1464: Somewhere Else by Adam J. Gellings

The Slowdown: Poetry & Reflection Daily

American Public Media

Arts, Performing Arts

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2026

⏱️ 6 minutes

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Summary

Today’s poem is Somewhere Else by Adam J. Gellings. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual. In this episode, Maggie writes… “I was born at 4:30 in the afternoon on a cold Sunday in February. All of this is either useless information — time of day, day of the week, month of the year — or it’s part of our own myth-making.” Celebrate the power of poems with a gift to The Slowdown today. Every donation makes a difference: https://tinyurl.com/rjm4synp

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Maggie Smith, and this is the slowdown.
0:19.2	I was born at 4.30 in the afternoon on a cold Sunday in February. All of this is either
0:29.7	useless information, time of day, day of the week, month of the year, or it's part of our own myth-making.
0:40.2	In a box of old things from my mother, I once found a card with a traditional English nursery rhyme on it,
0:50.1	about children born on different days of the week.
0:57.1	Maybe you've heard this one before.
1:08.9	Monday's child is fair of face. Tuesday's child is full of grace. Wednesday's child is full of woe.
1:12.8	Thursday's child has far to go. Friday's child is full of woe. Thursday's child has far to go.
1:16.8	Friday's child is loving and giving.
1:20.9	Saturday's child works hard for a living.
1:35.4	But the child that's born on the Sabbath day is fair and wise and good and gay. I'm a Sunday's child, or a child born on the Christian Sabbath day. Fair and wise and good and gay? I'm not sure I can claim all of that, but I'll take it. To be honest, for a chunk of
1:49.8	my angsty teenage years, I have a feeling my parents saw me as more of a Wednesday's child,
1:58.4	full of woe, and there are definitely years where I've had far to go,
2:05.6	like Thursday's child. I personally don't put any stock into the day of the week I was born on.
2:15.1	I can admit that I find astrology interesting, but I'm also wary of assigning
2:22.5	character traits to people based on their birth month. Aquariuses are said to be fiercely independent
2:31.5	and individualistic, so being wary of astrology would be very
2:38.6	Aquarius of me, come to think of it. Whether I'm fair and wise and good and gay or independent
2:48.7	and individualistic,
2:53.6	I know one thing for certain.
2:59.5	I have a soft spot for poems that take me back to childhood,
3:02.8	back to our origin stories.
	...

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