| Nurture
by Maxine Kumin From a documentary on marsupials I learn
that a pillowcase makes a fine
substitute pouch for an orphaned kangaroo. I am drawn to such dramas of animal rescue.
They are warm in the throat. I suffer, the critic proclaims,
from an overabundance of maternal genes. Bring me your fallen fledgling, your bummer lamb,
lead the abused, the starvelings, into my barn.
Advise the hunted deer to leap into my corn. And had there been a wild child—
filthy and fierce as a ferret, he is called
in one nineteenth-century account— a wild child to love, it is safe to assume,
given my fireside inked with paw prints,
there would have been room. Think of the language we two, same and not-same,
might have constructed from sign,
scratch, grimace, grunt, vowel: Laughter our first noun, and our long verb, howl. "Nurture" by Maxine Kumin from Selected Poems: 1960-1990. W. W. Norton, © 1997. Reprinted with the permission of the estate of Maxine Kumin. (buy now) It's the birthday of the author Helen Churchill Candee (books by this author), née Hungerford, in New York City (1858). One of her early books was a how-to guide, How Women May Earn a Living (1900). Her husband, Edward Candee, was abusive, and she eventually took the children and left him. As a single working mother, she wanted to make sure that other women could find ways to support themselves without relying on men. She wrote books on decorative arts, and also published a novel, An Oklahoma Romance, in 1901. Once she was established as a writer, Candee moved to Washington, D.C., and became one of the first professional interior decorators; several high-powered politicians, including Theodore Roosevelt, were her clients. She was in Europe early in 1912 when she received word that her son, Harold, had been injured in an accident. Naturally, she wanted to return home as soon as possible. From Cherbourg, she boarded a brand new luxury liner, the RMS Titanic, bound for New York. When the ship struck an iceberg near midnight on April 14 and began to sink, Candee boarded Lifeboat Six, under the command of quartermaster Robert Hitchens. She tried to persuade him to go back after the ship went down, to search for any survivors, but he refused. She wrote a dramatized account of the voyage for Collier's Weekly magazine, about an unnamed man and woman. The story, called "Sealed Orders," included a romantic sunset visit to the bow of the great ship, and it may have inspired parts of James Cameron's movie Titanic (1997). Today is the birthday of rocket scientist Robert Goddard, born in Worcester, Massachusetts (1882). Goddard had been interested in outer space since he read H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds when he was 16. He started thinking seriously about rockets the following year, in 1899. He received a patent for his design for a liquid-fueled rocket in 1914, and another for one that ran on solid fuel. At this point, the government wasn't really interested in the idea of space travel, so he had a hard time getting grants for his research. Finally, a grant from the Smithsonian Institution enabled him to do research and publish a paper on "A Method for Reaching Extreme Altitudes" in 1920. In the paper, he speculated that rockets could be used to reach the moon. The New York Times heard about his paper, and published an editorial ridiculing him. He went from "nobody" to "national laughingstock" literally overnight. He didn't give up, and on this date in 1926, he completed the first successful launch of his liquid-fueled rocket in Auburn, Massachusetts. The rocket reached a height of 41 feet and an average speed of 60 miles per hour. Unfortunately, Goddard didn't live to see space flight become a reality; he died of cancer in 1945. In July 1969, the day after Apollo 11 departed for the Moon, The New York Times printed a correction to its scathing editorial of nearly 50 years before. It was on this day in 1789 that women in Paris led a march on Versailles. Throughout the fall, the price of grain had been rising, and there was a shortage of bread. Ordinary people were starving, and anger was high. On October 4th, the press reported that there had been a huge banquet a few days earlier at the palace of Versailles to celebrate a new group of officers. And so, on the cold, rainy morning of October 5th, a group of women began to march across the city, from the markets in east Paris. A girl started off the march by beating on a drum, and soon churches across the city were ringing the tocsin, the alarm bell. More and more women joined the march, about 6,000 by the time they reached the Hôtel de Ville. The women had armed themselves with whatever they could find, from muskets and swords to pitchforks and broomsticks. Most of them were regular workingwomen — laundresses, fishwives, or market women. They marched 13 miles in the rain to Versailles, a journey of about six hours, gaining more and more marchers as they went. About 20,000 members of the National Guard decided to follow in support, and once the crowd reached Versailles, they found even more supporters waiting for them. The marchers arrived at Versailles in the evening, and a small group of market women were allowed inside to speak directly with King Louis XVI. He agreed to supply them with food, but the crowd wanted more. Throughout the evening, the king agreed to more and more demands, but the marchers remained unsatisfied. At about 6 a.m. the next morning, they found their way through a small unguarded gate and stormed the palace. A royal guard shot a young woman, and in return guards were attacked. Two were killed and their heads placed on pikes. For hours there was total chaos, with the king and queen locked in a bedroom. Finally the royal family appeared on the balcony and agreed to one of the original demands of the women: to return with them to Paris. That evening, a crowd estimated at 60,000 people marched back to Paris. The king, queen, and their young son were at the front of the procession in a carriage, surrounded by women carrying laurel branches. The women chanted that they were bringing "the baker, the baker's wife, and the baker's boy." Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® | 