Maxine Cushing Gray to Murray, 26 July 1982 -- "Chacun á son goût"

Here is a businesslike and by its end kind for shocking letter from the "Tweed Hornet," Seattle arts writer and critic Maxine Cushing Gray. She was the founder and fierce editor of Northwest Arts, which she ran from 1975 to 1987. (Both Murray and I wrote for her -- he often, me occasionally -- and she made progress in beating sloppy phrasing out of me.) She announces her "astonished pleasure and pride" that she got the latest issue out -- full size and on time -- a week after her husband's death, which came shortly after his diagnosis of lung cancer. Her comment on his 50-year smoking habit: Chacun á son goût. Characteristically, she took time, in her busyness and her grief, to ink in the accents. She was flinty and reliable to the end, putting out her final issue shortly before her own death from liver cancer. Paula Becker's fine profile of her is at HistoryLink.org: https://www.historylink.org/File/11119