More From the Writer's Almanac

From the 24 June 2010 Writer's Almanac. I get a free email from these folks daily, and it seldom fails to please. This day's entry had 3 gems worth passing on:

It's the 71st birthday of poet Stephen Dunn, born in Forest Hills, New York (1939). He is the first male in his family to live to his 60s. He wrote: 'Because in my family the heart goes first / and hardly anybody makes it out of his fifties, / I think I'll stay up late with a few bandits / of my choice and resist good advice.'

And this one, about Ambrose Bierce:

It's the birthday of the writer and satirist Ambrose Bierce, born near Horse Cave Creek, Ohio (1842), In his Devil's Dictionary (1906), he wrote: 'WEATHER, n. The climate of the hour. A permanent topic of conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who have inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal ancestors whom it keenly concerned.'

And finally, an excerpt from a poem called "Figs," (Erika Jong, (c) Penguin Group, 2009) just because I happen to like figs:

I believe it was
not an apple but a fig
Lucifer gave Eve,
knowing she would find
a fellow feeling
in this female fruit


One bite into
a ripe fig
is worth worlds
and worlds and worlds
beyond the green
of Eden.