Born In August Quotes

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Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is...and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be...and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart...no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them.
Robert A. Heinlein
August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.
Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
Every day we're told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it's always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it's startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are 'We're number two!
David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)
I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.
Jeffrey Eugenides (Middlesex)
The only Virgos left in the world are people like you who were born in August.
Gabriel García Márquez (Memories of My Melancholy Whores)
Probably it is true enough that the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs or another. In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance only for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved. It certainly does not justify the presumption of any group of people to claim the right to determine what people ought to think or believe.
Friedrich A. Hayek (The Road to Serfdom)
Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters." "This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. In the light of these ideas, Negroes will be hunted at the North, and held and flogged at the South so long as they submit to those devilish outrages, and make no resistance, either moral or physical. Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.
Frederick Douglass
I was born to a time of fire.
August Wilson (The Piano Lesson)
There’s not a lot you can control, you know. Where you’re born. Who your family is. What people want from you, and what you are, underneath it all. When you have so little say in it all, I think it’s important to exercise a measure of control when given the opportunity.” She smiled, ducking her head. “So I blow things up.
Brittany Cavallaro (The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2))
I hope for a light grief in old age. I was born in Rome and it has returned to me. My autumn was a kind of she-wolf, And August - the month of Caesars - smiled at me.
Osip Mandelstam
Besides, skin color was skin color, right? It was just the color of your goddamned skin. There was nothing anybody could do about that. You were born with it. Like some people were born with big feet or blue eyes. You didn't make the choice. Your parents did. Or God did.
Pete Hamill (Snow in August)
I was born in the city of Bombay ... once upon a time. No, that won't do, there's no getting away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar's Nursing Home on August 15th, 1947. And the time? The time matters, too. Well then: at night. No, it's important to be more ... On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms in respectful greeting as I came. Oh, spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of India's arrival at independence, I tumbled forth into the world.
Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Children)
It was a real dick move on Grandma’s part to be born in August.
Amy Tintera (Listen for the Lie)
I came to you one rainless August night. You taught me how to live without the rain. You are thirst and thirst is all I know. You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky, The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brand Your breath into my mouth. You reach—then bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new. You wrap your name tight around my ribs And keep me warm. I was born for you. Above, below, by you, by you surrounded. I wake to you at dawn. Never break your Knot. Reach, rise, blow, Sálvame, mi dios, Trágame, mi tierra. Salva, traga, Break me, I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle... If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Frederick Douglass
born on a early Sunday morning in August, 1960. A church baby
Kathryn Stockett (The Help)
Polly Esther Doe was born at 8:03 a.m. on August 14.
Adam Rex (Cold Cereal (The Cold Cereal Saga, #1))
At first it had been a torrent; now it was a tide, with a flow and ebb. During its flood she could almost fool them both. It was as if out of her knowledge that it was just a flow that must presently react was born a wilder fury, a fierce denial that could flag itself and him into physical experimentation that transcended imagining, carried them as though by momentum alone, bearing them without volition or plan. It was as if she knew somehow that time was short, that autumn was almost upon her, without knowing yet the exact significance of autumn. It seemed to be instinct alone: instinct physical and instinctive denial of the wasted years. Then the tide would ebb. Then they would be stranded as behind a dying mistral, upon a spent and satiate beach, looking at one another like strangers, with hopeless and reproachful (on his part with weary: on hers with despairing) eyes.
William Faulkner (Light in August)
And what are we to think, I asked,"of the article in Le Soleil?" "That it is a vast pity its inditer was not born a parrot--in which case he would have been the most illustrious parrot of his race.
Edgar Allan Poe (The Mystery of Marie Rogêt (C. Auguste Dupin, #2))
The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle…. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States)
You are a member of the first generation of doctors in the history of medicine to turn their backs on the oath of Hippocrates and kill millions of old useless people, unborn children, born malformed children, for the good of mankind —and to do so without a single murmur from one of you. Not a single letter of protest in the august New England Journal of Medicine. And do you know what you’re going to end up doing? You a graduate of Harvard and a reader of the New York Times and a member of the Ford Foundation’s Program for the Third World? Do you know what is going to happen to you? . . . You’re going to end up killing Jews.
Walker Percy (The Thanatos Syndrome)
I’m a Leo because I was born in August. It’s a fire sign; that’s why I’m passionate and I fall in love without thinking.
Isabel Allende (Lovers at the Museum)
There's not a lot you can control, you know. Where you're born. Who your family is. What people want from you, and what you are, underneath it all. When you have so little say in it all, I think it's important to exercise a measure of control when given the opportunity." She smiled, ducking her head "So I blow things up." "Did you hear that? You almost said something profound. You came so close .
Brittany Cavallaro (The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2))
The real names of the other people hiding in the Secret Annexe are: THE VAN PELS FAMILY (from Osnabrück, Germany): Auguste van Pels (born 9 September 1900) Hermann van Pels (born 31 March 1898) Peter van Pels (born 8 November 1926) Called
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition)
It's almost August, and the last swarm of lovebugs swirls around me, their tiny connected bodies a tragedy. They're born, they fuck, they die a horrific death splattered against an uncaring windshield. That's the cycle: The ones we love always die.
Shaun David Hutchinson (The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley)
...passions, poetry and the ego have been seen as perpetual explosions? But if that's true, then so its its opposite; ever since that August when athe mushroom rose over cities reduced to a layer of ash, an age was born in which the explosion is symbolic only of absolute negation.
Italo Calvino (Cosmicomics)
Then alone, of all church gatherings, is there something of that peace which is the promise and the end of the Church. The mind and the heart purged then, if it is ever to be; the week and its whatever disasters finished and summed and expiated by the stern and formal fury of the morning service; the next week and its whatever disasters not yet born, the heart quiet now for a little while beneath the cool soft blowing of faith and hope.
William Faulkner (Light in August (Vintage International))
JOHNNA: When a Cheyenne baby is born, their umbilical cord is dried and sewn into this pouch. Turtles for girls, lizards for boys. And we wear it for the rest of our lives. JEAN: Wow. JOHNNA: Because if we lose it, our souls belong nowhere and after we die our souls will walk the Earth looking for where we belong.
Tracy Letts (August: Osage County (TCG Edition))
Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reforms. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle. . . . If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. . . .
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present)
darling, you were born on September 3rd, died on July 13th, but to me, you will always be my August 15th.
Valérie Perrin (Fresh Water for Flowers)
I wish I were never born," August moans into the floor. "Retweet," Wes says solemnly.
Casey McQuiston (One Last Stop)
Had I been born in a different time, I would have been a wanderer with little money, few worries and even fewer fears.
Wiss Auguste
Be it then known that I was born on the family Estate in Devonshire, of the 10th day of August, 1690 (or in the new Gregorian Stile of Reckoning, the 20th of August),
H.P. Lovecraft (Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft (Illustrated))
England has her Stratford, Scotland has her Alloway, and America, too, has her Dresden. For there, on August 11, 1833, was born the greatest and noblest of the Western World; an immense personality, -- unique, lovable, sublime; the peerless orator of all time, and as true a poet as Nature ever held in tender clasp upon her loving breast, and, in words coined for the chosen few, told of the joys and sorrows, hopes, dreams, and fears of universal life; a patriot whose golden words and deathless deeds were worthy of the Great Republic; a philanthropist, real and genuine; a philosopher whose central theme was human love, -- who placed 'the holy hearth of home' higher than the altar of any god; an iconoclast, a builder -- a reformer, perfectly poised, absolutely honest, and as fearless as truth itself -- the most aggressive and formidable foe of superstition -- the most valiant champion of reason -- Robert G. Ingersoll.
Herman E. Kittredge (Ingersoll: A Biographical Appreciation (1911))
Napoleone di Buonaparte, as he signed himself until manhood, was born in Ajaccio, one of the larger towns on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, just before noon on Tuesday, August 15, 1769.
Andrew Roberts (Napoleon the Great)
Like a long sighing of wind in trees it begins, then they sweep into sight, borne now upon a cloud of phantom dust. They rush past, forwardleaning in the saddles, with brandished arms, beneath whipping ribbons from slanted and eager lances; with tumult and soundless yelling they sweep past like a tide whose crest is jagged with the wild heads of horses and the brandished arms of men like the crater of the world in explosion.
William Faulkner (Light in August)
My father was neither an ally nor a confidant, but it seemed backward to me that this hardworking man would be relegated to the sofa while my lazy mother got the king-size bed. I resented her for that, but she seemed immune to guilt and shame. I think she got away with so much because she was beautiful. She looked like Lee Miller if Lee Miller had been a bedroom drunk. I assume she blamed my father for ruining her life—she got pregnant and dropped out of college to marry him. She didn’t have to, of course. I was born in August 1973, seven months after Roe v. Wade. Her family was the country club brand of alcoholic Southern Baptists—Mississippi loggers on one side, Louisiana oilmen on the other—or else, I assumed, she would have aborted me. My father was twelve years older than my mother. She’d been just nineteen years old and already four months pregnant when they got married. I’d figured that out as soon as I could do the math.
