Born in 1941 – Billy Collins, American poet.

Picnic, Lightning

My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident
(picnic, lightning) when I was three …
—Lolita

It is possible to be struck by a meteor
or a single-engine plane
while reading in a chair at home.
Pedestrians are flattened by safes
falling from rooftops
mostly within the panels of the comics,
but still, we know it is possible,
as well as the flash of summer lightning,
the thermos toppling over,
spilling out on the grass.

And we know the message
can be delivered from within.
The heart, no valentine,
decides to quit after lunch,
the power shut off like a switch,
or a tiny dark ship is unmoored
into the flow of the body’s rivers,
the brain a monastery,
defenseless on the shore.

This is what I think about
when I shovel compost
into a wheelbarrow,
and when I fill the long flower boxes,
then press into rows
the limp roots of red impatiens—
the instant hand of Death
always ready to burst forth
from the sleeve of his voluminous cloak.

Then the soil is full of marvels,
bits of leaf like flakes off a fresco,
red-brown pine needles, a beetle quick
to burrow back under the loam.
Then the wheelbarrow is a wilder blue ,
the clouds a brighter white,

and all I hear is the rasp of the steel edge
against a round stone,
the small plants singing
with lifted faces, and the click
of the sundial
as one hour sweeps into the next.

Born in 270 – Saint Nicholas, Greek bishop and saint.

Above: San Nicolas de Bari. “Thank you for the grace and aid to heal me of a very rare infirmity that could not be cured by regular medical means and that your intercession helped without having to spend so much.”
Federico Lara. Mexico, 1940

In 1918, Lenin’s secretary, Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich, signed an official decree moving Russia’s capital from St. Petersburg to Moscow.

Above: Muscovite children beside the remains of a demolished statue of Tsar Alexander III.

Born in 1931 – Neil Postman, American author and critic.

“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.”

Previously: Postman

Born in 1944 – Townes Van Zandt, American singer-songwriter and guitarist.

“Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I’ll stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that.” Steve Earle

“I’ve met Bob Dylan’s bodyguards, and if Steve Earle thinks he can stand on Bob Dylan’s coffee table, he’s sadly mistaken.” Townes Van Zandt

In 1967, Joseph Stalin’s daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva defected to the United States.

Above: C. 1932, a young Alliluyeva sitting on Lavrentiy Beria’s lap, with Stalin in the background and Nestor Lakoba.