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Sunday, November 11, 2007
Title page of the Ostrih Bible, a 16th
century Ukrainian Bible in the collection
of the Library of Congress.
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)
WASHINGTON — Sen. Lindsey Graham reprimanded the Chinese ambassador to the United States on Wednesday over reports that Bibles are on a list of prohibited items for athletes who stay in the Olympic village during next year's Beijing Games.
Graham, a longtime critic of China over its currency manipulation and trade tariffs, said he called Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong and complained about the reported Bible ban.
"This would be contrary to the Olympic spirit," Graham said in an interview after speaking with the envoy. "It would be a totalitarian move that would create problems between China and the United States far beyond what we have today."
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Self-Portrait, 1880
Marie Bashkirtseff (November 11, 1858 — October 31, 1884) was a Ukrainian-born Russian diarist, painter and sculptor.
Born Maria Konstantinovna Bashkirtseva in Gavrontsy near Poltava, to a wealthy noble family, she grew up abroad, traveling with her mother across most of Europe. Educated privately, she studied painting in France at the Académie Julian, one of the few establishments that accepted female students. The Académie attracted young women from all over Europe and the United States. One fellow student was Louise Breslau who Marie viewed as her only rival. Marie would go on to produce a remarkable body of work in her short lifetime, the most famous being the portrait of Paris slum children titled The Meeting and In the Studio, a portrait of her fellow artists at work. Unfortunately, a large number of Bashkirtseff's works were destroyed by the Nazis during World War II.
Read Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) by Marie Bashkirtseff, one of two of her works available free from Project Gutenberg.
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