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
Hamilton, back by August 13, dove into a debate that passionately engaged him: immigration. He opposed any attempt to restrict membership in Congress to native-born Americans or to stipulate a residency period before immigrants could qualify for it.
Ron Chernow (Alexander Hamilton)
There’s not a lot you can control, you know. Where you’re born. Who your family is. What people want from you, and what you are, underneath it all. When you have so little say in it all, I think it’s important to exercise a measure of control when given the opportunity.
Brittany Cavallaro (The Last of August (Charlotte Holmes, #2))
Schools could do the same thing. Elementary and middle schools could put the January through April–born students in one class, the May through August in another class, and those born in September through December in the third class. They could let students learn with and compete against other students of the same maturity level. It would be a little bit more complicated administratively. But it wouldn’t necessarily cost that much more money, and it would level the playing field for those who — through no fault of their own — have been dealt a big disadvantage by the educational system. We could easily take control of the machinery of achievement, in other words — not just in sports but, as we will see, in other more consequential areas as well. But we don’t. And why? Because we cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don’t matter at all.
Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers: The Story of Success)
Alas! it is the artificial refinements, the oppressive burden of a relaxing and deadening superfluity which render man indifferent to the value of life: when it is stripped of all foreign appendages, though borne down with sufferings so that the naked existence alone remains, still will its sweetness flow from the heart at every pulse through all the veins.
August Wilhelm von Schlegel (Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature)
It was a golden evening in August when my mother came untethered. And the river must have shimmered as she walked into it, under it. And the water must have soothed and washed away her pain. And as her life ebbed, before her heart stopped and the high tide carried her upstream, she must have thought of me, surely? For it was the same golden evening I was born.
Judith Kinghorn (The Echo of Twilight)
Born some time in the mid-1920s, at her oldest she had lived to see planes fly into the World Trade Center. “I remember thinking,” she would say, “how frustrating it was that I wouldn’t live long enough to see what happened next.” But she interrogated the kalachakra of the Club, the younger members, those born in the 1980s and 1990s, who shook their heads sadly and said, “You’re not missing anything.
Claire North (The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August)
Bowman, too, had been born in a great city, in the French Hospital in Manhattan, in the burning heat of August and very early in the morning when all geniuses are born, as Pearson once told him. There had been an unbreathing stillness, and near dawn faint, distant thunder. It grew slowly louder, then gusts of cooler air before a tremendous storm broke with lightning and sheets of rain, and when it was over,
James Salter (All That Is)
Every day we’re told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it’s always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it’s startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are “We’re number two!
David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)
One-third of teens and young adults reported worsening mental health during the pandemic. According to an Ohio State University study,32 suicide rates among children rose 50 percent.33 An August 11, 2021 study by Brown University found that infants born during the quarantine were short, on average, 22 IQ points as measured by Baylor scale tests.34 Some 93,000 Americans died of overdoses in 2020—a 30 percent rise over 2019.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
with. Dandelion Wine is nothing if it is not the boy-hid-in-the-man playing in the fields of the Lord on the green grass of other Augusts in the midst of starting to grow up, grow old, and sense darkness waiting under the trees to seed the blood. I was amused and somewhat astonished at a critic a few years back who wrote an article analyzing Dandelion Wine plus the more realistic works of Sinclair Lewis, wondering how I could have been born and raised in Waukegan, which I renamed Green Town for my novel, and not noticed how ugly the harbor was and how depressing the coal docks and railyards down below the town. But, of course, I had noticed them and, genetic enchanter that I was, was fascinated by their beauty. Trains and boxcars and the smell of coal and fire are not ugly to children. Ugliness is a concept that we happen on later and become self-conscious about.
Ray Bradbury (Dandelion Wine (Green Town, #1))
After Tony [Judt]'s death, in August 2010, I toured to discuss the book we had written together, which he had entitle 'Thinking the Twentieth Century.' I realized as I traveled around the United States that its subject had been forgotten all too well. In hotel rooms, I watched Russian television toy with the traumatic American history of race, suggesting that Barack Obama had been born in Africa. It struck me as odd that the American entertainer Donald Trump picked up the theme not long thereafter.
Timothy Snyder (The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America)
Only then (nearly out the door, so to speak) did I realize how unspeakably beautiful all of this was, how precisely engineered for our pleasure, and saw that I was on the brink of squandering a wondrous gift, the gift of being allowed, every day, to wander this vast sensual paradise, this grand marketplace lovingly stocked with every sublime thing: swarms of insects dancing in slant-rays of august sun; a trio of black horses standing hock-deep and head-to-head in a field of snow; a waft of beef broth arriving breeze-borne from an orange-hued window on a chill autumn—
George Saunders (Lincoln in the Bardo)
Most parents worry. Most parents worry from day one that their child will stop breathing, that their child will fall out of bed, be crushed in the night by a falling light fixture or sat on by a cat. Most parents experience the worry and push their way through it, so that by the time they’re parents of two-year-olds or three-year-olds, individuals who really are capable of destroying themselves, they’ve learned not to worry. Even when they should. Rishi, however, was a newly born parent, and fearful. Maybe this was a good thing. Maybe it was fear that turned him, that early August morning, into a father.
Shanthi Sekaran (Lucky Boy)
August wanted to hand the papers back and to tell them everything, draw them close and whisper that their lives had turned out wrong, that she and her family were meant to be powerful, not broken, tell them that something bad happened before any of them was born. Tell them that something was stolen from a place inland, from the five hundred acres where her people lived. She wanted to tell them that the world was all askew and she thought it was because of the artefacts, that she thought they should understand it was all so urgent now, that they knew truths now tell them that she wasn’t extinct, that they didn’t need the exhibition after all.
Tara June Winch (The Yield)
For ourselves, we, who do not believe what these women believe, but live, like them, by faith, never could look without a species of tender and religious awe, a kind of pity full of envy, upon those devoted beings, trembling yet confident—those humble yet august souls, who dare to live upon the very confines of the great mystery, waiting between the world closed to them and heaven not yet opened; turned towards the daylight not yet seen, with only the happiness of thinking that they know where it is; their aspirations directed towards the abyss and the unknown, their gaze fixed on the motionless gloom, kneeling, dismayed, stupefied, shuddering, and half borne away at certain times by the deep pulsations of Eternity.
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
Author’s Note Caroline is a marriage of fact and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s fiction. I have knowingly departed from Wilder’s version of events only where the historical record stands in contradiction to her stories. Most prominently: Census records, as well as the Ingalls family Bible, demonstrate that Caroline Celestia Ingalls was born in Rutland Township, Montgomery County, Kansas on August 3, 1870. (Wilder, not anticipating writing a sequel to Little House in the Big Woods, set her first novel in 1873 and included her little sister. Consequently, when Wilder decided to continue her family’s saga by doubling back to earlier events, Carrie’s birth was omitted from Little House on the Prairie to avoid confusion.) No events corresponding to Wilder’s descriptions of a “war dance” in the chapter of Little House on the Prairie entitled “Indian War-Cry” are known to have occurred in the vicinity of Rutland Township during the Ingalls family’s residence there. Drum Creek, where Osage leaders met with federal Indian agents in the late summer of 1870 and agreed peaceably to sell their Kansas lands and relocate to present-day Oklahoma, was nearly twenty miles from the Ingalls claim. I have therefore adopted western scholar Frances Kay’s conjecture that Wilder’s family was frightened by the mourning songs sung by Osage women as they grieved the loss of their lands and ancestral graves in the days following the agreement. In this instance, like so many others involving the Osages, the Ingalls family’s reactions were entirely a product of their own deep prejudices and misconceptions.
Sarah Miller (Caroline: Little House, Revisited)
Obama’s father had studied in a missionary school and was working as a clerk in Nairobi. He was encouraged to come to America for further study by two missionary women, Helen Roberts and Elizabeth Mooney, who were living at the time in Kenya. In Obama’s Selma narrative, this was made possible by the Kennedy family. “What happened in Selma, Alabama, and Birmingham also, stirred the conscience of the nation. It worried folks in the White House,” he said. “The Kennedys decided we’re going to do an airlift. We’re going to go to Africa and start bringing young Africans over to this country and give them scholarships to study so they can learn what a wonderful country America is. This young man named Barack Obama got one of those tickets and came over to this country.” Soon after that Obama got married and “Barack Obama Jr. was born.... So I’m here because somebody marched. I’m here because you all sacrificed for me.” Except that the Kennedys had nothing to do with Obama’s father coming to America. As Obama’s staff eventually acknowledged, Obama Sr. arrived here in 1959. John F. Kennedy was elected president the following year.1 The two American teachers who had encouraged Obama Sr. to make the trip paid his travel costs and the bulk of his expenses. There was an airlift, organized by the Kenyan labor leader Tom Mboya with financial support from a number of American philanthropists. It brought several dozen African students to America to study, but Barack Obama Sr. did not come on that plane. Rather, he came on his own and enrolled at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.2 Moreover, the march in Selma occurred in March 1965, while Obama Jr. was born in August 1961; Selma had nothing to do with the circumstances of Obama’s birth.
