#tea with mussolini

[chers-cheekbones]

Cher as Elsa Morganthal in Tea with Mussolini trying to make Luca (Baird Wallace) stop being mad at her with a butt-in from Lily Tomlin as Georgie Rockwell and Paul Chequer as Wilfred 'Lucy' Random

The last gif: me too, dude

[judi-daily]

Tea with Mussolini, 1999 New York Premiere Photographer: Dan D'Errico

[travsd]

The Zeffirelli Centennial

Born 100 years ago today, Italian designer, director and politician Franco Zeffirelli (1923-2019). When Zeffirelli passed, only four years ago, it dawned on me that his hit 1968 screen adaptation of Romeo and Juliet was my first introduction to Shakespeare. I think this is true of a lot of people. We even had the soundtrack album to that movie in our house — the theme song became a #1 in the…

[supremechancellorrex]

I've been hearing a lot of people say that Ozai in the Avatar: the Last Airbender cartoon isn't supposed to be "developed" because he's a "symbol". My problem with this is that a character can both be well-developed and a symbol at the same time, so why choose otherwise? "It makes sense because he's supposed to represent" doesn't justify leaving the writing a little loose.

In the cartoon, Ozai is hardly a character to sink your teeth into. You can surmise and speculate things about him, but ultimately every discussion was more about Zuko or another character overcoming him and how satisfying that was than any character depth of Ozai himself. On the Day of Black Sun, Zuko and Ozai's confrontation is less an argument and ideological battle with layers between two human beings and more an extremely developed character yelling at an evil cardboard cutout.

The Problem With Ozai

Zuko: "It was cruel and it was wrong."

Ozai: "Lol."

Zuko: "We need to replace this era with an era of peace and kindness."

Ozai: "Lame." (*scowls in annoyance, tries to leave*)

Zuko: "Stay or I'll cut you." (*waves swords*)

Ozai: "Fine. Whatever. Go on" (*proceeds to sit back down and wonder if he's having spiced fire rice cakes for dinner*)

The way the cartoon presents it, Ozai just was a bit too a moustache-twirling villain and that's even considering his actions. It's not even him being morally bankrupt or sadistic, but that his entire character only exists on the surface level. Him being "superficial" and "ruthless" isn't even a character trait because he has no real character beyond "I'm arrogant, selfish and evil". Even some of the worst dictators in human history from Hitler and Stalin to Mussolini and Mao have more complex 'psychological depth' than Ozai, despite committing the most evil and awful acts against other human beings.

I got they want to reflect the toxicity of the Fire Nation with him as a symbol, "fear" and "ruthlessness", but these are symptoms and the result of an ideology, and Ozai and this ideology need a bit more than "The Fire Nation's ideology is that they're superior, share the greatness and just kill people". We never see Ozai really talk about this ideology, how he is *civilising* the other nations (well, besides, setting them on fire). Why does he think Fire is superior? Why does the Fire Nation? We can speculate it's the unity of the Fire Nation and its industrialisation, that maybe the Fire Nation thinks they have better tea ceremonies and cleaner cities, but none of the Fire Nation characters really talk about this. Sharing their 'greatness', how?

And, of course, we know and the show know their 'greatness' is a lie and farce really, but for their citizens to buy into this farce realistically for 100 years, sending sons and even daughters to die for it, presumably working in factories endless hours to keep up war production like that giant drill, one would think the smokescreen would be a little more convincing than a couple lines. Yes, in the Headband, they show the kids are taught a warped version history with the Air Nomad army, but what is the unifying ideology of the Fire Nation exactly? And how does this reflect Ozai? Beyond ruthlessness and being a smarmy jerk?

And this brings me to a scene I have quite a problem with. The War Meeting flashback in Sozin's Comet Part 1, essentially Ozai just goes from 'How do we quell rebellion?' to 'We will destroy their hope by killing them all with fire'. Hehe, well, I mean, why even talk about "destroying hope" when they'll be too dead to despair? Of course, Sokka says after hearing that literally "I always knew the Fire Lord was a bad guy, but his plan is just pure evil". Then they throw in an Ozai baby picture to pretend they have some nuance, and then blah, blah, Energybending turtle appears out of near nowhere.

A Better Ozai

(I want it noted how hard it was to get a decent gif of cartoon Ozai, especially in his Pheonix King regalia. That is how little people care about or are interested in him. There is more Daniel Dae Kim gifs from the live-action than the cartoon version)

The funny thing is Ozai burning the Earth Kingdom could have worked if they actually gave him character arc in the cartoon. Have Ozai start out believing he can civilise the Earth Kingdom, who he views as inferior and needing to be kept in check. We see in the show Earthbending is banned in Fire Nation colonies and annexed territory, but they should also show him introducing policies to ban certain styles of Earth Kingdom dress, specifically their green national colour dress, and customs, forcibly *civilising* these territory with authoritarian laws. Earth Kingdom children have to go to Fire Nation school to be indoctrinated in how their cultures and homes are inferior, and told to report on their parents.

However, as time goes on, Ozai becomes increasingly disenfranchised with the war, as colonised Earth Kingdom citizens continue to resist, Earthbend and continue banned cultural practices in secret. He feels rising disgust at these people's Earthbender stubbornness and 'backwards' practices, resisting engaging in and conforming to Fire Nation's 'superior' cultural practices, science, and education. How dirty they are, so unFire-Nation, he thinks more and more. He begins to unravel in his hate and think to himself things like how "You just can't take the root edge out of people, so I should burn the root to the ground. Make the world clean, pure and Fire Nation".

If they showed Ozai in the cartoon shifting from the standard position of his father Azulon to an even more extreme and horrifying position over time, reacting in all the worst ways to whatever the world throws at him increasingly and increasingly, his turn as the Pheonix King could have been far more chilling. Azula isn't the only one who has to go "crazy" due to the Fire Nation's twisted teachings. It would have further emphasised the cycle of toxicity in the Fire Nation that Sozin set in motion.

Imperialism and fascism is often driven by a number of things in conjunction, commonly economics, but also vain pride, fear and discomfort; pride of your own nation at the expense of others, as well as fear and discomfort of others, how 'different' they are, their 'weird illogical customs' diluting the 'pure culture of yours' that you understand, their 'strange appearances' changing the face of the culture you know, that you like and think is the greatest and should be eternal. They could be spies, enemy agents of chaos and degeneration. They need to be 'civilised' or 'exterminated' to silence conflict and bring order, this 'dark horde' of backwards people who just can't ever be allowed to be 'in charge'. I think a weakness here is that Ozai is never shown to show any discomfort, he's just so confident and evil about everything, but if he were to reflect the dark face of the Fire Nation, a people they say aren't wholly evil demons, he does a bad job showing the twisted human face of evil and it makes him irrelevant in a way as a character with the themes other than "Defeat evil guy".

Lessons Taught Improperly

Now some would try to defend Ozai in that Avatar: The Last Airbender is a kid's cartoon, but I would say that makes it more important when discussing real-life issues. What is the point of lesson if it is taught improperly? Sometimes that can do more harm than good.

Avatar includes a number of mature themes, including the genocide of Aang's entire people and Gyatso's skeleton. Judging by the Tibetan influences in Air Nomad culture, a real-life people who have also been genocided, I think it is necessary and good practice for even kid's shows to make sure the lessons on real-life evils like the concepts and systems of imperialism, colonialism and nationalism are taught well. Because otherwise you get an inaccurate picture of what it is and how it actually works, and what is the point of that?

Stories want to impart lessons on things being "bad" as a message, but often I think they fall short in getting to the point of why they happen. I wonder if that makes them a little pointless in a way, because the reasons why characters/people and nations do things is both important to good writing and real life. If you aren't taught it properly, how well can you recognise it in your own country? And if you can't, then hasn't the lesson failed to be imparted?

[70s80sandbeyond]

Tea with Mussolini (1999)

An orphaned Italian boy is raised amongst a circle of British and American women living in Mussolini's Italy before and during World War II.

[strangersunghoon]

Favorite actors and actresses part 3

Watched ✅

Haven’t watched yet ❌

FAVES ❤️‍🔥

Jennifer Lawrence

•15 august 1990 (Indian Hills)

•🇺🇸

Movies

Company town (2006) : Caitlin ❌

Not another high School show (2007) : panic girl ❌

Garden party (2008) : Tiff ❌

The poker house (2008) : Agnes❌

The burning plain (2008) : Mariana ❌

Winters bone (2010) : Ree❌

Like crazy (2011) : Sam❌

The beaver (2011) : Norah❌

X-men first class (2011) : raven Darkhölme/mystique ❌

The hunger games (2012) : Katniss ✅❤️‍🔥

Silver linings playbook (2012) : Tiffany❌

House at the end of the street (2012) : Elissa❌

The devil you know (2013) : Young Zoe

The hunger games : Catching fire (2013) : Katniss ✅❤️‍🔥

American hustle (2013) : Rosalyn❌

X-men days of future past (2014) : Raven Darkhölme/Mystique❌

Serena (2014) : Serena ❌

The hunger games mockingjay part 1 (2014) : Katniss ✅❤️‍🔥

The hunger games mockingjay part 2 (2015) : Katniss ✅❤️‍🔥

Joy (2015) : Joy ❌

X-men : Apocalypse (2016) : Raven Darkhölme/mystique ❌

Passengers (2016) : Aurora ✅

Mother! (2016) : Mother❌

Red sparrow (2018) : Dominika❌

X-men : Dark Phoenix (2019) : Raven Darkhölme/mystique ❌

Don’t look up (2021) : Kate✅

Shows

Monk (2006) : Mascot ❌

Cold case (2007) : Abby ❌

The bill engvall show (2007-2009) : Lauren❌

Medium (2007) : Claire ❌

Medium (2008) : Young Allison ❌

Maggie Smith

•28 december 1934 (Ilford)

