“The Reader’s Notebook” is a daily radio feature using general interest pieces, often of literary or historic significance. Topics will also include science, technology, philosophy, folklore and the arts.
The series is written and hosted by J. D. Reeder, a retired educator, historian, avid reader and regular writer, director, and performer with the Morehead Theatre Guild.
The segments air weekdays (M-TH) at 9:06 a.m., 12:20 p.m. and 5:44 p.m. Each segment will include vignettes about writers, artists and other noteworthy people whose birthdays or other significant events coincide with the date of the program.
Occasionally, word and phrase origins will be explored, often with a Kentucky connection or include poems and excerpts from other writings associated with the subject of the day. Each episode will conclude with the phrase: “Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year,” a quotation from noted American poet and essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Theme music for "The Reader's Notebook" provided by Todd Kozikowski ("Shadows of the Moon"/1997).
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Whitcomb L. Judson was an American machine salesman, mechanical engineer and inventor. He received thirty patents over a sixteen-year career, fourteen of which were on pneumatic street railway innovations.
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Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac was a French novelist, playwright, epistolarian, and duelist. A bold and innovative author, his work was part of the libertine literature of the first half of the 17th century.
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Benjamin Franklin Norris Jr. was an American journalist and novelist during the Progressive Era, whose fiction was predominantly in the naturalist genre. His notable works include McTeague: A Story of San Francisco, The Octopus: A Story of California and The Pit.
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A leap year is a calendar year that contains an additional day compared to a common year. The 366th day (or 13th month) is added to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical year or seasonal year.
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Samuel Joel "Zero" Mostel was an American actor, comedian, and singer. He is best known for his portrayal of comic characters such as Tevye on stage in Fiddler on the Roof.
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Irwin Shaw was an American playwright, screenwriter, novelist, and short-story author whose written works have sold more than 14 million copies.
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Hermine "Miep" Gies was one of the Dutch citizens who hid Anne Frank, her family and four other Dutch Jews from the Nazis in an annex above Otto Frank's business premises during World War II.
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Richard Allen was a minister, educator, writer, and one of the United States' most active and influential black leaders. In 1794, he founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black denomination in the United States. He opened his first AME church in 1794 in Philadelphia.
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Margaretta Mary Winifred Scott was an English stage, screen and television actress whose career spanned over seventy years. She is best remembered for playing the eccentric widow Mrs. Pumphrey in the BBC television series All Creatures Great and Small.
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John Uhler Lemmon III was an American actor. Considered equally proficient in both dramatic and comic roles, Lemmon was known for his anxious, middle-class everyman screen persona in dramedy pictures, leading The Guardian to label him as "the most successful tragi-comedian of his age."