#old Metropolitan Opera

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Furs and top hats were de rigeur for the audience at opening night of the Metropolitan Opera's 52nd season, December 21, 1936. The elegant crowd heard Wagner's Die Walküre, starring Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz Melchior, with Artur Bodanzky conducting.

Photo: Associated Press

[opera-ghosts]

Today a very old original Postcard with a Photo from the famous Tenor Enrico Caruso (1873-1921). This card was sent from New York December 2. 1905. On this day he was on stage at The Metropolitan Opera in La Gioconda.

[kiryoutann]

Before reading, please check series masterlist to read the warning(s), disclaimer, and to make sure you’re on the right chapter. Minors do NOT interact.

TRIGGER WARNING: DEPRESSION, SUICIDE ATTEMPT.

If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts or tendencies, please seek help and support from a mental health professional.

This story is written from the perspective of a biased omniscient narrator, keep this in mind as you read and don't take everything they say as absolute truth.

Please proceed with caution and consider your personal comfort and wellbeing before continuing.

SUICIDE HOTLINE.

I want to die.

The distant echoes of departing trains continue to linger in the air, reaching your ears even as you ascend the steps to the sidewalk of the old, dour London city. Gray clouds loom low in the sky, but occasional wisps of warm sunlight manage to slip through the overcast, illuminating patches of England's capital city.

And yet, when it comes your turn to cross beneath it—the last remnants of that golden hue—you feel nothing. The sun is gone, leaving you alone with yourself.

I want to die. You want to die, yet the way you stride leaves an impression that there remains a purpose to your existence—a reason to stay alive. Looking up, you see the neoclassical architectural building that you have long been familiar with. You push the large heavy doors to enter the Metropolitan Opera building.

The dim hallway of the opera house washes you over with old nostalgia. It reminds you of those early days, when you were just a wide-eyed girl fresh from San Francisco, full of newly lit aspirations. Determined to prove to herself that she wasn't what that old voice had always told her she was.

In the past, everything felt so gray—the streets, the buildings, even the sky above. But now, looking back, you realize you may have taken that time for granted. Compared to the supposedly better present, the past now appears in hues of bronze, still working towards perfection. Not yet gold—you haven’t gotten what you want, but you never lose sight of your stage, of your dance. Ballet remains both your agony and your solace.

But now, the world has been washed in muted colors, worse than gray. Ballet has shockingly intertwined with this foreign concept—distant, irrevocably severed.

Reality has transformed into an almost dreamlike quality, trapping you in the haze of your own creation. Yet, like a phantom that knows not when to end, you carry your feet toward the dressing room reserved for the prima ballerina. The door loomed before you; your hand reached for the handle, turned it, and pushed with a creak on its hinges.

(Was it ballet that had become nothing to you, or was it you who had become nothing to ballet?)

Your eyes immediately landed on the figure sitting in front of the vanity. Claudine, the woman who had taken your place as the Swan Queen, perched in the chair that should have been yours. Her eyes widen as she caught sight of your reflection in the mirror, but her surprise was short-lived as a smirk slowly spread across her red lips.

Claudine turns her body to face you. “Well, well, look who it is. Did you forget your way to the bathroom, darling?”

Much different from the last time you saw her, she looks radiantly happy. She adjusts her seat, making herself comfortable on the cushion of a chair that clearly does not belong to her. But that doesn’t mean it’s yours, does it? Sure, Claudine wasn’t the first choice—but the director still chose her to replace you. It was glaringly obvious that the role of the Swan Queen was no longer yours; you were simply the wrong choice, a mistake.

Tomorrow’s Swan Lake performance will be starring Claudine. Not you. Last week, you were still able to gloat and say that nothing would happen, and yet, something did—you blew your performance, delivered a shitshow, and the director launched into a long, angry sentence before discarding you. Sending you home.

(“You need to go home.” in a voice that doesn't belong to the director.)

Suddenly, the door opens wider; you see the director standing in the doorway. “Claudine, we need to—“ he begins, but his words trail off as his gaze meets yours.

A look of surprise flashed across his face as he took your presence. You could only imagine how unexpected your sudden appearance must have seemed to him—a ghost materializing after days of radio silence. He furrowed his brows, glancing at Claudine as if silently asking if she's seeing this too. Turning back to you, you felt the intensity of his eyes as he scanned you from head to toe.

Henri calls your name, then asks, “Are you alright?”

For a moment, you hesitate. “The world is covered in a gray haze” is the only description you can come up with—the only way to tell them, but you wonder if they will even understand what you mean. Maybe the issue lies in your own eyesight, tinting everything so dull and lifeless. Soulless. “The world is speaking a language I no longer have the strength to comprehend,” you want to scream it from the rooftops. Everything is moving on and leaving me behind, and I don’t know why.

“Are you alright?”

Such an easy question, yet so hard to answer. You're certain that nothing is alright, but you're not hurting as much as you were that night in that unfamiliar city, are you? No more hyperventilating, no more shortness of breath. Objectively speaking, you seem fine. And yet, you're not sure you can carry on if the future will continue to feel this way.

So instead, you simply nodded, eyes empty but staring back at him as you utter the words, “I’m fine. I was just about to leave.”

You didn’t wait for a response, turning around the way you came and walking back down the long hallway. Yet, the hallway seemed strangely altered, as if it had undergone some sort of magical transformation while you were inside the prima ballerina’s dressing room. The dim corridor was almost deformed to the point where you couldn't recognize it. Or perhaps the world was perfect, and it was your own sight that had become deformed.

Looking around, you wonder if it was all real—if the walls were as solid as they seemed; if the golden rays of sun were genuine, or if they were mere props in a stage production. Do you even exist? Or are you just a microorganism barely clinging to life and yearning to be something you're not? The exit seemed far away, and something begged you on its knees for you to stop, for you to turn back.

There is no turning back for you. You are deformed—you are lost in a place that no longer wants to recognize you. Where do you turn back? How do you turn back? The answers you demand are nil, and you… return to resignation, to surrender. There is no turning back for you.

London never really rests, even when the evening wears on with uncertain weather. The hesitant sunlight casts a slanting gaze on the upper half of a three-story building. While the middle section to the top is constructed from a rugged red-hued brick, the ground floor was painted in a bolder crimson, with old-style serif fonts for the name of the establishment. It's a flower shop. A couple exits, the woman smiling graciously at her lover while holding onto his hand, cradling a bouquet of freshly cut blossoms.

Walking opposite you is a family of four, laughing as they enjoy their stroll. You turn to see a career-driven woman striding purposefully, probably to meet her next client.

Everyone had a purpose, a direction, a sense of belonging. And standing amidst this bustling city, you felt alien, empty—a specter, a ghost among the living, treading this path simply because it’s the only one you knew, but it seemed to have no end in sight. It felt like you had lost something, everything. Your infinitesimal place in this world is now entirely erased.

(Who are you?)

Your life is yours to live, but you are not its main character. Everywhere you tread, you carry the setting sun; the colors fade in your presence. Doom creeps closer, dripping and seeping into your nailbeds—unfortunately, you have a habit of biting them. Now it is in your blood, pumped through your body, settling in your organs and muscles.

Who are you?

Nobody's daughter, nobody's lover. No longer a prima-ballerina.

As you descend the stairs that lead down to the subway, the sound of the departing train echoes through the station. You stand in the spot you’ve occupied countless times before—the safe line where other passengers wait for the next train. Taking a deep breath, your heart throbs painfully as the acrid scent of cigarette smoke enters your lungs. You turn to see a man leaning against the wall, his lips wrapped around the glowing embers.

You squeezed your eyes shut, trying to block out the memory that the smell reminded you of. Looking for a distraction, your gaze fell upon the yellow line that served as the boundaries where you should stand. It was a simple thing, but it carried a clear meaning—don't get too close to the edge of the platform; back away or find your doom.

However, from your dull vision, the vibrant hue had faded, leaving behind a lifeless grey that blended effortlessly with the rest of the platform. Another line meant nothing. You lifted your gaze and landed it on the train tracks.

The steel of the rails glints in the dim light. Just one step, one final fall, and it would all be over. No more empty apartments to face, no more tiring tomorrows. A funeral won't be necessary because by the time you're gone, there will be no part of you left in this world.

A cough sounds from behind you, breaking through your loud thoughts. Turning, you see a woman probably in her thirties in a bright floral dress. Averting your eyes to another source of voices, your gaze lands on a man and a girl next to him—a father and daughter. You end up glancing around at the people around you, all waiting patiently for the next train to take them to their next stop or home.

How would they react to such a spectacle?

The image of their horrified faces, their clothes stained with the crimson of your blood. And what about the train engineer? They would be the first and the last to look you in the eye, to witness your final moments before your demise. The ending you obtain will linger as a scar you leave on them—an impact that will stay, haunting them for weeks, perhaps even months or years to come.

And you…

You couldn't do that to them.

The second consideration is too late when the train squeals through the tunnel, signaling its arrival. The train has arrived; you are hyper-aware of your standing right behind the yellow line. A stream of people begins to board the tube, and so do you. Taking a seat, the window across from you serves as an uncomfortable mirror forced up against you. You avert your eyes from it, not wanting to face your own faint reflection.

As the robotic voice of the tube's announcement echoed through the carriage, urging the passengers to “step clear of the doors,” the father and daughter took their seats across from you. The little girl, no more than five or six years old, straightens her gaze to meet yours.

There, you find your younger self. To her, you are just a weird grown-up with tired eyes, but to you, she is that little girl you once were. The bright-eyed girl with simple dreams—to eat ice cream with Daddy, to coax Mommy for a furry friend, to be the brightest star for her parents. To be the greatest ballet dancer the world has ever seen.

The girl who loves blue so much, but Mom forces pink on her. You remember your childhood photo framed in the display cabinet back home before you left San Francisco for good—a photo of you and Mom at your first ballet recital.

“My little princess, you’re going to be the greatest ballet dancer the world has ever seen.”

And yet, hours later, submerged in the warm water that should have melted your tension away and untied the knots within, reality proved otherwise. Those dreams, once so vivid, are now gone—abandoned, for your heart has shrunk in size as you've grown. The bright-eyed girl was no more—so was Daddy, so was Mommy. Ballet, too, dismantled in your own hands. Your identity is destroyed and-

And what does that leave behind, then? An empty body? A vessel for a rotting soul? A very unlovable being roaming the earth, manipulating anyone she can find to stay; to act as a blind lover, because who else could love a deformed creature like me?

You let yourself take a deep, trembling breath, and as you did, a tiny echo of pain stabbed at your heart. The tears finally came. But, as your cries reverberated through the bathroom, the numbness returned, as if in an attempt to shut out the shame of hearing your agony. Reaching out, you made a gentle swirl in the water, watching as the small waves lapped against the porcelain of the tub, creating another smaller one that disappeared in a split second.

By the time you stepped out of the bath, your fingers were wrinkled. Wrapping yourself in a towel, you walked to the sink. You grabbed your toothbrush, smearing the minty paste across the bristles. Finally, you lifted your gaze to the mirror, the reflection of your tired face greeting you.

