The Echo of a Distant Time 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇩🇪🇩🇰🇨🇦🇺🇦🇮🇱
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The Echo of a Distant Time 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇩🇪🇩🇰🇨🇦🇺🇦🇮🇱
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*John 8:32* Old-fashioned, sick it of all. Anti-populist, independent pragmatist. Girly pics, nostalgia, history, Golden Age of Hollywood. War, tyranny, collapse. Massachusetts Bay Colony 🇬🇧. #StopPutin 🇺🇦 #NeverTrump linktr.ee/arthurnewhook
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The jungle princess takes the throne: Dorothy Lamour, born 10 December 1914. {photo c. 1936, source unknown}

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Dorothy Lamour, poised in an attitude of serene imperiousness, sits against a backdrop of braided cords and shimmering drapery that accentuates her statuesque composure. Her gown—a sinuous sheath of sequins and beadwork—clings like liquid silver, its keyhole neckline carving a luminous path down the centre of her torso. The intricate embroidery cascades to the floor in undulating patterns, catching the light with a jewelled subtlety that heightens her aura of cinematic glamour. Her arms fold lightly across her body, not in defensiveness but in a cultivated stillness, as though she were a deity momentarily consenting to be observed. Her expression—half-sphinx, half-starlet—combines languor with absolute self-assurance. The sleek waves of her dark hair frame a face sculpted by shadow and gleam, her lips a dark, lacquered blossom. The photograph, circa 1936, distils the young Lamour’s early mystique: exotic, imperturbable, and already fully conversant with the grammar of Hollywood allure.
December 11, 2025 at 2:12 AM
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Cheeky sailor girl on the fence: Una Merkel, born 10 December 1903. {MGM publicity photo}

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Bathed in a milky, late-morning radiance, Una Merkel perches with effortless poise upon a wrought-iron balcony rail, her figure framed by a soft blur of sun-struck foliage. She wears a sailor-inspired romper—crisp, buttoned, and neatly collared—whose jaunty bow and striped trim lend her the air of a young woman poised between ingénue charm and wry self-possession. Her smile, bright yet touched with a hint of mischief, softens the precision of her coiffed curls, which gleam like pale silk under the light. One hand rests lightly on her knee, the other on the rail, giving her pose an unstudied grace, as though she has momentarily paused mid-conversation. Below her, a pot of trailing flowers climbs toward her ankles, their tendrils echoing the delicacy of her lace-up shoes. The portrait captures not merely starlet allure but a fleeting, sunlit candour—an MGM confection of innocence, composure, and quietly radiant charisma.
December 10, 2025 at 7:12 PM
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Thinking of her soldier boy’s kiss, perhaps: Betty Grable in the 1940s, dreaming with eyes open. {source unknown}

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A chiaroscuro portrait of Betty Grable renders her in a mood of silken poise rather than the buoyant vivacity that made her a wartime icon. She is illuminated by a high, sculpting light that carves her features into planes of shadow and lustre: the sweep of her cheekbone, the soft plunge of her neckline, the luminous curve of her shoulder. Her hair—set in immaculate, cascading waves—catches the glow with a metallic sheen, framing a face composed in contemplative stillness. Her gaze, directed slightly away from the viewer, marries aloofness with latent warmth, while the dark lacquer of her lips introduces a note of glamour tinged with melancholy. The delicate straps of her gown fall over her skin like drawn lines, guiding the eye downwards into the enveloping shadow. The result is a portrait that evokes the language of classic Hollywood publicity photography: intimate yet mythic, poised between vulnerability and the artifice of stardom.
December 10, 2025 at 3:27 AM
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Soft blue and sunshine yellow: the enigmatic Jean Arthur. {source unknown, image colourised}

