Jan. 27

Events:

Jan. 27  Portsmouth, NH 6:30am - 9:00pm ; New Hampshire's best performance poets will compete for a $200 cash prize. Raffles and donations will help put on the first annual Black History Month celebration of local black contemporary poetry .At the Blue Mermaid Restaurant Host: Slam Free or Die poetry slam founder, Mark Palos  Also in a association with Portsmouth Poet Laureate Program and the Seacoast African American Cultural Center. Competing Poets so far...Cara Chanoine ,Anthony Febo, Beau Williams, Brandon Amico, Ryan McLellan, Chris Clauss, Wil Gibson, Sam Teitel, Matt Gallant, Mckendy Fis-Aime, Matthew Richards, Heidi Therrien . Click here Click here       Click here

Born:

January 27

Dr. Thomas Willis, 1622- 11 Nov. 1675 Eng scientist

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Richard Bentley 1662 -Click herey 14Click here Oulton, scholar/controversialist

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Click here  (1720 – Click here/1777)  English actor, playwright (Mirror)

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Click here  (1756 – Click here/1791)  Austrian composer (Figaro)

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Click here  (1805 – Click here/1881)  English painter etcher (Valley of Vision)

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Thomas Leiper Kane 1822 -1883 Brevet Major General (Union volunteers)
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Richard Taylor 1826 -1879 Lieutenant-General (Confederate Army)
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Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826-may 10,1889) Russian writer

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Click here Charles Lutwidge Dodgson,  (1832 – Click here/1898)  English logician, mathematician, and novelist-writer(Alice in Wonderland)

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Leopold von Sacher-Masoch 1836 -1895  Austrian writer (masochism)

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Samuel Gompers 1850 – Dec 13,1924 Dutch/US, 1st president-American Federation of Labor

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(Click here  (1872 – Click here/1961)  US federal judge (US Court of Appeals)

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Jerome Kern 1885 – November 11, 1945) American Click here of Click here (Showboat, Roberta) songwriter ,and journalist

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Ilya Ehrenburg (1891-1967) Prolific Russian writer ( Fall of Paris, The Thaw)
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Click here  (1900 – Click here/1986)  US Admiral (father of modern nuclear navy)
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Click here  (1907 – Click here/1997)  US actor

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William Randolph Hearst Jr ( 1908 – May 14, 1993) Click here of (Hearst Publishing) after the death of his father in 1951. Click here 1955.

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Elmore James 1918 – May 24,1963,  US musician (Dust My Broom)

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David Seville [Ross Bagdasarian], 1919-Jan 16,1972  songwriter (Alvin & Chipmunks)

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Click here  (1921 – Click here/1986)  US actor

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Click here(1931-Click here/2001)  Canadian writer -novelist, journalist, and scriptwriter (Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz)

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D[onald] M[ichael] Thomas (1935-  ) English novelist, Click here, and Click here.

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          Through the Fens

Hot summer, a slow train through Cambridgeshire.
After one halt, a country woman sat
in my double-seat. Merged almost into her,
I saw, etched by her tautened dress on fat,
motherly fen-wife thighs, corset suspenders,
a resurrection, their chunky contours plain,
immense and unashamed. The lesser splendour,
Ely cathedral, slid past the dusty pane.

She drowsed, we swayed; the flatlands drifted by;
I ached to touch, as pilgrims drew the power
of healing relics -- faint with desire
to let a sideways lurch propel my hand
to rest --‘I’m sorry!’ -- a moment on her thigh;
and she’d be moved by it, and understand.

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Kim Gardner 1938 –Oct.24,2001 Brit rocker (Byrds)

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Julius [Bernard] Lester (1939) Missouri-born musician, political activist, folklorist, educator, novelist, and children's author

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Frank Miller 1957 -  US, comic book writer (Batman-The Dark Knight Returns)

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Margo Timmins 1961- singer (Cowboy Junkies)

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Virgil Suárez (1962-  ) Cuban novelist, short-story writer, and poet

The Dirt Eaters
Whenever we grew tired and bored of curb ball,               of encircling the scorpions we found under rocks   by the mother-in-law tongue within a fiery circle               of kerosene and watching as they stung themselves   to death, we ate dirt; soft, grainy, pretend chocolate               dirt, in our fantasies sent to us by distant relatives   in El Norte. Fango. We stood in a circle, wet the dirt               under our bare feet, worked with our fingers to crumble   the clogs with our nails, removed the undesired twigs,               pebbles, and beetles. Dirt—how delicious. How filling.   We ate our share of it back then. Beto, the youngest,               warned us not to eat too much; it could make us sick,   vomit, give us the shits, or even worse, worms.               We laughed. We ridiculed him. We chanted   after him: "¡Lo que no mata, engorda!               ¡Lo que no mata, engorda!"   What doesn’t kill you makes you fat, and stronger.

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Click here  (1964 – )  US actor
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Passed:

January 27

Click here, (1785  -1851) naturalist, conservationist (Audubon Society),

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James G Blaine ( Jan31,1830 -1893)   US minister of foreign affairs

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Click here  (Click here/1813 –1901)  Italian composer (Rigoletto/Traviata/Aïda),

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 Endre Ady 1877-1919 Hungarian poet (Margita élni akar)

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Looking for Love

Neither the issue nor the sire,
neither fulfilment nor desire
am I for anyone,
am I for anyone.
I am as all men, the Click here sea,
the alien thule, mystery,
a fleeing wisp of light,
a fleeing wisp of light.
But I must look for friends and brothers;
I want to show myself to others
that seeing they will see,
that seeing they will see.
For this my lyric masochism;
I long to close the gaping schism,
and thus belong somewhere,
and thus belong somewhere.

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Click here  (Click here/1899 –1947)  US Click here

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Roger B Chaffee 1967 astronaut, dies at 31 in Apollo I fire
 Virgil I (Gus) Grissom 1967 astronaut, dies at 41 in Apollo I fire
Edward Higgins White II 1967 Lieutenant-Colonel USAF/astronaut (Gemini 4), dies in Apollo I fire

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Click here  (Click here/1911 –1972)  US gospel singer

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Click here  (Click here/1918 –2004)  US comic, TV host (Tonight Show)
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Click here  (Click here/1932 –2009)  US writer
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Click here  (Click here/1919 –2010)  US writer
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Click here  (Click here/1922 –2010)   US historian

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Sites:

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History:

1888 National Geographic Society organizes (Washington DC)

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Bonus Poem:

Shadow

Pierced by Click here the shadow squeezed itself into the rock-garden, crawling between jagged sinkholes, dragging its bruised vertebrae.

Stretched into a thin thread it Click here itself to hollowed places. Cracked it hangs in drops. Farther away it gushes out of the underground stream, following us everywhere. Constantly tied to some suffering that resides in us – like a broken staff it leans on.

It takes us along its edges, or we do so. It crumbles from the sun, from burned-out rays: it condenses in the ash that marks it.

When the sky is overcast, it's extended over the whole day.

And everything is a shadow where there is no shadow.

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