Writer's Almanac Archives - Page 110 of 294 - Garrison Keillor

Albums APHC Clips Audio Events Prairie Home Archives Songs Writer's Almanac

Writer's Almanac

To subscribe to the Writer’s Almanac Anniversary Episode email, which includes the unedited text and audio from one daily anniversary episode selected from the archive, click here >>>

To browse archived episodes of The Writer’s Almanac from before 2017, click here >>>

• • • • •

To support The Writer’s Almanac Anniversary Episodes newsletter, please consider “buying” a donation here >>>

You can also buy a paid subscription to the Anniversary Episode newsletter here >>>

Checks may be made out to Prairie Home Productions, LLC and mailed to:

Prairie Home Productions
P.O. Box 2090
Minneapolis, MN 55402

(Note: donations to LLCs are not tax-deductible)

• • • • •

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, June 10, 2023

Posted on June 10, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

On this day in 1881, Leo Tolstoy set off on a pilgrimage to the Optina-Pustyn monastery. He was 52 years old, and his two greatest novels, War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877), were behind him. He had found himself in a crisis—he was famous, had a family and land and money, but it all seemed empty. He was amazed that the majority of ordinary Russians managed to keep themselves going every day, and he finally decided that it must be their faith.

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, June 9, 2023

Posted on June 9, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of the man who wrote the songs “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “You’re the Top,” and “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall In Love”: Cole Porter, born in Peru, Indiana (1891). Most of his great songs were written within a 10-year period: between his first popular Broadway musical, Paris (1928)—his first musicals had been complete flops—and a terrible riding accident in 1937.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, June 8, 2023

Posted on June 8, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, born in Richland Center, Wisconsin (1867). His life spanned an era full of dramatic changes: he was born two years after the Civil War ended, and died in 1959, a year and a half after the first Sputnik launch. Wright would often tell his students: “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Posted on June 7, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of novelist and poet Louise Erdrich, born in Little Falls, Minnesota (1954). She grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota. Her mother was French Ojibwe and her father was German American; she grew up in a big family, the oldest of seven children, with lots of extended family nearby. She said: “The people in our families made everything into a story […] People just sit and the stories start coming, one after another. You just sort of grab the tail of the last person’s story: it reminds you of something and you keep going on. I suppose that when you grow up constantly hearing the stories rise, break and fall, it gets into you somehow.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Tuesday, June 6, 2023

Posted on June 6, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Sigmund Freud, born in Freiburg, Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic), in 1856. He’s usually associated with Vienna, where he lived from the age of four until the Germans occupied it in 1938. He then moved to London, where he died of throat cancer in 1939.
Freud started his professional life as a medical doctor, but as a Jew, he knew his prospects in medicine were probably limited. He became interested in psychology, especially in a mental illness called hysteria, which caused patients to suffer from tics, tremors, convulsions, paralysis, and hallucinations. Freud learned that some doctors were using hypnosis to treat hysteria, and he went to France to observe the use of hypnosis firsthand. Seeing that a patient could be talked out of his or her symptoms gave Freud the idea that the symptoms were a product of the mind and not the body. He learned the method of hypnosis himself and began to treat patients, but he had little success. Then one of Freud’s colleagues told him about a patient named Anna O., whose hysterical symptoms had improved when she told stories about her life. The woman herself named this process of storytelling “the talking cure.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Monday, June 5, 2023

Posted on June 5, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca (1898) born in Fuente Vaqueros, in the province of Granada. His father was a successful farmer, and his mother was a gifted pianist. García Lorca published his first book, Impressions and Landscapes, in 1918, and then moved to Madrid the following year, enrolling in the Residencia de Estudiantes (Student Residence), a cultural center that provided a stimulating, dynamic, and progressive environment for university students.

The Writer’s Almanac for Sunday, June 4, 2023

Posted on June 4, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1989 that Chinese troops stormed Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to crack down on students conducting pro-democracy demonstrations. The demonstrations had begun months earlier, after the government accused them of planning a coup d’état. They drew thousands of supporters from three dozen universities and staged hunger strikes and sit-ins. The Chinese government declared martial law, and troops approached the square with tanks in the late evening of June 3.

The Writer’s Almanac for Saturday, June 3, 2023

Posted on June 3, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

It’s the birthday of Allen Ginsberg (1926), the poet who coined the term “flower power,” which became the catchphrase to describe the social and political revolution of the 1960s. He’s best known for his landmark poem, “Howl” (1956), which kick-started the youth revolution in America and gave voice to a group of writers known as the “Beat Generation.”

The Writer’s Almanac for Friday, June 2, 2023

Posted on June 2, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

On this day in 1692, the Court of Oyer and Terminer convened in Salem Town, Massachusetts, beginning what would become known as the Salem Witch Trials. The hysteria had begun in Salem Village (now Danvers, Massachusetts) in January of that year; a few preteen and teenage girls, including the daughter of Samuel Parris, the village’s minister, began acting strangely and having fits, insisting that they were being poked and pinched.

The Writer’s Almanac for Thursday, June 1, 2023

Posted on June 1, 2023 - Writer's Almanac

On this day in 1974, Henry Jay Heimlich published his “Heimlich Maneuver” in the Journal of Emergency Medicine. The article was called “Pop Goes the Café Coronary.” Less than three weeks later, the maneuver was used successfully in a restaurant in Bellevue, Washington. As of 2006, the American Red Cross recommends the “five and five” approach: five sharp blows to the back, followed by five abdominal thrusts if the back blows are not effective.

Load next posts