flowers

April 29 (UPI) — Britain’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla laid flowers at the Sept. 11 memorial and met with victims’ families and first responders in New York City on the third day of their state visit to the United States.

It was the first visit by a reigning British monarch since Queen Elizabeth II visited in 2010.

The terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center in 2001 killed nearly 2,800 people, 67 of them British. During the queen’s trip, she officially opened what is now called the Queen Elizabeth II September 11th Garden. The lower Manhattan space honors the British citizens who died in the attacks.

The royal couple laid flowers beside the reflecting pool, which has the names of victims etched into the side. Standing beside them were firefighters and officers from the New York Police Department, the Port Authority Police Department and the New York Fire Department, in dress uniforms, The New York Times reported.

Charles spoke to both houses of Congress on Tuesday, and he mentioned that 9/11 was the first time that NATO invoked Article 5, which declares that an attack on any members is an attack on all.

Charles referenced the attacks during the speech.

“We stood with you then,” he said. “And we stand with you now in solemn remembrance of a day that shall never be forgotten.”

Trump has repeatedly claimed that NATO has never come to the aid of the United States.

Charles also emphasized his country’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan. Trump said earlier this year that British troops “held back” in the war, which caused some Brits to demand the state visit be canceled.

After the visit to the memorial, the king went to Harlem to meet with young people who run an urban farm. He fed lettuce to the chickens, The Times reported.

Camilla visited the New York Public Library and gave a speech about the power of literature. She gave the library a replica of Roo, the character in Winnie the Pooh, a British children’s classic.

The library has the original stuffed animals that inspired A.A. Milne to write the Pooh series, but the Roo animal was lost.

Wednesday evening, the king and queen will attend a reception with “celebrated creative and cultural figures from both sides of the Atlantic,” the British Embassy said. They will then head back to Washington.

The pair will attend a block party for the United States’ 250th anniversary in Virginia Thursday and say good-bye to Trump, ending their state visit.

A hiker has shared the location of “one of the best places to see bluebells in the UK”, stating that it’s so unknown, “you’d never find it unless you knew it was there”

For walkers and lovers of the great outdoors, a peaceful corner in the South West of England has been hailed as “one of the best places to see bluebells in the UK”. South Devon hiker, Elise Spicer, shared insider knowledge during a recent ramble in South Brent, highlighting a spectacular woodland area.

“Hardly anyone talks about it, but tucked away in South Brent, Lady’s Wood is one of those spots you’d never really find unless you knew it was there,” she explained in a video. Accompanied by her dog, Elise went on to describe how the walk becomes “absolutely beautiful” when the bluebells are in bloom, as they are now.

She continued: “It’s only about 1.5km circular and takes about 30 minutes – so it’s perfect if you just want something short and easy, plus it’s really great for kids.”

Elise captured more footage of her surroundings as she passed beneath a viaduct arch, drawing attention to the walk’s serene clear stream and wild garlic flourishing amongst the flowers.

“It’s such a peaceful feel all the way round and there’s a little river at the start. It’s actually part of a nature reserve too, so it’s really well looked after,” she added.

Elise also noted that there’s a footpath leading directly onto Dartmoor for those wanting to venture further into the National Park.

Devon Wildlife Trust describes the location: “This small reserve acts as a gateway to the wild landscape of Dartmoor. Bluebells and dormice are the stars of our oldest nature reserve.

“A wonderful woodland lying on a gentle north facing slope above the Glaze Brook. The nature reserve holds a wonderful bluebell display each spring and is a stronghold for the hazel dormouse. This was Devon Wildlife Trust’s first nature reserve and remains one of its loveliest.”

To reach it, take a minor road from South Brent towards Cheston/Wrangaton. A track leading to the reserve can be found on the right-hand side of this road, just past Glazebrook Court.

Responding to Elise on TikTok, one user enthused: “It’s beautiful, my partner used to live there, done that walk many a time.”

Another person chimed in: “Ooh gonna check this out.”

On the subject of bluebells, the RHS notes: “Woodland floors carpeted with bluebells are appreciated for their natural beauty, with many people visiting bluebell woods in mid- to late-spring.

“The flowers can attract bees and butterflies, including the brimstone, orange-tip and pearl-border fritillary. As a source of nectar in spring, bluebells are a useful addition to wildlife gardens. They can also provide good ground cover in spring and summer, particularly under deciduous trees and shrubs.”

Inara George looks back on it now as wistfully as someone remembering a love affair or a semester abroad.

“It was at this tiny theater on Pico near LaBrea, next to a barbecue place,” she says. “Our backstage was behind the theater, so we’d sit out there wearing these crazy corseted outfits while the guy next door was smoking brisket.”

A fixture of the Los Angeles music scene known for her solo records and as half of the Bird and the Bee, George is recalling the summer she spent working as a 20-something actor in “The Wandering Whore,” a musical set in 18th century London by composer Eliot Douglass and lyricist Philip Littell that played L.A.’s Playwrights’ Arena in August 1997.

“There was a scene where I die,” George adds, “and then I get reanimated by a ghost and someone pays — I don’t know if you need to put this in the article — someone pays to have relations with me.” She sighs.

“It was just such a rich time.”

