THIS WEEKEND IN GAY HISTORY Happy Weekend Everyone! JANUARY 3

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THIS WEEKEND IN GAY HISTORY

Happy Weekend Everyone!

JANUARY 3

1496 – LEONARDO DA VINCI unsuccessfully tests a flying machine. More on Leonardo on the anniversary of his birth, but for now, as an engineer, Leonardo conceived ideas vastly ahead of his own time, conceptualizing a helicopter, a tank, concentrated solar power, a calculator and the double hull, and outlining a rudimentary theory of plate tectonics. Relatively few of his designs were constructed or even feasible during his lifetime, but some of his smaller inventions such as an automated bobbin winder and a machine for testing the tensile strength of wire entered the world of manufacturing unheralded. As a scientist, he greatly advanced the state of knowledge in the fields of anatomy, civil engineering, optics and hydrodynamics.

Beyond friendship, Leonardo kept his private life secret. Within his own lifetime his extraordinary powers of invention, his "outstanding physical beauty", "infinite grace", "great strength and generosity", "regal spirit and tremendous breadth of mind" as described by Vasari  attracted the curiosity of others. Many authors have speculated on various aspects of Leonardo's personality. His sexuality has often been the subject of study, analysis and speculation. This trend began in the mid 16^th century and was revived in the 19^th and 20th centuries, most notably by Sigmund Freud.

Leonardo's most intimate relationships were with his pupils Salai and Melzi, Melzi writing that Leonardo's feelings for him were both loving and passionate. It has been claimed since the 16^th century that these relationships were of an erotic nature. Since that date much has been written about his presumed homosexuality and its role in his art, particularly in the androgyny and eroticism manifested in John the Baptist and Bacchus and more explicitly in a number of drawings.

1752 - JOHANNES VON MÜLLER, Swiss historian, born (d: 1809); That the name of this once famous Swiss historian is hardly a household name is not exactly surprising. It would probably be easier to climb the Matterhorn in a blizzard than to tackle Müller’s Geschichten der Schweizer (Swiss History), a project that occupied most of his life and took him more than forty years to complete. And it would probably be more practical to climb the Matterhorn as well, since Müller’s tome (18 volumes in the French translation) is now considered hopelessly unreliable, even though in its day it stirred Swiss nationalism and had profound influence.

Müller’s place here is due to his favorite extracurricular activity – writing love letters to Charles Victor de Bonstetten, a young, devastatingly handsome Swiss writer whose greatest talent was apparently turning on academic types who had passed through menopause at age 22. (Charlie will surface again in these pages when he causes that grayest of English poets, Thomas Gray, to do nip-ups at age 53.) Müller’s love letters, among the loveliest ever penned, were published in 1835, twenty-five years after his death. Long before then, however, Goethe had gone on record declaring Müller’s sexuality. It was another classic case of it taking one to know one.

2010 – MARY DALY, American feminist scholar and theologian, died (b: 1928); Daly taught at Boston College, a Jesuit-run institution, for 33 years. In a widely reported case at the time, she was denied tenure, a development interpreted by many as a response to her book, The Church and the Second Sex.” After more than 1,500 students signed a petition supporting her – most were men, for the college did not admit women to its liberal arts division until 1970 – she was reinstated with tenure.

Daly taught classes at Boston College from 1967 to 1999, including courses in theology, feminist ethics, and patriarchy. Her refusal to admit male students to some of her classes at Boston College also resulted in disciplinary action. While Daly justified her position on the grounds that their presence inhibited class discussion, Boston College consistently reprimanded Daly, claiming that her actions were in violation of Title IX of federal law requiring the College to ensure that no person was excluded from an education program on the basis of sex, and of the University's own non-discrimination policy insisting that all courses be open to both male and female students.

In 1998, a discrimination claim against the college by two male students was backed by the Center for Individual Rights, a conservative advocacy group. Following further reprimand, Daly absented herself from classes rather than admit the male students. Boston College removed her tenure rights, citing a verbal agreement by Daly to retire. She brought suit against the College disputing violation of her tenure rights and claiming she was forced out against her will, but her request for injunction was denied by Middlesex Superior Court, Judge Martha Sosman.