•🇬🇧

Movies

Child in the house (1956) : Party woman ❌

Nowhere to go (1958) : Bridget ❌

Hay fever (1960) ❌

Go to blazes (1962) : Chantal❌

The vips (1963) : Miss Mead ❌

The pumkin eater (1964) : Philpott❌

Young Cassidy (1965) : Nora❌

Othello (1965) : desdemona❌

Much Ado about nothing (1967) : Beatrice❌

The honey pot (1967) : Sarah❌

Man & Superman (1968) ❌

Hot millions (1968) : Patty❌

The seagull (1968) : Irina❌

The prime of miss Jean Brodie (1969) : Jean❌

Oh! What a lovely war (1969) : Music hall star❌

The merchant of Venice (1972) : Portia❌

The millionaires (1972)❌

Travels with my aunt (1972) : aunt Augusta❌

Love and pain and the whole damn thing (1973) : Lila❌

Murder by death (1976) : Miss Dora❌

Death on the Nile (1978) : Miss bowers❌

California suite (1978) : Diana❌

Quartet (1981) : Lois❌

Clash of The titans (1981) : Thetis❌

Better late than never (1982) : Miss Anderson❌

Evil under the sun (1982) : Daphne❌

The missionary (1982) : Lady Isabel❌

Lily in love (1984) : Lily❌

A private function (1984) : Joyce❌

A room with a view (1985) : Charlotte❌

The lonely passion of Judith hearne (1987) : Judith❌

Romeo-Juliet (1990) : Rozaline (voice)❌

Hook (1991) : grown up Wendy ❌

Memento mori (1992) : mrs Mabel❌

Sister act (1992) ❌

Suddenly, last summer (1993) : Violet❌

The secret garden (1993) : mrs medlock❌

Sister act 2 (1993) ❌

Richard III (1995) ❌

The first wives club (1996) : Gunilla ❌

Washington square (1997) : Aunt Lavinia❌

Tea with Mussolini (1999) : Lady Hester❌

The last September (1999) : Lady Myra❌

Curtain call (1999) : Lily❌

All the kings men (1999) : Queen Alexandra❌

David copperfield (1999) : Betsey❌

Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone (2001) : Professor Mcgonagall✅

Gosford park (2001) : Constance❌

Divine secrets of the Ya Ya sisterhood (2002) : Caro❌

Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets (2002) : Professor Mcgonagall✅

My house in Umbria (2003) : mrs Emily❌

Harry Potter and the prisoner of Azkaban (2004) : Professor Mcgonagall ✅

Ladies in lavender (2004) : Janet❌

Harry Potter and the goblet of Fire (2005) : Professor Mcgonagall ✅❤️‍🔥

Keeping mum (2005) : Grace❌

Becoming Jane (2007) : Lady Gresham❌

Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix (2007) : Professor Mcgonagall ✅❤️‍🔥

Capturing Mary (2007) : Mary❌

Harry Potter and the half blood prince (2009) : Professor Mcgonagall ✅❤️‍🔥

From time to time (2009) : Linett❌

Harry Potter and the deathly hallows part 1 (2010) : Professor Mcgonagall ✅

Nanny McPhee 2 (2010) : Mrs Docherty✅

Harry Potter and the deathly hallows part 2 (2011) : Professor Mcgonagall ✅❤️‍🔥

The best exotic marigold hotel (2012) : Muriel❌

Quartet (2012) : Jean❌

My old lady (2014) : Mathilde ❌

The second best marigold hotel (2015) : Muriel❌

The lady In the van (2015) : Miss Mary❌

Downtown Abbey (2019) : Dowager countess ❌

Downtown abbey a new era (2022) : Dowager countess ❌

Shows

All for love (1983) : mrs Silly❌

Talking heads (1987) : Susan❌

Downtown Abbey (2010-2015) : Dowager Countess❌

Colin Firth

•10 september 1960 (Grayshott)

•🇬🇧

Movies

Another country (1984) : Tommy❌

Camille (1984) : Armand❌

Dutch girls (1985) : Neil❌

1919 (1985) : young Alexander ❌

Tales from the Hollywood hills (1987) : Rene❌

A month in the country (1987) : Tom❌

The secret garden (1987) : Adult Colin❌

Apartment zero (1988) : Adrian❌

Tumbledown (1989) : Robert❌

Valmont (1989) : valmont❌

Wings of Fame (1990) : Brian❌

Femme fatale (1991) : Joseph ❌

Out of the blue (1991) : Alan❌

Mad at the moon (1992) : Barber❌

Hostages (1993) : John❌

The hour of the pig (1993) : Richard ❌

The deep blue sea (1994) : Freddie❌

Playmaker (1994) : Ross/Michael❌

master of the moor (1994) : Stephen❌

The windowing of mrs holroyd (1995) : Charles❌

Circle of friends (1995) : Simon ❌

Pride and prejudice (1995) : Mr Fitzwilliam❌

The English patient (1996) : Geoffrey❌

Nostromo (1997) : Charles❌

Fever pitch (1997) : Paul❌

A thousand acres (1997) : Jess❌

Shakespeare in love (1998) : Lord Wessex❌

Donovan Quick (1999) : Donovan❌

My life so far (1999) : Edward ❌

The secret laughter of women (1999) : Matthew❌

Blackadder back & Forth (1999) : William Shakespeare ❌

The turn of the screw (1999) : the master ❌

Relative values (2000) : Peter❌

Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) : Mark✅❤️‍🔥

Conspiracy (2001) : Dr Wilhelm ❌

Londinium (2001) : Allen ❌

The importance of being earnest (2002) : Jack❌

Hope springs (2003) : Colin❌

What a girl wants (2003) : Henry❌

Girl with a pearl earring (2003) : Johannes Vermeer ❌

Love actually (2003) : Jamie✅

Trauma (2004) : Ben❌

Bridget jones: The edge of reasons (2004) : Mark✅❤️‍🔥

Where the truth lies (2005) : Vince❌

Nanny McPhee (2005) : Mr Brown✅❤️‍🔥

London (2006) : Mark❌

Celebration (2006) : Russell ❌

The meat trade (2006) ❌

Then she found me (2006) ❌

The colossus (2007) : Francis❌

And when did you last see your father? (2007) : Blake❌

Toyer (2007) : Toyer❌

The last legion (2007) : Aurelius❌

Mamma Mia! (2008) : Harry✅❤️‍🔥

The accidental husband (2008) : Richard❌

Genova (2008) : Joe❌

Easy virtue (2008) : Mr Whittaker❌

A single man (2009) : George❌

Dorian Gray (2009) : Lord Henry❌

A Christmas carol (2009) : Fred❌

The kings speech (2010) : King George VI✅

Main Street (2010) : Gus❌

Steve (2010) : Steve❌

Tinker tailor soldier spy (2011) : Bill❌

Gambit (2012) : Harry❌

The railway man (2013) : Eric❌

Magic in the moonlight (2014) : Stanley❌

Kingsman: the secret service (2014) : Galahad/Harry✅

Bridget Jones’s baby (2016) : Mark✅❤️‍🔥

Genius (2016) : Max ❌

Red Nose Day actually (2017) : Jamie✅

Kingsman : the golden circle (2017) : Galahad/Harry✅

The happy prince (2018) : Reggie❌

Mamma Mia! Here we go again (2018) : Harry✅❤️‍🔥

The mercy (2018) : Donald❌

Mary poppins returns (2018) : William ❌

Kursk (2018) : David❌

1917 (2019) : General Erinmore✅

Supernova (2019) : Sam❌

Operation mincemeat (2021) : Ewen❌

The staircase (2022) : Michael ❌

Shows

Lost empires (1986) : Richard ❌

Helena Bonham Carter

•26 May 1966 (London)

