#female british poet

[veronicavervet]

A poem i wrote whilst i was travelling home 🪷🌵🌴

[cyramountain]

I think you know how to love better than any of us. that's why you find it all so painful

phoebe waller bridge

[yourdailyqueer]

Rosie Garland

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Lesbian

DOB: 8 May 1960

Ethnicity: White - British

Occupation: Writer, poet, singer

[byronicist]

"A love for things that have no feeling: / The spring’s first rose by you espied, / May fill your breast with joyful pride; / And you may love the strawberry-flower, / And love the strawberry in its bower"

Dorothy Wordsworth, Loving and Liking: Irregular Verses Addressed to a Child (1832)

[byoldervine]

How Often My Five Man Band In Byoldervine Swear

Lazulai: Refuses to swear

Kennedy: Has sworn before but rarely, she uses them strategically so they have a bigger impact when she does use them

Angelus: Only swears when the people around them are all comfortable with swearing, and even then would only ever direct them at Enigma

Connor: Swears casually, not too much but it’s definitely in his vocabulary

Enigma: Swears like it’s fucking punctuation, will call you a cunt affectionately and earnestly wonder why you got offended

[saintescuderia]

Things I Learned from Ricky Gervais’ ‘After Life.’

I was told I would cry from laughter — and from ugly emotional sobbing.

Ricky Gervais and I have a love-hate relationship.

One the one hand, he is one of the funniest comedians who haven’t diluted their craft for the sake of pleasing people. He makes jokes because he finds them funny. He is self-assured in his humour that nothing phases him — not even society’s politically correct tendencies — but it also means he just doesn’t give a shit. If you’re offended, that’s on you. There is no sensitivity here.

Which actually sums up his character, Tony, quite well.

We meet Tony who is struggling to make sense of life in the wake of his wife’s death. For him, he would’ve committed suicide had it not been for the fact that he needed to feed the dog. And that brings me to the first point.

#1 / Animals are sometimes (read: often) better.

I say this because one of the scenes that really got me was when Tony and his dog, a German Shepherd by the name of Brandy, visit the beach. Tony looks at the water and remembers a memory of his wife. Suddenly overwhelmed with the familiar desire to end it, he tries again. Wading into the water fully dressed, he keeps going in and in — until Brandy notices as starts desperately barking at him. Tony hears her and reluctantly comes out to be with his dog. Brandy might not have given him a reason to live— the show’s whole premise is that only you can give that to yourself — but she gave him a reason to not kill himself.

#2 You can grieve yourself.

This show was recommended to me in that, “if you’ve ever experienced loss, it’ll hit.” Now, I have never really lost anyone really close to me. All the funerals I’ve attended in my life had been some convoluted relation in the community in which I was there was an extension of my parents. I don’t know death. I don’t know loss. Not really.

But, the show did come at a time when life had done a complete overhaul with me. People had walked out, I had flipped out. Without warning, my life had completely changed. I was still processing everything that had happened which made me struggle at times to recognise the person in the mirror. I had a lot to grieve in that so many doors had closed — doors I though had remained open forever.

Tony’s navigation through his pain and suffering was something I could relate to all too well. He held so much anger within himself that lashing out was his way of coping. He punished others to create distance. The coping mechanism of pushing everyone as a form of self-punishment because he couldn’t save his wife; that he doesn’t want anyone else close anymore because they could disappear and cause him more grief to mourn.

That, or I’m just projecting.

#3 Support comes in many forms.

Admittedly, Tony was an asshole to to the people around him. Lenny, a co-worker who loves to eat, receives the blunt of many a food-related joke as Tony pokes fun of his size and appetitie. A new girl to the workplace, Sandy, asks Lenny if it bothers him. Lenny shrugs it off, completely indifferent.

“Nah, he’s just a mate.”

And you think, honey no, that guy’s being a dick to you. Tony isn’t his friend, he literally calls him a pig. One sequence has Tony holding onto the back of Lenny’s neck and talking about his neck fat.

Yet, at the end, it turns out that Lenny, the clueless and hungry Lenny, was actually right. During a tangent at the end of the show where Tony realises how grateful he is for the people in his life, he thanks Lenny for being his “human stress ball.”

Lenny didn’t do anything spectacular. He didn’t chase after Tony like his brother-in-law who would try to come up with ways to make Tony happy. Lenny just knew this was Tony’s was of coping and took it and let him have this as a cathartic outlet.

Which reminds me —

#4 Don’t be an asshole.

I kept waiting for the therapist’s asshole-ish ways to pay off and give Tony the answer he was seeking. That the tough, careless ‘love’ was actually love and there would be a turning point.

Spoilers: it never came.

In fact, the turning point came from Tony’s conversations with a lady he befriends at the cemetary. She had lost her husband and they would often sit together and talk. A kind, simple lady. Her name was Anne and she delivered one of the key lines from the show that stuck with me.

“I know you might not like living, but you make the world a better place.”

(Or something along those lines. I may be misremembering since I was sobbing throughout it all.)

Tony realises that punishing humanity only adds to the problem — Anne’s line of “they grow in numbers” about the assholes of the world is the plain truth — and that doesn’t work for him. Not anymore. The pain he felt actually eased when he did good things. And it’s easier to do good things if you just try to be a good person overall.

This train of thought led him to finally start to change his life. From cleaning up the dishes around his house to buying proper food to showing tokens of appreciation to the people around him. Tony sees that he’s not the only victim of life and that everyone has their own shit. Giving people the benefit of the doubt and trying to do good is much better for the soul than adding to the asshole tally of the world.

“A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they’ll never sit in.”

[goffjames]

Spotlight Art – History – Sculpture – Standing Female Bone Figure – Naqada 1 Art & Culture – Egypt - Predynastic Period

Naqada Female Bone Figure The Naqada 1 Female Bone Figure (H. 4.488189 in / 11.40 cm – W. 0.82 in / 2.10 cm – D in 0.23 in / 0.6 cm ) from the Egyptian Predynastic period dates from c. 4000 BCE – 3500 BCE – The British Museum of Art, London. The standing female figure is carved from bone. Such votive figures were often placed in tombs during the Egyptian Predynastic period (c. 5500 – 2927…

[peppertaemint]

Let's talk about Taemin and Key of SHINee wearing the Scottish fashion house Charles Jeffrey Loverboy, an openly queer unisex brand. There’s a lot of talk about whether idols know who they are wearing and, when relevant, do they understand the meaning of what they are wearing. We know there are clear examples of artists not understanding what they’re wearing. Indeed, 23-year-old, non-English-speaking Taemin admitted in 2021 that he had no idea the fly of his pants read “Open Here” during View era. Yet, a lot has changed this 2015/16. Taemin’s English is quite proficient. And what about Key, who has studied English since he was a child? I think we can consider understanding the words and understanding the context or broader meaning behind words or, as the case may be, symbols, which can be universal.

Taemin in the Advice album photobook, 2021.

The Charles Jeffrey Loverboy brand is no ordinary brand. It’s a spunky, fun and edgy unisex brand with genuine British flavour. From London Fashion Week's write up:

"Looking back to look forward, the collections re-render historical references as intrinsically modern while paying respect to an ancestral line-up of costumiers, performance artists and queer icons. Jeffrey’s nightlife-influenced thirst for experimentation, and belief in the validity of mistakes, result in a colourful tension between control and chaos.

"LOVERBOY’s roots are fixed in London’s queer nightlife scene, having been born in 2014 as both a fashion label and a cult club night. The LOVERBOY parties, first staged while Jeffrey was studying for his Masters in fashion design at Central St Martins in London, were attended by the city’s up-and-coming artists, performers, musicians, drag queens and poets, many of whom became Jeffrey’s future muses and creative collaborators."

Live performance of Advice, 2021.

The tartan in these looks is known as the loverboy tartan. In the current collection, they have an “odorable” loverboy tartan raincoat with giant floppy bunny ears. I’m too lazy to link it, but do look it up and peruse the punk-meets-whimsy items on the website.