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Jean Arthur sits curled against the sun-warmed planks of a studio backlot passageway, her posture relaxed yet luminously self-possessed. She wears a soft blue dress patterned with tiny florals, its fluttering sleeves edged in black, lending a quiet theatricality to the otherwise workaday frock. Her arms encircle her knees, drawing her figure into a compact, contemplative silhouette, while her lacquered shoes catch the faint spill of reflected light. Her face—serene, faintly amused, and touched with that unmistakable Arthur radiance—tilts toward the camera with a composure that feels both private and effortlessly cinematic. Behind her, the walkway recedes into brightness, populated by indistinct figures whose blurred presence underscores her solitude. The image captures a moment of repose between performances, distilling the subtle contradiction at the heart of her star persona: introspective yet irresistibly luminous, grounded yet wholly made for the silver screen.
December 9, 2025 at 3:14 AM
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Born in Melrose, Massachusetts—quite likely at the very same locale as yours truly, the city’s hospital—actress, model, producer, writer, and environmental advocate Leslie Parrish at the zenith of her fame. {source unknown, image colourised}

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A vintage studio portrait captures Leslie Parrish seated on the floor in a classic pin-up pose, her body arranged with the effortless symmetry favoured by mid-century glamour photography. She wears a leopard-print swimsuit that accentuates her hourglass silhouette, the halter strap framing her shoulders with feline elegance. Her legs are folded to one side, ankles delicately crossed, and her hands rest lightly upon her knee, creating a sculptural line that guides the eye through the composition. Parrish’s expression radiates warm, unguarded charm: a broad, luminous smile, eyes bright with the poised confidence of a young star ascending. Her hair, styled in soft, voluminous waves, falls over one shoulder in a sweep of golden light. Set against a seamless pale backdrop, the image distils Hollywood’s idealised vision of youthful beauty—clean, poised, and imbued with the polished optimism of the era’s publicity stills.
December 9, 2025 at 2:05 AM
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Nick Fuentes, the twenty-something anti-Semitic, weaselly-voiced agitator who visited Mar-a-Lago during Trump’s exile, tells Piers Morgan he is ‘tired of pretending’ Hitler was not ‘really f**king cool’, despite also declaring him ‘a paedophile and kind of a pagan’. {Mediate 8 December}
A stylised illustration depicts a young woman seated before an old-fashioned television set, its convex screen glowing in monochrome. Her expression is one of incredulous disgust: brows drawn tight, lips curled, one hand raised in a gesture that seems to ask how such a spectacle could possibly merit her attention. On the screen, rendered in crisp black and white, Piers Morgan and Nick Fuentes sit at a studio desk in mid-discussion, their names captioned beneath them. The contrast between their composed, televised debate and the woman’s visceral reaction heightens the image’s satirical edge. The muted palette of the room—cardigan, curtains, plain walls—serves as a calm backdrop against which her frustration becomes the focal point. The illustration blends mid-century visual language with contemporary media critique, capturing the weary incredulity of an audience confronted with yet another contentious broadcast.
December 9, 2025 at 1:26 AM
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Light, shadow, and a woman who knew exactly how to command both: Joan Bennett. {The Echo of a Distant Time 7 December, link below the fold; photo: Columbia Pictures, 1942}
A colour-tinted publicity photograph from around 1942 captures Joan Bennett posed against a woven rattan backdrop, her expression serene yet faintly enigmatic. She wears a white, eyelet-embroidered crop blouse that frames her shoulders and midriff with summery lightness, contrasted by a boldly patterned skirt in ochre, red, and black, its abstract motifs evoking a wartime fascination with the exotic. Her dark, softly waved hair is arranged with meticulous studio polish, and her make-up—crimson lips, defined brows, and subtly shadowed eyes—exemplifies the glamour grammar of early-forties Hollywood. One arm is raised behind her head, the gesture accentuating her poise while displaying a cluster of bracelets that glint against the textured background. The overall composition blends languid sensuality with stylised elegance, presenting Bennett as both starlet and icon of her era’s cultivated allure.
December 7, 2025 at 12:08 PM
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Caught between rose-light and indigo—like a dream the night forgot to finish. {source unknown}

