Diane Ackerman's birthday
Oct. 7th, 2004 05:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sun_set_bravelyfrom the Writer's Almanac this morning:
It's the birthday of the poet and essayist Diane Ackerman, born Diane Fink in Waukegan, Illinois (1948). A writer who has always been interested in the outside world more than her own life, she wrote her first book of poetry, The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral (1976) entirely about astronomy. She has since written many other poems about science, as well as cattle farming, flying an airplane, and soccer. She became a journalist as well, specializing in essays about animals, and she once put a bat on top of her head to see if it would really get tangled in her hair. It didn't, but she described how it coughed gently.
She is best known for her book A Natural History of the Senses (1990), a collection of wide-ranging essays about her own thoughts and experiences of sight, sound, smell, touch and taste.
Ackerman has put so much effort into experiencing the world to the fullest that she has broken ribs while mountain climbing in albatross country, and has ingested intestinal parasites while swimming in the Amazon River. But she still believes that you can find wonder in your own back yard. She said, "When the deer leap the fence behind my house and come up to eat the apples that are slightly fermented on the ground underneath a fresh layer of snow, that's magic."
Her most recent book is An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain, which came out this year.
~ ~ ~
A bat coughing gently, sitting on the top of her head. I like this woman a lot.
It's the birthday of the poet and essayist Diane Ackerman, born Diane Fink in Waukegan, Illinois (1948). A writer who has always been interested in the outside world more than her own life, she wrote her first book of poetry, The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral (1976) entirely about astronomy. She has since written many other poems about science, as well as cattle farming, flying an airplane, and soccer. She became a journalist as well, specializing in essays about animals, and she once put a bat on top of her head to see if it would really get tangled in her hair. It didn't, but she described how it coughed gently.
She is best known for her book A Natural History of the Senses (1990), a collection of wide-ranging essays about her own thoughts and experiences of sight, sound, smell, touch and taste.
Ackerman has put so much effort into experiencing the world to the fullest that she has broken ribs while mountain climbing in albatross country, and has ingested intestinal parasites while swimming in the Amazon River. But she still believes that you can find wonder in your own back yard. She said, "When the deer leap the fence behind my house and come up to eat the apples that are slightly fermented on the ground underneath a fresh layer of snow, that's magic."
Her most recent book is An Alchemy of Mind: The Marvel and Mystery of the Brain, which came out this year.
~ ~ ~
A bat coughing gently, sitting on the top of her head. I like this woman a lot.
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Date: 2004-10-07 03:25 pm (UTC)Not long after my friend died, I discovered a book she wrote about working at a suicide hotline. It was one of those moments where a book comes along at just the right moment.
I remember, in the book, she'd been given a grant by National Geographic (I think) to study the squirrels in her back yard. I remember thinking, I want to be Diane Ackerman when I grow up...
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Date: 2004-10-07 05:43 pm (UTC)A friend of mine dealt with Ms. Ackerman for a reading at a bookstore in upstate NY. She said she was a strange, eccentric woman with piles and piles of hair. As in, it's remarkable that a bat wouldn't get caught in it, much less small children.
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Date: 2004-10-12 02:55 pm (UTC)