Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald was born on 24 July 1900. Her dreams ran bigger than her husband’s words, deeper than his fame. She was way more than a muse, a wife, a mother: she was a writer, and a damn fine one.*
*Zelda also danced and painted.
“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”-Oscar Wilde
The House by the Railroad by Edward Hopper (born 22 July 1882). 1925.
“In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn’t creak.”-Tom Robbins (born 22 July 1936)
“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.”-Ernest Hemingway
“Eulogy is nice but one does not learn anything from it.”-Ellen Terry
“Let them cant about decorum, who have characters to lose!”-Robert Burns
1869: Ironing Woman by Edgar Degas (born on 7/19/1834)
“I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression.”-Margaret Fuller (died on 7/19/1850)
1877: Dancers Practicing at the Bar by Edgar Degas
“Let your fiction grow out of the land beneath your feet.”-Willa Cather
Willa Cather My Antonia Library Card Catalog Pendant by Parker’s Porch. $27.00
“Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.”-Anton Chekhov
Playwright and short story genius Anton Chekhov and actress Olga Knipper had a short, independent, mostly long-distance marriage. It began with a low-key, very private wedding in May 1901, and ended with Chekhov’s tragic death three years later. Neither career was sacrificed to the traditional dictates of matrimony.
“Give me a wife who, like the moon, won’t appear in my sky every day.”-Anton Chekhov
“And what does it mean–dying? Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and only the five we know are lost at death, while the other ninety-five remain alive.”-Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard
“In all the universe nothing remains permanent and unchanged but the spirit.”-Anton Chekhov, The Seagull
Anton Chekhov died on 15 July 1904, with his wife by his side. Olga Knipper outlived her husband by nearly fifty-five years.
South African Anti-Apartheid Author, Nobel Winner Gordimer Dies [courtesy The New York Times]
Nadine Gordimer, Nobel-Winning Chronicler of Apartheid, Dies [courtesy NPR]
This print, like all of Amanda Atkins’ work, is fantastic:
Flannery O’Connor 8×10 Print by Amanda Atkins. $18.00
Heinrich Heine by Gottlieb Gassen, 1828
Heinrich Heine by Gottlieb Gassen, 1828
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