Taemin’s stylist for Advice was Kim Wook. You can read an interview with Kim Wook in translation here. Wook talks about he and Taemin wanting to do something impactful before Taemin entered the military, and they settled on working with silhouettes that are usually seen on female dancers. I could do a whole post on Taemin’s styling for Advice (maybe I will!), but to connect things back to the brand at hand, the flamboyantly unisex Loverboy brand seems to be at home with the goal of Advice’s styling. Advice was Taemin’s way of saying “I will go my own way and trust myself over others,” and I don’t think the androgynous or even gender-fluid looks he presented are a coincidence; Wook’s interview shows that it isn’t. These looks feel like a push forward for Taemin, and he’s been clear in saying Advice was a breakaway from his past. Act I and Act II were leading to this moment.

Taemin has been wearing Charles Jeffery Loverboy upon in return in 2023. I think the most significant choice is the non-binary shirt he wore a fan meeting during Hard era. The t-shirt is a jab at conservatives’ obsession with the love lives and indeed, bathroom usage, of LGBT+, saying, “They’re happy and satisfied. Are you?” There is a also a good-sized, unmistakable non-binary symbol on the shirt. I hadn’t seen this symbol before but it was still easy for me to comprehend. As an artist who is increasingly wearing gender-fluid outfits, it is likely a conscious choice to wear a shirt that supports non-binary rights.

Now, we can’t forget fashion-forward, English king Key in all of this. Key has always had a love and fascination with fashion; we saw in One Fine Day his interaction with a local London fashion brands. He’s a man who knows his fashion houses, so it seems unlikely he wouldn’t know about the Loverboy brand or its ethos as a unisex brand.

Key primarily wore Charles Jeffrey Loverboy accessories for his Gasoline promotions in 2022. The adorable hat with ears is statement wrapped in cuteness, that speaks to the camp motif present in both Key’s body of work and the Loverboy label’s. It’s cute, but not too cute. It’s loud but soft, and the Loverboy stamp is there for all to see. I think that Key embodies what LSF wrote about the Lovery label as “a colourful tension between control and chaos.” Key is never afraid to experiment, and he can go from creating iconic androgynous silhouettes reminiscent of ancient gods and Beyoncé to the retro-camp shown below that almost looks like it could be at home in a Ghostbusters film. Almost.

There are contexts where, like the above, it is more than reasonable to assume that the artists understand what they are wearing and that the choices made are conscious and in some cases made with the goal of the comeback in mind. And there are situations where it’s possible or even confirmed by the artist that they didn’t know what they were wearing or what it meant. I think it can become an obsession for some to want the styling to be conveying a secret code. With the case of Charles Jeffrey Loverboy, there’s no code and it’s not secret. It’s simply known and recognised by those who know, which is enough.

[chosetherose]

*WSJ Link*

There Are Plenty of Power Publicists. But Only One Works for Taylor Swift.

By Allie Jones

April 18, 2024 at 8:00 am ET

Taylor Swift was celebrating the end of the Australian leg of her Eras Tour in late February when a bit of unpleasantness sailed out from Down Under and landed on the home page of TMZ. The New South Wales Police Force was investigating a 71-year-old man for allegedly assaulting a 51-year-old man at a wharf north of the city, according to their media unit. Per TMZ, the septuagenarian was Scott Swift, Taylor’s father and a key member of her management team, and the younger man was a photographer. 

The story had all the makings of a public relations nightmare: (1) Celebrity family member allegedly behaves badly while (2) disembarking from a luxury yacht, resulting in (3) a police investigation. To make matters more complicated, Taylor was reportedly present for the alleged altercation—hiding under an umbrella, TMZ said. Though the man didn’t require medical treatment, the police said, there was video footage. Would this be the end of the pop star’s marathon run of fawning press? 

Not if Tree Paine could help it. 

Swift’s longtime publicist first released a statement that did not refute TMZ’s story, exactly, but offered some exculpatory evidence: “Two individuals were aggressively pushing their way towards Taylor, grabbing at her security personnel, and threatening to throw a female staff member into the water.” Subtext: Scott Swift was simply protecting his daughter and another defenseless woman from a couple of rogue aggressors. He was not charged. 

Around the same time, as if by magic, People found a video of Scott passing out sandwiches to young female fans at one of the Sydney shows and published it along with fan commentary. “Isn’t he the sweetest and cutest,” one cooed.

Online, Swifties clocked the People story as good old-fashioned damage control. As a chorus of fan posts put it: “The devil works hard, but Tree Paine works harder.” (In late March, the New South Wales Police Force media unit said that the North Shore Police Area Command finished its investigation and that it is taking no further action.)

The public often sees Paine expertly attending to Swift’s needs, from smoothing out Swift’s red carpet dresses to leading her past scrums of paparazzi.

The average celebrity publicist does not have fans. But Paine, the 52-year-old redhead seen trailing Swift at awards shows and rubbing shoulders with Gayle King in the Eras Tour VIP area, has become a Swiftverse cult figure in her own right. Fans post reverently about her PR machinations and share videos of her expertly attending to Swift’s needs: smoothing out Swift’s dress on the red carpet, leading Swift right past a scrum of reporters whose questions have not been approved, subtly offering Swift what appeared to be water at the Video Music Awards—a night when the star was filmed dancing in a manner that suggested inebriation.

Swift has trained her followers to look for meaning in her every gesture, outfit and Instagram caption. Paine’s own work—the stories she chooses to respond to, the narrative she puts forward in the media—has become part of that lore. 

And Swift and Paine are creating a lot of lore lately. Swift spent the fall cheering on her new boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, as he sailed to Super Bowl victory, and dropped by the Grammys to pick up album of the year for Midnights and announce her new album in an acceptance speech for yet another award. The Tortured Poets Department, which fans speculate is at least partly inspired by her breakup with the British actor Joe Alwyn, drops this month, and Swift will promote it while balancing her public relationship, continuing her sold-out international Eras Tour amid growing criticism of her private jet usage and brushing off baseless conspiracy theories that she is secretly working as a Democratic operative to swing the 2024 election for President Joe Biden. 

In a long career of riding high, Swift has hit the stratosphere. It’s Paine’s job to keep her there. 

Back in 2014, Swift’s world domination was not yet assured. That March, trade publications reported that the pop star’s publicist of seven years, Paula Erickson, had submitted her resignation. Fairly or not, during Erickson’s tenure, Swift developed a reputation for being both boy-crazy and unwilling to joke about it. See: Swift’s string of high-profile relationships with Joe Jonas, Taylor Lautner, Jake Gyllenhaal and Harry Styles; her alleged wedding-crashing with Conor Kennedy; her humorless response to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s joke at the 2013 Golden Globes about her dating life. (“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women,” she told Vanity Fair when asked about the incident.) Erickson declined to comment for this story.

Paine, who had been working as the senior vice president of publicity in the Christian and Country divisions of Warner Music Nashville, came on board and quickly flipped the script. She launched her own firm, Premium PR, and signed Swift as her first and only client. “There isn’t a publicist in NY, LA or Nashville that wouldn’t jump at an opportunity to work with someone as talented as Taylor Swift and her management team,” Paine told Page Six at the time. 

That year, Swift moved from Nashville to New York, went full pop with the release of 1989 and began flaunting her friendships with a gaggle of famous women, known colloquially as The Squad. The public started to forget about the time Swift, age 22, allegedly bought a house across the street from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. 

Now that Swift has hit the stratosphere, it’s Paine’s job to keep her there. 

Throughout this transformation, Paine refused to let rumors about her client fester. The very week her hiring was announced, she began issuing public rebuttals to the tabloids. “Never believe the National Enquirer,” she tweeted about an apparently false story that Swift declined to record a duet with Randy Travis. Ten years later, the gossip about Swift has changed, but Paine’s approach has not: She recently called out the anonymous gossip account Deuxmoi for causing “pain and trauma” by posting false rumors about Swift secretly marrying Alwyn before the two broke up. 

Paine became even more visible to fans in 2020, when she appeared in Swift’s Netflix documentary Miss Americana. Wearing white shorts and blue nail polish, she clinked white-wine glasses with Swift as the singer-songwriter anxiously prepared to post her first political statement on Instagram. Swifties have since turned Paine into something of a meme: Online, they joke that Swift’s “Out of the Woods” lyric “the monsters turned out to be just trees” is a reference to the publicist and that a redheaded Eras Tour backup dancer is Tree-coded. They have decided that in the inevitable Paine biopic, the publicist will be played by Amy Adams, and that she will win her first Oscar for it. 

