Word: self-taught
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What makes Matthews so formidable is that he once went to law school (but never practiced) and has become a self-taught expert on land law. As he sees it, most of the swamps belong to either the people of Florida or the Federal Government. Matthews has carried his arguments to the courts with startling consistency and success. His strategy: "Sue the bums until they bleed...
...Self-Taught. Matisse has so long been hailed as the apostle of pictorial flatness that his bronzes, in all their ridged and bulging solidity, might seem to contradict his paintings. In fact, one form complements the other, and the museum's show beautifully demonstrates that exchange; thus key Matisse paintings like Dance (1909) and Blue Nude (1907) grew out of corresponding and earlier sculptures, while his own bronzes appear in many a later Matisse still life...
Torn Cloth. To Joplin, who was obsessed with opera, Treemonisha's failure meant the failure of his whole life. Born in 1868 in Texarkana, Texas, the son of an ex-slave, Joplin discovered the piano at age seven. His self-taught playing and improvising attracted so much attention that a local piano teacher waived his usual fees and took the prodigy in hand. After Joplin's mother died, the youngster had a falling out with his father and at 14 left home to take up the life of a honky-tonk pianist. He wandered to St. Louis, Chicago...
...Parker). Standing Bear was the plaintiff in an 1879 civil rights litigation which resulted in the United States Government, through the decision of Judge Elmer S. Dundy, recognizing the de jure humanity of the American Indian. Donehogawa, born a chief of the once-powerful Seneca Iroquois, became a self-taught lawyer only to discover that Indians need not apply to the bar of New York, went on to become a civil engineer, a friend of Ulysses S. Grant when the future President was a clerk in a harness store, served with Grant from Vicksburg to Richmond as his military secretary...
During that time, Van Peebles knocked out five novels. He wrote them in self-taught French because the French directors' union is required to give a union card to any author writing in French who wants to direct a film made from his own works. Armed with his union card, an advance from the French Ministry of Cultural Affairs and a substantial stipend from a wealthy Frenchwoman, Van Peebles did indeed make a film. Story of a Three-Day Pass, about a black G.I.'s weekend with a white French girl, became a hit in France...