Bark If You Like James Thurber!

James Thurber, author, cartoonist, and longtime contributor to The New Yorker, was born on this date in 1894.

Today we team up Thurber's humor with art sculpted by Stephen Polaha and Raya Bodnarchuk in praise of good dogs.

"If I have any beliefs at all about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to Heaven, and very, very few persons will be there."
—from "Why Not Die?" The New Yorker, September 21, 1935

"Dogs would, I am confident, have arranged many things better than we do. They would in all probability have averted the Depression, for they can go through lots tougher things than we and still think it's boom time. They demand very little of their heyday; a kind word is more to them than fame, a soup bone than gold; they are perfectly contented with a warm fire and a good book to chew (preferably an autographed first edition lent by a friend); wine and song they can completely forgo; and they can almost completely forgo women."
—from "Dogs I Have Scratched," Harper's Bazaar, January 1933

Pictured top: Stephen W. Polaha, 1891–1977, Winged Dog, about 1975, painted wood, metal, and glass, 17 7/8 x 22 x 10 1/2 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Chuck and Jan Rosenak and museum purchase through the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment.

Pictured bottom: Raya Bodnarchuk, born 1947, All Good Dogs, 1987, carved white pine, 34 1/2 x 19 x 18 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Anonymous gift in memory of Walter M. and Nancy A. Hall and Betty Hall McLane.