The woman gazing back at you seems like a complete stranger—you can hardly fathom that she is the person that little girl grew up into. The sight of your own face caused another tear to fall, but this time, you felt nothing but the throbbing headache that wrecked your brain. Your eyelids felt heavy—all you wanted to do was sleep.

After your nightly routine was complete, you slipped into the comfort of your pajamas—an oversized t-shirt and a pair of worn sweatpants. You turned the doorknob and stepped out of the bathroom. Walking to the kitchen, you decided to quench your thirst before actually going to bed. You opened the cabinet, searching for a clean glass.

As your hand clutched the glass, your gaze drifted to the bottle of bourbon beside it. You scrutinized the amber liquid for a good two minutes before closing the cabinet door with a soft click.

Turning on the tap, you let the cool water fill your empty cup before bringing it to your lips and taking a sip. You drained it to ease your dry throat. Placing the glass in the sink, you stared at it, contemplating something. You shook your head, reluctantly pulling yourself away from the kitchen and into the bedroom.

Despite the tightness in your skull and the burning ache of your eyelids, falling asleep proved to be a challenge. You lay there, tossing and turning, desperate for a long-lasting close of eyes. But your mind couldn't cooperate; instead, it was fixed on that day—the day you had visited him. The what-ifs come next, a chorus of “if only” that creates more space for questions and regret. What if you hadn't gone that day? What if you had given him the time and space he needed, trusting that he would come back to you just like he always had before?

What if you had become an easier woman to love? What if you hadn't been made like this—a shameful woman who claws for love in every kindness that others show you? Who had made you this way? Was it your parents and their inconsistent showcase of a tainted version of “love”? Or were you born with this never-ending hell?

Why doesn’t he love me? The words echoed, a persistent refrain that refused to be silenced. Why did he leave me? And you’re left wondering who you’re asking—that man or your father?

With a sudden jolt, you rise from the bed, your feet hitting the solid floor beneath. Wrenching the doorknob harshly, you made a beeline for the bathroom. You pulled open the cabinet, grabbing at everything you could, shoving the various pills and tablets into your mouth. The bitter taste slowly spreads as it all melts on your tongue.

Stumbling out of the bathroom, you walk quickly to the kitchen, eyes landing on the other cabinet – where a bottle of that amber liquid is stored. You open it roughly, downing the contents, feeling the burn of the alcohol searing your throat.

You set the bottle down, turning to leave the kitchen to return to the bedroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed, you blinked, sweeping your gaze one last time around the room. You laid back down on the mattress, pulling the soft blanket up over your body. The ceiling looked bland, all white with a dark spot where it had once leaked.

Reaching out, you grasped the lamp on the bedside table, flicked it off, painting the room black.

SUICIDE HOTLINE.

[nerdanel01]

Emmrook at the Opera

In honor of Sylvia confirming Emmrich’s occasionally into a “bold Orlesian opera” (one of the most exciting things to ever happen to me), I wanted to put together this little post on resources for anyone who might be curious about the genre, or want to incorporate it into their fic writing.

It’s going to be a little USA-heavy because I do, unfortunately, live in the land of hamburgers and assault rifles, but the silver lining is that I also live in the country that created this:

The Metropolitan Opera House in NYC has to be one of the largest opera houses in the world, at least partially because of the fact that it was built much more recently than many of the old ones. When it’s full, it fits over four thousand people in it. I once took a tour of the backstage with one of my best friends who told me, partially in jest, “Wow, I’ve never seen you look at your boyfriend the way you’re looking at this building.” I broke up with that boyfriend like a year later, but the Met is my love for life. I love the red velvet on the walls and the seats. I love the giant Marc Chagall paintings. I love the sputnik chandelier. I love the peeling gilt gold on the ceilings, which I often have a perfect view of from my seats in the nosebleeds. The Met is my boo. 

Onto the resources!

If you just want to watch a movie that FEATURES opera but is not specifically an opera:

Moonstruck - Cher tries to invite her fiance’s brother (Nicholas Cage) to her wedding. Can you imagine what happens to Cher and Nicholas Cage next. Features the both of them on a date at the Met Opera (my beloved!) and excerpts from La Boheme. One of my all time fave movies, I identify deeply with Cher’s grandfather in the film. 

Falling for Figaro is a pretty cute romcom about a finance chick who quits her job to pursue her dream of becoming a soprano. 

And listen like the singing in Phantom of the Opera (2004) is. Not great. (I’m sorry Gerard Butler, I loved you when I was twelve.) But the opening sequence of the rolling camera pulls through the opera house as the overture plays will haunt me for the rest of my life. 

If you’ve never seen an opera before, and want to watch one (either online or in person), I recommend starting with one of these:

La Boheme - One of the most popular operas, period. Also, it’s literally RENT. Beat for beat, from ‘will you light my candle’ to ‘la vie boheme,’ it’s RENT, just sung in Italian and set in Paris. (Spoilers, the ending in the opera is more tragic.)

L’Elisir D’Amore - If you like Agnes and Emmrich because you enjoy watching two idiots who are obviously in love with each other pine for each other, this is a good one. Very sweet. One of my faves.

The Barber of Seville - I think this one is very approachable if you think of it as a comic version of Sweeney Todd, if Sweeney had no tragic backstory and Jamie was a young noble. It’s a romance, shenanigans are had, and Largo al Factotum is one of the biggest bops of all time. 

My personal favorites also include Akhaten, La Fille Du Regiment, Le Nozze di Figaro, and Turandot, but your mileage may vary with these—Akhnaten is very contemporary, productions of Turandot sometimes feature some pretty heckin’ yikes orientalism. 

If you want to listen to opera music:

WQXR is NYC’s Classical Music Station. In addition to their regular classical music stream (which is also very good) they have a separate stream of just opera music called Operavore. (I also love New Sounds, but the streams vary wildly and its definitely an acquired taste.)

The Met broadcasts a series of live Sunday radio transmissions every year starting in the spring, available online and also via WQXR.

The Chicago Lyric Opera has a bunch of their live streams archived online.

I have also made a playlist where I’ll be adding all the songs featured in my Emmrook fics. :)

If you want to watch an opera stream online:

OperaVision

There’s this incredible list from OperaWire

But there’s also this site, where you can find pretty much anything

The Met also has it’s own paid streaming service, which is SPENSIVE on the subscription model, but if there’s something you really want to see and can’t find elsewhere, they allow you to rent single titles for $4.99 each.

I do strongly recommend, if you have any interest at all and have the opportunity, to go see an opera in person. For me it makes such a difference to be there in person, and it’s not as expensive as you might think! Plus, since opera is a dying art and opera houses are desperate for new audiences (at least, in America) there are usually a number of discounted ticket programs. (Again, the list below is super USA centric, I’m so sorry—and of those below, I’ve only been to the Met myself.)

The Metropolitan Opera is the biggest opera company in the US in terms of literally the number of operas they put on a year. Other than a brief break in February, the opera is pretty much in session 5 nights a week, from October through the end of May. 

Family Circle. I love the family circle. I’ve spent so much time in the Family Circle. The acoustics ARE genuinely better up here than they are in other parts of the house, and depending on the opera, tickets in the Family Circle typically go between $26-45 dollars each.

Rush Tickets are available every day online—these are usually seats in the orchestra. I can’t remember exactly but I think these are always $25. 

If you’re feeling ~opulent and looking for a very special date night, the Met also runs a program called Fridays Under 40. It’s a special priced Orchestra ticket for people under 40. Many of the dates also include little parties where they usually have photo booths, charcuterie, etc., and opportunities to meet some of the cast.

The Detroit Opera offers student rush tickets, although it looks like you have to be at the box office in person to get them. 

The Chicago Lyric Opera has discounts for students and 50% off rush tickets.

The San Francisco Opera has a great offer for first-time opera attendees who live in the Bay Area - $20 for two great seats

The L.A. Opera also offers student rush discount tickets, and $30 tickets for attendees under 30 years of age.

I am not aware of any discounts for the Santa Fe Opera but it looks so cool and it’s on my bucket list to go one day <3

Dallas Opera offers student discounts and discounts for attendees 21-45 (although it looks like they’re aksing for a membership fee for the 21-45 program—boooo Dallas Opera)

Not super clear on the specifics, but Houston Grand Opera also offers some kind of Under 40 discount on select performances

Opera Philadelphia, which recently appointed my all-time-favorite opera singer Anthony Roth Constanzo as their director, offers $10 rush tickets and student discounts

Tips for your first time at the opera, if you do go:

A thing I did not know before I started going to the opera is that even though they are sung in foreign languages, there are almost always subtitles. At the Met, these are transmitted to the chair back in front of you and available in a variety of other languages. Other houses often project the titles above or at the side of the stage.

If you don’t want to read and listen at the same time, synopses are almost always available in your program or ahead of time.

The food and drink is expensive and almost always not worth it. When I go to the Met with my friends, I regularly bring in alcohol minis as well as little cheese/meat/fruit plates in tupperware in my purse. We eat these outside the theater at intermission. No one has every batted an eye at me. (Mileage may vary at other theaters.)

I know opera has a Reputation, and I definitely was a little worried at first that I would look out of place and people would be snide to me. I have never found this to be the case. The only reason someone will be an asshole to you is if you have your phone out or are talking during the performance—don’t do that. Keep it in your pocket until intermission and silence your notifications. 

Crawl into my dms to talk to me about opera at any time, I will happily yap your ear off

[kimiko24-art]

Oliva Ercolani (Olive) JJBA OC (more AU lore and world building)

Oliva is another Vento Aureo oc apart of my au. Her first name means "olive" in Italian. She enjoys chatting with new people and has a love for the arts. Oliva's birthday is July 25th and she's currently only 21. I will be drawing both a reference sheet for her and Pesche soon.

✨ STORY✨

💖 Oliva, the willful daughter of one of the most influential mafiosi in Italy, Giulio Ecrolani. She was raised in Florence Italy after the Ercolani family relocated there from Naples. She lived in Florence until the age of four. Then gained the opportunity to travel the world with her adoptive brother Pesche Mistro to study dance in different countries. During her years abroad at the age of 16, Oliva was given management of her very own international dance team.

She soon returned to Italy at the age 19 to put her newly acquired knowledge and skill set to good use. Two years later, Oliva now manages most of her father's theatre businesses within Florence. While also aiding the women in her community. She scouts talent, training them and the other women in the Ercolani family. So that they could eventually be employed at one of the many theatres/opera houses that her family own. However, trouble arrives when Oliva runs into her old friend Kimiko (they met abroad) who's now affiliated with Passione. Despite knowing about her family's hatred for Passione Oliva still communicates with Kimiko, keeping her friends affiliation with Passione a secret.

SOME INFO

💖 Oliva doesn't have a Stand. Though she is a very talented ballet dancer and is applauded for those abilities.

💖 Oliva travels between Naples and Florence often for work. She's both respected and well known amongst the women in both cities. She has a strong sense of justice especially when it comes to women in general.

💖 Despite her cute and unassuming appearance, Oliva's a clever woman with a fiery personality, very out spoken and head strong comparable to an Ox.

OUR RELATIONSHIP

💖 Oliva and I met while she was studying the arts abroad, mainly dancing. At the time, I was attending one of her dance classes that she was responsible for instructing. I wasn't the best at it and she offered one on one sessions. During that time we got closer and began hanging outside of her classes. Before long we developed a sort of sister bond. With Oliva taken the role as a sort of big sister role model. Nowadays I consider Oliva my best friend/family as she's the closest person to me besides Bruno.

