Sunday

Jul. 19, 1998

Sunday Dinner

by Dan Masterson

SUNDAY 7/19

Today's Reading: "Sunday Dinner" by ALL THINGS, SEEN AND UNSEEN, published by University of Arkansas Press (1997).

English painter and writer JOHN BRATBY was born in Wimbledon on this day in 1928. He came to fame in the early 1950s as a founder of the Kitchen-Sink School, and his paintings sometimes incorporated beer bottles, trash cans and other everyday objects. He was associated with the Angry Young Men movement.

Journalist and author EDGAR SNOW, was born on this day in Kansas City (Missouri), 1905. Famous for reporting on the Communist movement before it achieved power in China.

Scottish physician and author A.J. CRONIN, was born in Cardoss, Dumbarton in 1896. He used his background as a medical doctor and inspector of coal mines and occupational diseases in his novels The Citadel (1937) and The Keys of the Kingdom (1944).

Russian poet VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY was born today in Bagdadi, Russia in 1893. His romantic poems include "A Cloud in Trousers" and "The Backbone Flute," while in later poems including "Ode to Revolution," he became the leading poet of the Russian Revolution and the early Soviet period.

It's the birthday in Rochester, Minnesota of CHARLES HORACE MAYO,1865, the surgeon who, with his brother Will, founded the Mayo Clinic. He was called a surgical wonder, pioneering modern procedures in goiter surgery, orthopedics, and neurosurgery, as well as the notion of the modern group medical practice, at the Mayo Clinic.

It's the 150th anniversary of the first WOMEN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION in Seneca Falls, New York, 1848. Elizabeth Cady Stanton had just moved to the village of Seneca Falls and that summer she and four friends, including Lucretia Mott, decided to hold the first women's rights convention. They got together and wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, a list of grievances and remedies modeled on the Declaration of Independence, and on July 19 they held their convention. 300 people turned out, including Frederick Douglass and many other men. But most people considered the convention very radical; it was severely criticized by newspapers and many women later felt pressured to remove their names from the Declaration that they had signed.

And today is the birthday of French Impressionist painter EDGAR DEGAS born in Paris in 1834. Known for his mastery of motion and famous for his portrayals of ballet dancers.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

 

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