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The Writer's Almanac from Saturday, July 20, 2013
The Writer's Almanac from Saturday, July 20, 2013"The Longing of the Feet" by Wesley McNair, from The Town of No. © David R. Godine, 2010. ORIGINAL TEXT AND AUDIO - 2013 It's the birthday of novelist and screenwriter Cormac McCarthy (1933). He was born Charles McCarthy Jr. in Providence, Rhode Island. He's best known as the author of the "Border Trilogy" — All the Pretty Horses (1992), The Crossing (1994), and Cities of the Plain (1998). In The New York Times Magazine, Richard B. Woodward, called him, "A man's novelist whose apocalyptic vision rarely focuses on women, McCarthy doesn't write about sex, love or domestic issues." His novel The Road (2006) was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. California opened its first freeway on this date in 1940. Known as the Arroyo Seco Parkway, the Pasadena Freeway, or simply "the 110," it was also the first freeway — a high-speed, divided, and limited-access thoroughfare — in the western United States. It runs for just over eight miles and connects Pasadena to Los Angeles. It's the birthday of explorer and author Sir Edmund Hillary, born near Auckland, New Zealand (1905). Although he made his living from beekeeping, Hillary began climbing mountains in New Zealand at the age of 20. He then moved on to the Alps, and in 1951, made his first visit to the Himalayas. In 1953, Hillary joined a British expedition team to climb Mount Everest. All but two of the climbers were forced to turn back because of the high altitudes. Finally, Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, a Nepalese Sherpa, were the only two able to reach the summit, 29,028 feet above sea level. He said: "It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves." It's the birthday of the Italian humanist, scholar, and poet Francesco Petrarca, or Petrarch, born in Arezzo, Italy in 1304. He is known as the founder of humanism at the beginning of the Renaissance in Italy and is admired for his collection of 366 Italian lyrical poems, the Canzoniere. The first half of the collection was written about his platonic love of Laura, a married woman whose actual identity is still in doubt, and who apparently kept her distance from him. The second half of the collection deals with his reaction to Laura's death, from the plague, in 1348. Petrarch wrote: Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® Saturday, September 28, 2024: A Prairie Home Companion’s 50th Anniversary Tour will visit to the Norsk Høstfest in Minot, ND with our Special Guests: Christine DiGiallonardo, Rich Dworsky, Howard Levy, Chris Siebold, Larry Kohut, Tim Russell and Fred Newman. Click HERE for details and tickets! If you are a paid subscriber to The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor, thank you! Your financial support is used to maintain these newsletters, websites, and archive. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber and would like to become one, support can be made through our garrisonkeillor.com store, by check to Prairie Home Productions, P.O. Box 2090, Minneapolis, MN 55402, or by clicking the SUBSCRIBE button. This financial support is not tax deductible.
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