Dinesh D'Souza (The Roots of Obama's Rage)
I had seen and known negroes since I could remember. I just looked at them as I did at rain, or furniture, or food or sleep. But after that I seemed to see them for the first time not as people, but as a thing, a shadow in which I lived, we lived, all white people, all other people. I thought of all the children coming forever and ever into the world, white, with the black shadow falling upon them before they drew breath. And I seemed to see the black shadow in the shape of a cross. And it seemed like the white babies were struggling, even before they drew breath, to escape from the shadow that was not only upon them but was beneath them too, flung out like their arms were flung out, as if they were nailed to the cross. I saw all the little babies that would ever be in the world, the ones not yet even born—a long line of them with their arms spread, on the black cross.
William Faulkner (Light in August)
There are Californians who waiver in their allegiance to the climate of California. Sometimes the climate of San Francisco has made me cross. Sometimes I have thought that the winds in summer were too cold, that the fogs in summer were too thick. But whenever I have crossed the continent—when I have emerged from New York at ninety-five degrees, and entered Chicago at one hundred degrees—when I have been breathing the dust of alkali deserts and the fiery air of sagebrush plains—these are the times when I have always been buoyed up by the anticipation of inhaling the salt air of San Francisco Bay. If ever a summer wanderer is glad to get back to his native land, it is I, returning to my native fog. Like the prodigal youth who returned to his home and filled himself with husks, so I always yearn in summer to return to mine, and fill myself up with fog. Not a thin, insignificant mist, but a fog—a thick fog—one of those rich pea-soup August fogs that blow in from the Pacific Ocean over San Francisco. When I leave the heated capitals of other lands and get back to California uncooked, I always offer up a thank-offering to Santa Niebla, Our Lady of the Fogs. Out near the Presidio, where Don Joaquin de Arillaga, the old comandante, revisits the glimpses of the moon, clad in rusty armor, with his Spanish spindle-shanks thrust into tall leathern boots—there some day I shall erect a chapel to Santa Niebla. And I have vowed to her as an ex-voto a silver fog-horn, which horn will be wound by the winds of the broad Pacific, and will ceaselessly sound through the centuries the litany of Our Lady of the Fogs. Every Californian has good reason to be loyal to his native land. If even the Swiss villagers, born in the high Alps, long to return to their birthplace, how much more does the exiled Californian yearn to return to the land which bore him. There are other, richer, and more populous lands, but to the Californian born, California is the only place in which to live. And to the returning Californian, particularly if he be native-born, the love of his birthplace is only intensified by visits to other lands. Why do men so love their native soil? It is perhaps a phase of human love for the mother. For we are compact of the soil. Out of the crumbling granite eroded from the ribs of California’s Sierras by California’s mountain streams—out of earth washed into California’s great valleys by her mighty rivers—out of this the sons of California are made, brain, and muscle, and bone. Why then should they not love their mother, even as the mountaineers of Montenegro, of Switzerland, of Savoy, lover their mountain birth-place? Why should not exiled Californians yearn to return? And we sons of California always do return; we are always brought back by the potent charm of our native land—back to the soil which gave us birth—and at the last back to Earth, the great mother, from whom we sprung, and on whose bosom we repose our tired bodies when our work is done.
Jerome Hart (Argonaut Letters)
out. This was the turning point: “From this illness, my father never quite recovered.”26 Had there been any possibility of Eleanor’s experiencing the joys or even routine of childhood, that time was now passing. In August, she was sent away to Grandmother Hall’s, and at Tivoli learned that her brother Elliott Roosevelt, Jr., had been born on September 29. She wrote a letter to her father, in which she wished her parents well, offered advice to the baby’s nurse should the newborn cry, then came straight to the crucial question about any child of Anna Roosevelt’s: “How does he look? Some people tell me he looks like an elephant and some say he is like a bunny.”27 Except for one pitiable moment at Half-Way Nirvana when Eleanor identified an Angora kitten as an “Angostura,”28 those aromatic bitters that flavored her father’s liquor, she showed few signs of registering the impact of addiction on their lives. “Little Eleanor is as happy as the day is long,” Elliott convinced himself during the heavy self-medicated month following his accident: “Plays with her kitten, the puppy & the chickens all the time & is very dirty as a general rule. I am the only ‘off’ member of the family.”29
David Michaelis (Eleanor: A Life)
To our amazement Jimmy received a letter, dated August 20, 1963, from Bertrand Russell, the world-famous philosopher and peace activist, saying “I have recently finished your remarkable book The American Resolution” and “have been greatly impressed with its power and insight.” The letter goes on to ask for Jimmy’s views on whether American whites “will understand the negro [sic] revolt because “the survival of mankind may well follow or fail to follow from political and social behavior of Americans in the next decades.” On September 5 Jimmy wrote back a lengthy reply saying among other things that “so far, with the exception of the students, there has been no social force in the white population which the Negroes can respect and a handful of liberals joining in a demonstration doesn’t change this one bit.” Russell replied on September 18 with more questions that Jimmy answered in an even longer letter dated December 22. Meanwhile, Russell had sent a telegram to the November 21 Town Hall meeting in New York City at which Jimmy was scheduled to speak, warning Negroes not to resort to violence. In response Jimmy said at the meeting that “I too would like to hope that the issues of our revolt might be resolved by peaceful means,” but “the issues and grievances were too deeply imbedded in the American system and the American peoples so that the very things Russell warned against might just have to take place if the Negroes in the U.S.A. are ever to walk the streets as free men.” In his December 22 letter Jimmy repeats what he said at the meeting and then patiently explains to Russell that what has historically been considered democracy in the United States has actually been fascism for millions of Negroes. The letter concludes: I believe that it is your responsibility as I believe that it is my responsibility to recognize and record this, so that in the future words do not confuse the struggle but help to clarify it. This is what I think philosophers should make clear. Because even though Negroes in the United States still think they are struggling for democracy, in fact democracy is what they are struggling against. This exchange between Jimmy and Russell has to be seen to be believed. In a way it epitomizes the 1960s—Jimmy Boggs, the Alabama-born autoworker, explaining the responsibility of philosophers to The Earl Russell, O.M., F.R.S., in his time probably the West’s best-known philosopher. Within the next few years The American Revolution was translated and published in French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese. To this day it remains a page-turner for grassroots activists because it is so personal and yet political, so down to earth and yet visionary.
Grace Lee Boggs (Living for Change: An Autobiography)
Major General Leonard Wood Leonard Wood was an army officer and physician, born October 9, 1860 in Winchester, New Hampshire. His first assignment was in 1886 at Fort Huachuca, Arizona where he fought in the last campaign against the fierce Apache warrior Geronimo. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for carrying dispatches 100 miles through hostile territory and was promoted to the rank of Captain, commanding a detachment of the 8th Infantry. From 1887 to 1898, he served as a medical officer in a number of positions, the last of which was as the personal physician to President William McKinley. In 1898 at the beginning of the war with Spain, he was given command of the 1st Volunteer Cavalry. The regiment was soon to be known as the “Rough Riders." Wood lead his men on the famous charge up San Juan Hill and was given a field promotion to brigadier general. In 1898 he was appointed the Military Governor of Santiago de Cuba. In 1920, as a retired Major General, Wood ran as the Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States, losing to Warren Harding. In 1921 following his defeat, General Wood accepted the post of Governor General of the Philippines. He held this position from 1921 to 1927, when he died of a brain tumor in Boston, on 7 August 1927, at 66 years of age after which he was buried, with full honors, in Arlington National Cemetery.
