I ran into an interesting book of illustrations from 1942 by an artist named Constantin Ajalov, entitled Conversation Pieces. I did an art piece centered around The New Yorker’s cartoons from World War II, all about the socialite women, who, in the…
Author: vassar
Famous Americans we Haven’t Met Yet
Do you know me? No one in Bulgaria does, either. His name was Raiko Daskalov, and he was a small-time labor organizer who died in 1923, while the communists were still an illegal underground movement. But 1986 was the 100th…
The Devil and Mark Twain, CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien
Late in life Mark Twain had to go on the road to raise money to pay his creditors because he’d invested poorly. In the process he probably invented stand-up comedy, which Vaudeville probably stole. Over the years I’ve collected several of his one-liners. At one of his sessions…