The Echo of a Distant Time: October 2025

Wednesday, October 1, 2025

Every pool was transfigured into a cathedral when she bent her knee beneath the sun’s benediction: Stella Stevens, born 1 October 1938

Columbia Pictures

Velvet tresses, gilded skin, and a secret to make even the sun envious. A daughter of Yazoo City, Mississippi, Stella Stevens was crowned Playboy’s Playmate of the Month in January 1960 and went on to a career in film and television that spanned more than half a century—perhaps most memorably opposite Jerry Lewis in The Nutty Professor. Yet, in the twilight of life, she fell victim to the scourge of Alzheimer’s, passing away at the age of 83 on 17 February 2023.

{alternate text} Bathed in the soft radiance of poolside daylight, Stella Stevens kneels with statuesque grace, her form poised in a bikini patterned with rich, paisley swirls that seem to shimmer against her porcelain skin. Her blonde hair, full and sculpted in voluminous waves, frames her face like spun silk, offsetting the sculptural precision of her features. The setting—a tranquil pool and blurred greenery beyond—serves as a stage for her languid poise, a tableau that captures the essence of 1960s glamour: at once sultry and self-assured, yet tinged with wistful allure.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. On X-TWITTER: @Sunking278 and @DollsFallen. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/user/SiberianKhatru278/. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. FULL LIST OF LINKS - linktr.ee/arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook), PayPal (paypal.me/Sunking278), and at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

A remarkable life: Dame Jane Goodall has died, aged 91

photo via the Jane Goodall Institute

{AP 1 October} Jane Goodall, conservationist known for chimpanzee research, dies at 91

Jane Goodall, born in London on 3 April 1934, has assured her place among England’s immortals. By decamping to the steaming tangles of Gombe and mucking in with the apes, this great lady unravelled the smug fiction that man was some sacred, tool-wielding exception. Her chimps whittled sticks, formed alliances, and wept for their dead — and with that, the neat wall between ‘us’ and ‘them’ crumbled.

But Jane Goodall was not content to scribble footnotes for zoologists; she spent the rest of her life pleading with the world not to turn every last scrap of wilderness into a strip-mine. Noble work, doomed of course, given the human talent for short-sighted vandalism.

Still, there’s something touching in her stubbornness — a luminous, bloody-minded emblem of curiosity, decency, and hope, however misplaced. She is gone now, and the planet is no less doomed for her efforts, but infinitely richer for her having tried. Rest in peace, dear lady. —Arthur Newhook, 1 October 2025.

Proffering felicitations to President Jimmy Carter—now resident in the celestial sphere—who, had he tarried upon this thankless planet another ten months, would this day have marked his 101st year

Consolidated News Photos

“I've looked on many women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times. God knows I will do this and forgives me.” —May I too be spared the harshest judgement for the lusts that dwell within my own heart, though I know I am not the man Jimmy Carter was and am decidedly not in God’s favour. No matter: in solemn remembrance of former President of the United States—who departed this life not long ago (29 December 2024), and who today would have marked his 101st birthday (born 1 October 1924 in Plains, Georgia).

{alternate text} In this warmly lit photograph, former US President Jimmy Carter is captured in a moment of unguarded delight, his face illuminated by a broad, genuine smile. His greying hair, neatly brushed back, frames features that radiate both humility and quiet resolve. Dressed in a grey checked suit, a pale blue striped shirt, and a red tie patterned with subtle paisleys, he exudes a modest formality befitting the era. The blurred backdrop, punctuated by the colours of the American flag, situates him unmistakably in the milieu of public service, likely during his presidency (1977–1981). The image conveys Carter’s characteristic warmth and approachability, qualities that underpinned his political persona as a leader of principle, guided more by moral conviction than pomp. It is less the portrait of a statesman cloaked in grandeur than of a man rooted in earnestness, embodying the ideals of decency and integrity he strove to bring to American public life.

In remembrance of Tim Wakefield, upon the second anniversary of his departure from this world

MediaNews Group/Getty Images

Yours truly, a Yankee partisan marooned behind enemy lines, is none too pleased with the Boston Red Sox this morning, having seen New York fall in the first contest of the best-of-three Wild Card series. Tonight must turn the tide, or the Yankees are finished. Yet amidst my ire, let us pause to recall Tim Wakefield—one of the most distinctive pitchers of his generation and in Boston franchise history—who departed this world two years ago today, aged only 53, claimed by pancreatic cancer. A master of the knuckleball, a philanthropist, and laureate of the 2010 Roberto Clemente Award: in short, a consummate sportsman and, by every account, a thoroughly decent man.