The fan obsession has been fueled, in part, by how little Paine has shared publicly about herself. Her Instagram is private. The last time she sat for an interview was 2012, when she was a VP at Warner and appeared in Nashville Lifestyles’ “Most Beautiful People” issue; she posed for a photo in front of a shiplap-covered wall wearing a peasant blouse and made the astonishing revelation that she was “trying to enjoy life.” I cannot report whether that is still true; Paine declined to be interviewed for this story. 

Born Trina Snyder, Paine grew up in Costa Mesa, California. She was still going by Trina when she was initiated into Pi Beta Phi at the University of Southern California in 1990, according to the women’s fraternity’s official publication, The Arrow. 

Like her client, Paine is a Nashville transplant. In her early career, she worked her way up at a variety of L.A. record labels—World Domination, Maverick and Interscope, whose roster included Snoop Dogg, No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson. She launched her own guerrilla-marketing company, worked for the Academy of Country Music and eventually joined Warner Music in Tennessee. 

In 1998, she married Lance Paine, a businessman and onetime president of the Nashville candy brand Goo Goo Cluster, in Las Vegas, according to public records. (Lance also served as president of the company owned by HGTV’s Property Brothers.) The Paines have one teenage daughter, and according to the society pages, they have spent some nights mixing with locals at Nashville charity galas. 

Paine has built a fearsome reputation in media circles, closely guarding access to Swift.

But mostly, Paine works. She has built a fearsome reputation in media circles, closely guarding access to Swift and sending emails to journalists with surprising velocity whenever she disagrees with a story. “Once I started working in media, I would always hear about people getting emails from Tree Paine, or maybe, people being afraid of getting emails from Tree Paine,” says Hunter Harris, a self-described “Painiac” and the writer of the entertainment newsletter Hung Up, which regularly chronicles Paine’s engagement with the press. (Harris has also contributed to WSJ. Magazine.)

In the past 10 years, Paine has guided Swift through some of the more tumultuous moments of her career: her feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West; her trial accusing a former DJ of sexual assault; her battle against her former label, Scooter Braun and private-equity giants for the control of her master recordings. At almost every turn, Paine presents Swift—arguably the most famous woman on the planet, a billionaire with a private jet—as a relatable underdog fighting for her voice to be heard. 

It has, for the most part, worked. In the process, Paine has become one of the most powerful people in the entertainment industry. 

Getting any kind of journalistic access to Swift has become a fool’s errand. The star sits for few magazine interviews, and in between, Paine does her best to ensure that no information about Swift that Swift has not expressly chosen to share with the public becomes available. One magazine writer recalls the slightly fraught process of interviewing another artist on one of Swift’s stadium tours a few years ago. As a condition of the interview, the writer had to agree that anything they witnessed or discovered about Swift while spending time with the other artist before a show would be off the record. Paine was clear: No journalist is going to catch Swift in her sweatpants backstage and write about it. 

When writer Emily Kirkpatrick reached out last year to seek Swift’s comment for a profile of the actress and musician Suki Waterhouse for the fashion website Ssense, Paine surprisingly acquiesced, with the caveat that Swift’s quote be printed in full—no edits, no line breaks. (Kirkpatrick, annoyed, accepted the terms.)

This is an understandable sticking point for Paine. The Kardashian-West debacle revolved, in large part, around a truncated recording of Swift. Before the rapper released the single “Famous,” which contained lewd lyrics about Swift, they spoke by phone, where he asked her to promote the track on Twitter. For years, a snippet of the call released by Kardashian painted Swift as a liar who publicly rejected the lyrics but privately approved them. When someone released the full call online—a friendly heads-up but one in which West never shares the final lyric (“I made that bitch famous”)—Kardashian tried to save face. “To be clear, the only issue I ever had around the situation was that Taylor lied through her publicist who stated that ‘Kanye never called to ask for permission…,’ ” she tweeted. But Paine never said that exactly. She tweeted a rejoinder: “I’m Taylor’s publicist and this is my UNEDITED original statement. Btw, when you take parts out, that’s editing. P.S. who did you guys piss off to leak that video?”

The biggest year of Swift’s career has also been her most public yet. There’s the tour, the new album, the NFL boyfriend, the constant tabloid coverage of her relationship with the NFL boyfriend, the never-ending paparazzi strolls with her famous friends at sceney New York City restaurants. There have been stumbles: Swift forgot to thank Celine Dion, who presented the album of the year award, when accepting her Grammy. (A photo of the two singers hugging circulated online later.) She’s still taking heat for her private jet. She dated Matty Healy. 

But the sheer volume of information about Swift that pours, ceaselessly, out of every tabloid and news outlet from the Daily Mail to the New York Times typically washes away negative stories as soon as they are published. There are fans who speculate that Paine sent Swift to Kelce’s regular-season game against the New York Jets in October so that internet searches for “Taylor Swift jets” would return cheery images of Swift dancing in a VIP suite with Blake Lively instead of stats about CO2 emissions. 

Swift is at a point in her career, however, where she could completely disappear from view and still generate more headlines than just about any other person on earth. Scientists at Caltech and UCLA recently published research proving the existence of “Swift quakes” (seismic activity caused by fans dancing and jumping at concerts). Ancestry.com shared on social media that Swift is a sixth cousin, three times removed, of poet Emily Dickinson. The New York Post talked to experts to guesstimate how much Kelce has spent wooing Swift so far (more than $8 million, allegedly). 

If Swift released The Tortured Poets Department with zero fanfare, it would probably still hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts. But she chooses to feed the beast—with black-and-white Instagram posts, snippets of possible lyrics, a pop-up poetry library, so many vinyl editions—and, with Paine’s help, make her own news.

[ltwilliammowett]

The Legend of the Princess Augusta or the Palatine Ship

The legend goes back to the historic shipwreck of the Princess Augusta at Block Island in 1738. The ship is known from several contemporary accounts and from statements made by the surviving crew after the sinking, which were discovered in 1925 and reprinted in 1939. The British merchant ship Augusta sailed from Rotterdam in August 1738 under Captain George Long and a crew of fourteen, carrying 240 immigrants to the English colonies in America. The passengers were German Palatines who came from the Palatinate, which is why the ship was referred to as the "Palatine Ship" in contemporary documents, which explains the later confusion about the name. The ship was on its way to Philadelphia, from where the passengers were possibly travelling to a German-owned settlement on the James River in Virginia.

The Burning Ship, by Albert Bierstadt 1869

The Princess Augusta's voyage was ill-fated: The water supply was contaminated, causing a "fever and flux disease" that killed 200 passengers and half the crew, including Captain Long. First Officer Andrew Brook took command when severe storms forced the ship off course to the north, where the survivors were exposed to extreme weather conditions and dwindling supplies for three months. According to the crew, Brook forced the passengers to pay for the remaining rations. Apparently he tried different routes to Rhode Island and Philadelphia, but the storms drove the damaged and leaking Augusta to Block Island. She ran aground in a snowstorm at Sandy Point at the northernmost end of the island at 2 p.m. on 27 December 1738.

According to reports, Brook rowed to shore with the entire crew and abandoned the passengers on board. The Block Islanders apparently did what they could to help. They convinced Brook to let the passengers disembark the next day, and later retrieved their belongings when he left them on board. They also buried about 20 people who died after the shipwreck; the Block Island Historical Society erected a memorial plaque at the site of the "Palatine Graves" in 1947.

The authorities took statements from the crew, but what happened afterwards is unclear. Apparently the crew was not charged for their actions, and they and most of the surviving passengers made it to the mainland, from where little is known about them. Two survivors remained on Block Island and settled there. Most reports indicate that the ship was deemed unsalvageable and was forced out to sea to sink. It may have been set on fire to sink it. According to some reports, a woman, sometimes referred to as Mary Van Der Line, was driven mad by her suffering; she was forgotten and sank with the ship, according to these reports. However, no remains of the wreck have ever been found, and there are indications that the Augusta may have been repaired and sent on to Philadelphia.

There is a rich oral tradition of this event, and numerous sightings were reported in the late 18th and 19th centuries. The legend was immortalised by the poet John Greenleaf Whittier in "The Palatine", which faithfully reproduces the traditional story in verse. Which gave the Legend it's name. On Saturdays between Christmas and New Year's Eve, locals still sporadically report seeing a burning ship pass by. Folklorist Michael Bell, investigating the legend, found that almost a year after the incident, two versions of the night's events were circulated.

