Pylimitics

Have you ever read a story by Donald Barthelme? The odds are you haven’t; Jacob Appel (a literary critic) described him in 2010 as “the most influential unread author in United States history.” Barthelme was born April 7, 1931, and died pretty young at 58 in 1989. He published more than a hundred short stories,… Continue reading

The European revolutions of 1848, which attempted to establish socialist systems of government and economics, didn’t spring up out of nowhere. Neither did the Narodniks, who were members of an agrarian socialist movement in Russia in the 1860s and 1870s. Narodism wasn’t the only socialist movement in Tsarist Russia, either; the Socialist Revolutionary Party was… Continue reading

April 5 is partly interesting because it’s the birthday of Tulse Luper, in Newport, Wales, in 1911. Or Tulse might be said to have been born April 5, 1942, also in Newport. It’s an intricate story, best told in the form of several valises; a subset of a much larger collection:  Valise 1: It’s possible… Continue reading

Owen Suffolk was born April 4, 1829, and was not a nice, law-abiding citizen. He was born into a comfortable middle-class life in England, but everything changed when his father’s business was ruined when he was probably in his teens. To make a living he went to sea. When he returned, though, he had no… Continue reading

Today is Jane Goodall’s 90th birthday. She might be celebrating with the chimpanzees she’s close to. Goodall was born in 1934 in London, and her first encounter with chimpanzees was a stuffed toy her father gave her instead of a teddy bear. Her mother’s friends thought the toy might terrify Goodall, but she loved it,… Continue reading