(alternate text) Tim Wakefield is captured mid-delivery, his motion frozen at the point just before release. Clad in the team’s iconic scarlet jersey with bold “RED SOX” lettering across the chest, he projects both intensity and composure, the hallmarks of his long career. His right arm is cocked, fingers poised delicately about the baseball—an image suggestive of his signature knuckleball, a pitch as elusive as it is unorthodox. His left hand, gloved in black leather, extends outward to balance the motion, while his gaze fixes unwaveringly on the target. Behind him, the blurred stadium and faintly discernible crowd set the stage without distracting from the clarity of his form. In this image, Wakefield embodies the paradox of his craft: effort harnessed into simplicity, a calm exterior concealing the unpredictable dance of the ball soon to leave his hand. It is at once a portrait of athletic precision and a testament to a pitcher defined by singular artistry.

Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook. On X-TWITTER: @Sunking278 and @DollsFallen. BLUESKY - @arthurnewhook.bsky.social. REDDIT - https://www.reddit.com/user/SiberianKhatru278/. FULL LIST OF LINKS - linktr.ee/arthurnewhook. DONATIONS GRATEFULLY ACCEPTED on Cash App ($ANewhook) and PayPal (paypal.me/Sunking278), and also at https://tinyurl.com/ArthurNewhook.

“The hem misbehaves, and so might I. A secret uncovered in the hush of the trees—do you only watch, or will you conspire with me?”

source unknown

The forest does not judge—only witnesses: a sylph ensnared in the woodland, baring her tenderest self to sky and bough. It is nothing wicked, but a homecoming: as though the earth itself reclaims her. Between bark and blossom she becomes, at once, woodland nymph and clandestine flame.

(alternate text) In the hush of woodland shade, she drapes herself over the fallen trunk as though surrendering to the earth’s embrace, her skirt carelessly lifted to reveal a secret meant for the forest alone. The socks at her ankles lend an almost girlish innocence, undone entirely by the flagrant boldness of her pose. Nature watches, silent and complicit, as if the trees themselves conspire to shield her wanton abandon from prying eyes. It is a tableau of vulnerability and provocation, where innocence and daring meet in one breathless moment of forbidden allure.

Actress Abby Dalton, posed as a desert-stricken heroine who at last discovers a single drop of water: proof that, at times, the very visage of survival can be the most seductive guise of all

source unknown

A gesture at once parched with longing and sated with abandon—innocent yet erotic, untamed and mischievous, as though a fleeting fragment torn from a summer without end. Abby Dalton, born Gladys Marlene Wasden on 15 August 1932 in Las Vegas, enjoyed a long and varied career as a versatile actress across both cinema and television from the 1950s onward. Yet she is now most widely remembered for embodying the tormented Julia Cumson in the 1980s American prime-time melodrama Falcon Crest.

(alternate text) In a candid black-and-white frame, a sunlit blonde tilts her head back with abandon, lips parted as she drinks from a rustic waterskin. Her bare shoulders gleam in the summer light, a pastoral vision caught between innocence and provocation. The texture of the worn leather against her fingers only sharpens the contrast between rugged wilderness and the soft vitality of her body. With eyes half-closed, she surrenders to the moment, making thirst itself into a sensual performance—an earthy hymn to freedom, youth, and daring.

When nature herself grows restive, she cloaks her unrest in the semblance of a woman’s skin

At once vulnerable and defiant: a maiden venturing bare and unarmoured into the wild, a feral hymn veiled in lace and shadow—she is of the forest, not the world. Model Courtney Smith, captured by Erik Tranberg, c. 2015.

(alternate text) A statuesque beauty stands poised in monochrome, her bare torso luminous against the dark blur of tangled woodland. Her long hair falls untamed over her shoulders, some strands caught in her fingers as if she toys with the wildness of the scene. The lace-trimmed panties cling delicately at her hips, their softness a fragile foil to the boldness of her stance. Her expression—half-defiant, half-dreamlike—conjures the aura of a woodland nymph who has stepped briefly into the mortal world, confident in her allure yet distant, as though she might vanish into shadow at any moment. The photograph hums with tension between raw natural beauty and cultivated sensual poise, an untamed goddess caught by the lens.