The Palatine Graves

The Block Islanders insisted that their citizens had made a valiant attempt to rescue the crew, while the New England mainlanders suspected the islanders of having lured the ship to them in order to seize their cargo. Both legends agreed that a female passenger had refused to abandon ship when it sank, and those who claim to have witnessed her reappearance say that her screams were heard from the ship.

Today, a plaque at the Mohegan Bluffs where the ship is said to have run aground reads: Palatine Graves - 1738. Some claim that those who died that night are buried underground. However, Charlotte Taylor of the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission has stated that no physical evidence has ever been found to support either this claim or the legend itself.

[queerasfact]

Queer Calendar 2023

We put together a calendar of key (mostly queer) dates at the start of the year to help us with scheduling - so I thought I’d share it around! Including pride and visibility days, some queer birthdays and anniversaries, and a few other bits and bobs. Click the links for more info - I dream one day of having a queer story for every day of the year!

This is obviously not an exhaustive list - if I’ve overlooked something important to you, feel free to add it in the reblogs!

January

3 - Bisexual American jazz-age heiress Henrietta Bingham born 1901

8 - Queer Australian bushranger Captain Moonlite born 1845; gay American art collector Ned Warren born 1860

11 - Pennsylvania celebrates Rosetta Tharpe Day in honour of bisexual musician Rosetta Tharpe

12 - Japanese lesbian author Nobuko Yoshiya born 1896

22 - Lunar New Year (Year of the Rabbit)

24 - Roman emperor Hadrian, famous for his relationship with Antinous, born 76CE; gay Prussian King Frederick the Great born 1712

27 - International Holocaust Remembrance Day

February

LGBT+ History Month (UK, Hungary)

Black History Month (USA and Canada)

1 - Feast of St Brigid, a saint especially important to Irish queer women

5 - Operation Soap, a police raid on gay bathhouses in Toronto, Canada, spurs massive protests, 1981

7 - National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day (USA)

18 - US Black lesbian writer and activist Audre Lorde born 1934

12 - National Freedom to Marry Day (USA)

19-25 - Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week

March

Women’s History Month

1 - Black Women in Jazz and the Arts Day

8 - International Women’s Day

9 - Bi British writer David Garnett born 1892

12 - Bi Polish-Russian ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky born 1889 or 1890

13 March-15 April - Deaf History Month

14 - American lesbian bookseller and publisher Sylvia Beach born 1887

16 - French lesbian artist Rosa Bonheur born 1822

20 - Bi US musician Rosetta Tharpe born 1915

21 - World Poetry Day

24 - The Wachowski sisters’ cyberpunk trans allegory The Matrix premiers 1999

April

Jazz Appreciation Month

Black Women’s History Month

National Poetry Month (USA)

3 - British lesbian diarist Anne Lister born 1791

8 - Trans British racing driver and fighter pilot Roberta Cowell born 1918

9 -  Bi Australia poet Lesbia Harford born 1891; Easter Sunday

10 - National Youth HIV & AIDS Awareness Day (USA)

14 - Day of Silence

15 - Queer Norwegian photographer and suffragist Marie Høeg born 1866

17 - Costa-Rican-Mexican lesbian singer Chavela Vargas born 1919

21-22 - Eid al-Fitr

25 - Gay English King Edward II born 1284

26 - Lesbian Day of Visibility; bi American blues singer Ma Rainey born 1886

29 - International Dance Day

30 - International Jazz Day

May

1 - Trans British doctor and Buddhist monk Michael Dillon born 1915

7 - International Family Equality Day

7 - Gay Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky born 1840

15 - Australian drag road-trip comedy The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert premiers in 1994

 17 - IDAHOBIT (International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Intersexism and Transphobia)

18 - International Museum Day

19 - Agender Pride Day

22 - US lesbian tailor and poet Charity Bryant born 1777

22 - Harvey Milk Day marks the birth of gay US politician Harvey Milk 1930

23 - Premier of Pride, telling the story of the 1980s British activist group Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners

24 - Pansexual and Panromantic Awareness and Visibility Day; Queer Chinese-Japanese spy Kawashima Yoshiko born 1907

26 - queer American astronaut Sally Ride born 1951

29 - Taiwanese lesbian writer Qiu Miaojin born 1969

June

Pride Month

Indigenous History Month (Canada)

3 - Bisexual American-French performer, activist and WWII spy Josephine Baker born 1906

5 - Queer Spanish playwright and poet Federico García Lorca born 1898; bi English economic John Maynard Keynes born 1883

8 - Mechanic and founder of Australia’s first all-female garage, Alice Anderson, born 1897

10 - Bisexual Israeli poet Yona Wallach born 1944

12 - Pulse Night of Remembrance, commemorating the 2012 shooting at the Pulse nightclub, Orlando

14 - Australian activists found the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands in 2004

18 - Sally Ride becomes the first know queer woman in space

24 - The first Sydney Mardi Gras 1978

25 - The rainbow flag first flown as a queer symbol in 1978

28 - Stonewall Riots, 1969

28 June-2 July - Eid al-Adha

30 - Gay German-Israeli activist, WWII resistance member and Holocaust survivor Gad Beck born 1923

July

1 - Gay Dutch WWII resistance fighter Willem Arondeus killed - his last words were “Tell the people homosexuals are no cowards”

2-9 - NAIDOC Week (Australia) celebrating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture

6 - Bi Mexican artist Frida Kahlo born 1907

12 or 13 - Roman emperor Julius Caesar born c.100BCE

14 - International Non-Binary People’s Day

23 - Shelly Bauman, owner of Seattle gay club Shelly’s Leg, born 1947; American lesbian cetenarian Ruth Ellis born 1899; gay American professor, tattooist and sex researcher Sam Steward born 1909

25 - Italian-Australian trans man Harry Crawford born 1875

August

8 - International Cat Day

9 - Queer Finnish artist, author and creator of Moomins Tove Jansson born 1914

9 - International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples

11 - Russian lesbian poet Sofya Parnok born 1885

12 - Queer American blues musician Gladys Bentley born 1907

13 - International Left-Handers Day

22 - Gay WWII Dutch resistance fight Willem Arondeus born 1894

24 - Trans American drag queen and activist Marsha P Johnson born 1945

26 - National Dog Day

30 - Bi British author Mary Shelley 1797

31 - Wear it Purple Day (Australia - queer youth awareness)

September

5 - Frontman of Queen Freddie Mercury born 1946

6 - Trans Scottish doctor and farmer Ewan Forbes born 1912

13 - 1990 documentary on New York’s ball culture Paris is Burning premiers

15-17 - Rosh Hashanah

16-23 - Bisexual Awareness Week

17 - Gay Prussian-American Inspector General of the US Army Baron von Steuben born 1730

23 - Celebrate Bisexuality Day

24 - Gay Australian artist William Dobell born 1889

30 - International Podcast Day

October

Black History Month (Europe)

4 - World Animal Day

5 - National Poetry Day (UK)

5 - Queer French diplomat and spy the Chevalière d’Éon born 1728

8 - International Lesbian Day

9 - Indigenous Peoples’ Day (USA)

11 - National Coming Out Day

16 - Irish writer Oscar Wilde born 1854

18 - International Pronouns Day

22-28 - Asexual Awareness Week

26 - Intersex Awareness Day

31 - American lesbian tailor Sylvia Drake born 1784

November

8 - Intersex Day of Remembrance

12 - Diwali; Queer Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz born c.1648

13-19 - Transgender Awareness Week

20 - Trans American writer, lawyer, activist and priest Pauli Murray born 1910; Transgender Day of Remembrance

27 - Antinous, lover of the Roman emperor Hadrian, born c.111; German lesbian drama Mädchen in Uniform premiers, 1931

29 - Queer American writer Louisa May Alcott born 1832

December

AIDS Awareness Month

1 - World AIDS Day

2 - International Day for the Abolition of Slavery

3 - International Day of Persons with Disabilities

8 - Pansexual Pride Day; queer Swedish monarch Christina of Sweden born 1626

10 - Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners host Pits and Perverts concern to raise mining for striking Welsh miners, 1984

14 - World Monkey Day

15 - Roman emperor Nero born 37CE

24 - American drag king and bouncer Stormé DeLarverie born 1920

25 - Christmas

29 - Trans American jazz musician Billy Tipton born 1914

[homomenhommes]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … March 29

1517 – Cardinal Carlo Carafa, (d.1561) who was born in Naples, was the younger son in a powerful noble family. He became a soldier and for seventeen years took part in the bloody wars which ravaged Italy, first on the side of the Habsburg imperial armies, afterwards with French troops.