INFO ABOUT THE ERCOLANI FAMILY

💖 A now powerful family, that had their humble beginnings in Southern Naples. In the beginning the Ercolani family had an arrangement with Passione. They had deep ties to the gang and agreed to work together since they both operated out of Southern Naples.

💖 The Ercolani would supply funding to Passione for a cut of the total profit made from the drug trade. But after finding out that Passione had been holding back on the family's cut, despite the investment, they had a huge falling out. Which led to a sort of heated rivalry. Eventually after a few years they cut ties and the Ercolani relocated elsewhere.

💖 They now own several major business throughout Italy. Mainly in tourism. They also have control of several popular opera houses in Florence and Rome. For now the two groups are at a sort of truce. Neither ventures on to each others territory. The Ercolani family has roughly 106 members and the head of the family is Giulio Ercolani. He is known for his intense hatred of Passione and love of opera.

-

(The family's name is a variation of Ercolano (Italian: [erkoˈlaːno]) is a town and comune in the Metropolitan City of Naples, Campania of Southern Italy. From the personal name Ercolano originally an adjectival derivative (meaning 'Herculean') of Hercules.)

[stargildedskies]

𝕬𝖓𝖎𝖒𝖊 𝕸𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖙

𝕴𝖒𝖕𝖔𝖗𝖙𝖆𝖓𝖙 𝕭𝖆𝖘𝖎𝖈𝖘

Blog Navigation Page Hoyoverse and Other Video Games Masterlist Arcane, Star Wars, and Misc. Masterlist Read my About Me for preferences, blog rules, and general info :)

𝕵𝖚𝖏𝖚𝖙𝖘𝖚 𝕶𝖆𝖎𝖘𝖊𝖓

🌻Denotes a work that's part of my "JJK Fic Readers Supporting Noury Event"

✧ ˚ 　· 　　 Through the Smoke and Fog - AO3 - Tumblr

➻ Nanami Kento x afab!reader

➻ Rating: Explicit

➻ Trapped in the gilded cage of Victorian high society, you were determined to rebel. You ran the streets in disguise at night and threw yourself into your work as a typist for Scotland Yard during the day, rejecting the label of “quiet, submissive woman.”  Further rebuffing the ideals of your time, you scoffed at the idea of love and marriage, but a certain blonde Detective Inspector always seemed to make your heart flutter. You’re assigned to work a case under him, and your feelings only grow more complicated… but will your budding romance be able to survive one of history’s most infamous murderers?

✧ ˚ 　· 　　 Baby, It's Cold Outside - AO3 - Tumblr

➻ Nanami Kento x afab!reader

➻ Rating: Explicit

➻ Living in Japan, you were used to people’s negative perceptions of your tattoos. An old man giving you a world-class stink-eye was more common than rain on a cloudy day, and those views were only compounded by the insular Jujutsu Sorcerer society you found yourself working in….. But what would the famous 7:3 Sorcerer think?

✧ ˚ 　· 　　 An Early-Morning Suprise - A03 - Tumblr

➻ Nanami Kento x wife!reader

➻ Rating: None! Just fluff and comfort with a side of domestic bliss.

�� What happens when the three first years find out that Nanami's wife has tattoos?

✧ ˚ 　· 　　 The Man Behind the Mask

➻ Ch 1: Mysterious Beginnings - A03 - Tumblr

➻ Nanami Kento x afab!reader

➻ Rating: Explicit

➻ You joined the Tokyo Metropolitan Opera Company after your father's death, only to be relentlessly badgered for your talent by Mei Mei, the Opera House's principal soprano. A mysterious incident led to her being fired from the company, and as her understudy, you're the natural choice to replace her in the role. You're determined to sing well to prove yourself to K, the mysterious man who led your voice to soar, but will the secretive man be able to accept and return your affection? After all, things at the theatre are not always as they seem...

Higuruma Hiromi

✧ ˚ 　· 　　 Metal Guitarist AU - A03 - Tumblr

➻ Rating: None, but I do reference a famous, real-life murder case at the end. There are no pairings or ships referenced in this.

✧ ˚ 　· 　　 The Taste of Love - AO3 - Tumblr

➻ Higuruma Hiromi x gender-neutral reader

➻ Rating: None, this is pure fluff

➻ In which our beloved bathtub lawyer realizes that he loves you the first time he’s forced to cancel a date.

Multi

✧ ˚ 　· 　　 Be Our Girl? - AO3 - Tumblr -🌻

➻ Geto Suguru x Gojo Satoru x afab!reader

➻ Rating: Explicit (18+ Minors DNI)

➻ Morally grey, obsessive pleasure doms Geto and Gojo take care of you on your period.

✧ ˚ 　· 　　 The Demon and the Dragon - AO3 - Tumblr - 🌻

➻ Nanami Kento x afab!reader x Hiuguruma Hiromi

➻ Rating: Explicit (18+ Minors DNI)

➻ Yakuza AU Nanami and Higuruma

[misfitwashere]

March 25, 2025

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAR 26 READ IN APP

On March 25, 1911, Frances Perkins was visiting with a friend who lived near Washington Square in New York City when they heard fire engines and screams. They rushed out to the street to see what the trouble was. A fire had broken out in a garment factory on the upper floors of a building on Washington Square, and the blaze ripped through the lint in the air. The only way out was down the elevator, which had been abandoned at the base of its shaft, or through an exit to the roof. But the factory owner had locked the roof exit that day because, he later testified, he was worried some of his workers might steal some of the blouses they were making.

“The people had just begun to jump when we got there,” Perkins later recalled. “They had been holding until that time, standing in the windowsills, being crowded by others behind them, the fire pressing closer and closer, the smoke closer and closer. Finally the men were trying to get out this thing that the firemen carry with them, a net to catch people if they do jump, the[y] were trying to get that out and they couldn’t wait any longer. They began to jump. The…weight of the bodies was so great, at the speed at which they were traveling that they broke through the net. Every one of them was killed, everybody who jumped was killed. It was a horrifying spectacle.”

By the time the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire was out, 147 young people were dead, either from their fall from the factory windows or from smoke inhalation.

Perkins had few illusions about industrial America: she had worked in a settlement house in an impoverished immigrant neighborhood in Chicago and was the head of the New York office of the National Consumers League, urging consumers to use their buying power to demand better conditions and wages for workers. But even she was shocked by the scene she witnessed on March 25.

By the next day, New Yorkers were gathering to talk about what had happened on their watch. “I can't begin to tell you how disturbed the people were everywhere,” Perkins said. “It was as though we had all done something wrong. It shouldn't have been. We were sorry…. We didn't want it that way. We hadn’t intended to have 147 girls and boys killed in a factory. It was a terrible thing for the people of the City of New York and the State of New York to face.”

The Democratic majority leader in the New York legislature, Al Smith—who would a few years later go on to four terms as New York governor and become the Democratic presidential nominee in 1928—went to visit the families of the dead to express his sympathy and his grief. “It was a human, decent, natural thing to do,” Perkins said, “and it was a sight he never forgot. It burned it into his mind. He also got to the morgue, I remember, at just the time when the survivors were being allowed to sort out the dead and see who was theirs and who could be recognized. He went along with a number of others to the morgue to support and help, you know, the old father or the sorrowing sister, do her terrible picking out.”

“This was the kind of shock that we all had,” Perkins remembered.

The next Sunday, concerned New Yorkers met at the Metropolitan Opera House with the conviction that “something must be done. We've got to turn this into some kind of victory, some kind of constructive action….” One man contributed $25,000 to fund citizens’ action to “make sure that this kind of thing can never happen again.”

The gathering appointed a committee, which asked the legislature to create a bipartisan commission to figure out how to improve fire safety in factories. For four years, Frances Perkins was their chief investigator.

She later explained that although their mission was to stop factory fires, “we went on and kept expanding the function of the commission 'till it came to be the report on sanitary conditions and to provide for their removal and to report all kinds of unsafe conditions and then to report all kinds of human conditions that were unfavorable to the employees, including long hours, including low wages, including the labor of children, including the overwork of women, including homework put out by the factories to be taken home by the women. It included almost everything you could think of that had been in agitation for years. We were authorized to investigate and report and recommend action on all these subjects.”

And they did. Al Smith was the speaker of the house when they published their report, and soon would become governor. Much of what the commission recommended became law.

Perkins later mused that perhaps the new legislation to protect workers had in some way paid the debt society owed to the young people who died in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. “The extent to which this legislation in New York marked a change in American political attitudes and policies toward social responsibility can scarcely be overrated,” she said. “It was, I am convinced, a turning point.”

But she was not done. In 1919, over the fervent objections of men, Governor Smith appointed Perkins to the New York State Industrial Commission to help weed out the corruption that was weakening the new laws. She continued to be one of his closest advisers on labor issues. In 1929, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt replaced Smith as New York governor, he appointed Perkins to oversee the state’s labor department as the Depression worsened. When President Herbert Hoover claimed that unemployment was ending, Perkins made national news when she repeatedly called him out with figures proving the opposite and said his “misleading statements” were “cruel and irresponsible.” She began to work with leaders from other states to figure out how to protect workers and promote employment by working together.

In 1933, after the people had rejected Hoover’s plan to let the Depression burn itself out, President-elect Roosevelt asked Perkins to serve as Secretary of Labor in his administration. She accepted only on the condition that he back her goals: unemployment insurance, health insurance, old-age insurance, a 40-hour work week, a minimum wage, and abolition of child labor. She later recalled: “I remember he looked so startled, and he said, ‘Well, do you think it can be done?’”

She promised to find out.

Once in office, Perkins was a driving force behind the administration’s massive investment in public works projects to get people back to work. She urged the government to spend $3.3 billion on schools, roads, housing, and post offices. Those projects employed more than a million people in 1934.

In 1935, FDR signed the Social Security Act, providing ordinary Americans with unemployment insurance; aid to homeless, dependent, and neglected children; funds to promote maternal and child welfare; and public health services.

In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which established a minimum wage and maximum hours. It banned child labor.

Frances Perkins, and all those who worked with her, transformed the horror of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire into the heart of our nation’s basic social safety net.

“There is always a large horizon…. There is much to be done,” Perkins said. “It is up to you to contribute some small part to a program of human betterment for all time.”

—

[amphibious-thing]

Oh! the Roast Beef of Old England: Roast Beef, English Nationalism, Effeminacy and Epilepsy (ft. Lord Hervey)

While today if asked what the national dish of England is some might say bangers and mash, Yorkshire pudding or chicken tikka masala in the 18th century the answer was roast beef.

It was roast beef that was the star of the patriotic 18th century song The Roast Beef of Old England. Originally written by Henry Fielding for his play The Grub-Steet Opera (1731) and then reused in Don Quixote in England (1734) the more popular version was written by Richard Leveridge who set it to a catchier tune and added five new stanzas:

When mighty roast Beef was the Englishman's Food, It ennobled our Veins, and enriched our Blood; Our Soldiers were brave, and our Courtiers were good. Oh the roast Beef of old England, and old English roast Beef. But since we have learn'd from all-conquering France, To eat their Ragouts, as well as to dance, We are fed up with nothing, but vain Complaisance. Oh the roast Beef, &c. Our Fathers, of old, were robust, stout, and strong, And kept open House, with good Chear all Day long, Which made their plump Tenants rejoice in this Song. Oh the roast Beef, &c. But now we are dwindled, to what shall I name, A sneaking poor Race, half begotten-and tame, Who sully those Honours, that once shone in Fame. Oh the roast Beef, &c. When good Queen Elizabeth sat on the Throne, E're Coffee, or Tea, and such Slip-Slops were known, The World was in Terror, if e'er she but frown. Oh the roast Beef, &c. In those Days, if Fleets did presume on the Main, They seldom, or never, return'd back again, As witness, the vaunting Armada of Spain. Oh the roast Beef, &c. Oh then they had Stomachs to eat, and to fight, And when Wrongs were a cooking, to do themselves right; But now we're a-I could, but good Night. Oh the roast Beef, &c.

Leveridge's version espouses the masculine qualities roast beef making Englishmen "brave", "robust," and "strong". Fielding's version from Don Quixote in England contrasts this English masculinity with the non-roast beef eating "effeminate Italy, France, and Spain". (Edgar V. Roberts, Henry Fielding and Richard Leveridge: Authorship of "The Roast Beef of Old England")

[Politeness, print, after 1780, published by Hannah Humphrey, after John Nixon (1779), via The Metropolitan Museum of Art.]

A common element of English nationalist propaganda was to contrast the masculine beef eating Englishman with the effeminate frogs legs eating Frenchman. The satirical print Politeness compares the masculine John Bull to a stereotypical effeminate Frenchman. John Bull is depicted as a plainly dressed man, holding a pint of beer, with a Bulldog at his feet and a cut of beef hanging behind him. The Frenchman in contrast is depicted as foppishly dressed, holding a snuff-box, with an Italian Greyhound at his feet and a bundle of Frogs hanging behind him. John Bull says "You be D_m'd". The Frenchman responds "Vous ete une Bete". The caption narrates:

With Porter Roast Beef & Plumb Pudding well cram'd, Jack English declares that Monsr may be D------d. The Soup Meagre Frenchman such Language dont suit, So he Grins Indignation & calls him a Brute.

In 18th century English print culture the butcher became somewhat of a stock figure representing English masculinity. There was a series of prints in which a masculine butcher is depicted assaulting a fop. Often with bystanders cheering him on. Some of these prints identified the fop as a Frenchman (such as The Frenchman in London by John Collet and The Frenchman at Market by Adam Smith) but others either don't identify nationality or indicate that the fop is English.

[The Beaux Disaster, print, c. 1747, via The Wellcome Collection.]

The Beaux Disaster depicts the aftermath of an altercation between a butcher and a fop. The butcher has hung the fop up by the back of his breeches on a hook next to cuts of meet. A crowd of passersby point and laugh at the fop, enjoying his misfortune. The caption narrates:

Ye smarts whose merit lies in dress, Take warning by a beaux distress. Whose pigmy size, & ill-tun'd rage Ventured with butchers to engage. But they unus'd affronts to brook Have hung poor Fribble on a hook, While foul disgrace! expos'd in air, The butchers shout and ladies stare. Satyr so strong, ye fops must strike you How can ye think ye fair will like you, Women of sense, in men despise The anticks, they in monkeys prize.

[Docking the Maccaroni–or the Butcher's Revenge, print, c. 1773, published by Carington Bowles, via The Metropolitan Museum of Art.]

Docking the Maccaroni–or the Butcher's Revenge depicts a butcher cutting off a macaroni's queue. Fashionable men in the late 1760s and 1770s would wear elaborate hairstyles sometimes with hair tied back into a 'club'. This hairstyle is a common element of macaroni satire (for a more flattering rendering of the style see George Simon Harcourt by Daniel Gardner). The caption narrates:

A Spruce Maccaroni whose Hair and whose Clothes, Were the envy of Fops, and the Patterns of Beaus; Looked with Scorn on a Butcher; in passing the Street, And turnd up his Nose, at the sight of the Meat. Says the Butcher you Pig, if you'd eat such as that, You'd credit your Country, and grow plump and fat. Greasy Brute cry's the Fop! then the Butcher enrag'd, Snatch'd a Knife, & to punish the Coxcomb engag'd: Then seizing poor Mac, who began to look pale, He docked his Fools noddle, and cut of his Tail: Now Now cry'd the Butcher the People may stare. At a Skull without Brains, & a Head without Hair.

The macaroni was often portrayed as a traitor to English culture not only for his love of french fashion but also his love of Italian pasta. The fabled 'macaroni club' was a reference to Almack's Assembly Rooms at 50 Pall Mall. (see Pretty Gentleman by Peter McNeil p52-55) The Macaroni and Theatrical Magazine (Oct 1772) explains that the origin of the word macaroni comes from:

a compound dish made of vermicelli and other pastes, which unknown in England until then, was imported by our Connoscenti in eating, as an improvement to their subscription at Almack's. In time, the subscribers to those dinners became to be distinguished by the title MACARONIES, and, as the meeting was composed of the younger and gayer part of our nobility and gentry, who, at the same time that they gave into the luxuries of eating, went equally into the extravagancies of dress; the word Macaroni then changed its meaning to that of a person who exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion; and is now partly used as a term of reproach to all ranks of people, indifferently, who fell into this absurdity.

(Cited in Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum edited by Frederic George Stephens and Edward Hawkins, vol.4, p.826)

Foppishly dressed men were blamed not only for the popularisation of pasta in England but also the growing disfavour for roast beef. A letter written to The Connoisseur in 1767 complains:

By Jove it is a shame, a burning shame, to see the honour of England, the glory of our nation, the greatest pillar of like, ROAST BEEF, utterly banished from our tables. This evil, like many others, has been growing upon us by degrees. It was begun by wickedly placing the Beef upon a side-table, and screening it by a parcel of queue-tail'd fellows in laced waistcoats.

(Volume 1, Edition 5)

With both his dress and diet the fop had betrayed English masculinity for French and Italian effeminacy.

Passed down by Lady Louisa Stuart* as an example of the "extreme to which Lord Hervey carried his effeminate nicety", when "asked at dinner whether he would have some beef, he answered, "Beef?— Oh, no!— Faugh! Don't you know I never eat beef, nor horse, nor any of those things?" Stuart was somewhat skeptical of this story wondering "Could any mortal have said this in earnest?"

*anonymously. Stuart wrote the introductory anecdotes included in the 1837 edition of The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

While it's anyone's guess as to whether Hervey said these exact words it is true that he didn't eat beef. Not because he "courted" effeminacy with the "affected and almost finical nicety in his habits and tastes" as John Heneage Jesse suggests (in Memoirs of the Court of England from the Revolution in 1688 to the Death of George the Second) but for his health.

Lord Hailes explained:

Lord Hervey, having felt some attacks of the epilepsy, entered upon and persisted in a very strict regimen, and thus stopt the progress and prevented the effects of that dreadful disease. His daily food was a small quantity of asses milk and a flour biscuit : once a-week he indulged himself with eating an apple : he used emetics daily.

(The Opinions of Sarah Duchess-Dowager of Marlborough edited by Lord Hailes, p43)

Lord Hervey's doctor George Cheyne believed that "a total Milk, and Vegetable Diet, as absolutely necessary for the total Cure of the Epilepsy". (The English Malady, p254)

In An Account of My Own Constitution and Illness Hervey explains that he followed such a diet for three years on Cheyne's prescription eating "neither flesh, fish, nor eggs" but living "entirely upon herbs, roots, pulse, grains, fruits, legumes". (p969) However after three years he reintroduced white meet. He explains his diet in a letter to Cheyne, written on the 9th of December 1732:

To let you know that I continue one of your most pious votaries, and to tell you the method I am in. In the first place, I never take wine nor malt drink, or any liquid but water and milk-tea ; in the next, I eat no meat but the whitest, youngest, and tenderest, nine times in ten nothing but chicken, and never more than the quantity of a small one at a meal. I seldom eat any supper, but if any, nothing absolutely but bread and water ; two days in the week I eat no flesh ; my breakfast is dry biscuit not sweet, and green tea ; I have left off butter as bilious ; I eat no salt, nor any sauce but bread sauce. I take a Scotch pill once a week, and thirty grains of Indian root when my stomach is loaded, my head giddy, and my appetite gone. I have not bragged of the persecutions I suffer in this cause ; but the attacks made upon me by ignorance, impertinence, and gluttony are innumerable and incredible.

Intriguingly in An Account of My Own Constitution and Illness Hervey focuses more attention on colic than epilepsy, dismissing his seizures as rare, but admits he had "two this year". This leads to the impression that his diet was prescribed to treat colic rather than epilepsy and Cheyne did prescribe a milk and vegetable diet in cases of "extreme Nervous Cholicts". (p167) Perhaps it was prescribed to treat both. But why downplay epilepsy in an account of his own illness?

While some enlightenment doctors approached epilepsy with a more scientific approach, superstitions still remained. Some believed epilepsy was a form of lunacy that was controlled by the moon (the word lunatick coming from luna). In An Historical Essay on the State of Physick in the Old and New Testament Dr. Jonathan Harle claimed that "people in this distemper are most afflicted at full or change of the moon." (p124)

Many believed epilepsy was caused by possession and this belief was supported by the bible. Mark 9:17-27, Matthew 17:14-18 and Luke 9:37-43 tell the story of a man who brings his possessed son to Jesus who "rebuked the unclean spirit, and healed the child". The boy's symptoms resemble those of an epileptic seizure and these bible verses are cited by Dr. Jonathan Harle as "an exact description of one that is an epileptick (had the falling sickness) or lunatick". (p124) Harle claimed that was "a truth as plain as words can make it" that some people with epilepsy were "possess'd by the devil". (p22)

Epilepsy was also believed to be caused by sexual depravity. The popular anti-masturbation pamphlet Onania: or, the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution claimed masturbation caused epilepsy (p23). Onanism: or, a treatise upon the disorders produced by masturbation, or, The dangerous effects of secret and excessive venery claimed that a 14-year-old boy "died of convulsions, and of a kind of epilepsy, the origin of which was solely masturbation". (p19)

With the stigma surrounding epilepsy its no wonder that Hervey kept his seizures secret only telling a select few. One of the people he trusted with this secret was his lover Stephen Fox. Hervey describes having a seizure while at court and keeping it hidden from the Royal Family in a letter to Fox written on the 7th of December 1731:

I have been so very much out of order since I writ last, that going into the Drawing Room before the King, I was taken with one of those disorders with the odious name, that you know happen'd to me once at Lincoln's Inn Fields play-house. I had just warning enough to catch hold of somebody (God knows who) in one side of the lane made for the King to pass through, and stopped till he was gone by. I recovered my senses enough immediately to say, when people came up to me asking what was the matter, that it was a cramp took me suddenly in my leg, and (that cramp excepted) that I was as well as ever I was in my life. I was far from it ; for I saw everything in a mist, was so giddy I could hardly walk, which I said was owing to my cramp not quite gone off. To avoid giving suspicion I stayed and talked with people about ten minutes, and then (the Duke of Grafton being there to light the King) came down to my lodgings, where * * * I am now far from well, but better, and prodigiously pleased, since I was to feel this disorder, that I contrived to do it à l'insu de tout le monde. Mr. Churchill was close by me when it happened, and takes it all for a cramp. The King, Queen, &c. inquired about my cramp this morning, and laughed at it ; I joined in the laugh, said how foolish an accident it was, and so it has passed off ; nobody but Lady Hervey (from whom it was impossible to conceal what followed) knows anything of it.

