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The Water Spirit's Song (Excerpt)

by Christina Rossetti

Art by Asako Eguchi

In the silent hour of even,

When the stars are in the heaven,

When in the azure cloudless sky

The moon beams forth all lustrously,

When over hill and over vale

Is wafted the sweet-scented gale,

When murmurs thro' the forest trees

The cool, refreshing, evening breeze,

When the nightingale's wild melody

Is waking herb and flower and tree,

From their perfumed and soft repose,

To list the the praises of the rose;

When the ocean sleeps deceitfully,

When the waves are resting quietly,

I spread my bright wings, and fly far away

To my beautiful sister's mansion gay:

I leave behind me rock and mountain,

I leave behind me rill and fountain,

And I dive far down in the murmuring sea,

Where my fair sister welcomes me joyously;

For she's Queen of Ocean for ever and ever,

And I of each fountain and still lake and river.

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Vape Teardown: Scientists Reveal What's Actually Inside E-Cigarettes : ScienceAlert

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Strange, Glowing Shapes Have Been Identified in Jupiter's Atmosphere : ScienceAlert

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“Shall I get the net?”

Peter Vatsures

April 17, 1954

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Hester Stanhope was born into privilege in 1776. She tottered away in London high society until at age 33 she became…utterly bored. Her finances were seemingly secure in perpetuity, so she hopped a ship to the Mediterranean, took a young male lover in Gibraltar, and headed for Istanbul (then Constantinople), Cairo, Syria, and Lebanon.

The sights, smells, and beheadings of the Near East didn’t phase Stanhope in the least. At a time when women’s fainting couches were de rigueur in England, the only travel hiccup that seemed to have ruffled Stanhope’s feathers was a shipwreck off the coast of Egypt. She lost all of her British finery in the accident, so she adopted a new, more practical style: the outfit of a Turkish man. From boots to waistcoat to sword and turban, Stanhope dressed in men’s clothes for the rest of her life.

Her manner of dress, proclivity for riding her horse like a man (as opposed to side saddle), and unwavering confidence in the face of entirely foreign cultures, was as much a riddle to the people she encountered in Egypt and the Middle East as it must have been to her English companions. Though she and her entourage were welcomed graciously in their travels, Stanhope herself was such an enigma – so uncustomary – that the locals couldn’t help but celebrate her especially.

And Stanhope ate it up. She was the independent and uncaged woman of the hour. Flaunting customs and cultural sensitivity, Stanhope walked unveiled through Damascus, Syria, in 1812. For an act that could have earned another woman a stoning, Stanhope was revered. The following year, she rode into the most feared Bedouin camp of Syria and demanded safe passage to the ancient city of Palmyra. Face to face with this odd force of nature, the Bedouins obliged. Before long, the various tribes took to calling her “Queen of the Desert,” a nickname Stanhope adopted with gusto, not to mention a solid sense of belief.

By 1814, her original entourage of travel companions had dispersed and Lady Stanhope settled in Lebanon. Though her wealth had diminished, she lived as though it had not. She lavished all guests – both prestigious and impoverished – with gifts, cash, clothing, and necessities. Her generosity and ferocious protection of her new neighbors further deepened their curiosity and admiration of this unconventional woman.

In the 1820s, Lady Stanhope sequestered herself at a monastery deep in the Lebanese mountains as she succumbed to a life guided by strange prophecies and astrology. Even so, she lucidly took in every peasant, stranger, and friend who came to her door and never stopped embracing her adopted culture. While conventional wisdom suggests assimilation is the truest form of cultural appreciation, she mastered the charisma-driven ability of always doing her own thing and still having people love her.

Most biographers and first-hand reporters ascribe a hefty dose of arrogance to Lady Hester Stanhope. She operated with a grand sense of entitlement that was only outdone by her equally grand ego. By the 1830s, Lady Stanhope’s ego had outlived her money, her lovers, and perhaps her sanity. She died poor, alone, and a servant to her own eccentricities in 1839.