Hank Bracker
It is a painful irony that silent movies were driven out of existence just as they were reaching a kind of glorious summit of creativity and imagination, so that some of the best silent movies were also some of the last ones. Of no film was that more true than Wings, which opened on August 12 at the Criterion Theatre in New York, with a dedication to Charles Lindbergh. The film was the conception of John Monk Saunders, a bright young man from Minnesota who was also a Rhodes scholar, a gifted writer, a handsome philanderer, and a drinker, not necessarily in that order. In the early 1920s, Saunders met and became friends with the film producer Jesse Lasky and Lasky’s wife, Bessie. Saunders was an uncommonly charming fellow, and he persuaded Lasky to buy a half-finished novel he had written about aerial combat in the First World War. Fired with excitement, Lasky gave Saunders a record $39,000 for the idea and put him to work on a script. Had Lasky known that Saunders was sleeping with his wife, he might not have been quite so generous. Lasky’s choice for director was unexpected but inspired. William Wellman was thirty years old and had no experience of making big movies—and at $2 million Wings was the biggest movie Paramount had ever undertaken. At a time when top-rank directors like Ernst Lubitsch were paid $175,000 a picture, Wellman was given a salary of $250 a week. But he had one advantage over every other director in Hollywood: he was a World War I flying ace and intimately understood the beauty and enchantment of flight as well as the fearful mayhem of aerial combat. No other filmmaker has ever used technical proficiency to better advantage. Wellman had had a busy life already. Born into a well-to-do family in Brookline, Massachusetts, he had been a high school dropout, a professional ice hockey player, a volunteer in the French Foreign Legion, and a member of the celebrated Lafayette Escadrille flying squad. Both France and the United States had decorated him for gallantry. After the war he became friends with Douglas Fairbanks, who got him a job at the Goldwyn studios as an actor. Wellman hated acting and switched to directing. He became what was known as a contract director, churning out low-budget westerns and other B movies. Always temperamental, he was frequently fired from jobs, once for slapping an actress. He was a startling choice to be put in charge of such a challenging epic. To the astonishment of everyone, he now made one of the most intelligent, moving, and thrilling pictures ever made. Nothing was faked. Whatever the pilot saw in real life the audiences saw on the screen. When clouds or exploding dirigibles were seen outside airplane windows they were real objects filmed in real time. Wellman mounted cameras inside the cockpits looking out, so that the audiences had the sensation of sitting at the pilots’ shoulders, and outside the cockpit looking in, allowing close-up views of the pilots’ reactions. Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers, the two male stars of the picture, had to be their own cameramen, activating cameras with a remote-control button.
Bill Bryson (One Summer: America, 1927)
I slide a particularly stunning weapon from its mounting and inspect the gems glittering on its hilt. “What kind is this one?” “That,” August says with a slight grin, “is a broadsword. And I highly doubt that it is what killed my brother.” “Why not? It’s the right width!” He holds up his hands. “I’m just saying that it doesn’t seem likely. Swords are much more conspicuous than daggers. If someone was carrying that around, I think people would have noticed.” “En guard!” I say, swinging it. He snorts. “Very terrifying.” “This is heavy. How do people actually fight with these things? I feel like I’m going to lose my balance.” “That’s because you’re standing all wrong. You need to spread your feet more and sink into your knees.” He demonstrates for me, bouncing a bit to show me his knees aren’t locked. I try to mimic the stance. “Good,” he says. “Now grip the sword. One hand under the cross guard and the other down close to the pommel.” I move my hands into the places he indicates and thrust the sword as though stabbing an imaginary foe. He snorts again. “No, no, no.” “Stop laughing. I’m fearsome.” “I guess that’s one word you could use.” “It’s the only word.” I stick my tongue out at him. “Then tell me, oh wise one, what am I doing wrong now?” “Your elbows. They look like chicken wings.” “Well, I’m sorry, but they’re the ones I was born with.” He chuckles again. “Here. You need to lower them a bit.” He sets the lantern on the floor at our feet, steps around behind me, and presses his hands against my arms. My breath catches in my throat, and I turn my head. His nose is inches from mine, but he doesn’t back away. Instead, his eyes dip to my lips.
Jessica S. Olson (A Forgery of Roses)
As Dr. Fauci’s policies took hold globally, 300 million humans fell into dire poverty, food insecurity, and starvation. “Globally, the impact of lockdowns on health programs, food production, and supply chains plunged millions of people into severe hunger and malnutrition,” said Alex Gutentag in Tablet Magazine.27 According to the Associated Press (AP), during 2020, 10,000 children died each month due to virus-linked hunger from global lockdowns. In addition, 500,000 children per month experienced wasting and stunting from malnutrition—up 6.7 million from last year’s total of 47 million—which can “permanently damage children physically and mentally, transforming individual tragedies into a generational catastrophe.”28 In 2020, disruptions to health and nutrition services killed 228,000 children in South Asia.29 Deferred medical treatments for cancers, kidney failure, and diabetes killed hundreds of thousands of people and created epidemics of cardiovascular disease and undiagnosed cancer. Unemployment shock is expected to cause 890,000 additional deaths over the next 15 years.30,31 The lockdown disintegrated vital food chains, dramatically increased rates of child abuse, suicide, addiction, alcoholism, obesity, mental illness, as well as debilitating developmental delays, isolation, depression, and severe educational deficits in young children. One-third of teens and young adults reported worsening mental health during the pandemic. According to an Ohio State University study,32 suicide rates among children rose 50 percent.33 An August 11, 2021 study by Brown University found that infants born during the quarantine were short, on average, 22 IQ points as measured by Baylor scale tests.34 Some 93,000 Americans died of overdoses in 2020—a 30 percent rise over 2019.35 “Overdoses from synthetic opioids increased by 38.4 percent,36 and 11 percent of US adults considered suicide in June 2020.37 Three million children disappeared from public school systems, and ERs saw a 31 percent increase in adolescent mental health visits,”38,39 according to Gutentag. Record numbers of young children failed to reach crucial developmental milestones.40,41 Millions of hospital and nursing home patients died alone without comfort or a final goodbye from their families. Dr. Fauci admitted that he never assessed the costs of desolation, poverty, unhealthy isolation, and depression fostered by his countermeasures. “I don’t give advice about economic things,”42 Dr. Fauci explained. “I don’t give advice about anything other than public health,” he continued, even though he was so clearly among those responsible for the economic and social costs.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
One can take the ape out of the jungle, but not the jungle out of the ape. This also applies to us, bipedal apes. Ever since our ancestors swung from tree to tree, life in small groups has been an obsession of ours. We can’t get enough of politicians thumping their chests on television, soap opera stars who swing from tryst to tryst, and reality shows about who’s in and who’s out. It would be easy to make fun of all this primate behavior if not for the fact that our fellow simians take the pursuit of power and sex just as seriously as we do. We share more with them than power and sex, though. Fellow-feeling and empathy are equally important, but they’re rarely mentioned as part of our biological heritage. We would much rather blame nature for what we don’t like in ourselves than credit it for what we do like. As Katharine Hepburn famously put it in The African Queen, ”Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.” This opinion is still very much with us. Of the millions of pages written over the centuries about human nature, none are as bleak as those of the last three decades, and none as wrong. We hear that we have selfish genes, that human goodness is a sham, and that we act morally only to impress others. But if all that people care about is their own good, why does a day-old baby cry when it hears another baby cry? This is how empathy starts. Not very sophisticated perhaps, but we can be sure that a newborn doesn’t try to impress. We are born with impulses that draw us to others and that later in life make us care about them. The possibility that empathy is part of our primate heritage ought to make us happy, but we’re not in the habit of embracing our nature. When people commit genocide, we call them ”animals”. But when they give to the poor, we praise them for being ”humane”. We like to claim the latter behavior for ourselves. It wasn’t until an ape saved a member of our own species that there was a public awakening to the possibility of nonhuman humaneness. This happened on August 16, 1996, when an eight-year-old female gorilla named Binti Jua helped a three-year-old boy who had fallen eighteen feet into the primate exhibit at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo. Reacting immediately, Binti scooped up the boy and carried him to safety. She sat down on a log in a stream, cradling the boy in her lap, giving him a few gentle back pats before taking him to the waiting zoo staff. This simple act of sympathy, captured on video and shown around the world, touched many hearts, and Binti was hailed as a heroine. It was the first time in U.S. history that an ape figured in the speeches of leading politicians, who held her up as a model of compassion. That Binti’s behavior caused such surprise among humans says a lot about the way animals are depicted in the media. She really did nothing unusual, or at least nothing an ape wouldn’t do for any juvenile of her own species. While recent nature documentaries focus on ferocious beasts (or the macho men who wrestle them to the ground), I think it’s vital to convey the true breadth and depth of our connection with nature. This book explores the fascinating and frightening parallels between primate behavior and our own, with equal regard for the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Frans de Waal (Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are)
British / Pakistani ISIS suspect, Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, is arrested in Bangladesh on suspicion of recruiting jihadists to fight in Syria • Local police named arrested Briton as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, also known as Zak, living in 70 Eversleigh Road, Westham, E6 1HQ London • They suspect him of recruiting militants for ISIS in two Bangladeshi cities • He arrived in the country in February, having previously spent time in Syria and Pakistan • Suspected militant recruiter also recently visited Australia A forty year old Muslim British man has been arrested in Bangladesh on suspicion of recruiting would-be jihadists to fight for Islamic State terrorists in Syria and Iraq. The man, who police named as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood born 24th August 1977, also known as Zak, is understood to be of Pakistani origin and was arrested near the Kamalapur Railway area of the capital city Dhaka. He is also suspected of having attempted to recruit militants in the northern city of Sylhet - where he is understood to have friends he knows from living in Newham, London - having reportedly first arrived in the country about six months ago to scout for potential extremists. Militants: The British Pakistani man (sitting on the left) named as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood was arrested in Bangladesh. The arrested man has been identified as Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, sources at the media wing of Dhaka Metropolitan Police told local newspapers. He is believed to have arrived in Bangladesh in February and used social media websites including Facebook to sound out local men about their interest in joining ISIS, according Monirul Islam - joint commissioner of Dhaka Metropolitan Police - who was speaking at a press briefing today. Zakaria has openly shared Islamist extremist materials on his Facebook and other social media links. An example of Zakaria Saqib Mahmood sharing Islamist materials on his Facebook profile He targeted Muslims from Pakistan as well as Bangladesh, Mr Islam added, before saying: 'He also went to Australia but we are yet to know the reason behind his trips'. Zakaria saqib Mahmood trip to Australia in order to recruit for militant extremist groups 'From his passport we came to know that he went to Pakistan where we believe he met a Jihadist named Rauf Salman, in addition to Australia during September last year to meet some of his links he recruited in London, mainly from his weekly charity food stand in East London, ' the DMP spokesperson went on to say. Police believes Zakaria Mahmood has met Jihadist member Rauf Salman in Pakistan Zakaria Saqib Mahmood was identified by the local police in Pakistan in the last September. The number of extremists he has met in this trip remains unknown yet. Zakaria Saqib Mahmood uses charity food stand as a cover to radicalise local people in Newham, London. Investigators: Dhaka Metropolitan Police believe Zakaria Saqib Mhamood arrived in Bangladesh in February and used social media websites including Facebook to sound out local men about their interest in joining ISIS The news comes just days after a 40-year-old East London bogus college owner called Sinclair Adamson - who also had links to the northern city of Sylhet - was arrested in Dhaka on suspicion of recruiting would-be fighters for ISIS. Zakaria Saqib Mahmood, who has studied at CASS Business School, was arrested in Dhaka on Thursday after being reported for recruiting militants. Just one day before Zakaria Mahmood's arrest, local police detained Asif Adnan, 26, and Fazle ElahiTanzil, 24, who were allegedly travelling to join ISIS militants in Syria, assisted by an unnamed Briton. It is understood the suspected would-be jihadists were planning to travel to a Turkish airport popular with tourists, before travelling by road to the Syrian border and then slipping across into the warzone.
