Two great journalists

Today is Studs Terkel's birthday, and he's still living at 96. He is best known for collecting oral histories and publishing them in books, such as "The Good War": An Oral History of World War II. He said his wife insisted that he put the words 'good war' in quotations because no war is good. He also had a long-running radio program on which he interviewed a variety of people.

I made a mental note to look up a book of his I thought I had on my shelf. But I was mistaken as the book I had pictured in my mind was by Ernie Pyle, also a journalist, who also covered World War II but from the front lines. Before the war, Ernie traveled across the country (during the 30's) collecting stories of ordinary Americans and having them published in a nationally syndicated newspaper column. Ernie died in combat in 1945.

You might wonder how I knew about Studs' birthday. I'm not usually much into trivia but I'm really enjoying the daily dose I'm getting via The Writer's Almanac, an e-newsletter that comes with a 5 minute audio clip in which the highlights of the day are read by one of the greatest story-tellers around, Garrison Keillor. There's something about hearing him tell it, versus reading it myself that makes it particularly enjoyable.

You can subscribe to Writer's Almanac here: http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/ Who knows, you might learn something valuable. For example it was May 12 in 1804 that Lewis and Clark set out from St. Louis on their expedition to the Pacific Ocean. May 12 was also Katharine Hepburn's birthday (1907) and May 14th was the 60th anniversary of the proclamation of the state of Israel. As Studs would say, "... knowing our past more is what we need..."