Liberty London Girl

Update/Explanation: I drafted the post below on 1 November 2009. It's posting today with no editing (until a point in abstract future) for a few reasons. 1) Whatever happened on Mad Men last night has even non-Mad Men posters busy as bees. So I'd best download it from iTunes & watch. 2) I feel like hell. More about which later this week (because I'll know something then). 3) I arrived home from my lovely house/cat sitting gig on Saturday evening....to open windows & the a/c chugging away. By the date on the "we're finished rehabbing your bathroom"slip (no you are not & I've busted you to the property manager), this state of affairs went on for at least 4 days. No money coming in & everything going -- literally -- out the window is causing huge upset. 4) Sasha, author of Liberty London Girl, is in the midst of blog troll visitation & it pisses me off. (I should explain that LLG was anonymous at the time of this draft; she has since popped out of her shell & is doing very well indeed.)

The Laura Burlton photographs (via here) reminded me of a sister who was a ballerina-in-training. And the sorts of things we used to get up to in old tulle & netting, as thunderstorms approached from Canada, on Lake Erie. It felt so wild & free. Very unlike today.

27 August 2011 Update - Laura Burlton, excellent photographer, stopped by with her new website address.

*********************************

I enjoy this compilation of tidbits on fashion & life (not really in that order) by an English fashion editor living in America. I don't go looking for blogs often as so many of you have great links & recommendations; that's how I came upon this one--sorry but I don't remember where (perhaps, Wee Birdy). I instantly visited as Liberty of London patterns & fabric (& the main store in London) have been important touchstones to another era. One is wrapped around my neck quite often, my grandfather's WWII-era silk paisley scarf. More about which another time.

LLG's post Ex-pat Friends reeled me in again yesterday (Saturday). I can identify, though I'm not an ex-pat at the moment, I know what she means because I could easily be one of the Americans in her group. LLG's LinkedWithin widget popped up a post called Why I Never Lose Hope In America. I was intrigued & clicked on the video. Along with a strongly brewed coffee, it provided the oomph to get on with it another day.

As I watched the video, I thought of the young man who asked me to talk about the Human Rights Campaign & gay marriage last week. I was on my way to arrange my local Amnesty International group's gift-wrap-for-donation gigs at a local bookstore. I was feeling mighty crabby but I know what it's like to pitch one's cause (though I've not done so on a street corner in a zillion years*).

I thought about him, standing up there in the rain, when I watched this video. (And a younger cousin, who is gay & married--& I'm not putting that in quotation marks.)

Thanks, Liberty London Girl. (And for all your excellent tips, too.)

*At 15 (1/2) years-old, I was surrounded, swarmed really, by the meanest bunch of capitalist hyenas in Pittsburgh. They yelled & cursed as I handed out flyers for a Democratic candidate near the plaza of the then-U.S. Steel Building. Two of them were from my church & I thought they were rescuing me from the pitchfork-wielding villagers. Nope. They were incensed that a "nice girl " of their acquaintance was doing this (outrageous, um, Constitutionally-protected) deed. I busted them--to our seminarian, a friend. They were lectured by our minister & shamed into apologies. I think they only felt bad that they swore at a girl from their church. (This was also the minister's opinion & it upset him very much.) Though many steelworkers & other union guys came to my aid, it was a traumatic experience. It felt imminently violent. I can't claim it for sure, but my successful plans to escape to another country for an unspecified amount of time might have been sealed that day.

Week's End - Day at the Beach

This was going to be 'no day at the beach' but these are too cute, though that older one seems a bit bossy. These are not necessarily two sisters as I have older cousins & felt like a little sister quite often. However, the three younger sibsters will fill your ear about my alleged bossiness. Propriety - & a lack of time to write a clever riposte (for now) - prevents me from making my case. (I said, for now, B, E, J....mwahahaha). If they're not good, I'll scan photos on a new-to-me printer/scanner & post them. Let me think on what I shall take in return for not doing so...hmmm.... Nope, can't be bought. Ciao!

[photographs by Nina Leen, LIFE Archives]

Love & Fury

Here are some sisters...in no particular order.

From an article in the Telegraph; this latter part cracked me up (which I need because at the moment, growl...):

"... But for many sisters competitiveness and a loving rage is what binds them. In her biography of the writer Rebecca West, Victoria Glendinning tells the story of going to lunch with West and her sister, the surgeon Dr Letitia Fairfield.

It was 1975 and West was in her eighties. Her sister, aged 90, did most of the talking, while West fell into "the well-rehearsed role of recalcitrant younger sister... sighing loudly, casting her eyes up to heaven, looking at a nonexistent watch on her wrist, while her sister's voice winds on".

The sisters boasted and squabbled about their aristocratic connections, "calling each other 'dear' with emphatic frequency". The moment Fairfield left the room, West remarked: "Now you see. She's always been like this. I've had to listen to her all my life."

Which, as sisters don't tend to gush about each other, is really as close as one could get to a declaration of the love and fury that is so often the hallmark of the sibling bond.

[Vanessa Redgrave & Lynn Redgrave; Suzy Parker & Dorian Leigh via LIFE Archives; Catherine Deneuve & Françoise Dorléac via radiofrance.fr]

Birthday Lily

Happy birthday to my sister, Beth. Talk about quick & dirty. The second photo doesn't do her justice, certainly. But I can easily change that when I ask her for permission to use something more, uh, recent. [Update a year later: she likes this photograph.] Her favorite flower is the iris. However, lilies are blooming, I like this photograph by George Brett (see below), & Beth has a pair of twins, among six children (!), & one is named Lily. So there you go. Now, I better go call Beth. She's off to Japan in August to visit another (grown) child in Tokyo & I don't have the dates. Oh, wow, I wish I could go with her. But very glad she's able to make the trip.

Happy Birthday, Beth! xoxoxoxo

[Lily by George Brett, wonderful Washington, DC-area photographer via flickr. Here's the link. Shots from all over the metropolitan area]