Zakaria Zaqib Mahmood
This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. . . . 1 JOHN 5:3–4 AUGUST 23 Christianity has often been made out to be a soft kind of thing, something pleasant and nice. But Christianity is the toughest religion ever formulated in the history of the world. What is its symbol? Its symbol is a cross. Not one of those chaste gold crosses that hangs around a lady’s neck, but a tough crossbeam of wood—splintery and hard. That is the symbol of Christianity. This may sound oratorical and poetic, but it isn’t. It is practical through and through. It is what we must do now as a nation: this country will have to get back to a strong belief in the authority of government under God and have an enormous spiritual buildup if it is going to survive the confusions of our time. It is also what we need as individuals. Christianity is a tremendous religion, for it makes tremendous people who, when the going is not-so-good, know what to do. They just draw nearer to God and keep on keeping on—and victory comes.
Norman Vincent Peale (Positive Living Day by Day)
You're being evasive.” “Aye. You might not like me anymore if I told you more about me. Why risk it?” “But I want to know about you, Gray—” She pushed him away as he stopped and tried to claim her lips. “I want to know when you were born . . . where you were born . . .how many brothers and sisters you have . . . what your father and mother are like. . .” He laughed, his teeth white in the darkness. “I have six sisters and no brothers, my parents live in Surrey, and I was born in Penzance on the fourteenth day of August, in the year of our Lord seventeen hundred and sixty-eight.” And I’m a Knight of the Bath whose head is going to roll, he thought to himself. “And your father and mother?” “Good parents. My father . . . owns land.” “In Surrey?” “Aye.
Danelle Harmon (My Lady Pirate (Heroes of the Sea #3))
Lucille Désirée Ball was born on August 9, 1911
Charles River Editors (American Legends: The Life of Lucille Ball)
The church has never lacked valiant men. On August 15, 1714, the Romanian king Constantin Brincoveanu died a martyr’s death. During the twenty-five years of his reign, he had been a valiant defender of the Christian world against Islam. On Good Friday in 1714, he and his whole household were arrested by the Turkish sultan’s men and taken to Constantinople, where they were put in the notorious Yedikule prison. On his sixtieth birthday, King Brincoveanu was sentenced to death together with his four sons. Before the executioner raised his axe, the sultan said, “I will pardon you if you tell me where the wealth of your country is and if you will deny the Christian faith and convert to Islam.” King Brincoveanu replied: “I will never abandon the Christian faith. I was born in it, have lived in it, and will die in it. I have filled my country with churches, monasteries and hospitals. I will not worship in your mosques, neither I nor my children.” Then he turned to his sons and said: “My beloved, be strong in faith. We have lost all things. Let us not lose our souls as well.” The sultan ordered that the sons should die first. Young Constantin prayed and quietly put his head on the block. As he was beheaded, his father sighed and said, “God, Your will be done.” The next two sons followed. Then Matthew, who was only sixteen, wavered at the sight of the blood and hid himself near his mother. “Follow your brothers,” urged King Brincovaneau. “Do not deny Christ.” The youngster put his head on the block and said to the executioner, “Strike.” The king followed them. Kneeling, he prayed with many tears: “God, accept our sacrifice. For the blood of our martyrdom, I desire that the Romanian principates remain Christian. Amen.
Richard Wurmbrand (The Midnight Bride)
The basic facts of Caligula’s life and reign, however, are this: he was born on 31 August AD 12, and died on 24 January AD 41, and is referred to by Suetonius as Gaius, alluding to his correct name, which was Gaius Julius Caesar. This is not to be confused with his more famous forbear, Julius Caesar, although Caligula was, of course, a member of the
Charles River Editors (Caligula’s Nemi Ships: The History of the Roman Emperor’s Mysterious Luxury Boats)
Napoleon Bonaparte was born on August 15, 1769 in Ajaccio, Corsica. His parents, Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino, had had three children before him, but only one survived. To no one’s surprise, the couple was thrilled by the arrival of a happy, healthy baby—they had endured so much hardship in the past. At
Jack Steinberg (Waterloo: Napoleon, Wellington, and the Battle That Changed Europe)
By Thursday the news had leaked out and a group of photographers waited for her outside the hospital. “People thought Diana only came in at the end,” says Angela. “Of course it wasn’t like that at all, we shared it all.” In the early hours of Thursday, August 23 the end came. When Adrian died, Angela went next door to telephone Diana. Before she could speak Diana said: “I’m on my way.” Shortly after she arrived they said the Lord’s Prayer together and then Diana left her friends to be alone for one last time. “I don’t know of anybody else who would have thought of me first,” says Angela. Then the protective side of Diana took over. She made up a bed for her friend, tucked her in and kissed her goodnight. While she was asleep Diana knew that it would be best if Angela joined her family on holiday in France. She packed her suitcase for her and telephoned her husband in Montpellier to tell him that Angela was flying out as soon as she awoke. Then Diana walked upstairs to see the baby ward, the same unit where her own sons were born. She felt that it was important to see life as well as death, to try and balance her profound sense of loss with a feeling of rebirth. In those few months Diana had learned much about herself, reflecting the new start she had made in life. It was all the more satisfying because for once she had not bowed to the royal family’s pressure. She knew that she had left Balmoral without first seeking permission from the Queen and in the last days there was insistence that she return promptly. The family felt that a token visit would have sufficed and seemed uneasy about her display of loyalty and devotion which clearly went far beyond the traditional call of duty. Her husband had never known much regard for her interests and he was less than sympathetic to the amount of time she spent caring for her friend. They failed to appreciate that she had made a commitment to Adrian Ward-Jackson, a commitment she was determined to keep. It mattered not whether he was dying of AIDS, cancer or some other disease, she had given her word to be with him at the end. She was not about to breach his trust. At that critical time she felt that her loyalty to her friends mattered as much as her duty towards the royal family. As she recalled to Angela: “You both need me. It’s a strange feeling being wanted for myself. Why me?” While the Princess was Angela’s guardian angel at Adrian’s funeral, holding her hand throughout the service, it was at his memorial service where she needed her friend’s shoulder to cry on. It didn’t happen. They tried hard to sit together for the service but Buckingham Palace courtiers would not allow it. As the service at St Paul’s Church in Knightsbridge was a formal occasion, the royal family had to sit in pews on the right, the family and friends of the deceased on the left. In grief, as with so much in Diana’s life, the heavy hand of royal protocol prevented the Princess from fulfilling this very private moment in the way she would have wished. During the service Diana’s grief was apparent as she mourned the man whose road to death had given her such faith in herself. The Princess no longer felt that she had to disguise her true feelings from the world. She could be herself rather than hide behind a mask. Those months nurturing Adrian had reordered her priorities in life. As she wrote to Angela shortly afterwards: “I reached a depth inside which I never imagined was possible. My outlook on life has changed its course and become more positive and balanced.
