Traded my rose-colored shades for a wide lens

[sovay]

Oh, good, we're having pregnancy nightmares. Can't imagine where that fits in. Have a selection of links.

1. I suspect these photos of Australian female criminals of the 1920's have been colorized, but A. Cooke still looks great.

2. Bernard Hoffman, "A young female welder adjusts her goggles, Groton, Connecticut, 1943." I haven't been able to find her name, but she was working at the Electric Boat Co.; they built PT boats and submarines. Also, damn.

3. Merril Mushroom's "How to Engage in Courting Rituals 1950s Butch Style in the Bar: An Essay" (1982) is a masterpiece.

4. Courtesy of this article on camp, I am stunned that I cannot remember ever before reading about Marchesa Luisa Casati, because Tanith Lee so obviously knew who she was.

5. A useful refresher on lesbian/bi history from staranise.

I am indeed watching HBO and Sky's Chernobyl (2019), which turns out to contain Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson as well as Jared Harris. I hope to write about it, since two episodes in it's certainly complex enough, but I hoped to write about several movies I watched earlier this month, too, and that hasn't happened yet. My sleep cycle has gone weird again. I need to be not working and that is literally unaffordable.

Comments

[rydra_wong]

1. I suspect these photos of Australian female criminals of the 1920's have been colorized, but A. Cooke still looks great.

I would read books about all of these women. Mrs Osbourne will be played by Harriet Walter in the movie.

A. Cooke does not look sorry.

[gwynnega]

It's been decades since I've heard of Merril Mushroom or Common Lives/Lesbian Lives. It brings back happy memories of when we had women's bookstores in Los Angeles.

[moon_custafer]

Merril Mushroom's "How to Engage in Courting Rituals 1950s Butch Style in the Bar: An Essay" (1982) is a masterpiece.

I need to dig out my copy of All the Sad Young Men by Anonymous, not to be confused with All the Sad Young Men by Fitzgerald (or with the song), because its uneven but entertaining tale of gay life in late ‘50s NYC includes a rather wonderful bit where the narrator resolves to finally check out a gay bar, gets picked up by a handsome Black dude who takes him home, has a pretty good one-night-stand and smokes marijuana with him; the punchline is that later, talking things over with a bar regular, he is shocked to learn that none of that happened randomly-- he’d inadvertently signaled interest by his drink order, and that it was just very good luck that the guy, who happened to own the bar and most of the block, liked his apparent nerve. The narrator’s guide tells him he could easily have been targeted for mugging, blackmail or worse when he came to the neighbourhood, but now that he’s favourably impressed the ruling queen he’s under protection.

I cannot remember ever before reading about Marchesa Luisa Casati,

The AGO has a couple of portraits of her. I think they’re in the same gallery with Otto Dix’s picture of Dr. Heinrich Stadelmann.

I am indeed watching HBO and Sky's Chernobyl (2019), which turns out to contain Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson as well as Jared Harris.
I’m always torn between fascination and squick when it comes to radioactive disasters, so I may stick to reading your review.

[davidgillon]

The instant I looked at the picture of the welder I got a shiver down my spine, because I've just been re-reading Seanan McGuire's Toby Daye series and the description of the Luidaeg, the Sea Witch (and Toby's aunt) fits her to a T.

[a_reasonable_man]

I found this image, too:

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/f7/8d/5f/f78d5f56e2f3b57671d8a84d63c55b92.jpg

[kore]

ooh, love those photos and the butch courting essay.

She was said to walk around Venice at night with her pet cheetahs, naked but for a fur cloak

#lifegoals wifegoals

[pedanther]

I don't know if you spotted the link for more information at the bottom of the post, but it confirms that the photos are colorized, and gives some details both of the colorization and of the subjects.

"By the time she was 24 Alice Cooke had created an impressive number of aliases and at least two husbands, and was convicted of bigamy and theft."