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The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, June 30, 2023

Posted on June 30, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

On this day in 1966, the National Organization for Women was founded in Washington, D.C., by a group of 28 women. They’d gathered for the Third National Conference of Commissions on the Status of Women to air their frustrations about the Equal Opportunity Commission’s failure to enforce Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited sex discrimination in employment. Women had lobbied Congress hard in 1964 to include this amendment in the Civil Rights Act, and their anger at its lack of enforcement was boiling over.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, June 29, 2023

Posted on June 29, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of composer, librettist, and lyricist Frank Loesser, born in New York City in 1910. His father was a classical pianist and a piano teacher who tried to discourage his son from pursuing popular music, but to no avail. Because his father didn’t approve, Loesser was largely self-taught.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Posted on June 28, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of actress and comedian Gilda Radner, born in Detroit (1946). Her father deserves the credit for introducing the young Gilda to show biz: he used to take her to Broadway musicals and nightclub shows, and she would love to perform in the living room at home.

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday June 27, 2023

Posted on June 27, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Helen Keller (1880), born in Tuscumbia, Alabama. When she was 19 months old, she came down with an illness — possibly scarlet fever — that left her blind and deaf. Alexander Graham Bell examined her when she was six years old and sent Anne Sullivan, a 20-year-old teacher at the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston, to help her. Sullivan stayed with Keller until she (Sullivan) died in 1936.

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, June 26, 2023

Posted on June 26, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of writer Pearl S. Buck, born in Hillsboro, West Virginia (1892). Her parents were Christian missionaries, and she was raised in China from the age of three months. She said: “I spoke Chinese first, and more easily. […] I did not consider myself a white person in those days.” She was tutored in the mornings by her mother, but spent the afternoons with her beloved Chinese nurse, who told her stories and took her to visit friends, where young Pearl listened to women gossip. She played with Chinese friends, joined their parties, and hid her blond hair underneath a hat.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, June 25, 2023

Posted on June 25, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of the man who wrote, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” That’s George Orwell, born Eric Blair in Motihari, India (1903). He believed there were four great motives for writing prose: sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, June 24, 2023

Posted on June 24, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of satirist and short-story writer Ambrose Bierce, nicknamed “Bitter Bierce,” born near Horse Cave Creek, Ohio (1842). He was the 10th of 13 children, and his parents were strict Puritan farmers. But his father had a library, and Ambrose said that those books allowed him to pull himself “out of the life of obscurity, privation, and labor in the fields.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, June 23, 2023

Posted on June 23, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, (1889). She’s considered one of Russia’s greatest poets, though for decades her work was banned and her relatives executed and imprisoned under the Joseph Stalin’s Reign of Terror.
Anna Akhmatova wrote, “I am in the middle of it: chaos and poetry; poetry and love and again, complete chaos. Pain, disorder, occasional clarity; and at the bottom of it all: only love; poetry. Sheer enchantment, fear, humiliation. It all comes with love.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday June 22, 2023

Posted on June 22, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It is the birthday of the “greatest-living actress,” Meryl Streep, born in New Jersey in 1949. Streep has more Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations than any other actor. She has also won two film-industry lifetime achievement awards and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, June 21, 2023

Posted on June 21, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Edward Snowden, born in Elizabeth City, North Carolina (1983). His family moved to Maryland when he was a boy, and his mother went to work for the federal court in Baltimore.
He got a job with the Center for Advanced Study of Language at the University of Maryland. The center had ties to the National Security Agency. He believed that the NSA was gathering too much information on American citizens, and he intended to blow the whistle.
Snowden has lived overseas ever since and is currently living in Russia on a three-year residence permit that expires this August; his request for clemency from the U.S. government was denied, and despite a plea from various human rights groups, President Obama declined to pardon him before he left office.

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