•🇬🇧

Movies

A room with a view (1985) : Lucy❌

Lady Jane (1986) : Lady Jane❌

Maurice (1987) : lady at cricket match❌

La Maschera (1988) : Iris❌

Francesco (1989) : Chiara❌

Getting it right (1989) : Lady Minerva❌

Hamlet (1990) : Ophelia❌

Where angels fear to tread (1991) : Caroline❌

Howard’s end (1992) : Helen ❌

Frankenstein (1994) : Elizabeth ❌

Mighty Aphrodite (1995) : Amanda❌

Margaret’s museum (1995) : Margaret❌

Twelfth night or what you will (1996) : Olivia❌

Portraits Chinois (1996) : Ada❌

The wings of the dove (1997) : Kat❌

Keep the aspidistra flying (1997) : Rosemary❌

The petticoat expeditions (1997) : Narrator❌

The revengers comedies (1998) : Karen❌

Merlin (1998) : Morgana❌

The theory of flight (1998) : Jane❌

Fight club (1999) : Marla❌

Women talking dirty (1999) : Cora❌

Planet of the apes (2001) : Ari✅

Novocaine (2001) : Susan❌

The heart of me (2002) : Dinah❌

Till human voices wake us (2002) : Ruby❌

Big fish (2003) : Jenny❌

Lemony Snicket’s a series of unfortunate events (2004) : Beatrice❌

Charlie and the chocolate factory (2005) : mrs Bucket✅❤️‍🔥

Conversations with other women (2005) : Woman❌

The curse of the were-rabbit (2005) : Lady Campanula (voice) ❌

Corpse bride (2005) : corpse bride (voice)❌

Sixty six (2006) : Esther❌

Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix (2007) : Bellatrix✅❤️‍🔥

Sweeney todd : The demon barber of Fleet Street (2007) : Mrs Lovett❌

Terminator salvation (2009) : dr Selena❌

Harry Potter and the half blood prince (2009) : Bellatrix✅❤️‍🔥

Alice in wonderland (2010) : red queen❌

The king’s speech (2010) : Elizabeth✅

Harry Potter and the deathly hallows part 1 (2010) : Bellatrix ✅

Harry Potter and the deathly hallows part 2 (2011) : Bellatrix✅

Dark shadows (2012) : Dr Julia❌

Great expectations (2012) : Miss Havisham❌

Les misérables (2012) : Madame Thénardier❌

The Lone Ranger (2013) : Red Harrington❌

The young & prodigious TS Spivet (2013) : dr Clair ❌

Cinderella (2015) : Fairy godmother✅

Suffragette (2015) : Edith❌

Alice through the looking glass (2016) : Iracebeth/Red queen❌

55 steps (2017) : Eleanor ❌

Ocean’s 8 (2018) : Rose❌

Enola Holmes (2020) : Eudoria✅

Enola Holmes 2 (2022) : Eudoria✅

Shows

Carnival (2000) : Milly (voice) ❌

The crowns (2019-2020) : Margaret ✅

Rebel Wilson

•2 March 1980 (Sydney)

•🇦🇺

Movies

Fat pizza (2003) : Toula ❌

Ghost rider (2007) : Girl in alley❌

Bargain! (2009) : Linda❌

Bridesmaids (2011) : Brynn✅

A few best man (2011) : Daphne ❌

Bachelorette (2012) : Becky ❌

Small apartments (2012) : Rocky❌

This means war (2012) : Guest appearance❌

Struck by lightning (2012) : Malerie❌

What to expect when you’re expecting (2012) : Janice❌

Ice age continental drift (2012) : Rae (voice)✅

Pitch perfect (2012) : Fat Amy✅

Pain & gain (2013) : Robin❌

Night at the museum : secret of the tomb (2014) : Tilly✅

Pitch perfect 2 (2015) : Fat Amy ✅

How to be single (2016) : Robin❌

Grimsby (2016) : Dawn ❌

Absolutely fabulous: the movie (2016)❌

Pitch perfect 3 (2017) : Fat Amy✅

The hustle (2019) : Penny❌

Cats (2019) : Jennyanydots❌

Isn’t it romantic (2019) : Natalie❌

Jojo rabbit (2019) : Fraulein Rahm✅

Senior Year (2022) : Stephanie✅

Shows

Pizza (2003-2007) : Toula ❌

Bogan pride (2008) : Jennie❌

Monster house (2008) : Penelope ❌

City homicide (2009) : Sarah❌

Rules of engagement (2010) : Sara❌

Super fun night (2013-2014) : Kimie❌

Olivia Colman

•30 January 1974 (Norwich)

•🇬🇧

Movies

The strategic humor initiative (2003) ❌

Terkel I knibe (2004) : Mother of Terkel ❌

Angell’s hell (2005) : Belinda❌

Zemanovaload (2005) : tv producer❌

Confetti (2006) : Joanna❌

Hot fuzz (2007) : Doris❌

The grey man (2007) : Linda❌

I could never be your woman (2007) : hairdresser❌

Grow your own (2007) : Alice❌

Hancock & Joan (2008) : Marion❌

Consuming passion (2008) : Janet/Violeta❌

Le Donk & scor-zay-zee (2009) : Olivia❌

Kari Gurashi no arietti (2010) : Homily❌

Tyrannosaurus (2011) : Hannah❌

Comic relief: uptown downstairs abbey (2011) : O’Brien❌

The Iron Lady (2011) : Carol❌

Hyde park on Hudson (2012) : Elizabeth ❌

Bad sugar (2012) : Joan❌

I give it a year (2013) : Linda✅

The suspicions of Mr Whicher : the murder in angel lane (2013) : Susan ❌

Locke (2013) : Bethan❌

The five(ish) doctors reboot (2013) : Herself❌

The thirteen tale (2013) : Margaret❌

The 7.39 (2014) : Maggie❌

Cuban Fury (2014) : Sam❌

Pudsey the dog (2014) : Nelly❌

Thomas & friends (2014) : Marion❌

The lobster (2015) : hotel manager ❌

London road (2015) : Julie❌

Thomas & friends (2015) : Marion❌

Thomas & friends (2016) : Marion❌

Murder on the orient express (2017) : Hildegarde❌

The favorite (2018) : Queen Anne❌

Them that follow (2019) : Hope❌

The father (2020) : Anne❌

The Mitchell’s vs the machines (2021) : Pal❌

Ron’s gone wrong (2021) : Donka❌

Mothering Sunday (2021) : Clarrie ❌

The lost daughter (2021) : Leda❌

The electrical life of Louis wain (2021) : Narrator ❌

Super worm (2021) : Narrator ❌

Joyride (2022) : Joy❌

Empire of light (2022) : Hillary❌

Shows

Bruiser (2000) ❌

The Mitchell & web situation (2001)❌

Gash (2003) ❌

Look around You (2005) : Pam❌

Green wing (2004-2006) : Harriet❌

The time of your life (2007) : Amanda❌

That Mitchell and web look (2006-2008) ❌

Mister eleven (2009) : Beth ❌

Beautiful people (2008-2009) : Debbie❌

Exile (2011) : Nancy❌

Twenty twelve (2011-2012) : Sally❌

Rev (2010-2014) : Alex❌

Mr sloane (2014) : Janet❌

The Great War : the people’s story (2014) : Narrator ❌

Peep show (2003-2015) : Sophie❌

The night manager (2016) : Angela❌

Flowers (2016) : Deborah❌

Thomas the tank engine & friends (2014-2016) : Marion✅

Broadchurch (2013-2017) : Ellie❌

Watership down (2018) : Strawberry❌

Les misérables (2018) : Madame Thenardier❌

Fleabag (2016-2019) : Stepmother ❌

The best of Thomas and friends (2020) : Marion❌

The crown (2019-2020) : Queen Elizabeth II✅❤️‍🔥

Landscapers (2021) : Susan❌

Heartstopper (2022) : Sarah✅❤️‍🔥

Roh Yoon Seo

•25 january 2000

•🇰🇷

Movies

20th century girl (2022) : Yeon Du✅

Shows

Our blues (2022) : Yeong Ju✅❤️‍🔥

Millie Bobby Brown

•19 February 2004 (Marbella)

•🇬🇧

Movies

Godzilla : king of the monsters (2019) : Madison❌

Enola Holmes (2020) : Enola✅❤️‍🔥

Godzilla vs Kong (2021) : Madison ❌

Enola Holmes 2 (2022) : Enola✅❤️‍🔥

Shows

Once upon a time in wonderland (2013) : young Alice ❌

Intruders (2014) : Madison❌

NCIS (2014) : Rachel❌

Modern Family (2015) : Lizzy✅❤️‍🔥

Grey’s Anatomy (2015) : Ruby✅

Stranger things (2016-current) : Eleven✅❤️‍🔥

Bae Hyun Sung

•3 May 1999

•🇰🇷

Movies

The divine fury (2019) : Hyun Sung❌

The most ordinary romance (2019) : Employee❌

Shows

What’s wrong with secretary Kim (2018) : intern staff❌

Love playlist (2018-2019) : Ha Neul✅❤️‍🔥

Extraordinary you (2019) : Joon Hyun❌

Hospital playlist (2020-2021) : Hong Do❌

Our blues (2022) : Jung Hyun✅❤️‍🔥

Dear m (2022) : Ha Neul❌

Gaus Electronics (2022) : Ma Tan❌

Madeleine Petsch

•18 august 1994 (Washington)

•🇺🇸/🇿🇦

Movies

The hive (2014) ❌

Instant mom (2015) : Mermaid ❌

The curse of sleeping beauty (2016) : Eliza❌

F the prom (2017) : Marissa❌

Polaroid (2019) : Sarah ❌

Sightless (2020) : Ellen✅

Shows

Riverdale (2017-current) : Cheryl✅❤️‍🔥

[fashionbyf]

What fashion makes the heritage cut? What Shoemaker of Dreams and even the Walter Albini relaunch indicates…

The Salvatore Ferragamo documentary Shoemaker of Dreams directed by Luca Guadagnino is finally available on AppleTV and, if you missed it in theaters or at other screenings in Italy since its first premieres in 2021, this is the time to watch it. Mix yourself an Aperol Spritz, imagine you’re at Procacci or Obika on Via Tornabuoni (unfortunately the former Anglo-American haunt featured in Tea with Mussolini, Doney’s, closed years ago…) and immerse yourself in the story of this Southern Italian immigrant to the United States who revolutionized shoes and shoe-making for Florentines and the wider world. Full of personal insights, the documentary also features Salvatore Ferragamo’s own voice taken from 1955 recordings of his Memoirs and interviews with Australian TV outlets in 1958. This is an especially moving part of the documentary because Salvatore Ferragamo’s voice, in some ways, perfectly encapsulates the context of the cultural moments in which he participated beyond fashion. Heritage, we might say, before heritage. These moments include Italians coming to the United States in the early 20th century with the requisite $20 entrance fee to create new lives and new identities for themselves, the beginnings of the movie industry in Santa Barbara in all its creativity and its decampment to Hollywood, and the determination of entrepreneurs to succeed against all odds and Florentine expectations, even in a complex early 20th century Italy facing economic sanctions.

