Sunday

Aug. 15, 1999

As the Ruin Falls

by C. S. Lewis

Broadcast Date: SUNDAY: August 15, 1999

Poem: "As the Ruin Falls," by C.S. Lewis, from Poems (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanavich).

Thirty years ago today, 1969, WOODSTOCK started. It was the three-day music festival of Yasgur's Farm near Bethel, New York. About 400,000 people attended.

It's poet MARY JO SALTER's birthday in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1954. Her most recent work, a book of poems entitled A Kiss in Space, appeared this spring.

It's the birthday in Burra, Australia, 1949, of the American writer GARRY DISHER. He has written many books, but is best known for his children's books that have come out in the nineties. The Bamboo Flute is probably the most famous; it is a story of a young boy during the Great Depression, whose family is forced to sell the old piano. He meets a drifter who teaches him how to carve a bamboo flute, and he brings music back to the family again.

It's the birthday in Stantonsburg, North Carolina, 1923, of LOUISE SHIVERS whose first novel came out when she was 54 years old. For years she worked on it during her shifts at the County public library of Augusta, Georgia. The name of the book is Here to Get My Baby out of Jail.

It is the birthday of Thomas Edward Lawrence today in 1888. He fought on the side of the Arabs during World War I, and became known as Lawrence of Arabia. He published his account of the Arab Revolt in Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Later, Revolt in the Desert came out; it was thought of as the last great romantic war book, and Winston Churchill called it one of the best books written in the English language. Lawrence died in a motorcycle accident near his home in Dorset, 1935.

It's the birthday of SIR WALTER SCOTT, born in Edinburgh, Scotland 1771. He wrote the first historical novels, books like Rob Roy, Ivanhoe, and The Talisman, most of them set in England or Scotland, and published in the 1820s.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

 

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