There was a photograph my dad used to have on his dresser which I remember now, a picture of my mother on a boat on Gull Lake in Michigan.  In my memory, Mom resembles Baba in yesterday's photograph of the Viceroy's Daughter -- the same hair style, the same smile and pose and one-piece swimsuit.  They both must have been about the same age, except the picture of Baba was taken on the Riviera in 1936, and my dad must have taken that picture of Mom in the 50s. 

There are lots of lakes in that part of the country, not just the Great Ones.  Here's a photograph my sister sent me the other day of Goshorn Lake, near Saugatuck, Michigan:

 

A place you've been, even if you think you haven't.

 

Not the Riviera, and smaller than Gull Lake, but you get the idea.  The thing about photographs, they always remind you of some other place, someone else, some other time.  Aide memoires even when you don't need any help.  Remember how you felt on that kind of a day in the summer when it looked like it might rain?  That kind of association.  Photographs do that.  Even pictures of Clouds can do that.

Anyway, unlike my mother, Baba Metcalfe went on after her marriage (to Fruity Metcalfe) to have affairs with Jock Whitney, Lord Halifax, Douglas Fairbanks and the leader of the British Fascist Party, Sir Oswald (Tom) Mosley, who was married to her sister Lady Cynthia ("Cimmie") and later on was married to Nancy Mitford's sister Diana.  Tom also seduced Baba's step-mother Lady Grace Curzon.  Everyone always describes Tom as being "extraordinarily fit" and "a fine physical specimen," which I think may be English code for very well hung.  JC offers the opinion that Mosley "had a very prominent nose, so one assumes he had a huge endowment, plus he was very cruel to them all.  An irresistible combination."

On another cruel (storm) front, Northeastern Pennsylvania's Times Leader is reporting today that Harlow Cuadra and Joe Kerekes both officially entered not-guilty pleas to homicide and other charges in the Jan. 24 slaying of gay porn producer Bryan Kocis.  "We're innocent," Kerekes said as he was led to his formal arraignment in Luzerne County Court.

"It's not right," a soft-spoken Cuadra said of the decision by prosecutors to seek the death penalty.

"Investigators claim that Cuadra (26) and Kerekes (33) killed Kocis, their rival in the gay porn industry, because they wanted to work with Sean Lockhart, a young model who was under contract to Kocis." (For the full story and to see footage of the suspects being led to their arraignment, go to www.timesleader.com.)

The trial is set to begin March 24.  The case has generated a flurry of interest, from a RollingStone article to extensive discussion and (occasionally) fanciful theorizing amongst the gay and porn blogging communities, some of the speculation verging on the unsavory. 

As a friend who has followed the case in the news observed, "They just wanted to live the American dream."