Ludwig Bemelmans was born on this day in 1898 in what was then Austria-Hungary, but is now Italy. When Lud was five or six, his dad left both his mother and his (Ludwig’s) governess when they were pregnant with his child for another woman. (Jeez Louise!) So Ludwig was raised by his mom for a while, but was a problem child so was sent off to work in his uncle’s hotel in Austria. However, he was beaten regularly there by the headwaiter until he retaliated by shooting him. The headwaiter was seriously wounded and Lud was given the choice of reform school or emigration to America. He chose the latter.
After bumbling around a bit in the army and the hotel/restaurant business, he started working on children’s books and, of course, gained fame with his Madeline series. Madeline was his wife’s name. They had one daughter and three grandchildren. He died in 1964 of pancreatic cancer and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
The opening of the first Madeline book is pretty much perfect. Here it is:
“In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines. In two straight lines they broke their bread, and brushed their teeth, and went to bed. They smiled at the good, and frowned at the bad, and sometimes they were very sad. They left the house at half past nine, in two straight lines, in rain or shine. The smallest one was Madeline!”
And here she is, way on the right, next to the dog and the nun:
From Owl Chatter’s Chutzpah With a Capital Chutz Department:
“I wanted to address my senators, Cruz and Cornyn,” Amanda Zurawski told the Senate Committee on the Judiciary at a hearing on reproductive rights. Zurawski’s water broke 18 weeks into her pregnancy, making it impossible for her fetus to survive. Because of the vague and extreme Texas antiabortion law, her health care providers refused to treat her as long as the fetus had a heartbeat. Zurawski developed sepsis and, after giving birth to a stillborn daughter, spent three days in intensive care.
Zurawski said she wanted the two Texas Republican senators to know “that what happened to me is a direct result of the policies they support. I nearly died, and I may not be able to have children in the future.” Neither Cruz nor Cornyn showed up to hear her.
Cornyn later said Zurawski should consider suing her doctors for misinterpreting the law.
And here are the Zurawskis.
Fifty bucks says you don’t know what Ulysses S. Grant’s middle name is. Give up? It’s Ulysses. Wait, what? His actual name was Hiram Ulysses Grant. The Congressman who nominated him for admission to West Point got his name wrong on the paperwork and Grant ran with it. Ulysses became his first name. The S stands for nothing. Hiram is gone. Happy Birthday Grant! He was born on this day in Point Pleasant, Ohio, in 1822.
Anya Silver, the poet whose poem was in Owl Chatter yesterday, chose not to read War and Peace. This was not as easy a decision for her as it generally is. Her dad was a Russian Lit professor at Swarthmore, and wrote a book about Tolstoy. So her refusal was hard on him. He offered her $100 to read it. She held her ground.
Anya wrote her first poem (“Snowflakes”) when she was in fourth grade, but her teacher upbraided her in front of the class for staring out the window and daydreaming. Later in life, she told an interviewer: “But that’s basically what I do now when I write a poem — stare out my window and contemplate.”
Here’s another of her poems, called “Return.”
When he returned home after many years,
an enormous oak had split his house in two,
its trunk growing right through the center hall.
Though there was nobody living in the tilting
rooms, he recognized some simple objects:
a milk jug once filled with daisies, a single shoe.
Where a mirror had hung, a darkened oval
remained on the wall. No bark, no call, no singing.
But though he didn’t understand what he saw,
he knew the tree, broad and green, was a blessing.
Thanks for dropping in. See you tomorrow!
The Wellington Files 