To her great credit, at a time when women were not expected to indulge in either confidence or adventure, Lady Hester Stanhope exhaled both with every breath. She refused to sacrifice her own desires to the patriarchal rules of any society. And though she was neither graceful nor subtle in her demonstration of this, she miraculously earned more respect than disdain for her stance.

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Peter Sellers was originally going to ride the atom bomb in "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964). Slim Pickens (born Louis Burton Lindley Jr.) got a phone call late one evening from Stanley Kubrick: "Peter has fallen and broken his hip, I need you for a day's shoot--I need you bad and I need you now. How soon can you get on a plane and make it to London?". Slim obliged and in his haste forgot that he didn't have a passport because he had never traveled outside the US before. His entrance was delayed while he had to go through the process of getting one before he was allowed to leave the airport.

When Pickens showed up on the set of "Dr. Strangelove" fully dressed as a cowboy and speaking in a thick Southern accent, the British crew thought he was "Method" acting, not knowing that this was how he always dressed and acted.

He explained how he got into the rodeo business: "Well, there was this big, lanky, 15-year-old California ranch kid, and he went into the rodeo manager's office and said, 'Mister, I want to sign up for the calf-roping but my paw says I ain't allowed to. So I can't use my right name'. And the manager said, 'Son, no matter what name you use, it'll be slim pickin's out there today'. So the boy said, 'That's as good a name as any, I reckon-put me down as Slim Pickin's'. The manager spelled it 'Pickens' and the boy won $400 that afternoon." (IMDb)

Happy Birthday, Slim Pickens!

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𝗦𝗛𝗘 𝗕𝗥𝗢𝗨𝗚𝗛𝗧 𝗡𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗔𝗠𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗖𝗔𝗡 𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗥𝗜𝗘𝗦 𝗧𝗢 𝗨𝗦 𝗔𝗟𝗟

On February 22, 1876, Thaté Iyóhiwiŋ, a Yankton Dakota woman living on the Yankton Indiana Reservation in South Dakota, and her European American mate, Felker Simmons, brought their daughter, Zitkála-Šá, into the world. Simmons would abandon mother and child, yet Zitkála-Šá describes the first 8 years of her life on the reservation as happy and safe. All that changed in 1884 when missionaries came to “save” the children.

Even though White's Indiana Manual Labor Institute was a Quaker project, it still forced the children who attended to adapt to the Quaker way of doing things, including taking new names. Zitkála-Šá was renamed Gertrude Simmons. In her biographies, Zitkála-Šá describes deep conflict between her native identity and the dominant white culture, the sorrow of being separated from her mother, and her joy in learning to read, write, and play the violin.

Zitkála-Šá returned to the reservation in 1887, but after 3 years she decided she wanted to further her education and returned to the Institute again. She taught music while attending school from 1891 to 1895, when she earned her first diploma. Her speech at graduation tackled the issue of women’s inequality and was praised in local newspapers. She had a gift of public speaking and music, and put both to good use during her life.

In 1895 Zitkála-Šá earned a scholarship to attend Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana. While in college she gave public speeches and even translated Native American legends into Latin and English for children. In 1887, mere weeks from graduation, her health took a turn for the worse; her scholarship did not cover all expenses, so she had to drop out.

After college Zitkála-Šá used her musical talents to make a living. From 1897-1899, she played violin with the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She then took a job teaching music at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, where she also hosted debates on the issue of Native American treatment. The school used her to recruit students and impress the world, but her speaking out against their rigid indoctrination of native children into white culture resulted in her dismissal in 1901.

Concerned about her mother’s health, Zitkála-Šá returned to the reservation. While there she began to collect the stories of her people and translate them into English. She found a publisher in Ginn and Company, and they put out her collection of these stories as Old Indian Legends in 1901. Like most authors, she took another job at the Bureau of Indian Affairs as her principal support. It was at this job in 1902 that she met and married Captain Raymond Bonnin, a mixed-race Nakota man.