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A low-lit, chromatically saturated photograph presents a nude female figure seated in a bath, her body illuminated by shifting bands of violet and cerulean light. The composition is tightly framed, focusing on the curve of her torso, the angle of her folded legs, and the play of colour across skin rendered almost opalescent. Fine glitter catches the light at her shoulders and collarbone, where small decorative appliqués resemble translucent petals or shells, heightening the image’s ethereal register. Soft tulle gathers around her hips, partly submerged, creating a diaphanous counterpoint to the sculptural lines of her pose. The lighting—more theatrical than natural—transforms the scene into something dreamlike, an interplay of shadow, sheen, and saturated glow that emphasises mood over narrative. The result is a study in texture and luminosity, intimate yet stylised, where the human form becomes a medium for colour and atmosphere rather than overt display.
December 7, 2025 at 10:51 AM
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“A doll upon the tiles, a thought lingering in the mirror. The room exhales… and I listen.” {source unknown}

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A softly lit interior photograph shows a young woman perched on a tiled bathroom counter, dressed in a pale pink top with ribboned cut-outs along the sleeves and a matching lace-trimmed skirt. Her long hair falls in loose waves down her back, echoed by her reflection in the ornate gilt mirror behind her. She turns her head toward the camera with a calm, pensive expression, as though interrupted mid-thought. Around her, the décor—wall sconces, folded towels, small ceramic containers—creates an atmosphere of curated delicacy. A doll in coordinating pink lies beside her hand, lending the composition a faintly uncanny, almost symbolic note. The entire scene merges fashion styling with a mood of poised introspection.
December 7, 2025 at 10:36 AM
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Congratulations, Indiana! Big Ten champions.
December 7, 2025 at 4:26 AM
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Trump insists he is ‘FIXING’ the affordability crisis, despite all available evidence indicating quite the opposite. {Stop the Idiocracy 6 December, link below the fold}
A stylised, painterly illustration depicts a blonde young woman standing at a petrol station, rendered with the polished sheen of mid-century advertising art. She wears a bright red dress and a matching ‘Make America Great Again’ cap, her expression one of breezy, almost theatrical self-assurance. One arm cradles two paper bags of groceries; the other is lifted in a gesture of blithe resignation, as though commenting on the scene around her. Behind her, a large sign declaims ‘AN ARM AND A LEG — BIDEN’S FAULT’, while the price board advertises petrol at $2.95, the lettering bold and deliberately simplified. Red and blue pumps flank the composition, and a discarded fast-food wrapper lies on the forecourt. The image blends kitsch Americana with pointed political satire, transforming a quotidian errand into a tableau of populist grievance and glossy pin-up aesthetics.
December 7, 2025 at 2:10 AM
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Olympic swimmer and actress Eleanor Holm, born 6 December 1913, was expelled from the 1936 Games—ostensibly for drunkenness. Holm maintained for decades that the true cause was far pettier: USOC president Avery Brundage nursing a grudge after she rebuffed his advances. {source unknown}
Olympic swimmer and actress Eleanor Holm reclining with jaunty ease in a richly upholstered armchair. She wears a pale yellow playsuit embroidered with bright floral motifs, the halter neckline framing her shoulders with effortless glamour. Her legs, tanned and athletic, are extended across the chair’s arm in a gesture of relaxed confidence, silver heels catching the lamplight. Holm smiles directly at the camera, exuding the bold, buoyant charm that made her a fixture of 1930s and 1940s popular culture. Around her, the room evokes genteel domestic luxury: brocade-patterned furniture, a period radio on a side table, a lamp casting warm light, and a folded newspaper advertising the day’s events. The composition combines poise and playfulness, presenting Holm as both star and spirited hostess of her own meticulously staged tableau.
December 7, 2025 at 1:48 AM
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Minty-green dreams with Betty Brosmer. {source unknown}