But, even more than that, the documentary is a testament to one man’s vision of shoes, from how they should be made, to the creativity they can embody and the messages they can impart. And this vision, on display more than 100 years later, is perhaps the most striking thing about the documentary because the vision highlights how we can project the present into the future and extend a role to the past in our visions of the present. Speaking after the bankruptcy of his business in 1933, Ferragamo is quoted in the documentary

For the first time in my life, I started to look back over the shoulder of my past. As a flash, it all seemed to see many things which I had, until then, never seen before. I looked forward to my future.

Looking to our past, even as we craft our personal narratives, and spotting what matters and what doesn’t, and how to use that for the benefit of our present and our future, is a central question at the heart of heritage.

In fashion, a field defined by its timeliness (as Saviolo and Corbellini in particular describe it), spotting what will matter over time is an endeavor. But, as time passes, time acts almost as a sieve, filtering out what matters and what doesn’t, what is timeless and what is timely for present generations. The results of the application of time can be unexpected (would you have thought that thinly rectangular sunglasses, low rise pants and other silhouettes from the late nineties and early noughties would be back in fashion?). The results can also be unexpected but somewhat pre-identifiable, driven by marketing, important brand anniversaries, and brand mythmaking as much as by nostalgia and/or individual and collective tastes (Exhibit A: the resurgence of the Fendi Baguette bag). Designers often play an important role in the curation of the past, as Maximilian Davis is doing at Ferragamo now- citing to Ferragamo’s gold sandal and building on the F heel, among other design details.

The pull between the past and the present, what we might term a battle for the future of fashion- heritage- also depends on the law. And this is also on display in Shoemaker of Dreams. One of the primary pieces of evidence shown during the documentary as a testament to Ferragamo’s vision are the multitude of patents he had on the procedures for his shoe designs, the processes to make them, and their look (the Ferragamo Museum also staged an insightful exhibit on these patents in 2004).  What we can take from the past and what we can re-use often depends on whether someone has a right to control a production, the use of a design, its reproduction and even the associations we make and have with that design. Some of the most insightful of Ferragamo’s creations (many reproduced ingeniously as part of the Ferragamo’s Creations line) are the fruit of others’ control of raw materials (or lack thereof), his own patents which reserved control over specific parts to Ferragamo himself for a time, the matching of tradition and innovation, and the inspiration that came from themes, recalling, and remembering.  While the documentary uses the Invisible Sandal (one of the most evocative examples I’ve explored extensively in other work) and the caged heel, the facts surrounding Ferragamo’s wedge made with cork are particularly evocative of the numerous threads that make up the design of one of his shoes. In his Memoirs, Ferragamo details how, after designing them years before, he discovered that a version of wedge soles had been worn centuries before thanks to an archeological excavation at Villa di Boccaccio outside Florence in 1950. As Ferragamo shares in another part of the documentary

I have not followed any master. I have not followed any school. Where have I learned all that I know? I had a clear vision that my work had never been done before. I have done it. Where? I do not know. But everything that I have done since my boyhood time, it has been work which came back to me. All I have to do while I work is to sit down and recall what I know about this work and do it again.

Knowing what fashion heritage is years later, what heritage makes the cut, is often a product of vision and, as Ferragamo’s work shows, of the tools and instruments that support that vision, from patents to trademarks, and even a robust public domain and other doctrines that allow for re-mixing, re-use, and commentary. As time goes on, curation and preservation, saving the vision and the tools and instruments that support that vision, are also central to identifying what is fashion heritage and how it can impact our fashion today. This is why archives themselves are also important for making the heritage cut.

And the acquiring of rights and archives to support a contemporary vision is what we see happening today with the revival of heritage brands, like that of the incredibly prescient Walter Albini, who, as a designer, preceded Giorgio Armani in his impact on Italian ready-to-wear and the concept of Milanese fashion. The announcement of the revival of the Walter Albini brand noted that the investment company that is relaunching it acquired the designer’s “intellectual property and archives”, including the acquisition of a large tangible archive of “garments, costume jewellery, drawings, photographs, and other memorabilia” from Dr. Barbara Curti, who is listed as Chief Memory Officer of the Walter Albini Archive. While we will have to see what the vision for a 21st century Walter Albini line is, the acquisition of the previous brand’s intellectual property and archives are fundamental first steps to identifying what fashion heritage has made the cut for our present times.

References and Further Readings

https://www.lofficielusa.com/fashion/gen-z-y2k-millennial-90s-fashion-nostalgia

https://tv.apple.com/ca/movie/salvatore-ferragamo-the-shoemaker-of-dreams/umc.cmc.13bohnm0ogsk0g6wdwlftjqud

https://www.wsj.com/articles/its-happening-again-the-return-of-low-rise-jeans-d8efc3f0

The Shoemaker of Dreams by Salvatore Ferragamo (in the Italian version, pages 131-35 for the story of the cork wedge)

https://academic.oup.com/jiplp/article/17/11/891/6852707

https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/spring-2023-ready-to-wear/salvatore-ferragamo

https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/fall-2023-ready-to-wear/salvatore-ferragamo

https://artsandculture.google.com/story/UQWRSqxpWZsfIg?hl=it

https://cardozoaelj.com/fashions-brand-heritage-cultural-heritage-and-the-piracy-paradox/

https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles/222/

https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/luxury/walter-albini-relaunch-confirmed/

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/09/24/the-piracy-paradox

https://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-97-number-2/memes-on-memes-and-the-new-creativity/

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/history-of-intellectual-property-in-50-objects/0737F2B342A61E0E90B0A98288E412C3

https://www.skira.net/books/le-leggi-della-moda/

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/paris-capital-of-fashion-9781350102965/

https://www.unesco.org/en/legal-affairs/convention-safeguarding-intangible-cultural-heritage

https://www.instagram.com/walteralbini_officialarchive/

https://scholarworks.uark.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=alr

https://scholarship.law.tamu.edu/facscholar/480/

Images from 

https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/fall-2023-ready-to-wear/salvatore-ferragamo/slideshow/details#77

https://www.vogue.com/fashion-shows/spring-2023-ready-to-wear/salvatore-ferragamo/slideshow/details#57

https://mostra1972.unipr.it/s/1972_mostra_en/page/designer_albini

https://www.ferragamo.com/creations/en/eur

[colin-ross]

I arrived in India earlier today, but really thought I should write something about Sri Lanka it’s history and also the Civil War.

Sri Lanka is beautiful and has amazing beaches, fantastic temples and the people are (generally) wonderful. It does however have a bit of a bloody history and the worst bits are really quite recent.

Sri Lanka is home to over 20 million people and has a long history. The two largest ethnic groups are Sinhalese (mainly Buddhist) and the Tamils (mainly Hindu). The Sinhalese make up 75% of the population and the Tamils around 15%, Wikipedia says there are also 9% Sri Lankan Moors.

Sri Lanka can trace back their history around 3,000 years, of course there will be a longer undocumented history and there is evidence of human settlements from 125,000 years ago.

The Sinhalese Kingdoms existed from at least 543 BCE until the British took over in 1815. There were other Kingdoms that coexisted at times including the Jaffna Kingdom 1215-1624 and the Vanni Chiefdoms from the 12th century to 1803 and, of course the Portuguese 1597-1658 and Dutch 1640-1796.

The location of Sri Lanka meant it was a huge prize to the Europeans who wanted to take advantage of the historic trading routes and ‘Maritime Silk Road’ for spices and of course tea!

I have previously touched on the Portuguese, Dutch and British rivalries in previous posts (mainly about forts). The Brits arrived in 1815 taking over the Dutch Forts and Ports.

The Sinhalese Kingdom shrunk during the time and the capital moved a number of times, I managed to visit most of the previous capitals including Anuradhapura and Kandy as well as Jaffna (capital of the Jaffna Kingdom) and Colombo (capital for the British and modern Sri Lanka until 1982).

In 1948 Sri Lanka, then Ceylon gained it’s Independence as a dominion and a Republic in 1972 (when the name change took place).

In 1982 a bloody Civil War between the (Sinhalese) Government and the Tamil Tigers (The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) started and lasted for 26 years ending in 2009.

There are always multiple versions of history and whilst in Sri Lankan I mainly heard that the Tamils were terrorists and all sorts of atrocities were laid at their door (some of which were quite clearly untrue) - and, of course, one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. Even the UN has been unable to ascertain the full facts (not that I have much time for the UN - but that’s a whole other Mussolini quote!)

What is not in doubt is some of the key facts that started the Civil War. The Government and Sinhalese persecuted the Tamil minority in a number of ways dating back a far as Independence where Sinhalese was recognised as the sole Official Language and the Ceylon Citizenship Act made around 700,000 stateless. There were attacks in 1956, 1958, 1977, the burning down of Jaffna Library in 1981. It was Black July Pogrom in 1983 and the Tamils responding by killing 13 Sri Lankan soldiers that started the actual Civil War.

