(photo courtesy of the Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park website)

Ernest Hemingway was born today, July 21, in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. It's something to think about, Hemingway's having a birthday so close to Hunter S. Thompson, both men being writers who broke through to new forms of prose expressions, who were focused on the male experience, and unfortunately who both committed suicide by gunshot in their sixties most likely due to depression and health problems. Maybe it's the shared Cancer zodiac sign, although Hemingway was between Cancer and Leo. Still, I've read that Cancers are often tough on the outside like the crab that represents them, but the hard shell covers a watery and tender sensitivity. (Hemingway of course would say that was a bunch of total b.s., especially the word tender! And crab! Crabs are for catching, killing, eating and dipping in melted butter, lady.)

If you're ever in Oak Park, Hemingway's birthplace is now a museum -- click here to make an on-line visit -- and maintained in the same turn of the century condition and style that Ernest himself would have found it as a child. Later, the family moved to a different home in Oak Park, which Hemingway complained was a place of "wide lawns and narrow minds" yet which he also seemed to enjoy growing up in, particularly during his high school years.

The hardest thing in the world to do is to write straight honest prose on human beings. First you have to know the subject; then you have to know how to write. Both take a lifetime to learn.…

Ernest Hemingway