The couple moved to work on the Uintah-Ouray Reservation in Utah for the next 14 years. They had one son, named Ohiya. Zitkála-Šá met and began to collaborate with William F. Hanson, a composer at Brigham Young University. Together they created The Sun Dance, the first opera co-written by a Native American. The opera used the backdrop of the Ute Sun Dance to explore Ute and Yankton Dakota cultures. It premiered in 1913 and was originally performed by Ute actors and singers. Choosing such a topic for the opera would have been a way to strike back at forced enculturation, because the ritual itself had been outlawed by the Federal Government in 1883 and remained so until 1933. Much later, in 1938, The Sun Dance came to The Broadway Theatre in New York City.

From 1902-1916, Zitkála-Šá published several articles about her life and native legends for English readers. Her works appeared in Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Monthly, magazines with primarily a white readership. Her essays also appeared in American Indian Magazine. While these pieces were often autobiographical, they were still political and social commentary that showed her increased frustration with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, which fired the couple in 1916.

In 1916, the couple moved to Washington D.C., where Zitkála-Šá served as the secretary of the Society of the American Indian. In 1926, she founded the National Council of American Indians, an organization that worked to improve the treatment and lives of Native Americans. By 1928, she was an advisor to the Meriam Commission, which would lead to several improvements in how the Federal Government treated native peoples.

Zitkála-Šá continued writing, and her books and essays became more political in such works as American Indian Stories (1921) and “Oklahoma’s Poor Rich Indians,” published in 1923 by the Indian Rights Association. She spoke out for Indian’s rights and women’s rights up until her death in 1938 at the age of 61.

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24th June 1533

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🖤 Birth of Robert Dudley ~ Earl of Leicester 🖤

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🖤 The story of Queen Elizabeth and Robert Dudley is one of the most touching stories in Queen Elizabeth's reign.

Robert was born on 24th June 1533, the fifth son of John Dudley~1st Duke of Northumberland and Jane Guildford.

🖤 On 6th July 1553, King Edward VI died, and Robert's father attempted to transfer the English crown to Lady Jane Grey, who was married to Robert's brother, Lord Guildford Dudley.

Robert Dudley, his father and four brothers were imprisoned in the Tower of London, and condemned to death.

🖤 Robert's father went to the scaffold.

Robert's brother Guildford Dudley was sent to the block in February 1554.

The surviving brothers were released and restored by Mary I's next parliament, in 1558.

🖤 In the Tower, Robert's stay coincided with the imprisonment of his childhood friend, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was sent there on suspicion of her involvement in Wyatt's rebellion.

On 18th November 1558, the morning after Elizabeth's accession to the throne, Robert became Master of the Horse.

🖤 This was an important court position, entailing close attendance on the sovereign.

It suited him, as he was an excellent horseman, and showed great professional interest in royal transport, horse breeding, and the supply of horses for all state and personal occasions.

🖤 Robert Dudley quickly became Queen Elizabeth's favorite.

They were forever in each others company, and grew closer and closer.

After the mysterious death of his first wife, Amy Robsart, they grew apart.

The constant accusations, had them both down as orchestrating Amy's murder.

🖤 Robert's subsequent remarriage to the queen’s cousin, Lady Lettice Knollys, had the brokenhearted Elizabeth, in tears of rage.

Elizabeth banished them from Court.

Dudley was eventually forgiven, and Elizabeth summoned her childhood friend back to court - and in her constant presence.

🖤 Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, passed away on the 4th of September 1588, at Cornbury Park in Oxfordshire, he was 58 years old.

His health had not been good for some time.

Some accounts say he was suffering from malaria, or stomach cancer.

Just a few weeks before his death, he was at Elizabeth's side, riding through the streets of London - celebrating the defeat of 'The Spanish Armada'.

🖤 Robert's death had come unexpectedly, hitting Queen Elizabeth harder than anything she had been through, before.

