Heart Handbag By ROTHBARTH

Imogene costume for Renee Fleming in “IL Pirata” | Robert Perdziola

me on my annual mbf series reread

snoopy reads my brilliant friend

Norway, 1988

Hall, Creech Grange, unknown artist (signed with monogram 'D.R' lower right), English school, c. 19th century, watercolour.

In Weimar Germany, in 1930, before Hitler, you could get gender treatment as a trans woman. The laws against homosexuality were largely unenforced, and the earliest gender-affirming surgeries were being developed.

A few years later, those same people were all living inside Hitler's Germany. It was all gone.

In the US in 2024 you could get an M, F, or X gender marker on your passport. No questions asked, just circle the box you want.

It's gone now.

Each verse of history has the same refrain. Kill your generation's fascists and rebuild.

The Shepherdess Of Rolleboise, 1896 Daniel Ridgway Knight

“Suddenly, all at once, she knows, knows that he doesn’t understand her, that he never will, that he lacks the power to understand such perverseness. And that he can never move fast enough to catch her.”

—Marguerite Duras, The Lover.

MBF Characters As Quotes Pt. 2: Lila & Stefano

The grandeur of life is the attempt, not the solution. It's about being as fearless as one can and behaving as beautifully as one can under completely impossible circumstances. Good is more interesting, more complex, more demanding. Evil is silly. It may be horrible, but it is not a compelling idea. The opposite survival, blossoming, endurance, those things are more compelling intellectually, if not spiritually, which they certainly are also. We are already born. We are going to die. So in between, you have to do something interesting that you respect.

Toni Morrison

Watercolour portrait of Ada King, Countess of Lovelace also known as Ada Lovelace, ca. 1840, possibly by Alfred Edward Chalon.

Ada Lovelace, is celebrated as the first computer programmer. In the early 19th century, she wrote detailed notes on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a pioneering mechanical computer.

Among these notes was an algorithm designed to compute Bernoulli numbers, which is recognized as the first published computer program. At a time when computing was an uncharted territory, Lovelace envisioned the potential of machines to perform complex tasks beyond basic arithmetic.

Her foresight and contributions laid the groundwork for modern computer science.

She was also the daughter of the poet Lord Byron.

1917 Wedding dress by couturier Jeanne Lanvin for her daughter Marguerite Marie-Blanche's wedding. From Fashion of Bygone Days, FB.