His uncle, Gian Piero Carafa was elected pope, with the name of Paul IV, and made Carlo a cardinal in 1555.

Carlo Carafa had a long and dubious career as a mercenary soldier in Italy and Germany. He was exiled from Naples for murder and banditry and was alleged to have perpetrated the massacre of Spanish soldiers as they recuperated in a hospital in Corsica.

His tenure as Cardinal Nephew was not a great success as he and Paul IV brought the Papacy to a humiliating defeat against the Spanish that nearly resulted in another Sack of Rome. Carlo's government was unpopular in Rome and he developed a reputation for avarice, cruelty and licentiousness, as well as for sodomy.

For instance the cardinal Charles de Lorraine asked the French ambassador in Rome to report to the pope scandals concerning his nephews. In his letter he stated that the courtiers had been scandalized by what they had witnessed, "and among the culprits were openly numbered, those who were closest in blood relations to our Holy Father the pope" had engaged in "that sin so loathsome in which there is no longer a distinction between the male and the female sex." That is, sodomy.

These rumors cannot be explained away as political slander. Already the poet Joachim du Bellay who was then in Rome, wrote a sonnet mentioning one Ascanio as the beloved of Carlo Carafa.

At first the pope refused to believe the numerous and varied accusations, but he was finally convinced of their veracity. and replaced Carlo as Cardinal Nephew with Carlo's own nephew Alfonso Carafa.

With the death of Paul IV, who had already limited a part of his power, he was imprisoned and judged by the new pope, Pius IV , for a lengthy series of crimes ranging from homicide to heresy, which also included sodomy. Carlo was condemned and executed.

1905 – Edward Burra, a British illustrator and stage designer (d.1976), depicted the possibility of gay sexual encounters in his drawings and watercolors of the urban underworld.

He left school at thirteen because of a combined attack of anemia and rheumatic fever. Burra's parents worried that that their son was too sickly for a regular job and encouraged his artistic interests.

Burra was not openly gay, but he visited gay bars, had gay friends, and possessed a camp sensibility. He met the dancer and theatrical director William Chappell at Chelsea and the two were apparently lovers although they never lived together. Burra may also have been involved with artist Paul Nash in the 1920s.

Burra, from an upper-class family, had a fascination with the lower class and with the urban underworld. He loved to spend hours in sailors' cafes and brothels in Mediterranean port cities, especially in France. He visited New York in 1933-34, where he became fascinated with black culture and the Harlem scene.

Three Sailors in a Bar

Typically featuring sailors, his early works portrayed clearly outlined and modeled forms and an absence of atmosphere. While Burra very rarely draws explicitly gay scenes or subjects, a homoeroticism pervades his work, perhaps because in his depictions of urban nightlife, sexual liaisons of various kinds are always a possibility.

Burra's most famous work, John Deth (1932), shows his interest in the bizarre. The painting depicts a party. The scythe-bearing Grim Reaper is in attendance, and he is striking down guests, much to the horror of one man who dips his partner in a dance at the moment that he recognizes the presence of Death. The faces and figures are distorted in a nightmare characterization typical of Burra's work.

Plagued by arthritis and poor health, Burra died on October 22, 1976 in Hastings, England.

1936 – Today's the birth date of the English composer Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, CBE (d.2012). Born in Kent, he is renowned for his film scores and his jazz performance as much as for his challenging concert works. He was based in New York City from 1979 until his death there in 2012.

After the collapse of a long-term same-sex relationship, Bennett relocated to the U.S., using Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein as his referees for his green card application. Bennett thrived in the home of the Great American Songbook. He began performing in piano bars and has continued ever since, in recent years accompanying the jazz singer Claire Martin, most recently in a season at the legendary Algonquin hotel.

Bennett taught at the Royal Academy of Music between 1963 and 1965, and the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, United States from 1970 to 1971, and was later International Chair of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music between 1994 and the year 2000. He received a CBE in 1977, and was knighted in 1998.

As one of Britain's most respected and versatile musicians, Bennett produced over two hundred works for the concert hall, and fifty scores for film and television, as well as having been a writer and performer of jazz songs for fifty years.

Among his best-known scores are the Doctor Who story The Aztecs (1964), Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), Nicholas and Alexandra (1971, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Enchanted April (1992) and Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994).

In 1995, to celebrate its 200th issue, Gay Times magazine published a list of people regarded as important to the British Lesbian and Gay community. Bennett was named as one of the key musical figures on the list.

1946 – Bruce Weber is an American photographer and occasional filmmaker. If you have ever gazed longingly at the models in an ad for Calvin Klein underwear or Abercrombie & Fitch, you have probably been looking at the work of photographer, Bruce Weber.

Born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, Weber became one of the most influential and successful fashion photographers of the 1980s and continues to be one of the world`s most successful commercial photographers.

Weber's fashion photography first appeared in the late 1970s in GQ magazine, where he had frequent cover photos. Soon known as a pioneer of modern male fashion and art photography, he came to the attention of the general public in the late 1980s and early 1990s with his advertising images for Calvin Klein. His straightforward black and white shots, featuring an unclothed heterosexual couple on a swing facing each other, two clothed men in bed, and model Marcus Schenkenberg barely holding jeans in front of himself in a shower, catapulted him into the international spotlight. His photograph for Calvin Klein of Olympic athlete Tom Hintnaus in white briefs is an iconic image.

His nostalgic, usually black and white photography, which manages to be boldly erotic and yet somehow innnocent, played a major role in the resurgence of the male body in advertising - his influence is everywhere. He has changed the way we look at male beauty.

In addition to his commercial work, Bruce Weber has produced several books of his photographs, often photographic essays, notably The Andy Book (1987) and Bear Pond (1991); made several films including a film about teenage boxers Broken Noses (1987), a documentary about jazz trumpeter Chet Baker, Let's Get Lost (1989) which was nominated for an Academy Award, and Chop Suey (2001). His work has also been widely exhibited in museums and galleries. He has additionally directed several music videos for the Pet Shop Boys.

"Laine and Kyle Carson"

His work, and advertising for Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Abercrombie & Fitch and others, somehow manages to balance an intense homoeroticism with an imagined ideal of all-American platonic male cameraderie. Gay men everywhere owe a debt to him.

1958 – Victor Salva is an American film director and convicted sex offender. He is best known for directing the films Powder and Jeepers Creepers.

Born in Martinez, California, Salva had written and directed over 20 short and feature films before graduating from high school. To finance his filmmaking hobby, he often held two jobs during the week. His biological father abandoned the family and Salva stated that his stepfather was often drunk and physically abusive.

Like a lot of children growing up in the East Bay town of Martinez in the early 1970s, the adolescent Salva was very much interested in horror and sci-fi. His favorite monster movie was Creature from the Black Lagoon. In 1975, the local newspaper reported that a child (Salva) had sat through Jaws a record 55 times. Salva was expelled from the family at eighteen when he acknowledged his homosexuality to his mother and stepfather.

Salva describes his films as "atmospheric and macabre, with no happy endings, but not to be taken totally seriously". In the mid-1980s, his 37-minute short film Something in the Basement (1986) took first place in the fiction category at the Sony/AFI Home Video Competition. A horror allegory about a young boy awaiting his brother's return from a bloody war, the highly acclaimed film went on to win several national awards (including a Bronze Plaque at the Chicago International Film Festival) and brought Salva to the attention of Francis Ford Coppola, who then produced Salva's first theatrical feature, Clownhouse (1989), which Salva again wrote and directed.

In 1988, Salva was convicted of sexual misconduct with one of Clownhouse's underage stars – a 12-year-old boy – including videotaping one of the encounters. Commercial videotapes and magazines containing child pornography were also found at his home. Salva pleaded guilty to lewd and lascivious conduct, oral sex with a person under 14, and procuring a child for pornography. He was sentenced to three years in state prison, of which he served 15 months. He completed his parole in 1992.

Salva's career took a hiatus after his release – he did not make another film for five years. He worked as a telemarketer during the week and wrote scripts during the weekend, supposedly delivering them to well-known producers while posing as a delivery boy.