A week before he died, Robert had sent Elizabeth, what turned out to be his farewell letter, full of devotion and loyalty to his 'Gloriana'.

Robert’s last letter, was Elizabeth's most treasured possession.

She inscribed it “His last letter” and kept it in a locked casket by her bed, until she died in 1603.

🖤 Upon receiving the news of the tragedy, a deeply distressed Elizabeth locked herself in her apartments for several days, grieving for her best friend, and refusing to see anybody.

William Cecil, eventually had the door broken.

🖤 Elizabeth and Robert, the man she referred to as her "Eyes", or as "Sweet Robin", were 'in love' for most of their lives.

There is absolutely no real evidence that they were intimate, and on her deathbed, Elizabeth solemnly swore that ~

‘"Though she loved him dearly…

nothing unseemly had ever passed between

them".

🖤 Source~olivialongueville/Wikipedia.

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🖤 Robert Dudley Created: circa 1564.

Formerly attributed to Steven van der Meulen.

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Very young Lucille Ball, before the red, looking a bit like Garbo here. This is a still from a film but I'm not sure which one. From the bio: In 1925 Ball, then only 14, started dating Johnny DeVita, a 23-year-old local hood. DeDe, her mother, was unhappy with the relationship, but was unable to influence her daughter to end it. She expected the romance to burn out in a few weeks, but that did not happen. After about a year, DeDe tried to separate them by using Lucille's desire to be in show business. Despite the family's meager finances, she arranged for Lucille to go to the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts in New York City where Bette Davis was a fellow student. Ball later said about that time in her life, "All I learned in drama school was how to be frightened." Her teachers thought she showed no natural acting ability and told her to seek another profession.

Ball was determined to prove her teachers wrong, and returned to New York City in 1928. Among her other jobs, she landed work as a fashion model for Hattie Carnegie. Her career was thriving when she became ill, either with rheumatic fever, rheumatoid arthritis, or some other unknown illness, and was unable to work for two years. She moved back to New York City in 1932 to resume her pursuit of a career as an actress, and supported herself by again working for Carnegie and as the Chesterfield cigarette girl. Using the name "Diane Belmont", she started getting some chorus work on Broadway but the work was not sporadic. Ball was hired – but then quickly fired – by theatre impresario Earl Carroll from his Vanities, by Florenz Ziegfeld from a touring company of Rio Rita, and was let go from the Shubert brothers production of Stepping Stones. These hardships and setbacks still did not deter her determination to succeed in show business.

After an uncredited stint as one of the Goldwyn Girls in Roman Scandals (1933) she moved permanently to Hollywood to appear in films. She appeared in many small movie roles in the 1930s as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures, including a two-reel comedy short with the Three Stooges (Three Little Pigskins, 1934) and a movie with the Marx Brothers (Room Service, 1938). She can also be seen as one of the featured models in the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film Roberta (1935), briefly as the flower girl in Top Hat (1935), as well as in a brief supporting role at the beginning of Follow the Fleet (1936), another Astaire-Rogers film. Ginger Rogers was a distant maternal cousin of Ball's. She and Rogers played aspiring actresses in the hit film Stage Door (1937) co-starring Katharine Hepburn.

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The body of Anne Boleyn.

Henry VIII and Cromwell got all things covered and gave detailed instructions for Anne’s execution, but they forgot one thing.

What would happen next ? So it was may 19th around noon, and Anne’s body continued to lay in the heat.

No one knew what to do. No one dared to do anything. They kept waiting, hoping some news would arrive from the court, but hours passed, and there was nothing other than silence .

A decision had to be made, and master Kingston , constable of the Tower, decided to use a storage chest as her coffin. Her ladies stripped her of her clothes, removed her grey gown, and wrapped her remains in a cloth .

They placed her in a small chest used for arrows storage and placed her head beneath her arm .

