Robert Barone's photostream  

This is a detail from the previous photo. The little girl doesn't seem to fit in at all. Completely different dress, much more informal, more modern. Is she from a different family? She's not waiting respectfully for the photo to be taken like the others. She's glowering and eating the props.
After she took this photo she moved to Los Angeles and landed a role in "The Little Rascals;" where she made life miserable for Alfalfa. See comments.

Scanned and restored from glass negative.
Photo by Benedetto Tatarelli

If you can, set the quality to HD on the right of the control bar, not for the value of the video, unfortunately, but because thousands of birds flying against the sky is a perfect storm for video compression software. Even at HD the compression here is struggling quite a bit, so think of it as abstract art. The shaking, however, is my own fault, since these birds were flying right over my head; no zoom lens, no tripod, at times I felt the breeze of their collective wings blowing around me. I felt other things, too, but I prefer to be discreet.
Shot with Pentax Takumar 50mm/1.4.

While many a spouse has rued the day when wifey or hubby fell under the spell of Flickr, this tale of marriage, its vicissitudes, and photo-sharing is both unusual and, I hope, heartwarming.
The first tale of zeppole begins some months ago when I casually mentioned to my wife that I would like to have zeppole, just like those my grandmother made when I was a boy in the sweet Bronx of my childhood.
Perhaps some of you are already thinking that this may have been an unreasonable request; after all my grandmother came from the mountains of Molise and all of this happened more than 50 years ago. How could my wife possibly know how to make the same zeppole? Well, to tell the truth, I emigrated from the Bronx to Rome, and married a girl from a small town not far from my grandmother's village, just so that these kinds of obstacles would not exist between the two of us. How foolishly romantic I must seem, how impetuous.
But I'm getting ahead of the story. So my wife goes into the kitchen and begins the arduous process of making zeppole -- kneading, rolling, frying, etc. I wait in the living room, reading Dante, sipping on my Barolo, waiting for the now imminent return to the days of my childhood and to the joys of homemade zeppole.
But, instead, something terrible happened. My wife called me to the kitchen and there on the table were these blackened round dough-nut shaped things. "Zeppole," was all she said. I did my best to suspend my disbelief, I even tried to eat one. They may have been comestible in some other universe, but this was my universe and these were not my grandmother's zeppole. The earth shifted under my feet. Suddenly the expected confirmation of the choices I had made over a lifetime slipped away, and the sacrifices I had made all came to nought. Over twenty years of marriage -- I can't remember exactly how many -- were based on false assumptions: how many other bad surprises were waiting for me?
I became uncharacteristically depressed and despondent. In Lenola I blurted out to my wife's family that she couldn't make zeppole. They became justifiably alarmed. One of my sister-in-laws and even my little eleven-year old niece jumped into action, and every time we went to Lenola, there were warm zeppole waiting for me. But while these were very good zeppole, they were not like my grandmother's. I was sinking deeper into an abyss of self-destruction: drinking homemade wine, inhaling my own cigar smoke, riding the buses in Rome at rush hour.
But then something good happened. And now we can go on to the second tale of zeppole. After complaining about my wife's lack of zeppole ability in a previous post, a Flickr friend, the dark lady, sent me this recipe. I sure she won't mind if I post it:
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Ingredienti
3/4 di farina tipo 00
1 Kg di patate
5 uova
50 di zucchero
3 pezzi di lievito di birra da sciogliere in un po' di latte tiepido
3 tazzine d'olio d'oliva
un pizzico di sale.
Procedimento
Si dispone la farina a fontana (tipo forma di un vulcano), aggiungervi le uova. Sbatterle aggiungendo lo zucchero, le patate ben setacciate, l'olio. Si lavora l'impasto. Si aggiunge il lievito sciolto e il pizzico di sale. Si lavora ancora la pasta e la si lascia riposare finché non cresce il volume. Dopo di che si lavora l'impasto, formando delle ciambelline e si lasciano riposare al caldo (in ambiente comunque caldo, altrimenti non la pasta non cresce) sotto un canovaccio. Una volta cresciute, si friggono in olio abbondante. Poi le si passano nello zucchero normale.
Try them and enjoy!!!
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With the little physical and mental energy I had left, I gave the recipe to my now nearly former wife. A few days later, on my birthday, she called me into the kitchen. "Zeppole," was all she said. But this time something was different. These looked like zeppole. I made one more leap of faith and tasted them. Zeppole! Just like my grandmother made them. My marriage had been saved by my Flickr friend. God's back in His Heaven; All's right with the world.

p.s. even this recipe says to shape the dough into dough-nuts, but since my grandmother didn't do this, it is not allowed. They should just be round like in the photo. All joking aside, this really is my universe.