His next film, The Nature of the Beast (1995), which Salva wrote and directed, starred Lance Henriksen and Eric Roberts and quickly became New Line Cinema's biggest direct-to-video title of that year. Salva based the film's characters on people he met in prison. Salva next made his first big-studio picture, Powder (1995), the tale of an albino boy with special powers that make him an outcast.

He next made Rites of Passage (1999), a coming-of-age thriller. The film depicts a homophobic father who unwittingly pushes his gay son into the arms of a psychotic killer. In 2001, Salva wrote and directed Jeepers Creepers, which was one of the year's breakout hits and set a world record for largest Labor Day box-office ever. Salva followed this up with his sixth feature film, Jeepers Creepers II (2003), breaking his old record and setting another Labor Day milestone. His next film, Peaceful Warrior (2006), was an adaptation of Dan Millman's best-seller The Way of the Peaceful Warrior.

1967 – Michael Link, born in Hagen, Germany, is a German music manager and author. He is best known as the manager and partner of the pop singer Patrick Lindner.

After training as a hotel manager and a few years in the hotel business, Link met Patrick Lindner in 1992 and took over his management in January 1993.

Link and Lindner became a couple privately and professed their homosexuality. The media spoke of the nation's flagship gay couple. In 1998, his partner adopted Daniel, a Russian child, who was eight months old at the time, and thus became a pioneer in matters of gay relationships and children. Link wrote the book "Adoption Adventure or A Lifelong Dream Come True", with which he campaigned for more tolerance towards homosexuals and encouraged adoption. In 2005 the couple separated.

In 2001 he also published the children's book “Come on, I'll show you my parents”. He also played in various television series such as SOKO 5113 or Siska. Today Link works as a marketing expert and lives with his current partner in Munich.

Link married his 13 years younger partner in September 2015. The wedding was part of the television series 4 Weddings and a Dream Trip.

1971 – Aaron Lawrence is an American gay pornographic actor, director, sex advice columnist, author and entrepreneur. After college Lawrence embarked on an unplanned male hustling career which he parlayed into both a writing and acting career. Lawrence, who is openly gay then started his own gay pornographic video company utilizing his international travels as an escort to shoot amateur pornography films. He has authored two books, Suburban Hustler: Stories of a Hi-Tech Callboy (1999), an account of his own experiences as a male escort and The Male Escort's Handbook: Your Guide to Getting Rich the Hard Way (2000), a "how-to" guide for those considering work as companions-for-hire. He has also written articles for several publications, including Anything That Moves and Unzipped.

After graduating from college Lawrence became depressed after a string of "100+ rejection letters", he became promiscuous and noting he was good at sex someone suggested he become a male hustler, which he did. He commanded an hourly rate of more than $350, which was much higher than average, which he attributed to his devotion to customer and self-satisfaction as well as his well-developed website, "By the time someone calls me for an appointment they already know who I am."

Lawrence worked in escorting from December 1993 to 2006. In addition to travel throughout the U.S., he traveled with clients on trips to Mexico and several locations in Europe, including Hungary, Germany, Ireland, and the Czech Republic.

Lawrence is versatile performing both top and bottom sex roles. Psychologist Todd G. Morrison notes that Lawrence came of age when being gay was seen as normal and HIV/AIDS was no longer defined culturally as a gay disease. In addition, in the mid-1990s the first AIDS "drug cocktails" marked a dramatic turning point in the pandemic so that a positive diagnosis was no longer considered a death sentence.[

Morrison notes the advent of the Internet for gay men to discover their sexuality and connect with each other online and that Lawrence is the embodiment of the "new experience of gay sexuality" much like Scott O'Hara, Tim Miller, and Wakefield Poole had been for their generations. Between his own work including promotions to advertise himself and his speaking and writing about the gay and bisexual escort industry Lawrence has helped revolutionize the public relation aspects.

He lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband Jeff whom he met in 1992, married in 1999, and who also helps provide illustrations for his various websites.

1982 – Jay Brannan is an American singer-songwriter and actor. He was born in Texas on this date and briefly studied in Ohio, but moved to California to become an actor. Brannan appeared in the 2006 movie Shortbus, which included one of his songs in its soundtrack, and began to build a fan base by performing on YouTube. He released an EP and acted in Holding Trevor in 2007. Since then, he has toured and released two albums.

Brannan was born 1982 in Texas in a middle-class family and grew up as the son of a petroleum engineer and a teacher. He described his family as conservative Baptists and discussed their difficulty with accepting his homosexuality. Brannan went to Los Angeles, trying to become an actor. After the end of a relationship in 2002, he was shown a casting notice and moved to New York City and submitted an audition tape.

Brannan was cast in 2003 for the movie Shortbus, which featured him in an explicit sex scene, and worked as a proofreader and in other jobs to support himself. He contributed the song "Soda Shop" to the film's soundtrack, which he stated was his "first professionally recorded track". The song was also released on Team Love Records. Brannan began to record sparse music videos for YouTube, accompanying himself on the guitar, and built an international fan base without corporate sponsorship, using MySpace and Blogspot. In 2007, he appeared in the movie Holding Trevor as the promiscuous best friend of the protagonist, and released a limited-edition EP with fours songs named disasterpiece or Unmastered, adding two additional songs for a 2008 re-release.

In July 2008, Brannan released the album goddamned through his own label, Great Depression Records, and toured ten dates, a departure from his previous practice of short tours of about four concerts. The same year, Brannan left his proofreading job and sustained himself with earnings from concerts and merchandise. His second album, In Living Cover, was released in 2009 and reached number ten on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart for the week of July 25, 2009. Brannan promoted the album in an interview on ABC News's Now in July 2009.

2009 – On this date Lieutenant Daniel Choi, publicly came out on the Rachel Maddow Show. Lieutenant Dan Choi is a United States Army combat veteran of the Iraq war who graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 2003 with degrees in Environmental Engineering and Arabic languages. With the three words "I AM GAY" Choi ended his military career . He received a letter from the U.S. Army informing him that he was being dismissed. It says, in part,

"This is to inform you that sufficient basis exists to initiate action for withdrawal of federal recognition in the Army National Guard for moral or professional dereliction. Specifically, you admitted publicly that you are a homosexual, which constitutes homosexual conduct. Your actions negatively affected the good order and discipline of the New York Army National Guard."

He recalls: "When I got the letter, I was extremely angry. I was angry -- I mean, the letter is basically saying bottom line, Lieutenant Dan Choi, you're fired. You're a West Point graduate, you're fired. You're an Arabic linguist, you're fired. You deployed to Iraq, you're willing to deploy again, doesn't matter. Because you're Gay, that's enough grounds to kick you out. But the biggest thing that I'm angry about is what it says about my unit. It says that my unit suffered negative good order -- negative actions -- good order and discipline suffered. That's a big insult to my unit.

"I mean, all the insult that the letter can do, to say that I'm worthy of being fired, you know, that's nothing comparing to saying that my unit is not professional enough, that my unit does not deserve to have a leader that is willing to deploy, that has skills to contribute."

2014 – At the stroke of midnight, gay marriage became legal in England and Wales. Among the first to tie the knot were Peter McGraith (left) and David Cabreza, who have been partners for 17 years. They were married at Islington Town Hall in the presence of friends, campaigners, well-wishers, and gay activist, Peter Tatchell.

TODAY'S GAY WISDOM:

Almost a year almost after Dan Choi publicly came out on the Rachel Maddow Show in 2009, he returned to speak about the previous year, the continuing fight against "Don't Ask Don't Tell" and his being handcuffed to the White House gates as a public protest. He spoke about the need to be honest and live for the truth of our lives. We reprint his comments here as a reminder that even though DADT has been officially revoked, our LGBT brothers and sisters who are serving in the military are still living in its shadow.

"What the soldiers really respect the most and what they demand of their leaders is not to be of a certain orientation or a certain race or of a certain religion. They want to see courage. They want to know that the leader can step up and speak the truth when it needs to be spoken. And I speak the truth for all these other people who cannot speak up for themselves. That's what they respect. So there's no negative impact. When people can be honest about themselves it's always a positive impact.