[justforbooks]

Iris Apfel was finally recognised as a great, original fashion stylist in her 80s, when the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum in New York had a sudden gap in its 2005 exhibition schedule. Many curators knew Apfel, who has died aged 102, as a collector stashing away clothes, especially costume jewellery, both couture-high and street-market-low, so the institute asked to borrow some of her thousands of pieces.

When Apfel wore them herself, dozens at a time in ensembles collaged fresh daily, they had zingy pzazz, so she was invited to set up the displays. There was no publicity budget, and her name was modestly known only in the interior decor trade, yet the show, Rara Avis: Selections from the Iris Apfel Collection, became a huge success after visitors promoted it online. It toured other American museums, changing exhibits en route because Apfel wanted her stuff back so she could wear it.

Apfel’s grandfather had been a master tailor in Russia; her father, Samuel Barrel, supplied mirrors to smart decorators; her chic mother, Sadye (nee Asofsky), had a fashion shop. They lived out in rural Astoria, in the Queens borough of New York, where Iris was born.

As a child, her treat was a weekly subway trip to Manhattan to explore its shops, her favourites the junk emporia of Greenwich Village. She was short, plain and, until her teen years, plump, but she had style; and the owner of a Brooklyn department store picked her out of a crowd to tell her so. During the Depression all her family could sew, drape, glue, paint and otherwise create the look of a room, or a person, on a budget of cents – the best of educations.

She studied art history at New York University, then qualified to teach and did so briefly in Wisconsin before fleeing back to New York to work on Women’s Wear Daily. Furniture and fabrics were in short supply during and after the second world war, and Iris began to earn by sourcing antiques and textiles; if she could not find it, she could make or fake it cheaply.

In 1948 she married Carl Apfel, and they became a decorating team: he had the head for business and she the eye. Unable to find cloth appropriate to a period decor, Iris adapted a design from an old piece and had it woven in a friend’s family mill; she and Carl then set up Old World Weavers in 1952, commissioning traditional makers around the globe.

Photographs and home-movie footage from the next four decades showed Apfel, adorned with elan, haggling for one-off items in souks, flea markets and bric-a-brac shops. She is the most decorative sight in each shot, her ensembles put together with complex cadenzas atop an underlying, tailored, structure– they are like jazz – not a statement, but a conversation.

Apfel was the last of those 20th-century fashion exotics who presented themselves as installations. Although she wore a priest’s warm tunic to the White House (President Richard Nixon underheated the place), plus armfuls of cheap African bracelets and thigh-high boots, she was not an exhibitionist like the Marchesa Casati, and, with her vaudevillian comic timing, was far funnier than the imperious Vogue editor Diana Vreeland.

Also, she never ever bought full-price: her many rails and under-the-bed suitcases of couture were sale-price samples, chosen for their cut, fabric, skilled craftwork and colour dazzle (“Colour can raise the dead”). She might wear them over thrift shop pyjamas, or under a Peking Opera costume, with hawsers of necklaces atop. Money could not buy personal style, she said, prettiness withered, beauty could corrode the soul. All that really mattered was “attitude, attitude, attitude”.

Old World Weavers discreetly refurbished the White House under nine presidents, as well as grand hotels and private houses, before the Apfels sold the company in 1992. They retired to a quiet life in their apartment on Park Avenue, New York, its decor an extension of Apfel’s outfits (bad garment choices were cut up for cushions), and in a Palm Beach holiday home where the Christmas decoration collection stayed up all year round, along with cuddly toys and museum-class folk art. Clothes shopping, and the improvisation of an outfit, became Apfel’s daily ritual, as cooking might be to a gourmet.

But after the Met show, and a book, Rare Bird of Fashion (2007), Apfel was back in as much full-time employment as she could manage in her 80s and 90s (she had a hip replacement because she fell after stepping on an Oscar de la Renta gown). She was cover girl of Dazed and Confused, among many other publications, window display artist at Bergdorf Goodman, designer and design consultant – superb on eye-glasses; she wore large, owl-like, frames to stylise her aged face into a witty, unchanging, cartoon.

She took seriously her responsibilities to fashion students on her course at the University of Texas, teaching them about imagination, craft and tangible pleasures in a world of images.

Her career lasted – nothing was ever too late: in 2018, Iris Apfel: Accidental Icon, a book of memoir and sound style advice; in 2019, a contract with the model agency IMG; and last year, a beauty campaign for makeup with Ciaté London. The documentarian Albert Maysles trailed her for Iris (2014), filming this “geriatric starlet” – her term – as she dealt drolly with new high-fashion friends, or laughed at an “Iris” Halloween costume (glasses, a ton of bangles).

She watched as a storage loft of her antique treasures was listed in lots for sale, and as white-gloved assistants from museums that had begged a bequest boxed up her garments; she still had, and wore, the shoes from her wedding. All things, she said, were only on loan in this world, even to collectors. The point was to enjoy them to the full before bidding them good-bye.

Carl died in 2015.

🔔 Iris Barrel Apfel, decorator and fashion stylist, born 29 August 1921; died 1 March 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[monkeyssalad-blog]

Jarmila Novotna by Truus, Bob & Jan too! Via Flickr: German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6837/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Walter Firner, Berlin. Czech soprano Jarmila Novotná (1907-1994) was one of the world-renowned opera luminaries of the 20th Century. Her film appearances were unfortunately few and far between. Jarmila Novotná was born in in Prague, Czech Republic in 1907. She studied singing with Emmy Destinn. In 1925, the 17-years-old Novotná made her operatic debut at the Prague Opera House as Marenka in Bedřich Smetana's Prodaná nevěsta (The Bartered Bride). Six days later, the lyric soprano sang there as Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi's La traviata. The following year, she made her film debut in the silent film Vyznavaci slunce/The Sun Disciples (Václav Binovec, 1926), starring Luigi Serventi. In 1928 she starred in Verona as Gilda opposite Giacomo Lauri-Volpi in Verdi's Rigoletto and at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples as Adina opposite Tito Schipa in Gaetano Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore. In 1929 she joined the Kroll Opera in Berlin, where she sang Violetta as well as the title roles of Giacomo Puccini's Manon Lescaut and Madama Butterfly. When talking pictures arrived, she headlined in German films like Brand in Der Oper/Fire in the Opera House (Carl Froelich, 1930), with Gustaf Gründgens, Der Bettelstudent/The Beggar Student (Victor Janson, 1931), and the film version of The Bartered Bride, Die Verkaufte Braut (Max Ophüls, 1932). Hal Erickson at AllMovie on Die Verkaufte Braut (1930): “The original libretto, involving the comic misadventures of two mismatched couples, is given a respectable amount of attention, but the film's biggest selling card is the photographic dexterity of Max Ophuls, who never met a camera crane he didn't like. Since filmed opera was seldom big box-office in 1932, Ophuls concentrates on the farcical elements of the story; especially worth noting are comic contributions by Paul Kemp and Otto Wernicke, who seldom let their German film fans down. Curiously, star Jarmila Novotna, whose ‘live’ appearances in The Bartered Bride were much prized by contemporary critics, doesn't come off all that well in this film version.” Other films followed such as Nacht Der Grossen Liebe/Night of the Great Love (Geza von Bolvary, 1933) with Gustav Fröhlich. In January 1933 she created the female lead in Jaromir Weinberger's new operetta Frühlingsstürme (Spring Storms), opposite Richard Tauber at the Theater im Admiralspalast, Berlin. This was the last new operetta produced in the Weimar Republic, and she and Tauber were both soon forced to leave Germany by the new Nazi regime. Jarmila Novotnà returned to Czechoslovakia to star in the film Skrivanci pisen/Lark's Songs (Svatopluk Innemann, 1933). In 1934, she left for Vienna, where she created the title role in Franz Lehár's operetta Giuditta opposite Richard Tauber. Her immense success in that role led to a contract with the Vienna State Opera, where she was named Kammersängerin. She also appeared there with Tauber in The Bartered Bride and Madama Butterfly. In the cinema, she starred in the Austrian operetta film Frasquita (Karel Lamac, 1934) with Heinz Ruhmann, the Austrian romantic thriller Der Kosak und die Nachtigall/The Cossack and the Nightingale (Phil Jutzi, 1935) with Iván Petrovich, and in the French-British operetta film La dernière valse/The Last Waltz (Leo Mittler, 1935), which was made in two language versions. She then left the film industry to concentrate on her stage work with the Viennese State Opera. After the Anschluss of Austria, she had to leave Vienna. In January 1940 she made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, as Mimí in Puccini's La bohème. From 1940 to 1956, Novotná performed regularly at the Met. In 1946 she returned before the cameras in a straight dramatic role in the Hollywood production The Search (Fred Zinnemann, 1946), starring Montgomery Clift. The Search is a semi-documentary film on the plight of WWII orphans. Novotná played a Czech mother who has lost contact with her young son when they were in Auschwitz and she now travels from one refugee camp to another in search of him. Novotna's then played turn of the century diva Maria Selka in the biopic The Great Caruso (Richard Thorpe, 1951), featuring Mario Lanza. The film traces legendary tenor Enrico Caruso's ascension from adolescent choir singer in Naples to the uppermost ranks of the opera world. Mario Lanza's tenor voice made this film one of the top box-office draws of 1951, and this helped to popularize opera among the general public. On TV she appeared in The Great Waltz (Max Liebman, 1955), which charts the life and times of composer Johann Strauss, Jr. She also played Hans’ mother in the TV musical Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates (Sidney Lumet, 1958), starring Tab Hunter. Her last screen appearance was as an interviewee in the documentary Toscanini: The Maestro (Peter Rosen, 1985). At 85, Jarmila Novotná passed away in 1994 in New York. Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

The famed "Diamond horseshoe" of the (old) Metropolitan Opera House sparkles on November 13, 1951, as the 67th season opens with the presentation of Verdi's Aida.

Photo: Associated Press

[opera-ghosts]

Here we see this 100 years old Program from The Metropolitan Opera 1925. Verdi „Requiem“ with a great cast under Tullio Serafin.

[halfagonyandhope]

ignite the stars │ch. 20

first chapter (x); previous chapter (x)

Satine Kryze is an internationally-recognized scholar in genocide studies who recently resigned from the Department of State over her concerns regarding the agency's ethics. Ben Kenobi is a tenured professor at Georgetown University studying the use of religion to justify military conflicts. Once high school sweethearts, the two haven't spoken since parting ways for university. That is, until Satine accepts a research fellowship - at Georgetown.