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A softly lit, colour-tinted photograph captures Betty Brosmer poised before a full-length mirror, her reflection doubling the scene’s glamour and creating a dialogue between movement and stillness. She wears pale lingerie of the mid-century style—a delicately ruched brassiere, high-waisted gusseted knickers, and suspenders clipped to sheer stockings—which accentuates the sculptural precision of her celebrated figure. Leaning slightly forward with parted lips and an inviting, almost playful expression, she appears caught mid-turn, as though responding to someone just outside the frame. The mirror beside her repeats her profile: the sweep of platinum hair, the pronounced curve of her waist, the poised line of her shoulders. The muted interior—shuttered window, soft shadows, faint motes of light—forms a discreet backdrop that heightens the image’s intimate theatricality. The result is a study in vintage allure, crafted with Brosmer’s characteristic poise and camera-aware magnetism.
December 6, 2025 at 5:24 PM
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#NeverTrump
December 6, 2025 at 4:11 PM
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High heels and high hopes. {source unknown}

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A monochrome pin-up photograph, styled in the idiom of late-1950s studio glamour, depicts a woman posed with theatrical exuberance atop a circular ottoman. Reclining on her back, she lifts her legs skyward in an almost balletic extension, the glossy arches of her patent heels catching the studio lights. She wears leopard-print knickers, sheer stockings, and a dark lace corset that frames her form with deliberate extravagance. Her head tilts back in a joyous, open-mouthed laugh, hair cascading in voluminous waves that echo the era’s taste for sculpted femininity. Around her, the interior—houseplants, framed illustrations, and starburst wall décor—evokes the optimistic futurism of mid-century design. The composition balances playful eroticism with graphic poise, transforming a moment of unabashed performance into a carefully orchestrated tableau of vintage glamour.
December 6, 2025 at 3:36 PM
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Ex-British PM Liz Truss resurfaces as a YouTube grifter, her new series pitched in earnest to American right-wing populists. {The Guardian 5 December, link below the fold; photo: Getty}
A tightly framed photograph shows former Prime Minister Liz Truss standing at a lectern, her gaze lowered and her expression composed in a studied, almost chastened stillness. The lighting falls softly across her face, accentuating the slight downturn of her mouth and the faint tension around her closed eyes, as though she is bracing herself for the weight of the moment. She wears a dark, formal jacket, a simple gold necklace, and ornate earrings that glint subtly against the blue and amber backdrop of the room. The blurred architectural lines behind her evoke the controlled solemnity of an official setting, yet her posture—head bowed, shoulders drawn inward—introduces a note of vulnerability. The image captures the uneasy poise of a political figure confronting the aftermath of her own decisions, suspended between public duty and private reckoning.
December 6, 2025 at 2:46 PM
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Optimism hath little soil: a large and ever-growing plurality of Trump 2024 voters express extremist, hard-right leanings in poll. {Stop the Idiocracy 5 December, link below the fold}
A stylised, painterly illustration depicts a blonde young woman standing before a large American flag, her posture brimming with brash, performative confidence. She wears a bright red “Make America Great Again” cap, a tightly fitted white blouse left partly unbuttoned, and a short red tartan skirt that flares around her hips. With one hand planted on her waist, she thrusts her tongue out in a gesture of exaggerated mockery, her expression caught between insolence and cartoonish cheer. Behind her, a television glows with the Fox News logo, while fast-food wrappers and a discarded cup litter the floor, adding a note of deliberate squalor to the composition. The image blends satire, Americana, and kitsch, presenting its protagonist as an emblem of loud, unabashed populist posturing.
December 6, 2025 at 1:28 AM
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“Left wanting my little comfort, so I’ve made do with my shirt instead… and it tastes delightfully of strawberries, love.” {source unknown}

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A tightly cropped, informal self-portrait of a young woman in a domestic interior, rendered with the unvarnished immediacy of a phone camera. She wears a vivid coral sports top, the fabric lifted by her teeth in a gesture that reads more as spontaneous play than deliberate display. The composition focuses primarily on colour, texture, and closeness: the ribbed knit of the garment stretched into sculptural folds, the soft ambient light flattening shadows, and the warm tones of skin juxtaposed with the saturated pink of the fabric. Her face is only partially visible—mouth, chin, and a sweep of hair frame the upper edge—leaving the emotional tenor of the moment deliberately ambiguous. Rather than narrative, the image leans on the tension between concealment and revelation, its intimacy shaped more by proximity and palette than by any overtly declarative intent.
December 5, 2025 at 11:59 AM
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Reading within the castle walls—the finest seat in all the vast, echoing house, where silence dignifies every turned page and stone itself seems to hold its breath. {photo: Ferdinando Scianna, c. 1997}