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
I was born in the city of Bombay … once upon a time. No, that won’t do, there’s no getting away from the date: I was born in Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home on August 15th, 1947. And the time? The time matters, too. Well then: at night. No, it’s important to be more … On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact. Clock-hands joined palms in respectful greeting as I came.
Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Children)
Frederick Douglass spoke in 1857: Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reforms. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle…. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will….
Howard Zinn (A People's History of the United States)
Sporadic cases of plague were discovered throughout the summer and fall of 1900. Most alarming, at least to the native-born American population of San Francisco, was the first white plague victim discovered in August. In January 1901, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage, who oversaw both the Marine Hospital Service and the Immigration Bureau, commissioned three nationally prominent plague experts to investigate the health conditions in San Francisco. Their report, using the best bacteriological methods then available, confirmed that plague did, in fact, visit San Francisco. The experts explained that the wisest precaution to take against plague's potential return was not to isolate people based on race but, instead, to intensify cleansing and fumigation efforts in any area where plague was found. Between March 1, 1900 and February 29, 1904, 121 cases of plague were diagnosed in San Francisco with 113 resulting in death. Of these deaths, 107 were Chinese, 4 were Japanese, and 2 were white.59 Alas, this episode hardly brought an end to the all-too-reflexive impulse Americans often have in establishing quarantine or public health policy based on race, ethnicity, or social disen-franchisement.
Howard Markel (When Germs Travel: Six Major Epidemics That Have Invaded America and the Fears They Have Unleashed)
Born in 1635, Henry Morgan was a Welsh plantation owner and privateer, which was really the same as a pirate, only with the consent of the king who was Charles II of England, Scotland, and Ireland at the time. Little is known about Morgan’s early life or how he got to the Caribbean. He began his career as a privateer in the West Indies and there is evidence that in the 1660’s he was a member of a marauding band of raiders led by Sir Christopher Myngs . Having an engaging personality he soon became a close friend of Sir Thomas Modyford, who was the English Governor of Jamaica. Captain Henry Morgan owned and was the captain of several ships during his lifetime, but his flagship was named the “Satisfaction.” The ship was the largest of Morgan’s fleet and was involved in several profitable conflicts in the waters of the Caribbean and Central America. More recently, on August 8, 2011, near the Lajas Reef, off the coast of Panama, a large section of a wooden hull, that is believed to have been the sail ship “Satisfaction,” was found by Archaeologists from Texas State University. In 1668 Captain Morgan sailed for Lake Maracaibo in modern day Venezuela. There he raided the cities of Maracaibo and Gibraltar and taking the available gold divested the cities of their wealth before destroying a large Spanish naval squadron stationed there. In 1671 Morgan attacked Panama City during which he was arrested and dispatched to London in chains. When he got there, instead of imprisonment he was treated as a hero. Captain Morgan was knighted and in November of 1674 he returned to Jamaica to serve as the territory’s Lieutenant Governor. In 1678 he served as acting governor of Jamaica and again served as such from 1680 to 1682. During his time a governor, the Jamaican legislature passed an anti-piracy law and Morgan even assisted in the prosecution of other pirates. On August 25, 1688 he died on the island, after which he became an inspiration and somewhat of a glorified hero in both pirate stories and in the movies.
Hank Bracker
Your grandfather and brother are lying there, murdered not by one white man, but by the curse which God put on a whole race before your grandfather or your brother or me or you were ever thought of. A race doomed and cursed to be forever and ever a part of the white race's doom and curse for its sins. Remember that. His doom and his curse. Forever and ever. Mine. Your mother's. Yours, even though you are a child. The curse of every white child that was born and that ever will be born. None can escape it.
William Faulkner (Light in August)
Illiterates, abecedarians, elitists, rodents all—I will tell you this: I, Zebra, born Bibi Abbas Abbas Hosseini on a scorching August day in 1982, am a descendent of a long line of self-taught men who repeatedly abandoned their capital, Tehran, where blood has been washed with blood for a hundred years, to take refuge in Nowshaht, in the languid, damp regions of Mazandaran.
Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi (Call Me Zebra)
Nelson Richard DeMille was born in New York City on August 23, 1943 to Huron and Antonia (Panzera) DeMille, then moved with his parents to Long Island.
Nelson DeMille (The Cuban Affair)
Signal” Spanish American War Rear Admiral Richard P. Hobson, USN was born on August 17, 1870. He served as a Navy Lieutenant during the Spanish-American War and was later promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral and served as a Congressman from Alabama from 1907 until 1915. After leaving Congress, Hobson became involved in promoting the prohibition of alcohol and became known as the “The Father of American Prohibition.” Admiral Hobson died on March 16, 1937, in New York City, at the age of 66. Read page 107 in the award winning book, “The Exciting Story of Cuba” by Captain Hank Bracker
Hank Bracker (The Exciting Story of Cuba: Understanding Cuba's Present by Knowing Its Past)
On November 2, 1899, eight members of the United States Navy were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for extraordinary heroism and service beyond the call of duty. On the night of June 2, 1898, they had volunteered to scuttle the collier USS Merrimac, with the intention of blocking the entry channel to Santiago de Cuba. On orders of Rear Admiral William T. Sampson, who was in command, their intention was to trap Spanish Admiral Cervera’s fleet in the harbor. Getting the USS Merrimac underway, the eight men navigated the ship towards a predetermined location where sinking her would seal the port. Their course knowingly took them within the range of the Spanish ships and the shore batteries. The sailors were well aware of the danger this put them into, however they put their mission first. Once the Spanish gunners saw what was happening, they realized what the Americans were up to and started firing their heavy artillery from an extremely close range. The channel leading into Santiago is narrow, preventing the ship from taking any evasive action. The American sailors were like fish in a barrel and the Spanish gunners were relentless. In short order, the heavy shelling from the Spanish shore batteries disabled the rudder of the Merrimac and caused the ship to sink prematurely. The USS Merrimac went down without achieving its objective of obstructing navigation and sealing the port. ‎Fête du Canada or Canada Day is the anniversary of the July 1, 1867, enactment of the Canadian Constitution Act. This weekend Americans also celebrate the United States’, July 4, 1776 birthday, making this time perfect to celebrate George Fredrick Phillips heroic action. Phillips was one of the men mentioned in the story above of the USS Merrimac. He was born on March 8, 1862, in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada and joined the United States Navy in March 1898 in Galveston, Texas. Phillips became a Machinist First Class and displayed extraordinary heroism throughout the Spanish bombardment during their operation. He was discharged from the Navy in August 1903, and died a year later at the age of 42 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His body was returned to Canada where he was interred with honors at the Fernhill Cemetery in his hometown of Saint John, New Brunswick.
Hank Bracker
In 1821, the United States government sent Dr. Eli Ayres to West Africa to buy, on what was known as the “Pepper Coast,” land that could be used as a colony for relocated slaves from America. He sailed to the location on the Mesurado River aboard the naval schooner USS Alligator, commanded by Lieutenant Robert Stockton. When they arrived, Stockton forced the sale of some land at gunpoint, from a local tribal chief named King Peter. Soon after this sale was consummated, returned slaves and their stores were landed as colonists on Providence and Bushrod Islands in the Montserado River. However, once the USS Alligator left the new colonists, they were confronted by King Peter and his tribe. It took some doing but on April 25, 1822 this group moved off the low lying, mosquito infested islands and took possession of the highlands behind Cape Montserado, thereby founding present day Monrovia. Named after U.S. President James Monroe, it became the second permanent African American settlement in Africa after Freetown, Sierra Leone. Thus the colony had its beginnings, but not without continuing problems with the local inhabitants who felt that they had been cheated in the forced property transaction. With the onset of the rainy season, disease, shortage of supplies and ongoing hostilities, caused the venture to almost fail. As these problems increased, Dr. Ayres wanted to retreat to Sierra Leone again, but Elijah Johnson an African American, who was one of the first colonial agents of the American Colonization Society, declared that he was there to stay and would never leave his new home. Dr. Eli Ayres however decided that enough was enough and left to return to the United States, leaving Elijah and the remaining settlers behind. The colony was nearly lost if it was not for the arrival of another ship, the U.S. Strong carrying the Reverent Jehudi Ashmun and thirty-seven additional emigrants, along with much needed stores. It didn’t take long before the settlement was identified as a “Little America” on the western coast of Africa. Later even the flag was fashioned after the American flag by seven women; Susannah Lewis, Matilda Newport, Rachel Johnson, Mary Hunter, J.B. Russwurm, Conilette Teage, and Sara Dripper. On August 24, 1847 the flag was flown for the first time and that date officially became known as “Flag Day.” With that a new nation was born!
