I enjoy reading those books and articles that tell you what happened on a particular day in history. For example, I receive a Civil War Teacher newsletter produced by Jennifer Rosenberry and from the newsletter I learned what happened yesterday and today. I also included   Jan. 6, as the event of this day was new to me, and it reveals the complexity of the politics of the Civil War. Rosenberry’s source of the information is The Civil War Day By Day, by E.B. Long, a book I must absolutely possess some day.

Jan. 1, 1863: Shortly after noon, Lincoln signed the final Emancipation
Proclamation.
www.thelincolnmuseum.org/new/research/emancipation.html

Jan. 2, 1863: Second day of the Battle of Murfreesboro/ Stone’s River

Jan. 6, 1861: In New York, Mayor Fernando Wood suggested that New York
should become a free city, trading with both North and South.
www.adena.com/adena/USA/cw/cw268.htm
I also found a poem I wrote on this day in my own history. It needs revision, but I think it has possibilities, and has given me a story idea.

Origami

Your kisses are the crease line,
I fold you into myself
Like a man creating origami,
Tool of teaching and therapy,
Developing one’s attention,
Memory and imagination.
Like these tiny pieces of paper,
You are a work of art,
Folds of life, beauty, and truth,
Molded and shaped by an artist’s hands,
Our art started impulsively,
Using scrap pages of our life,
Then we moved on to costly sheets,
Finer, as strong as washi,
Decorated with complex
Patterns of emotions and haiku,
A lover’s geometry, as with
Gentle creases of delicate paper,
Together we create simple elegant
Beauty from our studious repetition,
Each tryst and kiss possessing a new,
Fundamental, expressive beauty.