"I knew that when I was on that fence I was not alone. When I had those chains on me, on my waist and the fetters and shackles on my legs, for the first time I knew that on the outside it matched what was on the inside: having to live in the closet and to suffer through "Don't Ask Don't Tell." And I see so many stand up and say "You know what? I am somebody and I deserve full equality." And that's what we intend to fight for."- Dan Choi

[byronicist]

“ENOUGH! we're tired, my heart and I. / We sit beside the headstone thus, / And wish that name were carved for us.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, My Heart and I (1895)

[enqmind]

I'm kinda losing steam, so have the first part of this. (Also, I've been working on this for over a month. I need some encouragement T-T)

The Once and Future Queen

Pre-Raphaelite!Konig/female model(?)!reader, 2.9k words

Warnings: (Likely) Historical innaccuracies, pretension, Dante Gabriel Rosetti slander (aka: accurately describing what he did), TF141 are here with bells on.

Reader notes: Light enough to be easily lifted by Soap, has a family, lives somewhere in England, working class, Victorian.

Part I: Walpurgia's Night

 König was not a poet.

 Neither in his native German, nor this bizarre tongue that felt like speaking three at once.

 He was a man of few words, it only made sense to him that those words be simple and straight to the point. This attitude only made his fellows in the Brotherhood look upon him with rather some disdain.

 With this he was fine, he wasn’t there to mince pretty words and use them to entice young women to fulfil his whims and stroke his ego.

 The whole concept of poetry was a rather strange one to him to begin with. It seemed too prone to misrepresentations to his mind.

 After all, one could not scream a painting of a lover’s embrace, or softly whisper a woodcut of a bloody battle. A bold statue of a conquering hero could not be turned dreadful by a tone of voice or a stuttering delivery.

 No matter how honest the poet, the reader could turn their words to lie in another voice. Be that spoken aloud or just within their own mind.

 It was a folly, he would say if asked. In a particularly thunderous mood he would claim it made men mad. Drove their confidence into levels that tipped straight over the precipice of insanity. That otherwise merely passionate men were made Narcissus with the products of their souls. Or worse, made monsters.

 He had stood there, at the side of a young, lost, woman’s grave. The earth there turned fresh despite her being buried there years ago.

 Simple folly then seemed like madness, and his work thus changed.

 The word of the Bard became ash in his mouth.

 Smitten Juliets, sweet Cordelias and even poor Ophelias losing their glitter and shine. Becoming naught but shadows flickering at the limbus of his sight.

 Never honest. Never real.

 Thusly, he became a Nazarene.

 Vicious Judiths, loyal Ruths and penitent Marys Magdalene became his bread and butter.

 Until he recalled that these too were written in verse, and so the word of the Lord became as cinders.

 An unguided man, he wandered this foreign land as lost and adrift as the island itself.

 Perhaps it was a misunderstanding that brought him to this festival, but he was loathe to confess that he had wished to become drunk upon this Ale as he considered matters French, Roman and British for his work.

 It was here he saw them, on the day of Pentecost that these English did call Whitsun.

 In this place to the North, far from capitals both ancient and modern.

 This dying breed, these men of Morris. Dancing with their bells and handkerchiefs and swords never meant for battle.

 It captivated König.

 Here was legend, myth and mimesis.

 Representation of ancient truths without the lies of verse, except only —perhaps— to gild the lily.

 He took his sketches of the five.

 The leader with his distinctive hat and fashionable beard.

 The man dressed in rich colours and shine, like a jewelled beetle.

 The one with the swarthy skin and bearing of a grand thespian.

 The fellow with the piercing eyes and head shaved like warriors from the far side of the ocean.

 The largest of them, covered in darkness with a skull blacked upon his face.

 The One Four One, the side was called.

 The crowd laughed and clapped and cheered along to each of the dances, enraptured by this tradition that was petering out to its end.

 How it was worth the scorn that König had heard his cosmopolitan brothers heap upon it, he did not know. To him, these men were like warriors without a battle to fight.

 König was a draughtsman and a painter, so he drew and he painted.

 Captured the likeness of these men and their dance. Portraits of them in their mismatched gear titled with their odd nicknames, no sillier than his own.

 It kept him busy, back in his studio engulfed in smog and soot. Now become home as well, for Morris men were far from fashionable amongst his former patrons.

 The Earth had nearly completed her circuit ‘round the blazing Sun when he received a letter from the man that the side called captain.

 They were planning to travel to a new village for the next Whitsun, and König was welcome to meet them there. Price would arrive first, then Soap and Ghost, and trailing along would be Gaz and Roach

 He was rather confused that the invitation requested he join them in late April, as Whitsun would not be for weeks to come.

 He said as much when he accepted their kind invitation, expressing that he would be honoured to join them.

 A simple note was the only response he received as he packed up his meagre home .

 ‘The crowning of the May Queen must be honoured.’

 Another of these strange island customs.

 He pictured an austere woman in the fullness of life, tall for her sex and as imposing as Demeter while she ruled the growing season.

 König sketched such things as he travelled by train and then coach and then buggy to a new village.

 Was this queen special? he wondered. The ur-queen of life and growth, perhaps. So important that the near last of the Morris must attend her coronation.

 He near vibrated with intrigue at the thought.

 Here would be true magic and mystery, unsullied by the madness of verse.

 Price met him at the village’s inn, on the day of his arrival, buying him a drink and then a plate of food after passing his gaze up and down the near starving artist.

 He muttered something under his breath about brotherhood, it dripped with such disdain that König did fear it might land in his ale.

 After, Price perked up.

 “You’ll enjoy this,” he promised.

 Any wondering König might have done about how they would fill the time until May Day was quashed by the villagers. After all, surely a large man like him was there to help.

 He had no heart to say no, and was press ganged into helping them.

 On the third day, his job was to help erect a pole festooned with ribbons.

 This was where Soap and Ghost found him. One large man became two, their third securing the pole so well that naught but the mightiest gale could bring it down.

 After each day of hard work the villagers fed and watered them well. Women presenting them with stews and puddings, men with bread and ale, the children with wild berries and juices.

 The three men of the side ate well, reminding König to as well when he became too absorbed in his sketching of the day’s events.

 On one occasion, Ghost and Price caught him by the arms, Soap taking his papers and charcoal, refusing to return them until he cleared his plate.

 He almost snarled, but the gnawing pain that had settled into his gut asserted itself and cut him off.

 Soap laughed and he and his comrades watched, quietly pleased as König ate.

 He was not a Morris man, but he felt like one in the waning days of the month. Working, feasting and resting together.

 He wondered if this would last, if he was merely an understudy for their absent members. Standing in their spot, keeping their mark ready until they could arrive.

 This uncertainty lasted until the twilight of Walpurgia’s night, the last sunset before the queen was crowned, when the quintuplet once again became whole.

 Pulled along like the sea, König followed the moon of the three to the place where buggies made their stop.

 He sat on the bench and kept watch for them as they passed the time with practice. It was difficult for him to maintain his vigil, fascinated by how they danced as though nothing were missing at all. The glint of their blades and shadows of Roach and Gaz danced as much as they did in the golden hour.

 Only the distant sound of horses kept him from putting the image to paper.

 Hoofbeats blended with the stomp of the rappers into one melodious tune.

 König watched as two figures leapt from the buggy, running at full pelt down the road. The sound of their steps and laughter joined the steady rhythm until they slipped into the dance, replacing shadows like they were always there.

 It was as the buggy drew to a halt that he realised that there was no absence for him to fill.

 A woman’s laugh rose from the buggy, drawing five wide smiles and a curious look.

 Gilded by the setting sun, she stood above them all —even Ghost and König — glorious like a queen.

 This must be her, the monarch of May. Surely she was who the One Four One came to honour, bringing with them a foreign pretence of a king to make record of the ceremony.

 She was not Demeter, far too soft and kind as Soap lifted her by the waist from the buggy, dancing them into a spin before setting her to the ground.

 Immediately she was surrounded and towered over, the side as her court and her court at her side.

 “And so the summer queen arrives,” Price greeted, laughter in his voice as he doffed his hat into a deep bow.

 It was a wry grin she shot back, curtseying low.

 “Of course Captain, this is not an occasion that one could afford to miss.”

 She turned her eyes to König, lit ablaze as the stars crept out to shine.

 “And who might this be?” she asked, looking him up and down as one might a castle.

 “A sixth for a five man band? Why, was including Ghost not challenge enough?”

 The man himself huffed.