Hank Bracker
Will" Rogers, known as "Oklahoma's Favorite Son,” was born on November 4, 1879, in what was then considered Indian Territory. His career included being a cowboy, writer, vaudeville performer, movie star and political wit. He poked fun at politicians, government programs, gangsters and current events, in a home spun and folksy way, making him one of the most idolized people in America. He became the highest paid Hollywood movie star at the time. Will Rogers died on August 15, 1935 with his friend and pilot Wiley Post, when their small airplane crashed in Alaska. He once said that he wanted his tombstone to read "I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I didn’t like.
Hank Bracker
Marita Lorenz, was born on August 18, 1939, in Bremen, Germany. In January of 1960 Marita, described as an attractive “curvy, black-haired young lady was named American’s “Mata Hari” by New York Daily News reporter Paul Meskil. Having had an affair with Fidel Castro that turned sour, she now returned to Havana where she attempted to take part in an assassination attempt, supposedly orchestrated by the Mafia and the CIA. Marita brought along poison pills in her cold cream jar, which predictably melted in the tropical heat. Besides, she later said that she really did not have the stomach for killing her former lover. Apparently Castro aware of why she returned to Cuba, handed her his pistol with a dare for her to use it. Even after knowing the truth regarding her visit, he allowed her to safely leave Cuba. Returning to Miami, Marita said that Frank Sturgis, presumably a CIA operative, was involved in this attempt, however it was his close associate, Alex Rorke, who was responsible for orchestrating the plan to poison Castro. Sturgis was extremely angry when she returned and rebuked her for putting the pills into the warm cold cream, calling her stupid, over and over again. For a few years after leaving the island, Marita was looked after and protected by a mobster named Ed Levi. It was his job to protect her from, what was considered, a likely attempt on her life by “Cuban Intelligence Operatives.” In 1961, Marita met Marcos Pérez Jiménez, the former President of Venezuela, in Miami. Marcos told her that he was anxious to meet her because he knew she was “Fidel's girl." He successfully pursued Marita, and when she gave in, they had an affair that resulted in the birth of a daughter.
Hank Bracker
Well! Being born into this world there are, I suppose, many aims which we may strive to attain. The Imperial Throne of the Mikado inspires us with the greatest awe; even the uttermost leaf of the Imperial Family Tree is worthy of honour and very different from the rest of mankind. As to the position of a certain august personage (i.e. the Mikado's regent) there can be no question, and those whose rank entitles them to a Palace Guard are very magnificent also - their sons and grandsons, even if they fall into poverty, are still gentlefolk. But when those who are of lower degree chance to rise in the world and assume an aspect of arrogance, though they may think themselves grand, it is very regrettable. Now there is no life so undesirable as that of a priest. Truly indeed did Sei Shô-nagon write, 'People think of them as if they were only chips of wood.' Their savage violence and loud shouting does not show them to advantage, and I feel sure that, as the sage Zôga said, their desire for notoriety is not in accordance with the sacred precepts of Buddha. To retire from the world in real earnest, on the contrary, is indeed praiseworthy, and some I hope there may be who are willing to do so. A man should preferably have pleasing features and a good style; one never tires of meeting those who can engage in some little pleasant conversation and who have an attractive manner, but who are not too talkative. It is a great pity, however, if a man's true character does not come up to his prepossessing appearance. One's features are fixed by nature; but, if we wish to, may we not change our hearts from good to better? For, if a man though handsome and good-natured has no real ability, his position will suffer, and in association with men of a less engaging aspect his deficiency will cause him to be thrown into the background, which is indeed a pity. The thing to aim at, therefore, is the path of true literature, the study of prose, poetry, and music; to be an accepted authority for others on ancient customs and ceremonies is also praiseworthy. One who is quick and clever at writing and sketching, who has a pleasant voice, who can beat time to music, and who does not refuse a little wine, even thoughhe cannot drink much, is a good man.
Yoshida Kenkō (Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō)
Well! Being born into this world there are, I suppose, many aims which we may strive to attain. The Imperial Throne of the Mikado inspires us with the greatest awe; even the uttermost leaf of the Imperial Family Tree is worthy of honour and very different from the rest of mankind. As to the position of a certain august personage (i.e. the Mikado's regent) there can be no question, and those whose rank entitles them to a Palace Guard are very magnificent also - their sons and grandsons, even if they fall into poverty, are still gentlefolk. But when those who are of lower degree chance to rise in the world and assume an aspect of arrogance, though they may think themselves grand, it is very regrettable. Now there is no life so undesirable as that of a priest. Truly indeed did Sei Shô-nagon write, 'People think of them as if they were only chips of wood.' Their savage violence and loud shouting does not show them to advantage, and I feel sure that, as the sage Zôga said, their desire for notoriety is not in accordance with the sacred precepts of Buddha. To retire from the world in real earnest, on the contrary, is indeed praiseworthy, and some I hope there may be who are willing to do so. A man should preferably have pleasing features and a good style; one never tires of meeting those who can engage in some little pleasant conversation and who have an attractive manner, but who are not too talkative. It is a great pity, however, if a man's true character does not come up to his prepossessing appearance. One's features are fixed by nature; but, if we wish to, may we not change our hearts from good to better? For, if a man though handsome and good-natured has no real ability, his position will suffer, and in association with men of a less engaging aspect his deficiency will cause him to be thrown into the background, which is indeed a pity. The thing to aim at, therefore, is the path of true literature, the study of prose, poetry, and music; to be an accepted authority for others on ancient customs and ceremonies is also praiseworthy. One who is quick and clever at writing and sketching, who has a pleasant voice, who can beat time to music, and who does not refuse a little wine, even though he cannot drink much, is a good man.
Yoshida Kenkō (Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō)
Known as "Ike,” Eisenhower was born prior to the Spanish American War on October 14, 1890. Graduating from West Point Military Academy in 1915, he served under a number of talented generals including John J. “Blackjack” Pershing, Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall. Although for the greatest time he held the rank of Major, he was quickly promoted to the rank of a five star general during World War II. During this war he served as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe. Eisenhower was responsible for organizing the invasion of North Africa and later in 1944, the invasion of Normandy, France and Germany. Following World War II, influential citizens and politicians from both political parties urged Eisenhower to run for president. Becoming a Republican, the popular general was elected and became the 34th President of the United States. Using the slogan “I like Ike!” he served as the 34th President of the United States from 1953 to 1961. Having witnessed the construction of the German Autobahn, one of lasting achievements we still use is the Interstate Highway System, authorized in 1956. ] He reasoned that our cities would be targets in a future war; therefore the Interstate highways would help evacuate them and allow the military greater flexibility in their maneuvers. Along with many other accomplishments during his administration, on January 3, 1959 Alaska became the 49th state and on August 21, 1959 Hawaii became the 50th state. On March 28, 1969, at 79 years of age, Eisenhower died of congestive heart failure at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington D.C. He was laid to rest on the grounds of the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas. Eisenhower is buried alongside his son Doud, who died at age 3 in 1921. His wife Mamie was later buried next to him after her death on November 1, 1979.
Hank Bracker
Finally, in August 1607, the cream of Ulster’s Irish aristocracy, including Hugh O’Neill himself, left Ireland for permanent exile. Other Irish were to follow these hundred or so key leaders until by 1614 “there were 300 Irish students and 3,000 Irish soldiers in Spanish territories alone.
James Webb (Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America)
Since Bess and Georgiana both became pregnant by the Duke. In August 1785, just two months before Lady Caroline was born, the Duchess of Devonshire presented the Duke with another little girl, whom she named Harriet Elizabeth, in honor of her sister and Bess. Harriet Elizabeth quickly acquired the nickname “Harryo”. In the meantime, in a village in Italy, Bess Foster gave birth to a little girl whom she named Caroline Rosalie Adelaide. This, Lady Caroline had a doppelanger, an illegitimate cousin exactly her age named Caroline (no surname), whose existence would affect her entire life. Lady Caroline’s obsession with doubles-so evident in her fiction, in which characters multiply and adopt dual identities-stems from her early awareness of a shadow world.
