Is it Arbor Day where you are? An American ornithologist and a best-selling author share a birthday, and a tree-related poem to start your Friday.
The date is April 26th, Friday, and today I’m coming to you from Lima, Peru.
Today is Arbor Day across most of the northern states. Arbor Day is celebrated not on one day nation-wide, but on a day that is best for each state to plant tree saplings. The first Arbor day was celebrated in 1872 in Nebraska, led by J. Sterling Morton and it’s estimated one million trees were planted. In 1907, urged on by Native American conservationist Major Israel McCreight, Theodore Roosevelt gave an “Arbor Day Proclamation to the School Children of the United States” calling for schools include the importance of trees and forestry in their curriculum.
Today is the birthday of John James Audubon, ornithologist and painter. His major work The Birds of America, first published in 1827 was a result of a lifetime of observing and documenting birds in their natural habitat throughout a young American nation.
Originally born in the French Colony of what is now Haiti in 1785, his French father moved the family to France in 1791 as tensions rose in the colony. Audubon was fond of birds and plant from a young age, his father often pointing out the different feathered fowl and their particular habits on walks on their estate in France.
Audubon’s father however had his own ideas of what his son should do and sent a 12 year old James to a naval military school. Audubon soon discovered he was highly susceptible to seasickness and found the math and navigation studies boring. He failed the officer qualification test and was glad to get back to long walks in forests and fields. Jury’s still out on whether he purposely failed the test or not.
Although Audubon was born with a bit of a silver spoon, his pursuit of sketching and chronicling birds left him living paycheck to paycheck for most of his life. He traveled to America in 1803, fell in love, got married, had kids, and started and stopped various side ventures to support his family while he took trips around the country to observe and document birds.
He was determined to have his drawings and paintings be more lifelike than any other ornithologist before him. He would often burn his work in order to spur him to create an even better version the next day. A spendy habit in the first decades of the 1800s.
In 1841, Audubon travelled to England to get his book printed. It was incredibly expensive, as the pages measured 39.5 inches by 28.5 inches wide. A little bigger than modern day movie posters. The illustrations were all hand colored. Birds were drawn life-size and so larger birds were often in bent postures, with smaller birds perched on branches with flowers.
Audubon was able to tap into the Romantic movement happening in Europe, capitalizing on the interest in nature and the ‘wildness’ of America. For those that had ‘subscribed’ to the book, they would receive sets of five pages every four to eight weeks. The book was never bound in a single copy – there were 435 pages in total.
There are numerous parks, places, and museums named after Audubon and the National Audubon Society is named in his memory as well.
And today is the birthday of Anita Loos, author, playwright, and screenwriter. She was known for her humor and wit, particularly in early silent movie subtitles. Loos who said “Fate keeps on happening.” was the best-selling author of the book Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Loos wrote the book after watching a highly intellectual gentlemen friend fall head over heels for a ditzy blonde.
First circulated in Harper’s Bazaar as multiple short stories about a blonde woman, Lorelei, the book version sold out overnight at its first release in 1926. It was then adapted first for the theater and for film, a few decades later, with Marilyn Monroe leading. After a successful career playwriting and screenwriting in New York, she moved back to Hollywood, lured by a substantial contract deal.
Loos wrote articles for Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar, and The New Yorker throughout her life and was often the go to writer for fixing poor scripts during her time in Hollywood. She moved back to New York at the end of her career, leaving behind her drag of a husband in Hollywood and rejoining the social circles she had missed terribly during her time away. She remained active, writing up until her passing in 1981 in her beloved New York City.
The Heart of the Tree
Henry Cuyler Bunner