APRIL20

Events:

April 20 ,Portsmouth, (from Andrew Periale) -My script of Animal Farm opens tomorrow night, Friday, April 20th at the Players Ring. and runs through May 6th, Fri-Sun. TIckets are $15… --a beautiful little cast in a quaint old building right on the waterfront in Portsmouth, NH.   Click here

… Andrew Periale

Born:

April 20

Click here  (0121 – ?/0180)  Roman Emperor, philosopher, and Stoic- Meditations

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Pietro Aretino (1492 – 10/21/1556) Italian writer

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David Brainerd, 1718 -October 9, 1747)   colonial American missionary to the Indians of New England. Following his premature death from tuberculosis at 29, Brainerd's journal (published in 1649 by the Jonathan Edwards) influenced hundreds to become missionaries after him.

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Erastus Johnson, 1826  American hymnwriter. A lifelong student of the Bible, Johnson, at age 47, penned the hymn, "O Sometimes the Shadows are Deep" (a.k.a. "The Rock That Is Higher Than I").

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Click here  (1826 – Click here/1887)  English writer- poet & novelist

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W. H. (William Henry) Davies .(1870 - 1940) Welsh Poet, Author, Vagabond

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April's Charms

When April scatters charms of primrose gold
Among the copper leaves in thickets old,
And singing skylarks from the meadows rise,
To twinkle like black stars in sunny skies;

When I can hear the small woodpecker ring
Time on a tree for all the birds that sing;
And hear the pleasant cuckoo, loud and long --
The simple bird that thinks two notes a song;

When I can hear the woodland brook, that could
Not drown a babe, with all his threatening mood;
Upon these banks the violets make their home,
And let a few small strawberry vlossoms come:

When I go forth on such a pleasant day,
One breath outdoors takes all my cares away;
It goes like heavy smoke, when flames take hold
Of wood that's green and fill a grate with gold.

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Robert Lynd, Click here - 6 October 1949 Irish writer/ an urbane literary Click here and strong Click here.critic (Pleasures of Ignorance)

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Adolph Hitler (1889 – 04/30/1945) German dictator  

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Click here  (1897 – Click here/1960)  Russian actor

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Click here (1901-Sept 30, 1990) French surrealist writer, anthropologist, and autobiographer

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Click here  (1910 – Click here/1991)  US mayor (NYC)

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Click here 1912- September 27 /97, Finnish writer and psychiatrist

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Richard Hillary, (Click here - 1943) Australian Spitfire pilot and author

George Hosato Takei (1937) Click here actor, best known for his role as Click here, Click here of the Click here in the television series Click here.

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Peter S. Beagle, 1939 - American author

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Ian Watson, 1943 - UK, sci-fi author (Book of Being, Whores of Babylon)

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Andrew Tobias, 1947 - American journalist and author

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Click here  (1949 – )  US actor

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Steve Erickson, 1950 - American novelist, essayist and film critic.

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Click here  (1972 – )  US model, actor

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Click here  (1964 – )  US actor

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Click here  (1961 – ) US baseball player

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Sebastian Faulks, Click here - British novelist

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Cameron Duncan, Click here – 2003, New Zealand director

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Passed:

April 20

Abraham “Bram” Stoker Nov.8,1847-1912Click here novelist and short story writer

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Warren Miller  (Aug.31,1921–1966) Click here writer. The Cool World and The Siege of Harlem

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Archibald MacLeish (05/07/1892 –1982) American poet, writer, and the Click here. ..received three Click here for his work Pulitzer Prize in 1932. His Collected Poems (1952) won him a second Pulitzer Prize, as well as the National Book Award and the Bollingen Prize. J.B. (1958), a verse play based on the book of Job, earned him a third Pulitzer, this time for drama. And in 1965 he received an Academy Award for his work on the screenplay of The Eleanor Roosevelt Story.

        Baccalaureate

A year or two, and grey Euripides,
And Horace and a Lydia or so,
And Euclid and the brush of Angelo,
Darwin on man, Vergilius on Click here,
The nose and Dialogues of Socrates,
Don Quixote, Hudibras and Trinculo,
How worlds are spawned and where the dead gods go,--
All shall be shard of broken memories.

And there shall linger other, magic things,--
The fog that creeps in wanly from the sea,
The rotton harbor smell, the mystery
Of moonlit elms, the flash of pigeon wings,
The sunny Green, the old-world peace that clings
About the Click here yard, where endlessly
The dead go up and down. These things shall be
Enchantment of our heart's rememberings.

And these are more than memories of youth
Which earth's four winds of pain shall blow away;
These are earth's symbols of eternal truth,
Symbols of dream and imagery and flame,
Symbols of those same verities that play
Bright through the crumbling gold of a great name

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Don[ald] Siegel, Click here US director (Coogan's Bluff/Dirty Harry)

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Benny Hill, (01/21/1925 –1992) English comic actor

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Sites:

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History:

April 20

1836 Territory of Wisconsin created

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1943 In Poland, Germans Nazi troops massacred the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto.

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1977 Woody Allen's film "Annie Hall" premieres

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Bonus Poem:

Spring Rain
Spring rain leaking through Click here dripping from the wasps’ nest.                            Matsuo Basho (c. 1680) (trans. Robert Hass)