The chest was too short for normal placement . Then, they carried the chest to the Tower's chapel and dug a hole under the altar.

She was buried next to her brother, George. Anne was king's Henry greatest obsession but when he found out she couldn't live up to his image, his obsession turned into hate.

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In 1923, when Yul Brynner was just three, his father had an affair with an actress at Moscow Art Theatre and then abandoned his family. Perhaps the emotional scars remained and made him into this brooding and intensely private person. After her husband left her, his mother, Marousia, took her two children to Harbin, China where they attended a YMCA school.

Circa 1932, sensing the rising tensions between Japan and China, Marousia moved her family to Paris to avoid the impending war. Brynner only wanted to be in the performing arts. He dropped out of school and worked as a trapeze artist in a famous circus.

During his 5th year in the circus, Brynner suffered a back injury, ending his career. Meanwhile, he played guitar, primarily Gypsy songs, at Russian nightclubs in Paris. In 1938, Marousia was diagnosed with leukaemia and the family briefly moved back to Harbin, China.

In 1940, Brynner and his mother emigrated to the US joining his sister. Working as a French-speaking radio commentator for the US Office of War Information, he broadcasted into German-occupied France while studying under the tutelage of Russian-American actor, Michael Chekhov.

In 1941, Brynner performed his first Broadway show in 'Twelfth Night’. His next play, ‘Lute Song’ with Mary Martin only won him mild acclaim but his friendship with Martin would later bring him the biggest acting role in his career.

In 1944, he married the first of four wives and began his career as a film and television director at CBS. His directing debut was a children’s puppet show and then established himself, successful directing films as 'Studio One in Hollywood’ (1948).

In 1950, Martin encouraged Brynner to audition for 'The King and I'. Initially reluctant to return to the stage, he was fascinated with the character of King Mongkut and joined the original Broadway production in 1951. Brynner was asked to shave his head and since then, he kept his head shaved becoming his most notable trademark.

Yul Brynner was sensational as King Mongkut, winning two Tony Awards. He reprised the role over 4000 times before the 1956 film and won an Academy Award for Best Actor. In his acceptance speech, he famously said:

"I hope this is not a mistake, because I won’t give it back for anything in the world. Thank you very much."

For the next two decades of his career, Brynner starred in over 40 films including ‘Solomon and Sheba’ , (replacing Tyrone Power) (1959) and 'The Magnificent Seven’ (1960). Due to his exotic good looks, he was typically cast in strong leading roles such as kings, an Egyptian Pharaoh and a Western gunslinger.

Brynner was also an accomplished photographer, author of 2 books and a guitarist.

Yul Brynner was passionate about refugee issues which arose from his interest in collecting United Nations Refugee stamps. This led to him taking up the post as Special Consultant on Refugees for the UNHCR. His fame brought awareness to the sufferings I around the world from Asia to the Middle East.

Brynner began smoking at the age of 12 and chain smoked until 1971. In 1983, he was suffering from inoperable lung cancer and given three months to live. He ended the 4,625th show of The King and I in June, 1985 and died a few months later.

Brynner recorded prior to his death an anti-smoking campaign and

poignantly said:

"Now that I’m gone, I tell you: Don’t smoke, whatever you do, just don’t smoke. If I could take back that smoking, we wouldn’t be talking about any cancer. I’m convinced of that."

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The Sea to the Shore

by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Art by Liza Paizis

Lo, I have loved thee long, long have I yearned and entreated!

Tell me how I may win thee, tell me how I must woo.

Shall I creep to thy white feet, in guise of a humble lover ?

Shall I croon in mild petition, murmuring vows anew ?

Shall I stretch my arms unto thee, biding thy maiden coyness,

Under the silver of morning, under the purple of night ?

Taming my ancient rudeness, checking my heady clamor­

Thus, is it thus I must woo thee, oh, my delight?

Nay, 'tis no way of the sea thus to be meekly suitor­

I shall storm thee away with laughter wrapped in my beard of snow,

With the wildest of billows for chords I shall harp thee a song for thy bridal,

A mighty lyric of love that feared not nor would forego!