None of this excuses the killing of innocent civilians (or indeed the armed forces) by the Tamil Tigers, who it is said invented suicide bombings with a number of attacks on religious worshippers over the years. It is believed over 100,000 people (on both sides) died during the Civil War and it is thought to include more than 40,000 civilians.

The Civil War raged for decades and there seems to be have been a number phases (Wikipedia has a good history) and was brought to an end in 2009 with the Government crushed the remaining Tamil Tigers.

One result of the Civil war ending is the north of the island is opening up again. Hopefully the increase in tourism will help provide funds to rebuild from both the Civil War and tsunami.

[heavenboy09]

Happy Belated Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 To You

The Legendary American Humorous Actress👩‍🦳, comedian, writer, singer, and producer of The 1960s, 70's, 80's, 90's and Today.

Born on September 1st, 1939

She is an American actress, comedian, writer, singer, and producer. Tomlin started her career in stand-up comedy and sketch comedy before transitioning her career to acting across stage and screen. In a career spanning over fifty years, Tomlin has received numerous accolades, including seven Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award, two Tony Awards, and a nomination for an Academy Award. She was also awarded the Kennedy Center Honor in 2014 and the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2017.

Tomlin started her career as a stand-up comedian as well as performing off-Broadway during the 1960s. Her breakout role was on the variety show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In from 1969 until 1973. Her signature role, which was written by her then partner (now wife) Jane Wagner, was in the show The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, which opened on Broadway in 1985 and earned Tomlin the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. She won Emmy Awards for the special Lily (1973) and received a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album for This Is a Recording (1972).

In 1975, Tomlin made her film debut with Robert Altman's Nashville, which earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In 1977, her performance as Margo Sperling in The Late Show won her the Silver Bear for Best Actress and nominations for the Golden Globe and BAFTA Award for Best Actress. Her other notable films include All of Me (1984), Big Business (1988), Flirting with Disaster (1996), Tea with Mussolini (1999), I Heart Huckabees (2004), A Prairie Home Companion (2006), and Grandma (2015).

Tomlin is known for her collaborations with Jane Fonda starring in the films 9 to 5 (1980), 80 for Brady (2023), and Moving On (2023). She also starred with Fonda on the Netflix series Grace and Frankie, which ran from 2015 to 2022. She earned four Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series nominations. From 2002 to 2006, she portrayed Deborah Fiderer on the Aaron Sorkin series The West Wing. She also voiced Ms. Frizzle for the children's animated series The Magic School Bus (1994–1997) and The Magic School Bus Rides Again (2017–2020).

Please Wish This Incredible Legendary American Humorous Actress, comedian, writer, singer, and producer of The 1960s, 70's, 80's, 90's and Today.

A Very Happy Belated Birthday 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊

YOU KNOW HER. OR AT LEAST THE OLDER GENERATION DOES.

SHE HAS MADE YOU LAUGH, TIME AND TIME AGAIN.

AND YOU CANT HELP BUT LOVE HER ONSCREEN PERFORMANCES & LONG LASTING FRIENDSHIP WITH THE LEGENDARY JANE FONDA

THE 1 & ONLY

MS. MARY JEAN LILY TOMLIN AKA LILY TOMLIN 👩‍🦳

HAPPY BELATED 85TH BIRTHDAY 🎂 🥳 🎉 🎈 🎁 🎊 TO YOU MS. TOMLIN & HERES TO MANY MORE YEARS TO COME

#LilyTomlin

[ilearhmajeste]

Rule number one Mussolini rose from the grave, raped a tree and a marsh. And made it easy to get into 'the buildingthe Vatican front steps backstop windows. They don't have rights they have pillow fights

So there was an announcement like there's going to be an earth quake.

Beep beep boop didididbangarang justsittinproperFocusAsifWarren Clinton's like so lama says I lama feel bad that I am

Click makes blue milk.so she goes in deep. Woman's education

What's stamped on tombstone so either she's saying I have zero info to go off or she needs a date

That's no escape, right. I lost my contact it's see through probably on the ground. Would you A un

Nesbit it's Ben with ctv newsbAng

Coo

V

Errrrrrrrtrrr

Whena pipsKweek says dmv barn

You. Probably should just say brown. Not hose. Slender and bodacious baby's. Brown can be land speed

What people want by common Christian cnn cog opposit

Yes Chris they do actually want magic the gathering what they don't want I'd tk give Josh holly a blow job in outdoor wedding zone because they're not ending the strike

I am mumbled-сh like Aug wa?

Chris is like okfuck that can't wait, he said merism patient was the queen of Italy I have it all set for Windsor Windsor bridge Windsor Ontario. What the hell is a wop?

He was there

Waiting

Up a head

Sounds fun

Hell ya sounds like he said double Christmas

What's antarctica

Anda one Two Days the approach vector of hey we're dreaming with gears

Mystery Sub unloads 500 000 frogs or whatever

It just came up with the surf

Check for intelligence

Bang bang

We got coppeffillinc we got a few shooting back

Bacon?

Back

No the so black they got the blue halo

Theyfound Gibraltar

Omg you guys sound so dumb lol

Woah is someoneVacuum

Fuck people. Do you know anyone who works at the Vatican, it's the goddam dreadnaufjt

Exzumer

Captain handed me deconstro Porte LA Mains Croq

Are they modeling those you can't pull that off

It's a completely automated system. Run by a competitor. Some street tough wa.na break in and rub one out on poppys dress might aswell post them somewhere

See her he worked at Bloomberg

That's television to my teeth

Are you looking for any antique furniture? All day at this address.

So just so that we are all clear. CNN broadcast projector data, not TV CNN as scenery gratuity. Holographic manager required

NOT FOR LCD you wuss. Well couch surf.ed up to Latvian Orthodox hell yeah I can transfer next year

Ach tea tea

Thanks Rebecca

This is rich a new witness, probably me. Wasn't there, too past .y bed time let's lookipa priest loose to pills and nana

No that's how the Vatican deals with murder.

Gets up

Points

What's this.

Eventually your problem

The gulf spill was three times as worse so maybe Palmolive.

Good News tidings does want to inform the general public that no it was not Sailor Palin, it was a bunch of hot chicks

How hot?

[musingsofanapprectice]

Her name means "burning one", and just like the seraphs she is named after, she burns with a passion that fuels her intense love of things and the people she's surrounded herself with. The first day I met her in the flesh I brought her a cupcake and she ate it so gently but so eager, telling me how good it was and how the texture reminded her of pancakes, how the cinnamon-sugar had melted in the oven and now tasted like maple syrup, how the sponge tasted almost savory, how the flavor of the cake overwhelmed the espresso buttercream. It felt so vulnerable, like just as tore my cupcake apart, I too felt the intensity of her brain prying me apart crumb by crumb. No one else had done that for me. She then, as promised, gave me a thorough introduction to Jungian psychoanalytics, dualism, stoner monkey evolution theory, and I'm sure more I've forgotten. It hurt to peel my eyes away from her so I could absorb her words. She is beautiful. Her eyes are brown, and some may say this is the most boring of eye colors. I disagree. There is something ancient in her eyes, a creature that Knows Things. Sees Things. Hears Things. They are brown, but at 2pm in the Southeast, during the beginnings of summer, they glow red. Red like a glass of sweet tea on the porch, like a fine burgundy fabric, something like cashmere. She is so intense, but soft like cashmere, too. Insists on doing dishes when in my home, and after us wrestling over the sink, we settled into teamwork. I knew where she needed to put things, would open the cabinets for her, dry the dishes she washed. She asked for a vase to put flowers in for the table. When was the last time I had thought about putting flowers on the table? She went outside and returned with Hemerocallis fulva, orange daylilies that were growing near the fence. She initiates trust falls without warning, at random, and I catch her every time. She lifts herself into my arms and I am holding her now. I sit with her in my arms, on the couch. We stay like this, getting more comfortable but still she is in my lap, held in my arms. She is much like a cat in this way. Yesterday she discussed a series of essays she is writing. An alternative version of history in which Mussolini, madman that he was, posed a more serious threat during WW2. He creates New Rome, has America so dependent on Italian goods that when Italy is nuked by Russia (in retaliation for leveling Greece) and then disappears from the globe, the people overthrow the government and found New Romerica. There is magic system involved that comes into play due to the radiation, as well as fungal consciousness. I learned she doesn't like bell peppers. She looks through my notes app, good. Being vulnerable is so scary but it is a choice with her, as much as she tries to make it look like it isn't. She looks through my photos and I can't scrounge up the energy to be mortified. The filth she sees is looked at with more fascination than anything, and she says it is just fuel for her to joke with me about later. She shows me one of her group chats and later says she can't leave me now. I have seen too much, and leaving me would mean I could tell others what I saw. She does not lie to me. It is an Expectation. There is only friendship, but to be friends with her is divine. To be anywhere near the warmth of her, near her piercing gaze that leaves me at a loss, to listen to her Words.

[chers-cheekbones]

Cher as Elsa Morganthal in Tea with Mussolini with the English ladies borrowing all of her clothes for the party!!

