Category: people

On “chemo brain”: “It was not merely that the chemo left me fully thoughtless so that as time went on I could not even read; the effect of the drug darkened the mind or filled it with something hard and severe and relentless. It was like pain or a sort of anguish, but those words don’t really cover it. Everything that normally kept the day going, and the mind, was reduced to almost zero.” – London Review of Books

“The world is moving in a direction that does require intervention and does require comment and does require a shift in direction. That’s the job description for artists. We’re the people who suggest a bunch of that stuff. Nobody needs to vote for an artist. You’ve got nothing to lose, you just put it out there. This is a very important time to be an artist.” – San Francisco Classical Voice

The two great African-American writers happened to run into each other on the street in Mobile, Alabama on a summer day in 1927, and she invited him to ride along with her to Tuskegee and beyond, through Georgia and South Carolina and ultimately home to New York. As biographer Yuval Taylor recounts, they visited a traveling rural school, saw a Bessie Smith traveling tent show, had a session with a conjur-man, and plenty more. – Longreads

“One of a very few women in television’s executive ranks at the time, [she] oversaw CBS Playhouse in the late 1960s and the PBS series Visions in the 1970s, … offer[ing] writers a platform free from interference by corporate sponsors in exchange for stories that explored contemporary American themes.” – The New York Times

“She could get a laugh on literally every line you gave her,” remembered Raymond‘s creator. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” She received three Emmy nominations for her work on that series and two others for her performance as Georgette, the sweet-but-dim girlfriend of anchorman Ted Baxter, on MTM; she had an extensive stage career as well. – The New York Times

The Pulitzer board gave the late singer a Special Citation “for her indelible contribution to American music and culture for more than five decades.” She is the first individual woman to receive the Special Citation in its 89-year history. – Detroit Free Press

Twenty-first-century scholars at MIT ranked him the sixth most influential person who ever lived. Like Rembrandt and Michelangelo, he is so renowned that he is known by only his first name. Yet despite his fame, there are things about Leonardo that many people today find surprising. – The Conversation

As a busy soloist, a founding member of the influential Empire Brass quintet and a partner to the acoustic guitarist Frank Vignola in the jazz group Travelin’ Light, Mr. Pilafian expanded the musical possibilities of his lumbering instrument. – The New York Times