---

Satine officially moves into Ben’s Old Town Alexandria apartment that weekend. Some of her furniture and other household items they decide to donate, mostly the pieces she’d picked up in grad school as thrift store finds that have seen better days. Other items they move into storage. While they haven’t talked about it yet, they share an understanding: his two-bedroom apartment will suffice for now, but someday they want a proper home, one that they own. So those items moved into storage - those are an investment in that future, one that Satine hopes isn’t too far away.

A few things she does take with her, such as her desk and sentimental knick knacks like sandbakelse tins. The tins are small and bowl-shaped with ornamental ridges used for making holiday cookies, and she’d been gifted them by her adoptive parents. Satine doesn’t celebrate Christmas, of course, but she thinks maybe this year she can get Ben on board with helping her try to bake the cardamom- and almond-flavored cookies.

Somehow, she doesn’t think he’ll be too opposed.

Her birthday arrives shortly after her move, aligning this year with the summer solstice. Ben wakes her with the sun, kissing her and bringing her to ecstasy before the sunrise is complete.

As they lie together afterward, his thumb traces over her ring, and they kiss lazily but longingly.

They don’t end up moving far from bed that day, and he makes good on his promise from Valentine’s Day to see how many times he can bring her to climax. While they rest in between, they search for job openings and create a list of the institutions to which they want to apply.

One of particular interest has just been posted at Harvard. It fits Satine’s skillset a bit more than it does Ben’s, and they decide she should apply. 

“It’d be a homecoming of sorts,” Ben says. “Really not that far from Andover.”

“I wonder how many of our classmates ended up at Harvard? I can’t fathom we’d be the first.”

“Some of them absolutely should not end up anywhere near Harvard,” says Ben, and Satine laughs. “But in all seriousness, Massachusetts would be a good choice. We wouldn’t have to worry about state politics there.”

It’s clear where his mind is headed, and Satine looks over at him.

“Do you want children?” she asks, curious.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “I just know I want the ability to protect you if you were to get pregnant and can't - or don't want to - continue the pregnancy.”

And at that she closes the laptop and sets it on one of the nightstands, leading to a tangle of limbs and bedsheets.

After, while still breathing heavily, Satine responds, “I’m not sure about children, either. At the moment I feel...ambivalent. But if you were to eventually decide wholeheartedly that children were not something you saw for yourself, I would not be disappointed.”

“I feel similarly. It’s not a dealbreaker for me either way, nor will it become one.”

And they resume their search for jobs, opening the laptop again. They find a posting at Princeton, this one more appropriate for Ben’s background. “How would you feel about New Jersey?” he says.

“Padma would be thrilled,” says Satine. “Isn’t she a Princeton alum?”

“She is indeed,” Ben confirms. “But I asked about your feelings, not Padma’s.”

“I don’t know much about it,” says Satine honestly. “Beyond that it’s not a long trip by train into the city. That could be nice, especially if we’d like to see a show at the Metropolitan Opera.”

“Or Broadway,” he suggests. “Moulin Rouge! is still playing, and the protagonist is named Satine.”

She quirks a brow. “How do you know so much about Broadway? Were you secretly a musical theater kid and never told me?”

He laughs. “I’m a bi cliché, I suppose,” says Ben, shrugging. “Musicals are fun,” he adds. “Romance, drama, intrigue, suspense - and dancing! What’s not to like?” He clears his throat. “Although maybe not Moulin Rouge!; it’s very Orpheus and Eurydice coded.”

Satine sighs. “Satine dies in the end, doesn’t she?”

Ben grimaces. “Perhaps we should avoid that particular show,” he admits.

“Let me guess. Her pain and eventual death further the character development of the male protagonist,” Satine quips, “and the plot was thus lauded as 'poignant' and 'innovative'?”

“You’re not wrong,” says Ben. “But the one thing they get very right is that her love interest adores his Satine.” He closes the laptop and sets it aside again. “Allow me to demonstrate?”

He pulls the sheets back, crawling between her legs, kissing her inner thighs.

She sighs like it’s a chore, but then cannot contain her laugh.

“Very well,” she says, and she can’t keep the smile out of her voice. “You’ve dug yourself quite deep, and I’m looking forward to seeing how you crawl your way out.”

“Challenge accepted,” Ben says with a grin, and then his lips are on her.

She arches into him.

---

Before June ends, they apply to the respective positions at Harvard and Princeton. The postings don’t close for several weeks still and are being reviewed on a rolling basis until that point, but it’s a relief to be planning, to have concrete steps to take.

Meanwhile, Ben takes the first steps to put their backup plan in motion.

“I think the most expedient way for me to obtain a resident permit would be to apply for an engagement visa,” he tells her one evening as they are preparing supper. Satine has graduated to being able to boil noodles without supervision, although his words distract her momentarily, and she lets the water bubble over onto the hot stove, and it hisses at her angrily.

Ben reaches over to turn the burner temperature down.

“Obviously, before I do that, we should have jobs lined up. And the thing about this particular visa is that we’d actually need to marry within six months of arriving there.” He holds her gaze. “So if you have any qualms about the actual tradition of marriage itself, now would be the time to voice them.”

Satine stirs the pasta noodles. “No qualms,” she whispers. “Not on my end, at least,” she adds, this time more sure.

He gives her a confused look. “Are you implying there would be qualms on my end?”

She sets down the pasta fork. “No,” she says immediately. “I mean. Yes?” She sighs. “It’s just - you’re ready to move across the world for someone who can’t even vocalize how she feels about you. You honestly don’t have qualms about that?”

Ben considers this. “No,” he says eventually. “There are many ways to communicate, and words are just one way to do so. You show me how you feel about me every day, in other ways. The rest…that I can wait for.”

She leans her shoulder against his, ducking her head to smile. Then she picks up the pasta fork again. “Good,” she says, beginning to stir. “Because the other day I saw a posting at the University of Oslo within their Department of Political Science. Starting in the spring, they need a lecturer for their Peace and Conflict Studies master’s program.”

He nudges her back. “You should apply. I’ll update my LinkedIn page and make some connections to look for remote work.”

“They have courses and programs in English at the University of Oslo, too, you know. So you could teach, if you want to.”

His eyes light up at this, and Satine smiles.

“Forever a teacher at heart,” she says.

“I’ll learn Norwegian, too,” he promises. “I happen to have a live-in tutor who I think could get me fluent in record time.”

She snickers. “What is it with you and sleeping with your language instructors?”

“Polyglots are intelligent, and intelligence is sexy,” says Ben.

Satine drops the fork, and it clatters on the stove. “You think I’m sexy?”

He rolls his eyes. “How have we not established this by now?” he says. “That insecurity complex of yours will just not be tamed.” So he pulls her against him, his hands on her ass. “Darling, you are the most gorgeous, intelligent, and - yes - sexy creature I’ve ever laid eyes on. You literally make me weak in the knees.”

Satine kisses his collarbone, mollified.

“I like when you call me ‘darling’,” she murmurs, turning back to the stove.

“Good to know, darling,” he breathes into her ear.

---

The next day, they sit side-by-side at the kitchen table, ready to submit their applications.

“On three,” Satine says.

“On three or right after?”

She looks at him, exasperated; he’s messing with her and wearing a shit-eating grin.

She hits submit without counting down.

“Hey!” he says, mock affronted, and then Satine reaches over to tap the mousepad of his laptop, also submitting his application. “And again - hey!”

She sticks her tongue out at him, and she considers the image they present: two PhDs, applying to jobs at Harvard and Princeton, while simultaneously appearing to the rest of the world like they are twelve years old. Ben seems to be thinking along the same lines because he bursts out laughing.

Satine mirrors him, doubling over as she snickers.

---

Ben ends up hearing back first.

Princeton wants to schedule a phone screen interview, which eventually takes place in mid-July. They go into campus that day so he can take the call from his office phone, and Satine tries not to listen in from her office next door.

She fails miserably.

Ben, of course, is a natural at the interview process. He’s charming and doesn’t have any problems conversing with someone he’s just met: he chats with the interviewer about the Premier League and what Arsenal’s chances are come the start of the season in August. And he’s practiced his responses to typical questions asked during such screenings, so he doesn’t use filler words as he searches for the next phrase.

In her office, Satine sets down her pen as he begins to answer the next question.

“Yes, absolutely. My family right now is my fiancée, and she’s excited about the possibility of moving there. The campus of course is beautiful, and she’s a fellow academic so she understands the appeal of me working at an Ivy.”

The interviewer must ask for more information because Ben gives a mini-elevator pitch of her work. Satine thinks her heart might explode at the pride in his voice.

“Potentially,” says Ben in response to another question. “She’s also on the job market right now, so we’re exploring options and seeing how everything shakes out.”

The call wraps up soon after that, and Ben immediately appears at her door. Satine looks up. “How do you think it went?” she asks, standing to give him a congratulatory hug.

“Mission accomplished in that they know you’ll be tagging along if I get the job. They requested your CV, but they sounded like they knew of you already.”

“I meant about you,” says Satine. “This was your interview, after all.”

Ben’s face heats, and he ducks his head. “I think it went well,” he admits.

Satine kisses his cheek. “Humble man. When do you hear back? About next steps?”

“A couple weeks. They have a lot of candidates to screen first. If I make it, it’ll be a remote panel interview, and then after that if my name is still in the mix, there will be a two-day campus visit.”

“They’ll call you,” Satine says. “Your interviewer was a fellow Gooner, for God’s sake. What a story that would be, if the Arsenal can help you land a job.”

Her email pings at that moment, and Satine leans over her desk to check if it’s important. At seeing the sender’s address, she moves around the desk to look at the screen properly, and she opens the email.

She looks up at Ben.

“They want to set up a screening call with me,” she says, hardly believing it, letting a smile cross her face. “At Harvard.”

---

The following week, it’s Satine’s turn to take the screening call. She and Ben return to campus, and she shuts the door to her office to make sure she’s not interrupted.

She’s no stranger to interviews, of course, and she’s prepared just as she has for her previous ones. Though this call is likely to be more on the business-y side of things, discussing items like benefits and salary expectations, Satine has prepared scenarios for every question they could possibly ask her.

They do end up asking about her salary expectations, and they also ask about her research and service. And when they ask if she has any questions for them, she’s prepared.

One of the questions she asks is to get the interviewer’s opinion on the strengths of the department. The interviewer gives a fairly standard reply about the quality of the campus, and Satine sees her chance.

“I’ve only ever heard great things,” she says, “and my partner and I are from the area, so we’ve heard a lot. We’re looking forward to the opportunity to potentially move back. Kind of like an academic homecoming.”

The interviewer is excited by this, so Satine gets to explain that she and Ben had gone to high school at Andover and that Ben is currently a professor at Georgetown. Her heart races as the interviewer seems genuinely interested in the courses he’s taught. And - sure enough - the Harvard interviewer asks if she can forward Ben’s CV.

Before the interview ends, Satine asks about next steps. Harvard, too, is in the early stages of screening applicants, and she won’t hear back about a potential second interview until August. But Satine can relax - she’s made it through the first hurdle, and she thinks it was good enough.

When Ben asks how it went, she tells him this, and he crosses his fingers, holding them up for her to see. “Sending good vibes out into the universe for us both,” he says.

She nods. “But in the meantime…wine?”

He agrees. “Definitely.”

---

The following week, they both get emails inviting them for a second interview.

