Mairlyn's Photos - Aug 24 2025 - Gina Lollobrigida vs Sophia Loren

 

Last night's Turner Classic Movie was Gina Lollobrigida's Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell.   I remember seeing it at the movie theatre in 1968 or so when it came out. What a strange trio of male leads - Phil Silvers, Peter Lawford and Telly Savalas.  I mean that genuinely as they paled in comparison to the beautiful, glowing Gina.   She was called the most beautiful woman in the world at the time.  And that made me think of Sophia Loren, who was considered very beautiful.  There was a supposed feud between them on this theme.   If one were to search the archives carefully, there was lots of nasty insults supposedly tossed back and forth.  For example:  "Sophia Loren plays peasants.  I play ladies." This comparison of beauty seems to remain current - there are lots of reddit sorts of opinions on who was more beautiful. And that seems to be her legacy.  Not her photography and sculptures and photojournalism in the 1970s and beyond.  And she died in 2023 at 95, so a long life after movies. I decided to find out a bit more about her and whether her artistic life was being suppressed because of the glitz of the movies. Reading her obituary by the BBC, the legacy of celebrity beauty seems very understandable. She led a celebrity life of famous men courting her constantly.  This romance-filled life even had a strange wedding scandal.   "Disastrously, she met Javier Rigau y Rafols, a charming Spaniard who was 34 years younger. They announced their engagement in 2006 - but soon called it off, citing frenzied press attention. Rigau, however, went ahead with the wedding - allegedly using an imposter to play Lollobrigida. According to her account, she only discovered her marriage by chance when she found documents on the internet. She took legal action; Rigau produced witnesses. He insisted Lollobrigida had agreed to marry him by proxy using a power of attorney she had once granted.  She lost the ensuing court case, but the marriage was annulled in 2019 with the blessing of the Pope." And that was only one chapter of her busy romantic life.  I didn't find any great philosophical quotes as one does with Marilyn Monroe.  There are lots about men. Even in her photojournalism activities where she interviewed and photographed Castro, the quote is that she related to Castro as a man.   So after reading about her exotic and romance-filled life, maybe Gina Lollobrigida's legacy of being the most beautiful woman in the world is suitable.

I found this bit of tabloid history Gina and Elzabeth Taylor in the same dress at a gala event.   And below that?  A pretty little house in Buffalo - too bad about the Buffalo Garden Walk being in Buffalo.

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Marilyn's PHotos - Aug 23 2025 - The World's Oldest Baby

 

The headline is strange:  "World's oldest baby is born" - how can this be?  How can a baby be old, older or oldest? The embryo was frozen in 1994, so being born on July 26, 2025, he is 30 plus years old at birth.  His embryo mother is now 62.  His sister is 30 years old and she has a daughter who is 10 years old. The embryo got adopted by its current family, and the new mother says "her family and church family think it's like something from a sci-fi movie,"   The original mother kept the embryos after winning custody of them in a divorce from her first husband.  She thought it was the right thing to do and to keep them in storage.  It got more complicated as she got much older.  She wanted to place the embryos up for adoption and found a religious agency where they made a match with another Christian couple living in the US with a similar background.  It was a "hard to place" embryo having been in storage for so long. The possibilities of damage were much higher with the extremely long storage period. One of the articles had scientific details on the freezing methods  - so complicated and so much technical expertise has developed over time. It is a remarkable story of human accomplishment.  There are still mysteries. We may know all about the physical processes and structures of the human embryo, but what else might be at play?  Remember the heart transplant recipients that experienced transplants of donor behaviours?  You have to wonder what could be possible with embryos.

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Marilyn's Photos - Aug 22 2025 - Out of and Into the Blue

 

Out of the blue is still an expression that we see.  It originates with something we don't see - a bolt of lightning out of a blue sky.  The expression means something unexpected and almost impossible.  It is not that uncommon for lightning to strike in a blue sky.  It travels horizontally for miles from clouds that aren't that far away.  About 30% of people are struck by lightning under clear skies.  While lightning strikes before thunder sounds, the rule of thumb is to quickly take shelter when thunder is heard.  It means lightning is close. Jeff Bezos' spaceflight company, Blue Origin,  is named for the blue planet.  He says it is humanity's blue origin.  He "envisions a future where millions live and work in space to restore and sustain Earth."   Go and look at the website - it looks to be about getting hold of the resources in space.  Here's a quote:  "The road to space will be built from the limitless treasures of the solar system. We must learn to "live off the land" to fully realize the promise of space for the benefit of Earth."  There's much more of this pseudo-optimism on the website HERE.  So what made me think of these two expressions as somehow related? They both seem a bit silly to me. Out of the blue seems one of those expressions that is an exaggeration.   Into the Blue seems like an equal exaggeration.

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Mairlyn's Photos - Aug 21 2025 - Big Things

 

There are big things on the landscape across Canada.  We have a lot of novelty structures along our long, long road system. Maybe Big Nickel in Sudbury, Ontario is one of the most famous. Who knows the most famous of the big things - Big Nickel, Giant Lobster, Wawa Goose, The Big Apple, Huge Hockey and so on.  Maybe there's too many to choose. There's a website dedicated to Canada's big things, it is full of click bait advertisements, so don't go there.  I guess towns have to think of something to draw in tourists and this seems to work.  The editor-in-chief of Guinness World Records, Craig Glenday, circles the globe weighing and measuring big things.  You can read more about him and Canada's big things in the CBC article on the topic HERE.  I agree with his interest and excitement for bit things. It is fun to come upon something giant by the road.  You know someone created it for you to see. And when I think of the big things that I take for granted -  we've had Gerry the Giraffe on St. Paul Street West in St. Catharines since I can remember -  many decades.  And there's the  bronze elephants at the antique store on the South Service Road in Beamsville - they change position increase and decrease in number every so often.   And the biggest clock of them all in Niagara? The grand Floral Clock on the Niagara Parkway?  Now that's a big clock.

This is one of the Beamsville elephants.  And an abstract after that. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Marilyn's Photos - Aug 20 2025 - Wedding day is every day

 

Wedding is a surname.  It is German and  it originates in place names - Wedding or Weddingen. It is also a short form of Wederkind, with its variant Weddig. I guess that's better than having the surname "Nobody" which is rarer than "Wedding,"   One website said it found 6,830 records for the Nobody surname.  I wonder if they are all related.  What is your guess that Somebody is a surname?  I thought it could be - one article says no it isn't and in another says that there are 82 people with the surname Somebody.  Another site thinks there are 128 people with the surname, mostly in Iran.   What if you were one of the Heavens?  There are some notable people with this surname.  Heaven is a variant of Evan and is Welsh.   What surnames have fewer than 20 contemporary people holding the name afloat?  Here's what the internet site Ancestry.uk says are current "endangered" names: Miracle Dankworth Relish MacQuoid Loughty Birdwhistle Berrycloth Tumbler Other articles have different surnames that are going extinct. That's out of somewhere in the range of nine to eleven million different surnames in the world.  That number comes from a few sites. However, the AI overview gave the range of 100,000 to 750 million distinct surnames in 2020. It depends how you account for language.

The is the door to the carillon at Bok Tower, in Florida.  Don't you love a golden door?  It seems like all the answers lie within   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca