Pronounced TEL-ma, in the Spanish fashion.  Born Thelma Morgan, identical twin sister of Gloria Laura Mercedes Morgan Vanderbilt [1904-1965] mother of ("Little") Gloria Vanderbilt Cooper.  Thelma married Marmaduke Furness, 1st Viscount Furness [1883-1940] in 1926, divorcing him in 1933.  She is perhaps best known, however, for her affair with King Edward VIII, before leaving the field, as it were, to Wallis Simpson. 

The illustration of Thelma is from Double Exposure, [New York: David McKay, 1958], the memoir she wrote with her sister.  So The Story Goes [Art Institute of Chicago: Yale, 2006] is the exhibition catalogue of work by photographers Tina Barney, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, and Larry Sultan.

Bianca thinks if I had a decent camera, I'd be lethal.

There are multiple copies of Double Exposure at the Central Library downtown, but the one I checked out has been heavily annotated in the margins in pencil ["Parasites" with underlining; "Not true!" and "Thelma quit the Royal Bed and Wally climbed in."]  There is something wonderful and awful about old library books -- the sensible bile green buckram binding, the institutional stamps and markings, the pocket and dust jacket blurb pasted in, the musky rotting smell of wood pulp and silver fish and old glue.  Librarians used to do such alarming things to books.

Saturday was bright with a crisp autumnal feel in the air as I sat with Thelma and Gloria at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, near the Grotto to Our Lady.  The sisters are buried together in a lovely spot.  I used to come here on my lunch break years ago to admire the view and feel sorry for myself for the mind-numbing temp job I was being forced to endure at the time.  If we could only know in advance how things will turn out.

On the drive out I'd been listening to a radio interview with Naomi Wolf who was explaining the military coup the current regime has set into motion [Source]. I was telling Thelma and Gloria about it as I tidied up the weeds and the grass around their marker.  Gloria didn't seem interested at all, and even Thelma was curiously unimpressed.  Of course, if I'd had an affair with the King of England who'd ended up abdicating his throne for a commoner, not to mention the fairly awkward relationships he'd had with the Nazis, I might have a jaded view of current events as well.  

"I can see," I admitted, "how you ladies, living through two world wars, a Great Depression and more than a scandal or two -- I can see how it'd take more than the end of democracy to get your attention.  Am I right?"

In the distant rushing freeway traffic you could hear the whisper of their reply, like a faint, softly elegant and smoky duet, a harmonic refrain in a lilting blend of accents -- Spanish, English, French, Locust Valley -- sort of like Arianna Huffington and Kathleen Turner at a really good cocktail party: 

'Seen it all seen it all, darling, seen it all seen it all seen it all, darling, seen it all...'