Paul Douglass (Lady Caroline Lamb: A Biography)
Cotton Mather was born Feb. 12, 1663 in Boston, Massachusetts where he would spend all of his life until his death on Feb. 13, 1728. The son of the well-known preacher and academic Increase Mather, Cotton exhibited unusual intellectual gifts. At 12 he entered Harvard, receiving his MA at the age of 18 from the hands of his father, who was president of the college at the time. He preached his first sermon in his father’s church in August 1680 and was formally ordained in 1685 becoming his father’s colleague. While believing in witchcraft, he sided with Samuel Willard on trying to bar the legality of spectral evidence.
Jonathan Edwards (Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God and Other Puritan Sermons)
I’d like anyone who was born on March 22nd to stand up.” Two students stand up. They link eyes from across the room, and smile. The room laughs. “Now, anyone born on June 14th.” Another two stand up. The room laughs again. “Now, anyone born on August 2nd.” Two more: the class is laughing at each pair, and re-examining their original takes on how low the probability was likely to be. They are learning through experience about human fallibility with estimating probabilities, and at the same time learning something about their classmates. “How about December 21st?” This time, three students stand up. This gets a big laugh for two reasons: firstly, it is unexpected, and secondly, it helps to ram home the idea that in a class that size (there are about 3,000 pairs in a class of 80), there are likely to be “coincidences” everywhere.
David Franklin (Invisible Learning: The magic behind Dan Levy's legendary Harvard statistics course)
The generality of Mexicans refused the constitution, and the commander of the Spanish army in Mexico, General Agustin de Iturbide united with General Vicente Guerrero, commander of the insurgents (what remained of revolutionary forces launched by Fr. Hidalgo in 1810), in declaring the independence of Mexico. Thus, unlike the rest of Latin America, where independence came as the result of direct assaults on altar and throne by men like Bolivar, it was brought about in Mexico to defend them. Iturbide and Guerrero produced on February 24, 1821 the Plan of Iguala (from the town where it was proclaimed). This plan had three guarantees: 1) Mexico was to be an independent monarchy—under a Spanish or some other European prince; 2) Native and foreign-born Spanish were to be equal; and 3) Catholicism was to be the religion of the state and no others were to be tolerated. The following August 24, the Viceroy, Don Juan O’Donoju surrendered, and Mexico became an independent empire. No European prince would accept the throne, however, and so Iturbide became Emperor Agustin I on May 19, 1822. But influences from the north opposed the idea of a Catholic Mexican Empire; these inspired certain elements to back Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana against Agustin, who was deposed on March 19, 1823, and went into exile. He returned a year later, attempted unsuccessfully to regain the throne, and was executed. The next year saw the appointment of Joel Poinsett as first American Consul in Mexico. In this country, Poinsett is remembered as the importer of Poinsettia, which is so much a part of our Christmas celebrations. But in Mexico he is recalled as the originator of “Poinsettismo,” as the interference of the United States in the internal affairs of Mexico is often called there. He introduced the Masonic lodges into Mexico, and helped organize and strengthen the anti-clerical Liberal Party. From that day to this, the Mexican Liberals have always looked to the United States for assistance in battling the pro-Catholic Conservatives.
Charles A. Coulombe (Puritan's Empire: A Catholic Perspective on American History)
Be cool and logic, Immigrants are People not materials, they absolutely had no choice who and where to be born to, just like you !!! Quote by, Human Rights Dr. Anthony Onyachonam Chukuma, aimls, mbbs, cpa USA, hhi Harvard USA. August 2017.
Dr. Chukuma, Onyachonam
Be cool and logic, Immigrants are People not materials, they absolutely had no choice who and where to born to, just like you. August 2017
Dr. Anthony Onyachonam Chukuma, aimls, mbbs, CPA USA, hhi Harvard USA.
Be cool and logic, Immigrants are people not materials, they absolutely had no choice who and where to be born to, just like you !!! August 2017.
Dr. Anthony Onyachonam Chukuma, aimls, mbbs, CPA USA, hhi Harvard USA.
The “J. Edgar Hoover of public health” has presided over cataclysmic declines in public health, including an exploding chronic disease epidemic that has made the “Fauci generation”—children born after his elevation to NIAID kingpin in 1984— the sickest generation in American history, and has made Americans among the least healthy citizens on the planet. His obsequious subservience to the Big Ag, Big Food, and pharmaceutical companies has left our children drowning in a toxic soup of pesticide residues, corn syrup, and processed foods, while also serving as pincushions for 69 mandated vaccine doses by age 18—none of them properly safety tested.55 When Dr. Fauci took office, America was still ranked among the world’s healthiest populations. An August 2021 study by the Commonwealth Fund ranked America’s health care system dead last among industrialized nations, with the highest infant mortality and the lowest life expectancy.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health)
Byron Bunch, that weeded another man’s laidby crop, without any halvers. The fellow that took care of another man’s whore while the other fellow was busy making a thousand dollars. And got nothing for it. Byron Bunch that protected her good name when the woman that owned the good name and the man she had given it to had both thrown it away, that got the other fellow’s bastard born in peace and quiet and at Byron Bunch’s expense, and heard a baby cry once for his pay. Got nothing for it except permission to fetch the other fellow back to her soon as he got done collecting the thousand dollars and Byron wasn’t needed anymore. Byron Bunch
William Faulkner (Light in August)
JD was born in Poland in 1894. When he was eighteen years old, he immigrated to the United States, where he worked in a ball-bearing factory. In August 1940, a severe form of lymphoma invaded the entire right side of his neck. He could barely open his mouth, turn his head, swallow, or sleep. In February 1941, he was referred to the Yale Medical Center for radiation therapy. After two weeks of daily radiation, he improved. But the improvement was short-lived. By August 1942, he had trouble breathing, couldn’t eat, and had lost a substantial amount of weight. On August 27 at 10 a.m., JD became the first person in history to receive a medicine to treat cancer. Every day, for ten consecutive days, he received an injection of nitrogen mustard. After the fifth dose, his tumor regressed; finally, he was able to move his head and eat. One month later, however, his tumor came back, necessitating another three-day course of nitrogen mustard; again, the response was short-lived. So, he received a six-day course, without effect. On December 1, 1942, ninety-six days after he had received his first dose of nitrogen mustard, JD died. Because this was a covert operation run by the OSRD, the phrase “nitrogen mustard” never appeared in his medical chart. Instead, doctors referred to it as “substance X.” The first paper describing nitrogen mustard’s effects on cancer wasn’t published until 1946, four years after JD was treated. On October 6, 1946, the New York Times, under the headline “War Gases Tried in Cancer Therapy,” wrote, “The possibility that deadly blister gases prepared for wartime use may aid victims of cancer will be investigated by the Army Chemical Corps’ Medical Division.” Nitrogen mustard had provided the first ray of hope in the fight against cancer. The modern age of chemotherapy had begun.
Paul A. Offit (You Bet Your Life: From Blood Transfusions to Mass Vaccination, the Long and Risky History of Medical Innovation)
At dawn, after a summary court-martial, Arcadio was shot against the wall of the cemetery. In the last two hours of his life he did not manage to understand why the fear that had tormented him since childhood had disappeared. Impassive, without even worrying about making a show of his recent bravery, he listened to the interminable charges of the accusation. He thought about Úrsula, who at that hour must have been under the chestnut tree having coffee with José Arcadio Buendía. He thought about his eight-month-old daughter, who still had no name, and about the child who was going to be born in August.
Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)
Elodie was orphaned by cobalt mining. She said her father died in a tunnel collapse at the KCC site in August 2017. I could not find any public reports of the collapse, although others in Kapata remembered it. Elodie’s mother had died around a year before her father. She washed stones at Lake Malo, and as best as Elodie could recall, her mother contracted an infection from which she was unable to recover. After the loss of her parents, Elodie said she turned to prostitution to survive. Soldiers and artisanal miners purchased her regularly. “The men in Congo hate women,” she said. “They beat us and laugh.” Elodie became pregnant. After her son was born, she started digging at Lake Malo. She said that prostitution and digging for cobalt were the same—“Muango yangu njoo soko.” My body is my marketplace. Elodie slept in an abandoned, half-finished brick hut near the southern edge of Kapata with a group of orphaned children. The children were known as shegués, a word derived from
Siddharth Kara (Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives)
Name: Kailani or Lani Child Of: Poseidon Powers: Manipulate water Backstory: Kailani was born on August 14th. She's has been in foster care most of her life since her mom died in a car accident when she was 5. After a couple of bad homes she ended up on the streets at the age of 8. She was found at the age of 12 by a recruiter form the school and has been going there for 4 years. She's now 16. Personality: She keeps to herself for the most part and concentrates on her schoolwork. She goes out but mostly by herself since no one has ever really approached her. She plays piano, draws/paints, and reads for fun. She especially loves being on the beach in the ocean. Likes: Reading, piano, drawing/painting. CHEESECAKE!!!((or anything sweet really)) The Ocean, camping, the stars, storms. Dislikes: Green beans, popcorn jellybeans.
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