 “Her majesty jests,” Soap declared with a conspiratorial grin. “T’was no issue with Ghost at all. Excepting, of course, his demeanour.”

 That earned the Scot a cuff around the head that hurt not at all, if his wide smile bore fair witness.

 Price beckoned König over.

 “To honour the occasion, we invited a titled man to oversee proceedings. A majesty in his own right.”

 A hand fell on his shoulder.

 “A delight, my queen, to present to you a king; König.”

 Those eyes flew wide, and pretty lips parted in a gasp, before she curtseyed low again..

 “Nothing but a pleasure, I’m sure,” she smiled, so beautiful that it made his hands twitch. “To meet you is like a gift from above.”

 She wore admiration on her face like another lady might wear powder and rouge.

 “You know my work,” he realised.

 “Yes. I had the pleasure of seeing it as I attended my lady during a trip to the city.”

 The smile she wore was enchanting, almost enough that he didn’t parse what she said. Almost.

 “Your lady?”

 “Away from here I’m a mere lady’s maid.”

 “A poet,” Gaz corrected, “one who pays for room and board by masquerading as a maid.”

 She gave him a look that seemed to sigh ‘not you too’.

 König’s heart fell to his feet.

 “Not much of one,” she murmured, looking up at him, embarrassed.

 “Tosh.”

 Ghost’s simple comment brought a smile back to the queen’s face. She tugged his shirt to draw him down for a kiss on the cheek.

 König watched them. He wondered how much of the platonic nature of her affection was pure falsehood. How deep could the lies of verse go?

 Price’s hand fell again onto his shoulder, the look in the man’s eyes somehow both concerned and warning in the same expression.

 “We’ll get your bags to your Mam’s and then circle back to the pub, hmm?” he said to her, hand tightening on the painter’s shoulder.

 König found himself almost frogmarched into helping as the others, including their queen, unloaded the buggy of bags and cases.

 “Later,” was the captain’s quiet warning.

 The Morris men and their queen conversed with bright smiles and open laughter.

 Even the taciturn spectre was light. He shared a story with the newcomers of how one girl (soft and kind with a sweet, dark, face) commandeered he and König to help her pick some upstart elderflowers. She’d sat on Ghost’s shoulders to reach blooms to pluck alongside König. A little princess who crowned them both in flowers and thanks.

 Gaz puffed up in pride when König called her a braves Mädchen.

 “Just wait until tomorrow. You’ll see her be really brave.”

 To a man, the One Four One nodded in agreement.

 “I just hope I can do her justice,” the queen sighed.

 Roach patted her on the back with a reassuring grin. The silent conversation between them enough to draw her shoulders back.

 “You’re right. Just… one more pass?”

 He laughed, it running through the group like a plague. Affecting even König through his veil of misery.

 He didn’t speak much, even as they made their efforts to include him in the conversation as though nothing were amiss. To them, he supposed, there was not.

 He was no fool. He was aware that to educated and uneducated men alike, his aversion to poetry was bizarre.

 The expression colouring Price’s countenance told him as much when the queen went into her family home to put away her bag and be smothered in love.

 König told him that he could not stand that which would disturb the grave of a young woman as she slept eternal.

 He had expected confusion, perhaps more scorn, but instead he was given sympathy.

 Soap put his hand on König’s arm.

 A frisson of disgust ran through the side.

 “We heard about that,” Price rumbled, “foul business.”

 “Were you friends?” A question asked by all, but spoken by Gaz.

 He threw his thoughts back to her gentle face and broken soul. They spoke as infrequently as they met. Even as she sat for him, but those silences were amicable. Amicable.

 “Ja.”

 Delusion as it may be, she and he were kindred spirits. This he knew in his heart.

 “I get how you feel,” Soap commiserated, “that guy’s a cunt.”

 It began slowly and then came out of his like a torrent. Chuckle into raucous laughter.

 How direct. How clear. How unpoetic.

 It was like a veil had been lifted.

 The defiler wasn’t a tortured poet, a grieving husband, Alighieri descending into hell.

 “He is a cunt,” König stated. “Ja. Only a cunt would do that.”

 The hand on his arm turned into an encouraging clap.

 “There you go. He’s a cunt. You gonna let a cunt like that ruin something for you?”

 That was wha he’d been allowing, wasn’t it?”

 “No. Not anymore.”

 “Good man.”

 They were swiftly joined by the queen and her family, familiar from about the village.

 The queen mother made shooing motions at them.

 “Get a shift on lads,. They won’t light the bonfire without the guest of honour!”

 The side gave their greetings and the group headed onward.

 The queen’s family was a curious bunch, asking questions about what everyone had been up to on their travels and an inordinate amount about König.

 “So… I hear you’re a painter,” her father had begun.

 “Ja. We’ve already had this conversation.”

 “... Right. I just didn’t know you were that painter…”

 The man awkwardly moved into interrogating Gaz with his wife.

 Odd fellow, but not unlikable.

 It was not an unpleasant walk, König found himself rather enjoying it. Somehow folded into another band without meaning to.

 He stole glances at the queen as they went, the dark shadow washed away. His heart was for from repaired, but now he no longer needed to second guess her quite so much.

 She fidgeted while he looked at her. Dutifully, he averted his gaze as he noticed each time.

 No wonder she was the guest of honour; even in dusty travelling clothes she was wonderful.

 He wondered if she would be willing to sit for him.

 Soon enough they reached the inn.

 The bonfire was small and rather hastily made. He didn’t doubt that they built much more impressive ones to burn traitors in effigy.

 Gaz and Roach were hurried off to place their bags in the side’s room as the innkeeper strode up to the party.

 “Ah, good. You’re here!”

 König could have sworn his heart stopped when the man put a hand on his back.

 “Light the bonfire so we can ward off the witches, then.”

 He looked at the innkeeper, nonplussed.

 The hand patted.

 “Happy wall purge is knack, König,” the man grinned up at him. He looked so proud.

 König nodded, a small smile playing on his own lips.

 “Frohe Walpurgisnacht.”

 He was handed a flaming torch and the gathered village folk cheered as the pile caught flame.

 “From now on, we’ll know our May Queens will be safe from witches!” the innkeeper called to further cheers.

 It was a strange feeling being the centre of attention like this, but it didn’t feel so unnatural as it should. Explaining the traditions of Walpurgisnacht to the queen and other curious souls wasn’t as harrowing as he’d have expected if told he’d be required to do so when he had arrived.

 He expressed as much to Price as the bonfire died down and the side bade the queen and her family good night.

 The captain shrugged and slapped him on the back.

 “Sleep, it’s a big day tomorrow.”

[polarpanda01]

ATLA characters as things I’ve heard people say at my high school, part 2

Sokka, high on cactus juice: The British are in my organs

Aang, trying to act fancy: *French accent* hon hon, Monsieur Cobweb

Toph, finally done with Sokka and Hakoda’s bullshit: It’s [dad jokes] not a dad thing. It’s a mental illness

Azula: Shakespeare was limited in his knowledge of the female desire because first of all, he’s a poet

Katara, complaining about Aang’s teachers to the fire nation headmaster: maybe you should tell him to spend a little less time on grilled cheese and a little more time on his content

Katara, about Bumi as a small child: He’s an emotional terrorist. That’s what all five year olds are

Sokka, declaring his artistic skill: I’m the anti-Hitler of art

Sokka, during the Tales of Ba Sing Se: words are sexy

Zuko: I try to have friends

[themuseumwithoutwalls]

MWW Artist of the Day (12/14/23) Dante Gabriel Rossetti (British, 1828-1882) Dante's Dream on the Day of the Death of Beatrice (1880) Oil on canvas, 135.2 x 200.6 cm. Dundee (UK) Art Galleries & Museums Collection

Rossetti had a lifelong interest in the Italian poet Dante Alighieri. The painting was inspired by Dante's poem "La Vita Nuova." In this poem Dante dreams that he is led to the death-bed of Beatrice Portinari, who was the object of his unfulfilled love. Dante, in black, stands looking towards the dying Beatrice who is lying on a bed. Two female figures in green hold a canopy over her. An angel in red holds Dante's hand and leans forward to kiss Beatrice. In the painting, Rossetti creates a visionary world with complex symbols. The symbols include the green clothes of Beatrice's attendants, signifying hope; spring flowers in the foreground symbolising purity; and red doves for love.