| Out on the Flats
by Leonard Nathan
Out on the flats, a heron still
as a hieroglyph carved
on the soft gray face of morning.
You asked, when I seemed far away,
what it meant but were gone
when I turned to you with an answer.
Nothing mysterious—hunger,
a taste for salt tides,
distance, and a gift of flight.
Leonard Nathan, "Out on the Flats" from The Potato Eaters. © 1998 Orchises Press. Reprinted with permission. (buy now) It was on this day in 1764 that the city of St. Louis was founded by the businessman Pierre Laclède and his 14-year-old stepson, Auguste Chouteau. Auguste's abusive father had abandoned him and his mother, Marie Thérèse Chouteau, and she and Pierre Laclède lived together in a common-law marriage. Laclede taught young Auguste about his business and he brought him on his journey up the Mississippi to establish a trading post at the place where the Mississippi and Missouri came together. They stayed at a French fort about 50 miles south of what is now St. Louis and looked for land. In November of 1763 Laclède found the place he wanted, a limestone bluff, and he marked trees and then went back to the fort for the winter. The river broke up in February and young Auguste Chouteau and 30 workers went back to the spot to start clearing land on this day in 1764. There is some debate about whether it was February 14th or 15th, or another day altogether. Chouteau's son Gabriel said that the inaugural day was on the 14th but Chouteau's own recollection of the event — albeit 40 years after it had taken place — listed the date as the 15th. Chouteau went on to become the most prominent citizen of the quickly growing St. Louis — he started out as a fur trader and soon moved into banking and real estate. It's the birthday of scientist and writer Galileo Galilei, born in Pisa, Italy (1564), who defended the scientific belief that the Earth was not the center of the Universe and was tried by the Roman Inquisition for heresy. He once prophesied that, in the future, "There will be opened a gateway and a road to a large and excellent science into which minds more piercing than mine shall penetrate to recesses still deeper." Galileo was a mathematics professor at Padua when he first heard about a new invention from the Netherlands, the telescope. When he couldn't get his hands on one to even look at he worked out the mechanics on his own. The spyglass everyone had been talking about could magnify objects to three times their original size. The instrument Galileo made with lenses he ground himself magnified all the way up to 20 times. He was able to see the valleys and mountains of the moon, the Milky Way, and to discover four moons of Jupiter. In 1610, Galileo published the story of his telescope and the results of his studies as The Starry Messenger. Galileo had been corresponding with German astronomer Johannes Kepler who also believed that the Sun, not the Earth, was the center of the solar system. Kepler had been urging Galileo to go public with his theories for years and, though Galileo was tried and convicted by the Church for heresy, he was never tortured or excommunicated as the dominant narrative goes—in reality he remained a loyal Catholic his entire life. It’s the birthday of Susan B. Anthony, born in Adams, Massachusetts (1820). She was one of the leaders of the women’s suffrage movement, and her plainspoken, hard-hitting speeches rallied people around her cause. One time a fan wrote a poem in her honor, and she replied: “I find in a very handsome lavender envelope a poem inscribed on lavender paper, addressed to Susan B. Anthony. Since I know nothing of the merits of poetry, I am not able to pass any opinion upon this, but I can see that ‘reap’ and ‘deep,’ ‘prayers’ and ‘bears,’ ‘ark’ and ‘dark,’ ‘true’ and ‘grew’ do rhyme, and so I suppose it is a splendid effort, but if you had written it in plain prose, I could have understood it a great deal better and read it a great deal more easily. Nevertheless, I am thankful to you for poetizing over me — although the fact is that I am the most prosaic, matter-of-fact creature that ever drew the breath of life.” It’s the birthday of American cartoonist Matt Groening (books by this author), best known for creating The Simpsons, the irascible cartoon family from Springfield. Groening was born in Portland, Oregon (1954), the middle of five children, and the son of a filmmaker and cartoonist named Homer. It was while working at a pizza store in Los Angeles in the early ’70s that he began drawing and selling a comic called Life in Hell, about a pathetic, oppressed rabbit named Binky. He’d been using the comic as a way to describe his life in L.A. to friends who lived elsewhere. He was writing a music column for the Los Angeles Reader, but he hated it because pop stars annoyed him, so he made each column up and apologized the next week. But his editor loved Life in Hell and let him do that instead of the music column. The strip proved so popular that Groening was able to publish several books, including School is Hell (1987), Childhood is Hell (1988), and The Big Book of Hell (1990). James L. Brooks, a Hollywood producer and writer, loved the strip and asked Groening to adapt it as a series of shorts for his new television show, The Tracey Ullman Show. But Groening refused; he thought if the show tanked he’d lose the rights to the comic. Besides, he said, “I think human beings resonate with audiences more than bunnies, but who knows?” Instead, he created a dysfunctional family and named everyone, except the punky son Bart, after the members of his own family: Homer, Marge, Maggie, Lisa, Patty. “Bart” is an anagram for “brat.” The Simpsons debuted in 1987 on The Tracey Ullman Show and became a hit. It was spun off in 1989 and is now the longest-running animated show in the history of television. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® | 