Three decades later, George’s warm feelings for that era — and especially for the duo who soundtracked it — have led to an exquisite new album, “Songs of Douglass & Littell,” on which she sets aside her own songwriting to interpret nine tunes by these under-the-radar veterans of West Coast musical theater: searching, funny, vividly emotional songs like “Tired Butterfly,” about a busy insect in search of “a little nap,” and “The Extra Nipple,” which ponders a “harsh encounter with another heart.”

Think of the record as George’s take on one of Ella Fitzgerald’s classic “Song Book” LPs from the late ’50s and early ’60s, when the jazz star was systematically enshrining the work of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin and other authors of the Great American Songbook.

“These men deserve to have some attention,” George says of Douglass and Littell, the latter of whom she’s known since she was a little girl performing in plays at Topanga Canyon’s Theatricum Botanicum. “I want to give them their flowers.”

Yet if the album is rooted in the creative awakenings of George’s youth, it’s also the 51-year-old’s way of embracing middle age.

Inspired by singers like Helen Merrill and Chet Baker — “Elis & Tom,” a 1974 duo album by Brazil’s Elis Regina and Antônio Carlos Jobim, was another touchstone — George turns on “Songs” from the Bird and the Bee’s blippy electronica and the folky pop of her solo work to a jazzier sound that puts her cool, breathy vocals amid piano, strings and horns.

“This is a grown-up record,” says George, who shares three teenage children with her husband, the movie director Jake Kasdan. “I don’t want to be making music that makes me feel like I’m trying to be younger — I wanted to make something that makes me feel my age.”

Inara George at home this month.

(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

The singer is at home near Griffith Park on a recent afternoon; with her kids at school and Kasdan away on a film shoot, the house is quiet, though signs of music are everywhere: a drum set, a grand piano, a guitar once owned by George’s late father, Lowell George, who founded the cult-fave L.A. rock band Little Feat and who died of a heart attack when Inara was only 4.

“As a woman, it’s a weird time in life — there’s something in-between about it,” she says. “Even the question of what do you wear. When you’re younger, you’re like, I’m gonna wear a dress — is it sexy, is it cute? Now, all of a sudden, all I want to do is wear suits.” She laughs.

Douglass, who plays piano on the new album, hears a “groundedness” in George’s singing all the more remarkable given that the arrangements represent “a new kind of school for her,” he says. “I was wondering how she would approach it, and she’s done it with such aplomb and wisdom.”

On Friday night, Douglass will accompany George — along with more than a dozen other players — in a record-release concert at Largo at the Coronet, with proceeds going to the nonprofit LA Voice, which seeks to organize voters on issues related to immigration and affordable housing.

George happily describes “Songs of Douglass & Littell” as a passion project. “I think you get to a certain point where selling a million records is not your intention,” she says. “Obviously, I wouldn’t make a record like this if I had that intention.” (Counterpoint: the arena-filling success of Laufey.)

“I’m just about the experience,” she adds, “and this has been an amazing experience.”

The experience began one night a few years ago when George hosted a wine-soaked reunion of performers who’d worked with Douglass and Littell back in the ’90s on shows like “The Wandering Whore” and “No Miracle: A Consolation,” the latter a song cycle rooted in the losses of the AIDS epidemic.

Philip Littell, from left, Eliot Douglass and Inara George.

(Thomas Heegard)

After her years of childhood dramatics at the Theatricum — Littell remembers meeting “this bird of a girl with these huge eyes” — George had gone to Boston’s Emerson College to study acting but dropped out and returned to L.A., where she eventually made her name as a musician. (In addition to the Bird and the Bee, her duo with the Grammy-winning producer Greg Kurstin, she’s also played with the Living Sisters and sung with Foo Fighters.)

Yet her postcollege stint in the experimental theater scene always stuck with her, she says. Reconnecting with Littell, whose other work includes the libretto for André Previn’s operatic adaptation of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” and Douglass, who played piano for years with Cirque du Soleil, got George thinking about how she might help preserve their music and bring it to a modern audience.

In 2024, she put together a trio for an intimate gig at Pasadena’s Healing Force of the Universe record store; her old friend Mike Andrews, who produced her solo albums, was there and told her they should record the material. Given the number of ballads she’d worked up, George asked Douglass and Littell to write a couple of new uptempo tunes; among the ones they came up with was the frisky “La Lune S’en Va.”

Does George speak French?

“Not at all,” she says, smiling. “But Philip does. It’s so fun — I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll take it.’ I think the pronunciation’s OK.”

She and a small crew of musicians cut the album live in the studio over three days — in part an attempt to capture some energy, in part an acknowledgment of an economic reality.

“Is music just a hobby for me now? Yeah, it is,” says George, who’s putting “Songs” out through her own label, Release Me Records. “I mean, I’m spending money to do it.” She worries about the disappearance of music’s middle class even as she notes happily that “Again & Again” by the Bird and the Bee “recently had a little TikTok moment,” as she puts it. (With 86 million streams, it’s the duo’s most popular track on Spotify, followed by an ethereal cover of the Bee Gees’ “How Deep Is Your Love.”)

Yet all that seems less important to George than taking the opportunity to honor “these incredibly talented, very sensitive people” who she says shaped the artist she became.

“Their songs just mean so much to me,” she says of Douglass and Littell. “More than ever, this is the music I want to listen to.”