Edmond Rostand and published in 1897, is largely fiction. Some historians of literature now think the actual Bergerac was an immature and immoral playboy who may have been assassinated.

An engraving or illustration of the actual swordsman and author Cyrano de Bergerac, circa 1654 Artist: Zacharie Heince

It is the birthday of the author who became one of the world’s great stories. The novelist and swordsman Cyrano de Bergerac was born on this day in 1619.
#RealityVFiction #History #BOTD