With a red-gold wedding ring, mined from the caves of sunset,

Fast shall I bind thy faith to my faith evermore,

And the stars will wait on our pleasure, the great north wind will trumpet

A thunderous marriage march for the nuptials of sea and shore.

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Darcey Bussell and Zoltan Solymosi

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On a Day Like Today ~ June 23, 1695. Louise Anne de Bourbon, a 3x great granddaughter of HM King James I, was born.

Louise Anne was born on this day in 1695 at the Palace of Versailles as the 4th child and 3rd daughter of Louis III, Prince of Condé and his wife Louise Françoise de Bourbon. She was baptized in late November 1698 alongside her brother Louis Henri and her sister Louise Élisabeth. Her father died in March 1710.

Sometime in the mid to late 1710s she became romantically involved with Armand de Vignerot du Plessis, Duke of Richelieu. At the same time, the Duke of Richelieu began an affair with Louise Anne's first cousin, Charlotte Aglaé d'Orléans. The two cousins, rivals in love, would later fight fiercely, but separately, for the liberation of the Duke from his incarceration in the Bastille due to his participation in the Cellamare Conspiracy.

Around the early 1720s she was considered as a possible bride for her cousin, Louis Auguste, Prince of Dombes however, she refused. Another proposed husband was the Duke of Chartres, the son of the Regent, and heir to the House of Orléans. His mother, however, wanted a more prestigious marriage for her son.

In the late 1720's it was common gossip that Louise Anne was Louis XV of France's former mistresses and that she was his first unofficial partner after his wife. It was said they had an on-and-off-affair for a few years and that she introduced him to prospective new mistresses. However, other contemporaries claim that while Louise Anne did wish to become his lover and did attempt to seduce him, she never actually succeeded to become his mistress. The king did, in any case, enjoy her company, and she belonged to his circle of personal friends and frequently attended court.

Louis Anne never married and died in early April 1758 at the Hôtel de Rothelin-Charolais in Paris, France at the age of 62. She was buried in the Carmelite Convent of the Faubourg Saint-Jacques.

Family sequence:

#1

King James I (3x Great Grandfather)

Elizabeth Stuart (2x Great Grandmother)

Edward, Count Palatine of Simmern (Great Grandfather)

Anne Henriette of Bavaria (Grandmother)

Louis III, Prince of Condé (Father)

Shared from History & Lives of the British Royals.

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A Victorian Girl from the 1860s!

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Pauline Cushman was a notable figure in the 19th century United States, whose life transitioned from the theatrical stage to the dangerous world of espionage during the Civil War. Born in 1833, Cushman began her career as an actress, but it was her patriotism and daring spirit that led her to become a spy for the Union.

Her journey into espionage began in 1863 when she was performing in a stage play. Confederate sympathizers, unaware of her Unionist leanings, requested that she toast Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy. Instead of complying, Cushman reported the incident to a federal marshal, which led to an invitation to serve as a spy for the Union. She accepted the offer, motivated not only by her loyalty to the Union but also by the personal loss of her husband, who had died fighting for the cause.

Cushman's acting skills became invaluable in her new role. Her ability to assume different identities and convincingly play various parts allowed her to gather crucial intelligence. She operated out of a boardinghouse, where she could eavesdrop on conversations and obtain vital information about Confederate plans and movements. Her most daring act came when she managed to steal Confederate battle plans. However, her espionage career nearly came to an abrupt end when she was caught by Confederate forces. Sentenced to execution, Cushman was saved by the timely arrival of Union troops who liberated her just in time.

Following the war, Cushman leveraged her wartime experiences into a successful post-war career. She collaborated with P.T. Barnum, the famous showman, to create a one-woman show where she recounted her thrilling exploits as a spy. This show not only entertained audiences but also cemented her legacy as a Civil War heroine.