[judi-daily]

Tea With Mussolini, 1999 with Cher Royal Premiere Photographer: Michael Stephens

[hellsitesonlybookclub]

It Can't Happen Here, Sinclair Lewis

Chapter 23-24

CHAPTER XXIII

DOREMUS was nervous. The Minute Men had come, not with Shad but with Emil and a strange battalion-leader from Hanover, to examine the private letters in his study. They were polite enough, but alarmingly thorough. Then he knew, from the disorder in his desk at the Informer, that someone had gone over his papers there. Emil avoided him at the office. Doremus was called to Shad's office and gruffly questioned about correspondence which some denouncer had reported his having with the agents of Walt Trowbridge.

So Doremus was nervous. So Doremus was certain that his time for going to concentration camp was coming. He glanced back at every stranger who seemed to be following him on the street. The fruitman, Tony Mogliani, flowery advocate of Windrip, of Mussolini, and of tobacco quid as a cure for cuts and burns, asked him too many questions about his plans for the time when he should "get through on the paper"; and once a tramp tried to quiz Mrs. Candy, meantime peering at the pantry shelves, perhaps to see if there was any sign of their being understocked, as if for closing the house and fleeing.... But perhaps the tramp really was a tramp.

In the office, in mid-afternoon, Doremus had a telephone call from that scholar-farmer, Buck Titus:

"Going to be home this evening, about nine? Good! Got to see you. Important! Say, see if you can have all your family and Linda Pike and young Falck there, too, will you? Got an idea. Important!"

As important ideas, just now, usually concerned being imprisoned, Doremus and his women waited jumpily. Lorinda came in twittering, for the sight of Emma always did make her twitter a little, and in Lorinda there was no relief. Julian came in shyly, and there was no relief in Julian. Mrs. Candy brought in unsolicited tea with a dash of rum, and in her was some relief, but it was all a dullness of fidgety waiting till Buck slammed in, ten minutes late and very snowy.

"Sorkeepwaiting but I've been telephoning. Here's some news you won't have even in the office yet, Dormouse. The forest fire's getting nearer. This afternoon they arrested the editor of the Rutland Herald—no charge laid against him yet—no publicity—I got it from a commission merchant I deal with in Rutland. You're next, Doremus. I reckon they've just been laying off you till Staubmeyer picked your brains. Or maybe Ledue has some nice idea about torturing you by keeping you waiting. Anyway, you've got to get out. And tomorrow! To Canada! To stay! By automobile. No can do by plane any more—Canadian government's stopped that. You and Emma and Mary and Dave and Sis and the whole damn shooting-match— and maybe Foolish and Mrs. Candy and the canary!"

"Couldn't possibly! Take me weeks to realize on what investments I've got. Guess I could raise twenty thousand, but it'd take weeks."

"Sign 'em over to me, if you trust me—and you better! I can cash in everything better than you can—stand in with the Corpos better— been selling 'em horses and they think I'm the kind of loud-mouthed walking gent that will join 'em! I've got fifteen hundred Canadian dollars for you right here in my pocket, for a starter."

"We'd never get across the border. The M.M.'s are watching every inch, just looking for suspects like me."

"I've got a Canadian driver's license, and Canadian registration plates ready to put on my car—we'll take mine—less suspicious. I can look like a real farmer—that's because I am one, I guess—I'm going to drive you all, by the way. I got the plates smuggled in underneath the bottles in a case of ale! So we're all set, and we'll start tomorrow night, if the weather isn't too clear—hope there'll be snow."

"But Buck! Good Lord! I'm not going to flee. I'm not guilty of anything. I haven't anything to flee for!"

"Just your life, my boy, just your life!"

"I'm not afraid of 'em."

"Oh yes you are!"

"Oh—well—if you look at it that way, probably I am! But I'm not going to let a bunch of lunatics and gunmen drive me out of the country that I and my ancestors made!"

Emma choked with the effort to think of something convincing; Mary seemed without tears to be weeping; Sissy squeaked; Julian and Lorinda started to speak and interrupted each other; and it was the uninvited Mrs. Candy who, from the doorway, led off: "Now isn't that like a man! Stubborn as mules. All of 'em. Every one. And show-offs, the whole lot of 'em. Course you just wouldn't stop and think how your womenfolks will feel if you get took off and shot! You just stand in front of the locomotive and claim that because you were on the section gang that built the track, you got more right there than the engine has, and then when it's gone over you and gone away, you expect us all to think what a hero you were! Well, maybe some call it being a hero, but—"

"Well, confound it all, all of you picking on me and trying to get me all mixed up and not carry out my duty to the State as I see it—"

"You're over sixty, Doremus. Maybe a lot of us can do our duty better now from Canada than we can here—like Walt Trowbridge," besought Lorinda. Emma looked at her friend Lorinda with no particular affection.

"But to let the Corpos steal the country and nobody protest! No!"

"That's the kind of argument that sent a few million out to die, to make the world safe for democracy and a cinch for Fascism!" scoffed Buck.

"Dad! Come with us. Because we can't go without you. And I'm getting scared here." Sissy sounded scared, too; Sissy the unconquerable. "This afternoon Shad stopped me on the street and wanted me to go out with him. He tickled my chin, the little darling! But honestly, the way he smirked, as if he was so sure of me—I got scared!"

"I'll get a shotgun and—" "Why, I'll kill the dirty—" "Wait'll I get my hands on—" cried Doremus, Julian, and Buck, all together, and glared at one another, then looked sheepish as Foolish barked at the racket, and Mrs. Candy, leaning like a frozen codfish against the door jamb, snorted, "Some more locomotive-batters!"

Doremus laughed. For one only time in his life he showed genius, for he consented: "All right. We'll go. But just imagine that I'm a man of strong will power and I'm taking all night to be convinced. We'll start tomorrow night." What he did not say was that he planned, the moment he had his family safe in Canada, with money in the bank and perhaps a job to amuse Sissy, to run away from them and come back to his proper fight. He would at least kill Shad before he got killed himself.

It was only a week before Christmas, a holiday always greeted with good cheer and quantities of colored ribbons in the Jessup household; and that wild day of preparing for flight had a queer Christmas joyfulness. To dodge suspicion, Doremus spent most of the time at the office, and a hundred times it seemed that Staubmeyer was glancing at him with just the ruler-threatening hidden ire he had used on whisperers and like young criminals in school. But he took off two hours at lunch time, and he went home early in the afternoon, and his long depression was gone in the prospect of Canada and freedom, in an excited inspection of clothes that was like preparation for a fishing trip. They worked upstairs, behind drawn blinds, feeling like spies in an E. Phillips Oppenheim story, beleagured in the dark and stone-floored ducal bedroom of an ancient inn just beyond Grasse. Downstairs, Mrs. Candy was pretentiously busy looking normal—after their flight, she and the canary were to remain and she was to be surprised when the M.M.'s reported that the Jessups seemed to have escaped.

Doremus had drawn five hundred from each of the local banks, late that afternoon, telling them that he was thinking of taking an option on an apple orchard. He was too well-trained a domestic animal to be raucously amused, but he could not help observing that while he himself was taking on the flight to Egypt only all the money he could get hold of, plus cigarettes, six handkerchiefs, two extra pairs of socks, a comb, a toothbrush, and the first volume of Spengler's Decline of the West—decidedly it was not his favorite book, but one he had been trying to make himself read for years, on train journeys—while, in fact, he took nothing that he could not stuff into his overcoat pockets, Sissy apparently had need of all her newest lingerie and of a large framed picture of Julian, Emma of a kodak album showing the three children from the ages of one to twenty, David of his new model aeroplane, and Mary of her still, dark hatred that was heavier to carry than many chests.

Julian and Lorinda were there to help them; Julian off in corners with Sissy.

With Lorinda, Doremus had but one free moment... in the old-fashioned guest-bathroom.

"Linda. Oh, Lord!"

"We'll come through! In Canada you'll have time to catch your breath. Join Trowbridge!"

"Yes, but to leave you—I'd hoped somehow, by some miracle, you and I could have maybe a month together, say in Monterey or Venice or the Yellowstone. I hate it when life doesn't seem to stick together and get somewhere and have some plan and meaning."

"It's had meaning! No dictator can completely smother us now! Come!"

"Good-bye, my Linda!"

Not even now did he alarm her by confessing that he planned to come back, into danger.

Embracing beside an aged tin-lined bathtub with woodwork painted a dreary brown, in a room which smelled slightly of gas from an old hot-water heater—embracing in sunset-colored mist upon a mountain top.

Darkness, edged wind, wickedly deliberate snow, and in it Buck Titus boisterously cheerful in his veteran Nash, looking as farmer-like as he could, in sealskin cap with rubbed bare patches and an atrocious dogskin overcoat. Doremus thought of him again as a Captain Charles King cavalryman chasing the Sioux across blizzard-blinded prairies.

They packed alarmingly into the car; Mary beside Buck, the driver; in the back, Doremus between Emma and Sissy; on the floor, David and Foolish and the toy aeroplane indistinguishably curled up together beneath a robe. Trunk rack and front fenders were heaped with tarpaulin-covered suitcases.

"Lord, I wish I were going!" moaned Julian. "Look! Sis! Grand spy-story idea! But I mean seriously: Send souvenir postcards to my granddad—views of churches and so on—just sign 'em 'Jane'—and whatever you say about the church, I'll know you really mean it about you and—Oh, damn all mystery! I want you, Sissy!"