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A chiaroscuro black-and-white photograph by Ferdinando Scianna (c. 1997) depicts a young woman seated on a toilet in an improbably grand, faintly decaying bathroom, absorbed in a book held inches from her face. She wears a simple dark slip, her bare feet resting upon an ornate Persian rug whose intricate pattern anchors the room’s theatrical incongruity. Around her rise the accoutrements of faded aristocratic splendour: a claw-footed tub, a wrought-iron candelabrum bristling with unlit candles, and an oversized gilt mirror reflecting shadows rather than light. A formal Victorian portrait hangs above the cistern, its solemn gaze lending the scene a wry, almost surreal gravity. The high, vaulted ceiling dissolves into nebulous grey, while the overall composition juxtaposes intimacy and formality, rendering the private act of reading as an exquisitely staged moment of domestic absurdity.
December 5, 2025 at 9:58 AM
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Stretched out as a figure from a Renaissance sketch, a mood of memory rather than shock: Sharon Stone in Playboy, July 1990. {The Echo of a Distant Time 4 December} floydetcetera.blogspot.com/2025/12/stre...
A sepia-washed close-up from Playboy (July 1990) presents Sharon Stone with an almost elemental intensity, her face half-obscured by a wild tumble of wet, sun-lit curls. The composition is tightly cropped, allowing only the barest glimpse of shoulder and hand at the margins, so that her features—part shadow, part shimmer—command the entire frame. Strands of hair cling to her skin in looping filaments, casting fine, calligraphic shadows across her brow, cheeks, and lips. Her gaze is lowered, not in coyness but in a kind of meditative focus, as though she stands poised between breath and thought. The interplay of moisture, light, and texture creates a portrait at once tactile and elusive, evoking the sensuous austerity of fashion photography and the candid immediacy of a moment caught between sea and sun. A sepia-toned photograph from Playboy (July 1990) captures Sharon Stone in a languid, sculptural pose upon rumpled bedclothes, the composition suffused with the grain and warmth of late-20th-century glamour photography. Her body lies diagonally across the frame, one arm flung above her head, the other disappearing beyond the margin, creating an elegant sweep of line and shadow. Her face is turned away, half-submerged in pillow and hair, lending the image an atmosphere of reverie rather than display. She wears only a pair of delicate lace knickers, the fine embroidery catching the light in soft, intricate highlights. The interplay of fabric, skin, and bedding produces a tableau that is at once intimate and stylised, evoking the era’s penchant for transforming the private moment into a heightened, almost cinematic still life.
December 5, 2025 at 3:49 AM
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Frank Zappa, who departed this realm on 4 December 1993 and may be currently rolling over continually in his grave, on ‘Death by Nostalgia’. {The Echo of a Distant Time 4 December, link below the fold}
A softly stylised, retro-inflected illustration shows a young woman with pale silver hair standing in a record shop, her pose composed with languid self-possession. She leans against a wooden counter lined with crates of vinyl, their sleeves forming a muted collage of colours and half-familiar designs. Behind her, rows of albums ascend the wall like a mosaic of forgotten soundscapes. She wears a pastel blazer over a graphic T-shirt bearing a sun-bleached, synthwave-style motif, tucked neatly into high-waisted jeans. Her expression is poised yet faintly aloof—blue eyes holding a distant, contemplative chill, as though she is momentarily suspended between eras, hearing music that belongs to none of the records around her. The composition evokes the dreamlike nostalgia of 1980s pop aesthetics filtered through contemporary illustration, merging cool detachment with an undercurrent of intimate longing.
December 5, 2025 at 12:05 AM
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Employers in the former US have cut over 1.1 million jobs in 2025, 54% higher than 2024; tech sector haemorrhaging fastest. {CBS News 4 December, link below the fold}
