Writer's Almanac, Dec. 27, 2015

It's the birthday of chemist Louis Pasteur, born in Dole, France (1822). Although he was not a physician, Pasteur was one of the most important medical scientists of the 19th century. He made four important discoveries that changed the modern world. First, he discovered that most infectious diseases are caused by germs, and that instituting sanitary conditions in hospitals could save many lives. Second, he discovered that weakened forms of a germ or microbe could be used as a vaccine to immunize against more virulent forms of the microbe. Third, he discovered that rabies was transmitted by particles so small they could not be seen under a microscope, thus revealing the existence of viruses. And fourth, he developed pasteurization, a process that uses heat to destroy harmful microbes in food products without destroying the food itself.

The Writer's Alamac 12/26/2015

On this date in 2004, a tsunami devastated coastlines along the Indian Ocean. It was triggered by an earthquake in the middle of the ocean, 160 miles west of Sumatra. With a magnitude of between 9.1 and 9.3, the quake was the third strongest ever recorded on a seismograph, and it lasted for up to 10 minutes. It occurred when pressure built up along a 600-mile fault line between two tectonic plates to such a degree that one plate slipped underneath the other. The quake occurred in relatively shallow water, which meant that the energy was not dispersed as much as it would have been in deeper seas. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the quake released energy equivalent to 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs. The quake was so powerful that it vibrated the whole planet and actually changed the Earth's rotation very slightly.

The shifting of the plates raised the sea floor by about 10 yards, and this displaced massive amounts of water. The tsunami chain that this generated reached the Sumatra coast within 15 minutes. The waves - which started small but grew as high as 50 feet - wiped out whole villages in seconds. The tsunami even claimed lives in South Africa, up to 3,000 miles away from the epicenter of the quake. An estimated 230,000 people from 14 different countries died; half a million more were injured. Five million people required humanitarian aid. A ship weighing almost 3,000 tons was thrown almost a mile inland, where it remains a tourist attraction in Indonesia. But there were very few animal casualties; many people reported seeing animals fleeing for higher ground just minutes before the tsunami struck.

Two years after the quake and tsunami, the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System went into operation, and it was successfully put to the test in 2012, when more quakes hit the Indian Ocean.

Dec. 25, 2015 Writer's Almanac

Today is Christmas Day. Many of our Christmas traditions here in America came to us from England - specifically, Victorian England of the 19th century. In fact, there are some who credit Charles Dickens with inventing the holiday, at least as we know it today. In early 19th-century Britain, rural workers were moving to the cities in droves. They left behind the Christmas traditions of their home regions, but they didn't really adopt the practices of city dwellers, either. The holiday was slowly waning, and by mid-century, middle-aged Britons had begun to feel nostalgic for the holidays of their youth, even as they adapted to new customs like the Christmas tree, a tradition imported by Queen Victoria's German husband, Prince Albert. The American writer Washington Irving spent time in England and fell in love with some of the old Christmas traditions that were fading away. He believed - and Charles Dickens later agreed - that a revival of old Christmas traditions would promote social harmony. But by the mid-19th century, few could afford to take off "the twelve days of Christmas" to celebrate the season, as they once had. Conditions for industrial workers and miners were very bad, and Dickens - who had himself worked in a blacking factory as a boy - became determined to "strike a sledgehammer blow" for the poor. He also thought a great deal about the Christmas traditions of his father's boyhood in the country: games, dancing, mulled wine, Christmas pudding, and a fat roasted goose. Dickens' 1843 novella A Christmas Carol contains both of these elements - an appeal to care for the less fortunate as an act of Christian charity, and a celebration of that cozy country Christmas that Dickens imagined so fondly. The story was an instant success, and Dickens found himself obligated to churn out a new Christmas story on a regular basis for many years. He grumbled, but he really did love the holiday. As his son later remembered, Christmas was, for Dickens, "a great time, a really jovial time, and my father was always at his best, a splendid host, bright and jolly as a boy and throwing his heart and soul into everything that was going on [...] And then the dance! There was no stopping him!"

One of my favorite books. From 12/17/15 Writer's Almanac

It's the birthday of Hmong writer Kao Kalia Yang (books by this author), born in Ban Vinai refugee camp in Thailand (1980). Her family moved to Minnesota when she was six years old. She planned to become a doctor. Then, during college, she did a study abroad program in Thailand that focused on global poverty. She said: "When I came back to America and college, I knew I could survive poverty in my life without being selfish. This is how I knew I could write." So she continued on to an MFA program, and she wrote a memoir about growing up Hmong in America, called The Latehomecomer(2008).

She said, "I became involved with writing like it is a love affair."

PS  January 11, 2016 I leave for Thailand and return February 15.

Bill Of Rights

From the 12/15/15 Writer's Almanac

It was on this day in 1791 that the Bill of Rights was ratified by the newly formed United States of America. From the beginning, American politicians fought about how much power the central government should have. Some believed that the Constitution did not do enough to protect individual liberties, and worried that the Constitution would allow the central government to oppress the people. During the Constitutional Convention, several states only agreed to ratify the Constitution with the understanding that a Bill of Rights would be added to guarantee basic rights to American citizens.

The most vocal supporter of a Bill of Rights was George Mason, who wrote the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Thomas Jefferson used it as an inspiration for the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, and James Madison used it as a model for the Bill of Rights. Madison ran for Congress (and won) with the promise that he would support a Bill of Rights. Four days after Washington's inauguration, Madison began the work of reading through the Constitution and noting all the places he thought it should be changed. These changes were presented as a list of 19 amendments. Madison used non-negotiable language. For example, where the states rights documents said that the government "ought not" to interfere with freedom of the press, Madison wrote that it "shall not." Of Madison's 19 amendments, the House approved 17, and the Senate 12. By the time they were ratified by all the states, the amendments were down to 10. One of the two amendments that didn't make the final cut was never ratified, but the second - an amendment about congressional salaries - was ratified in 1992. The 10 amendments that became the Bill of Rights guarantee the freedom of the press, right to bear arms, freedom of religion, the right to trial by jury, and other basic rights.

In a 1788 letter to Jefferson about the Bill of Rights, Madison wrote: "It is a melancholy reflection that liberty should be equally exposed to danger whether the Government have too much or too little power, and that the line which defines these extremes should be so inaccurately defined by experience."