Mrs. Candy whisked a bundle in among the already intolerable mess of baggage which promised to descend on Doremus's knees and David's head, and she snapped, "Well, if you folks must go flyin' around the country—It's a cocoanut layer cake." Savagely: "Soon's you get around the corner, throw the fool thing in the ditch if you want to!" She fled sobbing into the kitchen, where Lorinda stood in the lighted doorway, silent, her trembling hands out to them.

The car was already lurching in the snow before they had sneaked through Fort Beulah by shadowy back-streets and started streaking northward.

Sissy sang out cheerily, "Well, Christmas in Canada! Skittles and beer and lots of holly!"

"Oh, do they have Santa Claus in Canada?" came David's voice, wondering, childish, slightly muffled by lap robe and the furry ears of Foolish.

"Of course they do, dearie!" Emma reassured him and, to the grown-ups, "Now wasn't that the cutest thing!"

To Doremus, Sissy whispered, "Darn well ought to be cute. Took me ten minutes to teach him to say it, this afternoon! Hold my hand. I hope Buck knows how to drive!"

Buck Titus knew every back-road from Fort Beulah to the border, preferably in filthy weather, like tonight. Beyond Trianon he pulled the car up deep-rutted roads, on which you would have to back if you were to pass anyone. Up grades on which the car knocked and panted, into lonely hills, by a zigzag of roads, they jerked toward Canada. Wet snow sheathed the windshield, then froze, and Buck had to drive with his head thrust out through the open window, and the blast came in and circled round their stiff necks.

Doremus could see nothing save the back of Buck's twisted, taut neck, and the icy windshield, most of the time. Just now and then a light far below the level of the road indicated that they were sliding along a shelf road, and if they skidded off, they would keep going a hundred feet, two hundred feet, downward—probably turning over and over. Once they did skid, and while they panted in an eternity of four seconds, Buck yanked the car up a bank beside the road, down to the left again, and finally straight— speeding on as if nothing had happened, while Doremus felt feeble in the knees.

For a long while he kept going rigid with fear, but he sank into misery, too cold and deaf to feel anything except a slow desire to vomit as the car lurched. Probably he slept—at least, he awakened, and awakened to a sensation of pushing the car anxiously up hill, as she bucked and stuttered in the effort to make a slippery rise. Suppose the engine died—suppose the brakes would not hold and they slid back downhill, reeling, bursting off the road and down—A great many suppositions tortured him, hour by hour.

Then he tried being awake and bright and helpful. He noticed that the ice-lined windshield, illuminated from the light on the snow ahead, was a sheet of diamonds. He noticed it, but he couldn't get himself to think much of diamonds, even in sheets.

He tried conversation.

"Cheer up. Breakfast at dawn—across the border!" he tried on Sissy.

"Breakfast!" she said bitterly.

And they crunched on, in that moving coffin with only the sheet of diamonds and Buck's silhouette alive in all the world.

After unnumbered hours the car reared and tumbled and reared again. The motor raced; its sound rose to an intolerable roaring; yet the car seemed not to be moving. The motor stopped abruptly. Buck cursed, popped his head back into the car like a turtle, and the starter ground long and whiningly. The motor again roared, again stopped. They could hear stiff branches rattling, hear Foolish moaning in sleep. The car was a storm-menaced cabin in the wilderness. The silence seemed waiting, as they were waiting.

"Strouble?" said Doremus.

"Stuck. No traction. Hit a drift of wet snow—drainage from a busted culvert, I sh' think. Hell! Have to get out and take a look."

Outside the car, as Doremus crept down from the slippery running-board, it was cold in a vicious wind. He was so stiff he could scarcely stand.

As people do, feeling important and advisory, Doremus looked at the drift with an electric torch, and Sissy looked at the drift with the torch, and Buck impatiently took the torch away from them and looked twice.

"Get some—" and "Brush would help," said Sissy and Buck together, while Doremus rubbed his chilly ears.

They three trotted back and forth with fragments of brush, laying it in front of the wheels, while Mary politely asked from within, "Can I help?" and no one seemed particularly to have answered her.

The headlights picked out an abandoned shack beside the road; an unpainted gray pine cabin with broken window glass and no door. Emma, sighing her way out of the car and stepping through the lumpy snow as delicately as a pacer at a horse show, said humbly, "That little house there—maybe I could go in and make some hot coffee on the alcohol stove—didn't have room for a thermos. Hot coffee, Dormouse?"

To Doremus she sounded, just now, not at all like a wife, but as sensible as Mrs. Candy.

When the car did kick its way up on the pathway of twigs and stand panting safely beyond the drift, they had, in the sheltered shack, coffee with slabs of Mrs. Candy's voluptuous cocoanut cake. Doremus pondered, "This is a nice place. I like this place. It doesn't bounce or skid. I don't want to leave this place."

He did. The secure immobility of the shack was behind them, dark miles behind, and they were again pitching and rolling and being sick and inescapably chilly. David was alternately crying and going back to sleep. Foolish woke up to cough inquiringly and returned to his dream of rabbiting. And Doremus was sleeping, his head swaying like a masthead in long rollers, his shoulder against Emma's, his hand warm about Sissy's, and his soul in nameless bliss.

He roused to a half-dawn filmy with snow. The car was standing in what seemed to be a crossroads hamlet, and Buck was examining a map by the light of the electric torch.

"Got anywhere yet?" Doremus whispered.

"Just a few miles to the border."

"Anybody stopped us?"

"Nope. Oh, we'll make it, all right, o' man."

Out of East Berkshire, Buck took not the main road to the border but an old wood lane so little used that the ruts were twin snakes. Though Doremus said nothing, the others felt his intensity, his anxiety that was like listening for an enemy in the dark. David sat up, the blue motor robe about him. Foolish started, snorted, looked offended but, catching the spirit of the moment, comfortingly laid a paw on Doremus's knee and insisted on shaking hands, over and over, as gravely as a Venetian senator or an undertaker.

They dropped into the dimness of a tree-walled hollow. A searchlight darted, and rested hotly on them, so dazzling them that Buck almost ran off the road.

"Confound it," he said gently. No one else said anything.

He crawled up to the light, which was mounted on a platform in front of a small shelter hut. Two Minute Men stood out in the road, dripping with radiance from the car. They were young and rural, but they had efficient repeating rifles.

"Where you headed for?" demanded the elder, good-naturedly enough.

"Montreal, where we live." Buck showed his Canadian license.... Gasoline motor and electric light, yet Doremus saw the frontier guard as a sentry in 1864, studying a pass by lantern light, beside a farm wagon in which hid General Joe Johnston's spies disguised as plantation hands.

"I guess it's all right. Seems in order. But we've had some trouble with refugees. You'll have to wait till the Battalion-Leader comes—maybe 'long about noon."

"But good Lord, Inspector, we can't do that! My mother's awful sick, in Montreal."

"Yuh, I've heard that one before! And maybe it's true, this time. But afraid you'll have to wait for the Bat. You folks can come in and set by the fire, if you want to."

"But we've got to—"

"You heard what I said!" The M.M.'s were fingering their rifles.

"All right. But tell you what we'll do. We'll go back to East Berkshire and get some breakfast and a wash and come back here. Noon, you said?"

"Okay! And say, Brother, it does seem kind of funny, your taking this back road, when there's a first-rate highway. S' long. Be good.... Just don't try it again! The Bat might be here next time—and he ain't a farmer like you or me!"

The refugees, as they drove away, had an uncomfortable feeling that the guards were laughing at them.

Three border posts they tried, and at three posts they were turned back.

"Well?" said Buck.

"Yes. I guess so. Back home. My turn to drive," said Doremus wearily.

The humiliation of retreat was the worse in that none of the guards had troubled to do more than laugh at them. They were trapped too tightly for the trappers to worry. Doremus's only clear emotion as, tails between their legs, they back-tracked to Shad Ledue's sneer and to Mrs. Candy's "Well, I never!" was regret that he had not shot one guard, at least, and he raged:

"Now I know why men like John Brown became crazy killers!"

CHAPTER XXIV

HE could not decide whether Emil Staubmeyer, and through him Shad Ledue, knew that he had tried to escape. Did Staubmeyer really look more knowing, or did he just imagine it? What the deuce had Emil meant when he said, "I hear the roads aren't so good up north— not so good!" Whether they knew or not, it was grinding that he should have to shiver lest an illiterate roustabout like Shad Ledue find out that he desired to go to Canada, while a ruler-slapper like Staubmeyer, a Squeers with certificates in "pedagogy," should now be able to cuff grown men instead of urchins and should be editor of the Informer! Doremus's Informer! Staubmeyer! That human blackboard!

Daily Doremus found it more cramping, more instantly stirring to fury, to write anything mentioning Windrip. His private office— the cheerfully rattling linotype room—the shouting pressroom with its smell of ink that to him hitherto had been like the smell of grease paint to an actor—they were hateful now, and choking. Not even Lorinda's faith, not even Sissy's jibes and Buck's stories, could rouse him to hope.

He rejoiced the more, therefore, when his son Philip telephoned him from Worcester: "Be home Sunday? Merilla's in New York, gadding, and I'm all alone here. Thought I'd just drive up for the day and see how things are in your neck of the woods."

"Come on! Splendid! So long since we've seen you. I'll have your mother start a pot of beans right away!"

