“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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Isaac Burns Murphy was an American Hall of Fame jockey, considered one of the greatest riders in American Thoroughbred horse racing history. He won three runnings of the Kentucky Derby and was the first jockey to be inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame at its creation in 1955. -
Ethel Kennedy is an American human rights advocate. She is the widow of U.S. senator Robert F. Kennedy, a sister-in-law of President John F. Kennedy, and the sixth child of George and Ann Skakel. -
Harry Morgan was an American actor whose television and film career spanned six decades. Morgan's major roles included Pete Porter in both December Bride and Pete and Gladys; Officer Bill Gannon on Dragnet; Amos Coogan on Hec Ramsey; and his starring role as Colonel Sherman T. Potter in M*A*S*H and AfterMASH. -
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American bass-baritone concert artist, stage and film actor, professional football player, and activist who became famous both for his cultural accomplishments and for his political stances. -
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five". He was an innovator of Russian music in the Romantic period. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music. -
Jean-Antoine Houdon was a French neoclassical sculptor. Houdon is famous for his portrait busts and statues of philosophers, inventors and political figures of the Enlightenment -
Tobias George Smollett was a Scottish novelist, surgeon, critic and playwright. He was best known for picaresque novels such as The Adventures of Roderick Random, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker, which influenced later novelists, including Charles Dickens. -
Sir Michael Caine is an English retired actor. Known for his distinctive Cockney accent, he has appeared in more than 160 films over a career spanning eight decades and is considered a British film icon. -
William Hall Macy Jr. is an American actor. His film career has been built on appearances in small, independent films, though he has also appeared in mainstream films. His starring roles include those in Fargo, Boogie Nights, Mystery Men, Jurassic Park III, Cellular, Bobby, Wild Hogs, and Shorts. -
Sir Richard Steele was an Anglo-Irish writer, playwright, and politician, remembered as co-founder, with his friend Joseph Addison, of the magazine The Spectator.