A hyper-real, nostalgically inflected illustration portrays a young blonde woman kneeling on a sunlit beach, the sea behind her rendered in serene bands of turquoise and cobalt. She wears a simple white bikini, its unadorned minimalism intensifying the vulnerability of her posture. Her face—soft, round, luminously painted—bears two perfect tracks of tears, each catching the light like glass filaments. Her expression is a study in desolation: brows lifted in mute supplication, lips parted as though she cannot quite summon speech. Held gingerly in both hands is a makeshift cardboard sign, its blunt lettering reading ‘NEED WORK — PLEASE’. The dissonance between setting and message creates a scene of aching irony: the idyll of sea and sky juxtaposed with the quiet desperation of a figure who seems marooned not by tides, but by circumstance. The entire composition evokes Depression-era pathos refracted through the soft-focus glamour of mid-century illustration.
December 4, 2025 at 10:49 PM
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One would scarcely guess it from today’s weather, yet New England’s climate is warming faster than nearly anywhere on earth. {The Guardian 4 December, link below the fold}
A whimsically rendered, pastoral winter scene shows a young woman standing in a field of half-thawed snow, her expression one of melodramatic astonishment. She presses her hands to her cheeks, eyes widened to near-comic proportions, mouth parted as though caught between disbelief and alarm. She is dressed incongruously for the season—in a close-fitting blue vest and abbreviated denim shorts—which heightens the painting’s playful air of visual paradox. Beside her, a small, forlorn snowman tilts under the warmth of the day, its body already pooling into slush. Its twig arms droop, its coal features sag with theatrical despair, and its carrot nose points downward like a gesture of wounded resignation. A faded red farmhouse and bare winter trees recede into a softly brushed background, lending the tableau a mood of gentle absurdity, as though both girl and snowman were participants in an unspoken joke about the caprices of weather and the fragility of fleeting worlds.
December 4, 2025 at 8:44 PM
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Elon Musk in hiding, claims he is the most vulnerable in the former US for assassination behind his former partner-in-crime. {IBT 4 December, link below the fold; photo: AFP/Getty}
A wide-angle photograph captures a 2024 political rally at sunset, the stage draped in red, white, and blue bunting. At the lectern stands Donald Trump, rigid in profile, reading from a teleprompter as he addresses a vast, cheering crowd. Behind him and slightly to the right, Elon Musk erupts into an exuberant leap, arms flung skyward in a gesture so overwrought that it borders on the burlesque, his jacket flying open to reveal a rumpled T-shirt and exposed midriff. The contrast is almost surreal: Trump absorbed in his script, unmoved and monumental; Musk cavorting behind him with a theatrical abandon that seems profoundly at odds with the solemnity the moment strains to project. The spectators beyond form a dense mosaic of flags, placards, and upturned faces, underscoring the spectacle’s mixture of fervour, artifice, and faintly absurd pageantry.
December 4, 2025 at 7:53 PM
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Muratura Viva: the quiet suffocation and pious prison of Sister Virginia Maria, the ‘Nun of Monza’ (pictured: Anne Heywood). {The Echo of a Distant Time 4 December, link below the fold}
A stark, theatrical poster for The Lady of Monza (1969) presents Anne Heywood in the habit of a cloistered nun, shown seated on the ground in a posture that fuses vulnerability with anguished defiance. Her body is half-turned from the viewer, arms drawn protectively around herself, her veil displaced as though by some unseen turmoil. Looming beside her stands a faceless male figure in dark, gleaming boots and ecclesiastical robes, his presence rendered as an oppressive vertical column against which she is visually and symbolically trapped. The typography declares, ‘Her other love is God’, while a block of text alludes—elliptically rather than graphically—to the moral and emotional catastrophe at the film’s core: a nun violated within the convent walls and thereafter torn between faith, desire, and transgression. The image as a whole operates in the idiom of late-1960s exploitation cinema: austere, melodramatic, and deliberately provocative, hinging on the collision of piety, coercion, and forbidden longing.
December 4, 2025 at 7:05 PM