"David Hockney has a fag in one hand, a mug of tea in the other, fish and chips and mushy peas in front of him, and he is surrounded by his own work."

"... Hockney is such a militant smoker you sense he sparks up even when he doesn�t fancy one, just to piss people off. His father, Kenneth, was just as militant in his non-smoking. 'I have now outlived him. I am nearly 78.� He puffs and grins.... He waves his cigarette at me. 'Do you smoke?' he asks, as if challenging me to a duel. I find myself apologising for having stopped, and he looks at me with a disappointment bordering on contempt � though he seems slightly pacified when I ask for a whisky. 'Bohemia was against the suburbs, and now the suburbs have taken over,' he says. 'I mean, the anti-smoking thing is all anti-bohemia. Bohemia is gone now. When people say, well wasn�t it amazing saying you were gay in 1960, I point out, well, I lived in bohemia, and bohemia is a tolerant place. You can�t have a smoke-free bohemia. You can�t have a drug-free bohemia. You can�t have a drink-free bohemia. Now they�re all worried about their fucking curtains, sniffing curtains for tobacco and stuff like that.' Does he think gay life has become more conservative in recent years? 'Yes. I suppose it�s that they want to be ordinary � they want to fit in. Well, I didn�t care about that. I didn�t care about fitting in. Everywhere is so conservative.'"

A tiny snippet of "David Hockney: �'Just because I�m cheeky, doesn�t mean I�m not serious'/At 77, and with two new exhibitions, David Hockney is more prolific and outspoken than ever. He tells us why he stopped painting after the death of his assistant � and why, despite a 9pm bedtime, he�s still a rebel at heart."

"A baseball team composed mostly of child laborers from an Indiana glassmaking factory..."

"... as photographed by Lewis Hine in August 1908," is "Today's featured picture" at Wikipedia:



"Hine (1874�1940) was an American sociologist who promoted the use of photography as an educational medium and means for social change. Beginning in 1908, he spent ten years photographing child labor for the National Child Labor Committee. The project was a dangerous one, and Hine had to disguise himself � at times as a fire inspector, postcard vendor, Bible salesman, or industrial photographer � to avoid the factory police and foremen."

"I can understand why a depraved man may find salvation in marriage."

"But why a pure girl should want to get mixed up in such a business is beyond me. If I were a girl I would not marry for anything in the world. And so far as being in love is concerned, for either men and women � since I know what it means, that is, it is an ignoble and above all an unhealthy sentiment, not at all beautiful, lofty or poetical � I would not have opened my door to it. I would have taken as many precautions to avoid being contaminated by that disease as I would to protect myself against far less serious infections such as diphtheria, typhus or scarlet fever."

Leo Tolstoy, quoted in "Intellectuals," by Paul Johnson.

Oh, that book title makes me want to tack on this wonderful quote from that professor who got in trouble for smoking a cigarette and raving about lefty politics on an airplane: "I know that might sound somewhat esoteric to other people, but I�m an intellectual, so that�s what I intended."

The esoteric thing she said was that the cigarette smoking was done for symbolism and it signified "a smoking gun" and "revolutionaries" (notably, Fidel Castro). (And it's just by chance that the first post of the day is on the topic of esoteric writing.)