Satine’s arrives first, but she’s meeting Breha for lunch and can’t tell Ben right away. So she excitedly shares the information with her friend instead, and Breha orders a decadent dessert for them to split to celebrate.

Breha laughs as they dig in. “So your backup plan for the NSF was Harvard?” she asks. “I don’t know if that’s brave or foolish. Both, maybe?”

“Try ‘calculated’,” says Satine, and she finally moves her left hand into view so that Breha can see.

Breha’s jaw drops. “Oh my god,” she says. “Oh my god, Satine!” And she pulls Satine’s hand toward her to better view the ring. “I need to hear everything. How did he propose?”

“Actually, I did,” Satine says. “But he had the ring with him when I asked him, so it was kind of a mutual thing.”

“It’s gorgeous,” says Breha. “He has very good taste. I mean,” she adds, gesturing at Satine. “Obviously he does. But look at you! Actually living outside of your work for once! I’m so happy for you, truly.”

“I’ll take the compliment, however backhanded it was.”

Breha rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean. I feel like I’m obligated, as your friend, to say that you seem to be moving a little fast - but honestly, fuck that. You dated this guy for two years in high school, right? So it’s not like you don’t know him.”

Satine nods. “We dated for two years and were close friends a year before that, and we were in the same social circles a year before that,” she confirms. “So I know him. And he hasn’t changed. Not in any way that matters, that is.”

“So if you get the job at Harvard, is he coming with? Like spousal arm candy?”

Satine cackles at this image. “Ben would actually think that’s fucking hilarious. But, yes, that’s the goal. He’s actually hoping to hear back about a similar interview at Princeton soon, so God willing one of us will get an offer that’s open to bringing on a plus one.”

“If your department at Georgetown got their heads out of their asses, they’d just hire you on full-time,” says Breha. “But they really haven’t given you any indication that they will? Even after you booked that major keynote address?”

Satine sighs. “Nothing solid enough to bank on,” she admits. “So Ben and I have backup plans. And backup plans for those plans.”

Breha takes another bite of the dessert. “Well, wherever you end up, I’ll come visit. I’ve got to make sure Baby Organa is cultured and well-traveled. Obviously.”

Satine grins. “Is the morning sickness any better?”

“Not at all.” Breha makes a face. “I’m so ready to be done with the first trimester.”

“Oh yes, I’ve heard the swollen ankles are a big improvement over the morning sickness,” Satine says in mock seriousness.

“Don’t remind me. But I shouldn’t complain. I’ve wanted this for so long.”

“You can still complain,” says Satine with a smirk, and they both laugh.

---

When Satine arrives home, she shares the news with Ben. He kisses her fiercely in congratulations, and she fills him in on the details of the interview set for next week.

“Oh,” she adds. “I told Breha about our engagement, which means that Bail likely knows by now. And if Bail knows, then Padma does, so you should expect - ”

Ben’s phone lights up, signaling an incoming call.

“ - a call from Anakin,” finishes Satine.

Ben cracks a smile at this. “Should we bet on if he’ll be upset that I didn’t tell him right away, or will he offer to throw us a party?”

“I’d put money on the latter. But pick up the phone, Ben.”

As it turns out, Satine is half-right: Anakin is initially shocked that they’d let a month pass without looping him in, but he mentions in the next sentence that he and Padma are already planning a celebration for them. Ben smiles as he ends the call, but before he can put his phone away, it chimes, signaling an incoming email. He looks up at Satine.

“We’ve got a lot to celebrate, it seems.” And he shows her the email.

He, too, has been invited for a second interview.

---

Both virtual panel interviews are scheduled for the first week in August, Ben’s a day before Satine’s.

They practice scenario-based questions on the Metro and then bus ride into campus: Describe a time you made a mistake and how you handled it. Tell us about a time when your work priorities changed unexpectedly and you had to pivot. How have you handled disagreements with colleagues in the past?

As he answers, Satine files these pieces of information away. Each piece is a data point of the years she’d missed, a key to understanding the journey he’d undertaken the days they’d been apart.

She doesn’t have pointers or advice; he’s clearly rehearsed these responses before. He knows what he is doing.

When they arrive on campus, Satine kisses his jaw and wishes him luck. He squeezes her hand, and they go into their respective offices.

---

The next day, Satine thanks the Harvard interviewing panel and exits the videoconferencing software, leaning back in her chair and letting out a deep sigh.

Ben peaks his head into his office, and she smiles at him, inviting him inside wordlessly.

“Sounds like it went well,” he hedges, sitting in the chair in front of her desk.

“As you no doubt heard, I suspect they have their concerns about why I wanted to leave government to transition to academia.”

“You handled that question well,” Ben says. “And, honestly, given the way that the American federal government has behaved itself the past decade or so, I don’t think they'll blame anyone for wanting to leave federal employment.”

“Fair point,” Satine acknowledges.

“So you’ll hear back next week about an on campus interview?”

She nods. “They’re narrowing it down to three candidates for campus visits. Let’s just hope they’re not planning an internal hire, meaning all this is just for show.”

“Every job candidate’s worst nightmare,” agrees Ben. He stands and extends a hand. “Come on,” he says. “The surprise engagement party that Anakin and Padma are throwing us awaits.”

---

Satine is normally wary of parties: she doesn’t like small talk or loud noises or being crowded. But their engagement party is none of these things.

Padma and Anakin live a few blocks away from Breha and Bail in the Embassy Row neighborhood. Though Satine still feels a little out of place approaching the affluent neighborhood, it doesn’t make her as uncomfortable as it had the last time. 

Maybe she’s run out of fucks to give.

Less pessimistically, she realizes it likely has more to do with the camaraderie she knows is waiting for her within the townhouse. Yes, she’s always been close with Breha, but now she has a community - Bail and Breha and Padma and Anakin and Quinlan and Asajj - rather than just a sister.

Her heart twists at the thought of potentially being forced to leave this all behind.

She supposes she once had a community, back in Bosnia - but she can’t remember any of it. And life in Norway was really all about survival. Satine loves her adoptive parents, but she hasn’t been close with them in years. And she’d moved around so much after high school, first to California and then to Oxford and then to Chicago before DC, that she never had a chance to put down roots.

Of course the moment those roots would begin to grow would be the moment she’s forced to contend with pulling them up.

But she pushes this thought out of her mind as Anakin opens the door and sweeps her and Ben into a big hug, practically pulling them across the threshold. He’s chattering so quickly Satine can hardly follow - “Breha and Bail are here, but Ventress and Vos couldn't make it; hard to fly back from fieldwork in the middle of the summer” - and she and Ben exchange an amused glance. Anakin leads them into the kitchen, where their friends are waiting amongst balloons and other bright decorations. Someone places a rhinestone tiara on her head, and Anakin and Bail set off confetti cannons.

One of these detonates directly over Satine and Ben, showering them in glitter.

“It’s a good look on you, O.B.!” says Anakin. Ben sighs, resigned, but he leaves the glitter in his hair, and Satine can’t help but smile whenever she catches a glimpse of it.

After getting hugs and congratulations from everyone, Satine makes her way over to Breha and Padma, who are comparing notes on their pregnancy experiences so far.

“Gingivitis,” says Padma. “I did not expect gingivitis!”

Breha nods. “They really don’t prepare us well enough with what will happen to the body. My face has started to freckle, and it's not like I've been out in the sun much this summer. Apparently that’s also a thing that happens with pregnancy? It’s called melasma, I guess. Pregnancy mask.”

Satine doesn’t miss a beat. “Some people lose teeth while pregnant,” she says nonchalantly.

Breha gapes at her.

“I majored in anthropology in undergrad. I had to take human osteology.” Satine shrugs.

“Ah,” says Padma, hands resting over her swollen abdomen. “So I have to ask: why would pregnancy result in losing teeth?”

“Well, it ideally shouldn’t,” says Satine. “But the growing fetus needs calcium. And bones are a source of calcium, so the fetus will get the calcium from your bones if you don’t have enough in your diet. If the bone resorption happens in the jaw, you can lose a tooth. Or several.”

“Yikes,” says Breha. “Good incentive to make sure I actually take those prenatal multivitamins, I guess.”

"Agreed. My due date cannot come soon enough."

Satine grins. "Next month, right?"

Padma smiles back. "Thank goodness," she confirms with a nod. 

Then Padma leans closer.

“So why human osteology?” she asks Satine. “I can’t imagine that was a required course for anthropology majors.”

Satine laughs. “It wasn’t. At the time, I wanted to be a forensic anthropologist. I ended up choosing something far less morbid.”

Breha snorts into her soda. Padma’s laugh is more proper, but just as genuine.

---

The following week, Satine receives an invitation to interview in person at Harvard.

The week after, Ben gets a similar notice to interview at Princeton.

They compare the available dates from which to choose.

“Since they aren’t covering travel for the spouse,” says Ben, “we may as well pick the same weekend. Minimize our days apart.”

Satine nudges him with her elbow. “Why, Ben Kenobi - if you keep up that kind of talk, people might actually think you like me or something.”

“Satine, we’re engaged.”

They get distracted for quite some time after that. 

Later, each of them wearing significantly fewer articles of clothing than they had been before, they decide to schedule their interviews for the first Thursday and Friday in September.

Satine closes her laptop, feeling nervous.

“We’re going to be fine,” Ben says, and Satine nods, believing him.

He pulls her close.

---

The semester begins at the end of August, and Georgetown's campus returns to a hive of activity.

Asajj and Quinlan return from fieldwork, and both immediately admire the ring that Ben picked out for Satine - Quinlan even more so than Asajj, which amuses Satine greatly.

That Friday, the junior faculty - including Anakin, who is starting the second year of his postdoc - go out for drinks. Anakin doesn't stay late, as Padma's due date is approaching and he doesn't want to be away from her for long in the case she goes into early labor, which - according to him - is common when carrying twins.

Later, after switching from the bus to the Metro, Satine leans her head against Ben's shoulder as they make their way home to Old Town.

---

“How did it go?”

Satine collapses on the bed in her hotel room, still fully clothed in her pantsuit and heels, phone to her ear.

“Ben, they literally scheduled my visits to the washroom. That’s how packed the itinerary was.”

“I’m sure you stunned them regardless of how tired you feel.”

“And tomorrow morning is the job talk, so even more to look forward to.” She rolls over onto her stomach. “How was your day?”

Ben considers this. “Probably about the same as yours, I’d imagine,” he eventually says. “No red flags. I suspect some typical department politics but nothing glaring. I’m sure the faculty were mostly on their best behavior today, but they did indeed behave themselves.”

“That’s better than what I got. One of the tenured faculty I had a one-on-one with tried to explain a recent book he’d read to me. He got it wrong, and he dug his heels in. I knew, of course, that he was wrong because I wrote the book he was talking about.”

She has to hold the phone away from her ear at the strength of his laughter. When he pulls himself together, he asks, “Did you tell him that?"

"Better to wait until after I get the job offer," she says, and Ben just laughs harder.

When his laughter subsides, he asks, "But beyond that? How was it?”

“The usual. Meeting after meeting with various different faculty. I’d done my prep, so I could talk about their work. As you know, every academic loves to talk about their own research, so I’m sure I’ll get glowing reviews from all of them.”

“That’s my girl.”

