Why There Will Always Be Thistle
by Maxine Kumin

Sheep will not eat it
nor horses nor cattle
unless they are starving.
Unchecked, it will sprawl over
pasture and meadow
choking the sweet grass
defeating the clover
until you are driven
to take arms against it
but if unthinking
you grasp it barehanded
you will need tweezers
to pick out the stickers.

Outlawed in most Northern
states of the Union
still it jumps borders.
Its taproot runs deeper
than underground rivers
and once it’s been severed
by breadknife or shovel
—two popular methods
employed by the desperate—
the bits that remain will
spring up like dragons’ teeth
a field full of soldiers
their spines at the ready.

Bright little bursts of
chrome yellow explode from
the thistle in autumn
when goldfinches gorge on
the seeds of its flower.
The ones left uneaten
dry up and pop open
and parachutes carry
their procreant power
to disparate venues
in each hemisphere
which is why there will always
be thistle next year.


“Why There Will Always Be Thistle” by Maxine Kumin from The Long Marriage. © W.W. Norton, 2003. Reprinted with permission of the Maxine W. Kumin Literary Trust. (buy now)

It was on this date in 1920 that Scientific American magazine reported the news that radio would soon be used to transmit music into people’s homes. Eighteen years earlier, in 1902, the same magazine had published an article titled “How to Construct an Efficient Wireless Telegraphy Apparatus at Small Cost.” The 1902 article opened whole new vistas to American readers: radio was technology that they could incorporate into their personal lives. Four years later, a man named Reginald Fessenden transmitted the first speech and music program.

From then on, the idea of radio for home use grew by leaps and bounds, especially after World War I ended. Scientists and laypeople alike stopped thinking of radio as a mere novelty or a successor to the telegraph in the transmission of crucial information. They started imagining all kinds of ways that radio could enrich people’s daily lives. The National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., had set up a Radio Laboratory to test transmissions of various features, including entertainment programs. People had been listening to music in their homes since Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, but phonographs had their drawbacks: the players were fairly expensive, and a record could only hold a few minutes of music. So, in late 1919 and early 1920, Bureau of Standards researchers turned their attention to the radio transmission of music. Every Friday night, from 8:30 to 11:00, they presented a live “experimental” concert, which they would attempt to broadcast to volunteer radio enthusiasts in the area. The hobbyists would then report the results to the bureau’s Radio Laboratory. Once this idea looked like it had legs, Scientific American ran with the story.

The magazine reported: “Music can be performed at any place, radiated into the air through an ordinary radio transmitting set and received at any other place, even though hundreds of miles away,” adding that “the music received can be made as loud as desired by suitable operation of the receiving apparatus.”

It’s the birthday of the man who said, “America did not invent human rights. In a very real way, human rights invented America.” That’s former president Jimmy Carter (books by this author), born in Plains, Georgia (1924). He took over the family peanut farm after his father died in 1953, and he expanded the farm into a fertilizer business, a farm supply business, and a peanut-shelling plant. He got interested in politics after he refused to join a citizens’ group that opposed the integration of schools. He became the governor of Georgia and then, in 1977, the 39th president of the United States. Carter said he wanted to end what he called “the imperial presidency.” He walked down Pennsylvania Avenue for his inauguration, often wore informal clothes at official appearances, and sold the presidential yacht. Jimmy Carter said: “A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.” 

On this day in 1890, Yosemite National Park was established by the U.S. Congress. Yosemite was one of the first national parks in America, and it has continued to serve as a model for all that came after.

 Today is the birthday of British actor and singer Julie Andrews (books by this author), born in a suburb of London (1935). Her parents first noticed her unusual voice when she was singing “Strawberry Fair” with a group of children and her voice floated over the others, since she was singing in a higher octave than the rest. She started taking voice lessons with a retired opera singer when her doctor discovered she had a “nearly adult larynx.” Her mother and stepfather were singers who performed for British troops during WWII, and she went on tour with them at age 11.

She moved to New York and began a career on Broadway at 19, and she starred in the musical My Fair Lady. In 1964, she made her film debut with Mary Poppins, which became Disney’s greatest box-office success. The next year, she starred in The Sound of Music, which was 20th Century Fox’s biggest hit until the premiere of Star Wars.

Andrews’ voice got hoarse while performing a show in 1997, and her doctors told her she had nodules in her throat. After the surgery to remove them, her voice never reached the same range, and she mostly stopped singing. Andrews was devastated and had to learn to see herself as more than just a beautiful singer. These days she spends most of her time writing children’s books with her daughter, and she’s published over 30 books.

Most people think of Julie Andrews as extremely proper and squeaky clean because of the most famous roles she’s played, including her more recent role as the queen in The Princess Diaries. Although she disagrees with this image, she has a sense of humor about it. She once said, “Sometimes I’m so sweet, even I can’t stand it.”

The Free Speech Movement was launched in Berkeley, California, on this date in 1964. It was the first mass civil disobedience protest held on a college campus during the 1960s. The University of California at Berkeley had a policy against allowing political activity or fundraising on campus, with the exception of the established Democrat and Republican student clubs. Jack Weinberg was one of several graduate students who had been to the South to join the civil rights movement. They came back to UC Berkeley to spread the word about the movement, and they set up an information table on the steps of Sproul Hall to mobilize their fellow students. University officials asked Weinberg to stop, and he refused. They called the police, who put him in the back of a squad car when he declined to show them his identification. Students quickly surrounded the police car and staged a sit-in, keeping the car from driving off. Weinberg’s fellow student activist, Mario Savio, climbed on the police car and used it as an impromptu podium. Weinberg ended up being held in the squad car for 32 hours. A journalist interviewed him and tried to get him to admit that the students were the puppets of older agitators; Weinberg denied it, and famously said that the movement’s members didn’t trust anyone over 30.

Some of the original protestors now say that they think the movement went too far, but 50 years after the original protest, Weinberg defended it. “Democracy’s messy,” he said. “When people have the right to express themselves and organize for whatever they are, you’re always going to find some things that you find objectionable … But I think that American society is much better off today than it was in the ’50s when there was very little freedom of any kind. Unless you were dressed the right way and spoke the right way and thought the right way, you were marginalized.”

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

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