Doremus was happy. Not for some time did his cursed two-way-mindedness come to weaken his joy, as he wondered whether it wasn't just a myth held over from boyhood that Philip really cared so much for Emma's beans and brown bread; and wondered just why it was that Up-to-Date Americans like Philip always used the long-distance telephone rather than undergo the dreadful toil of dictating a letter a day or two earlier. It didn't really seem so efficient, the old-fashioned village editor reflected, to spend seventy-five cents on a telephone call in order to save five cents' worth of time.

"Oh hush! Anyway, I'll be delighted to see the boy! I'll bet there isn't a smarter young lawyer in Worcester. There's one member of the family that's a real success!"

He was a little shocked when Philip came, like a one-man procession, into the living room, late on Saturday afternoon. He had been forgetting how bald this upstanding young advocate was growing even at thirty-four. And it seemed to him that Philip was a little heavy and senatorial in speech and a bit too cordial.

"By Jove, Dad, you don't know how good it is to be back in the old digs. Mother and the girls upstairs? By Jove, sir, that was a horrible business, the killing of poor Fowler. Horrible! I was simply horrified. There must have been a mistake somewhere, because Judge Swan has a wonderful reputation for scrupulousness."

"There was no mistake. Swan is a fiend. Literally!" Doremus sounded less paternal than when he had first bounded up to shake hands with the beloved prodigal.

"Really? We must talk it over. I'll see if there can't be a stricter investigation. Swan? Really! We'll certainly go into the whole business. But first I must just skip upstairs and give Mammy a good smack, and Mary and Little Sis."

And that was the last time that Philip mentioned Effingham Swan or any "stricter investigation" of the acts thereof. All afternoon he was relentlessly filial and fraternal, and he smiled like an automobile salesman when Sissy griped at him, "What's the idea of all the tender hand-dusting, Philco?"

Doremus and he were not alone till nearly midnight.

They sat upstairs in the sacred study. Philip lighted one of Doremus's excellent cigars as though he were a cinema actor playing the role of a man lighting an excellent cigar, and breathed amiably:

"Well, sir, this is an excellent cigar! It certainly is excellent!"

"Why not?"

"Oh, I just mean—I was just appreciating it—"

"What is it, Phil? There's something on your mind. Shoot! Not rowing with Merilla, are you?"

"Certainly not! Most certainly not! Oh, I don't approve of everything Merry does—she's a little extravagant—but she's got a heart of gold, and let me tell you, Pater, there isn't a young society woman in Worcester that makes a nicer impression on everybody, especially at nice dinner parties."

"Well then? Let's have it, Phil. Something serious?"

"Ye-es, I'm afraid there is. Look, Dad.... Oh, do sit down and be comfortable!... I've been awfully perturbed to hear that you've, uh, that you're in slightly bad odor with some of the authorities."

"You mean the Corpos?"

"Naturally! Who else?"

"Maybe I don't recognize 'em as authorities."

"Oh, listen, Pater, please don't joke tonight! I'm serious. As a matter fact, I hear you're more than just 'slightly' in wrong with them."

"And who may your informant be?"

"Oh, just letters—old school friends. Now you aren't really pro- Corpo, are you?"

"How did you ever guess?"

"Well, I've been—I didn't vote for Windrip, personally, but I begin to see where I was wrong. I can see now that he has not only great personal magnetism, but real constructive power—real sure-enough statesmanship. Some say it's Lee Sarason's doing, but don't you believe it for a minute. Look at all Buzz did back in his home state, before he ever teamed up with Sarason! And some say Windrip is crude. Well, so were Lincoln and Jackson. Now what I think of Windrip—"

"The only thing you ought to think of Windrip is that his gangsters murdered your fine brother-in-law! And plenty of other men just as good. Do you condone such murders?"

"No! Certainly not! How can you suggest such a thing, Dad! No one abhors violence more than I do. Still, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs—"

"Hell and damnation!"

"Why, Pater!"

"Don't call me 'Pater'! If I ever hear that 'can't make an omelet' phrase again, I'll start doing a little murder myself! It's used to justify every atrocity under every despotism, Fascist or Nazi or Communist or American labor war. Omelet! Eggs! By God, sir, men's souls and blood are not eggshells for tyrants to break!"

"Oh, sorry, sir. I guess maybe the phrase is a little shopworn! I just mean to say—I'm just trying to figure this situation out realistically!"

"'Realistically'! That's another buttered bun to excuse murder!"

"But honestly, you know—horrible things do happen, thanks to the imperfection of human nature, but you can forgive the means if the end is a rejuvenated nation that—"

"I can do nothing of the kind! I can never forgive evil and lying and cruel means, and still less can I forgive fanatics that use that for an excuse! If I may imitate Romain Rolland, a country that tolerates evil means—evil manners, standards of ethics—for a generation, will be so poisoned that it never will have any good end. I'm just curious, but do you know how perfectly you're quoting every Bolshevik apologist that sneers at decency and kindness and truthfulness in daily dealings as 'bourgeois morality'? I hadn't understood that you'd gone quite so Marxo- materialistic!"

"I! Marxian! Good God!" Doremus was pleased to see that he had stirred his son out of his if-your-honor-please smugness. "Why, one of the things I most admire about the Corpos is that, as I know, absolutely—I have reliable information from Washington—they have saved us from a simply ghastly invasion by red agents of Moscow—Communists pretending to be decent labor-leaders!"

"Not really!" (Had the fool forgotten that his father was a newspaperman and not likely to be impressed by "reliable information from Washington"?)

"Really! And to be realistic—sorry, sir, if you don't like the word, but to be—to be—"

"In fact, to be realistic!"

"Well, yes, then!"

(Doremus recalled such tempers in Philip from years ago. Had he been wise, after all, to restrain himself from the domestic pleasure of licking the brat?)

"The whole point is that Windrip, or anyway the Corpos, are here to stay, Pater, and we've got to base our future actions not on some desired Utopia but on what we really and truly have. And think of what they've actually done! Just, for example, how they've removed the advertising billboards from the highways, and ended unemployment, and their simply stupendous feat in getting rid of all crime!"

"Good God!"

"Pardon me—what y' say, Dad?"

"Nothing! Nothing! Go on!"

"But I begin to see now that the Corpo gains haven't been just material but spiritual."

"Eh?"

"Really! They've revitalized the whole country. Formerly we had gotten pretty sordid, just thinking about material possessions and comforts—about electric refrigeration and television and air- conditioning. Kind of lost the sturdiness that characterized our pioneer ancestors. Why, ever so many young men were refusing to take military drill, and the discipline and will power and good-fellowship that you only get from military training—Oh, pardon me! I forgot you were a pacifist."

Doremus grimly muttered, "Not any more!"

"Of course there must be any number of things we can't agree on, Dad. But after all, as a publicist you ought to listen to the Voice of Youth."

"You? Youth? You're not youth. You're two thousand years old, mentally. You date just about 100 B.C. in your fine new imperialistic theories!"

"No, but you must listen, Dad! Why do you suppose I came clear up here from Worcester just to see you?"

"God only knows!"

"I want to make myself clear. Before Windrip, we'd been lying down in America, while Europe was throwing off all her bonds—both monarchy and this antiquated parliamentary-democratic-liberal system that really means rule by professional politicians and by egotistic 'intellectuals.' We've got to catch up to Europe again— got to expand—it's the rule of life. A nation, like a man, has to go ahead or go backward. Always!"

"I know, Phil. I used to write that same thing in those same words, back before 1914!"

"Did you? Well, anyway—Got to expand! Why, what we ought to do is to grab all of Mexico, and maybe Central America, and a good big slice of China. Why, just on their own behalf we ought to do it, misgoverned the way they are! Maybe I'm wrong but—"

"Impossible!"

"—Windrip and Sarason and Dewey Haik and Macgoblin, all those fellows, they're big—they're making me stop and think! And now to come down to my errand here—"

"You think I ought to run the Informer according to Corpo theology!"

"Why—why yes! That was approximately what I was going to say. (I just don't see why you haven't been more reasonable about this whole thing—you with your quick mind!) After all, the time for selfish individualism is gone. We've got to have mass action. One for all and all for one—"

"Philip, would you mind telling me what the deuce you're really heading toward? Cut the cackle!"

"Well, since you insist—to 'cut the cackle,' as you call it—not very politely, seems to me, seeing I've taken the trouble to come clear up from Worcester!—I have reliable information that you're going to get into mighty serious trouble if you don't stop opposing—or at least markedly failing to support—the government."

"All right. What of it? It's my serious trouble!"

"That's just the point! It isn't! I do think that just for once in your life you might think of Mother and the girls, instead of always of your own selfish 'ideas' that you're so proud of! In a crisis like this, it just isn't funny any longer to pose as a quaint 'liberal.'"

Doremus's voice was like a firecracker. "Cut the cackle, I told you! What you after? What's the Corpo gang to you?"

"I have been approached in regard to the very high honor of an assistant military judgeship, but your attitude, as my father—"

"Philip, I think, I rather think, that I give you my parental curse not so much because you are a traitor as because you have become a stuffed shirt! Good-night."

[spidermanepisodes]

"What is that tanker doing over there" Churchill: it is pissing on the wall of water Hitler: it is against my Nazi plan Mussolini: We will not bow to Hitler's regime (but we will) Deutschland für alles Sieg H... Sieg H...! Cup of tea for a big believer

[70s80sandbeyond]

Tea with Mussolini (1999)