Satine smiles. “I actually liked meeting with the students most,” she admits. “They set aside an hour for upper-level students to ask me questions. Seems like they get to weigh in on the ultimate hiring decision. They were far more interesting than the faculty.” She breathes in. “It actually gives me a little bit of hope,” she admits. “Hearing about their ideas and what they want to do after graduation. I think I needed that.”

“You claim not to enjoy teaching all that much, my dear, but I’d argue you were born for it.”

“You may be more right than I’d care to admit. I connected with some of the students on LinkedIn in case they ever needed advice. I don’t usually do that, and it wasn’t just because I wanted to be in their good graces.”

“I’m proud of you,” says Ben. “I know you did a wonderful job, and I’m sure tomorrow will go just as well.” He pauses. “Did they take you someplace fancy for dinner tonight?”

“The faculty club on campus for lunch, and then, yes, someplace I’ve already forgotten the name of for supper. Thank goodness they had vegetarian options.”

“Princeton gave me lunch at the faculty club, too! The faculty who ate with me from the department pointed out this ancient fellow from the chemistry department who apparently eats there every day. Can you imagine?”

Satine rolls her eyes. “He’ll die alone in that ivory tower of his.” Then she becomes more serious. “The department chair asked about you, you know,” she says. “It was clear they’d looked at your CV. They mentioned a few classes that they thought you might be interested in teaching.”

“Sounds promising. And the entire search committee here knows of you. It feels a bit like I’m marrying into academic royalty, the way they talked about you.”

“You’re being hyperbolic.”

“Not at all,” he assures her. "I also, conveniently, received an email from Serenno today describing the raise that will go into effect for my salary starting next term. I checked discretely with some other faculty in the department, and they didn't get a similar email."

Satine understands. "So he's aware you're interviewing, and he wants you to stay."

"It's a step in the right direction," says Ben. "But it means nothing if they're not willing to bring you aboard." He’s silent for a bit before he speaks again. “I’ll let you go so you can rest. Call and leave a voicemail as soon as you’re finished and on your way tomorrow. I might still be in meetings, but I want to know as soon as you’re done.”

The light in the hotel room catches Satine’s ring. “I miss you,” she murmurs.

“I’ll see you late tomorrow evening. I promise.”

“And I’ll hold you to it.”

She can hear his smile in his response. “You better.”

---

Satine has already given a version of this job talk before, back when she was interviewing at Georgetown and elsewhere, so it’s easy and natural to step into the role of lecturer again. She may not love teaching, but she’s damn good at it.

There’s an incredibly good turnout for her job talk, and that, strangely, gives her more confidence rather than less. It means the department advertised the talk - and it means that students are interested enough to take time out of their schedules to attend. Satine won’t make them regret it.

Satine is thrilled to get multiple questions during the talk itself, and several hands immediately fly up as she concludes her presentation. She calls on the first student, buoyed by their interest and the fact that the difficult part of the talk is over.

The student asks an astute question about navigating the field of genocide studies given current global events. It’s an intentionally loaded question, though Satine is sure the student doesn’t know exactly how loaded it is for Satine specifically.

She ponders how to answer for a few seconds before giving a nuanced reply. “I know that’s probably not what you wanted to hear,” she adds. “I also know that probably brings up more questions than it really answers. But maybe it’ll be your job to answer those questions someday.”

The student beams at her.

And Satine begins to think that maybe - just maybe - she will be able to put down roots here, too.

[amarguerite]

i am so c o n f u s e d

ive been seeing u reblogging/talking abt the gilded age among a couple others of ppl I follow/talk abt JA and like............ITS LOOKS PRETTY. SEEEMS LIKE ITS A VICTORIAN ERA THING WHICH IS NICE. but but would it be as inapp as bridgerton?? I can just skip through fucking scenes so I can look at the prett dresses but if theres outright fucking itd be age inapp BUT I need smth to watch while crocheting and this seems like the perfect kinda trashy show to watch

so so as a person whos seen it like should i watch it or not? 😭😭

It’s set in 1882 in the first season and 1883 in the second! It’s very mild, in terms of sexual content. Clothed making out between George and Bertha Russell and then in the second season their son has an ill-advised fling with an older woman that results in them making out while fully clothed and a scene of them chatting in bed while under the covers. I think the most you see is Laura Benanti’s bare leg. ETA: there is a scene in the first season where one character tries to seduce another by being naked in his bed but he gets real mad and immediately makes her get dressed and leave.

It’s a lot of fun, but admittedly it’s fun for me for some very specific reasons. If any of these resonate with you, I’d give it a shot:

1) great costuming

2) nearly every contemporary Broadway star is there to chew on scenery, be witty, and wear hats

3) ridiculous gilded age nonsense where ultra-rich robber barons and “old money” New Yorkers fight over who gets invited to what party. The overarching plot of the second season is about the construction of the Metropolitan Opera House

4) neat subplots featuring genuinely cool female historical figures who accomplished an incredible amount given the societal constraints under which they existed. Last season there was a long subplot about Clara Barton founding the Red Cross and this season there’s a subplot about the female engineer who was actually responsible for constructing the Brooklyn Bridge instead of her husband

5) fantastic scenery

6) a look at the Black elite of New York at the time— a group I didn’t know much about until this show

7) Nathan Lane giving one of the strangest and funniest performances of his long and varied career.

8) on location shooting at big Gilded Age mansions in New York State and in Newport, Rhode Island. The house belonging to the character played by one of my fave Broadway prima donnas, Kelli O’Hara, is actually Lyndhurst House, the actual Gothic Revival mansion of actual Gilded Age robber baron Jay Gould.

9) an insanely high props budget that they use to buy such outlandishly delightful things as penny-farthing bicycles and magic lanterns

Is it a good show? Honestly, I don’t know if I can answer that question.

Is it great if you’re a musical theatre fan who enjoys being able to say, “oh my god that’s Douglas Sills from The Scarlet Pimpernel and Little Shop of Horrors playing the Russell’s chef!” Yes.

[mozartbachtoven]

CHAGALL & MOZART

* Marc Chagall / Marc Zakharovich Chagall - born Moishe Zakharovich Shagall ( 1887 - 1985 ) was a Russian -French ( of Belarusian Jewish origin) painter, printmaker, and designer. He composed his images based on emotional and poetic associations, rather than on rules of pictorial logic.

- In 1963, Chagall was commissioned to paint the new ceiling for the Paris Opera / Palais Garnier.

Nonetheless, Chagall continued the project, which took the 77-year-old artist a year to complete.

The images Chagall painted on canvas ( the final canvas was nearly 220 sq. meters / 2.400 square feet ) paid tribute to the composers Mozart, Wagner, Mussorgsky, Berlioz and Ravel.

It was presented to the public on 23 Sept. 1964.

The Paris correspondent for the NEW YORK TIMES wrote:

" ... To begin with, the big crystal chandelier hanging from the centre of the ceiling was unlit... the entire corps de ballet came onto the stage, after which, in Chagall honour, the opera's orchestra played the finale of the JUPITER SYMPHONY by Mozart, Chagall's favorite composer.

- Chagall's love for Mozart was well known.

* In 1967, when a new production of Mozart's THE MAGIC FLUTE opened at New York City's Metropolitan Opera, the steady pulse of the opera world was sent racing.

The costumes and sets had been reimagined by Marc Chagall, the then 79-year-old artist.

In many ways Chagall's work for premiere of THE MAGIC FLUTE is quintessence of everything that Chagall's work stood for ultimately defined his drive to create.

It was the mix of perfect melancholy Chagall found in Mozart's work that was reflective of his feelings towards life in the wake of the tragedies throughout his own.

" Perfection is close to death," Chagall said in reference to THE MAGIC FLUTE as it premiered just two months prior to Mozart's death on 5 Dec. 1791.

- Photo: " The Magic Flute " - Mozart / Metropolitan Opera New York / Poster by Marc Chagall - 1967

Thank you Lisa Mirren FB @Music, Art & Paintings

[broadwaydivastournament]

Broadway Divas Tournament: 2A

Donna Murphy (1959) “DONNA MURPHY (Anna) received the 1996 Tony Award, as well as Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for her performance in The King and I. She also received the 1994 Tony and Drama Desk Awards for her portrayal of Fosca in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Passion. Last summer she was featured as Dorothy Trowbridge in Mr. Lapine’s Twelve Dreams at Lincoln Center (Drama Desk nomination). Other Broadway Credits include: Edwin Drood in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Human Comedy, and They’re Playing Our Song. Off-B’way: The Whore in Michael John LaChuisa’s Hello Again (Drama Desk nom.), Rose in Song of Singapore (Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle noms.), Hey Love; The Songs of Mary Rodgers, Privates on Parade, Showing Off, Birds of Paradise, A…My Name is Alice, Little Shop of Horrors. Regional work includes Miss Julie (McCarter), Pal Joey (Huntington), Williamstown, Portland Shage Co. and Goodspeed. She made her feature film debut in Jade, and co-stared (sp) in “Someone Had to Be Benny” for HBO. Other TV includes: Francesa Cross on Stephen Bocho’s “Murder One,” “Law & Order,” “A Table at Ciro’s” (PBS Great Performances), “Another World” and the American Playhouse Production of Passion. Ms. Murphy can be heard on the original cast recordings of Passion (Grammy Award), and Hello Again, and is featured on Leonard Bernstein’s New York on Electra/Noneshuch.” – Playbill bio from The King and I, December 1996.

Mary Beth Peil (1940) "MARY BETH PEIL (Anna Leonowens), before joining the 1982 Los Angeles production of The King and I, received national acclaim for her television portrayal of Alma Winemiller in Lee Hoiby's opera Summer and Smoke (based on the Tennessee Williams play), produced by PBS and the Chicago Opera Theatre. As a member of New York's Theatre for a New Audience she has apperaed in many productions of Shakespeare. A Graduate of Northwestern University and a First Prize winner of the Metropolitian Opera Auditions, Mary Beth has been featured in opera and musical theatre with such companies as The Metropolitan Opera National Company, the New York City Opera, the Lake George Opera and the Minnesota Opera. She has appeared as soloist with the New York Philharmonic, Honolulu Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, the New York Young Concert Artists and the Cincinnati Area Artists Series. Favorite musical theatre roles that she has performed include Rosabella in Most Happy Fella, Magnolia in Show Boat and Kate in Kiss Me, Kate." - Playbill bio from The King and I, March, 1985.

NEW PROPAGANDA AND MEDIA UNDER CUT: ALL POLLS HERE

"We have Donna Murphy as Dolly. We have Donna Murphy as Aurelia. What are we doing to get Donna Murphy in a Mame revival so she can hit the Jerry Herman trifecta? I need this woman back on a stage immediately and genuinely, I cannot tell you how much money I'd be realistically willing to shell out. And on a more personal note? What do I have to do to get Donna Murphy to look at me like she wants to devour me whole? The things I want to do to this woman... She has chemistry with every single person she crosses paths with. I need her carnally."

"Mary Beth Peil's hair deserves a Tony Award of its own. She started going grey almost twenty years ago and never looked back. A grey-haired octogenarian who's actively out here being hot and sexy and showing skin is quite possible one of the hottest things in the world. Let me reiterate: I want to fuck this old woman."