An out-of-court settlement was reached in which Daly agreed that she had retired from her faculty position. However, Daly maintained that Boston College had wronged her students by depriving her of her right to teach freely. She documented her account of the events in the 2006 book Amazon Grace. Daly protested the commencement speech of Condoleeza Rice at Boston College and continued to speak on campuses around the United States as well as internationally.

Her own description of herself was a “radical lesbian feminist” and “post-christian” considering most, if not all, organized religion to be irreparably patriarchal.

JANUARY 4

1877 – MARSDEN HARTLEY, American painter and poet (d. 1943); Born in Lewiston, Maine, at the age of 22, he moved to New York City where he attended the National Academy of Design and studied painting with William Merritt Chase. A great admirer of Albert Pinkham Ryder, Hartley would visit Ryder's studio in Greenwich Village as often as possible. While in New York, he came to the attention of Alfred Stieglitz and became associated with Stieglitz' 291 Gallery Group. He was in the cultural vanguard, in the same milieu as Gertrude Stein, Hart Crane,Charles Demuth, Georgia O'Keeffe, Fernand Leger, Ezra Pound and many others, among many others.

Hartley, who was gay, painted Portrait of a German Officer (1914), an ode to Karl von Freyburg, a Prussian lieutenant with whom he became enamored before his death in WWI. One of America’s earliest modern painters, Hartley was in Paris “at the creation” to be influenced by the Cubists and in German to be influenced by the Expressionists before developing an abstract style all his own (in true Gay archetypical form as the Interpreter and Mediator).

Although he flits almost inconspicuously through the pages of the biographies devoted to his famous contemporaries, he has yet to be the subject of a major biography of his own. Strange, considering the company he kept. Among Hartley’s acquaintances were a telephone directory of contemporary Faes including William Sloan Kennedy, the biographer of Longfellow, Whittier and Holmes; Thomas Bird Mosher, the publisher of Whitman and one of the earliest American publishers of Oscar Wilde; Horace Traubel, Whitman’s secretary and the socialist editor of the Conservator; Peter Doyle, Whitman’s trolley conductor lover; Gertrude Stein; the American painter, Charles Demuth; writer and publisher Robert McAlmon, whose “notorious” Greenwich Village wedding to the Lesbian writer “Bryher” Hartley attended in 1917; actor George de Winter; writer Djuna Barnes; and poet Hart Crane – to name just a few. Although few seem to know it, Hartley was also a fine poet. His Selected Poems, out of print for almost 40 years, is worth rediscovery.

The love of Hartley’s life was the above-referenced Prussian lieutenant, Karl von Freyburg, killed in a battle in 1914. This was Hartley’s great tragedy, an event mirrored in a series of contemporary abstractions that team with bold outlined forms, violent in color, and aggressively painted. The dead lieutenant was twenty-four (as can be seen referenced in the lower right-hand corner of painting, Portrait of A German Officer; Hartley was fifteen years his senior and grieved for the rest of his life.

1946 - On this date the African-American soul singer ARTHUR CONLEY was born (d. 2003). Best known for the 1967 hit, "Sweet Soul Music," Conley was born Arthur Lee Conley in McIntosh, Georgia and started his music career as the lead singer of Arthur and the Corvets in 1959. With this group, he released three singles in 1963 and 1964 ("Poor Girl", "I Believe", and "Flossie Mae") on the Atlanta based record label, National Recording Company.

In 1964, he moved to Ru-Jac Records and released "I'm a Lonely Stranger". When Otis Redding heard this, he asked Conley to record a new version, which was released on Redding's own fledgling label Jotis Records, as only its second release. In the 1970's he moved to Ruurlo in the Netherlands and changed his name to Lee Roberts.

His albums include: Sweet Soul Music, Shake Rattle & Roll, Soul Directions, More Sweet Soul, Soulin (1988, as Lee Roberts and the Sweaters), and Sweet Soul Music: The Best Of Arthur Conley (1995).

1960 – Today is the birthday of R.E.M. front man and lyricist MICHAEL STIPE.  Born John Michael Stipe he's become well-known (and occasionally parodied) for the "mumbling" style of his early career and for his complex, surreal lyrics, as well as his social and political activism. Stipe is in charge of the band's visual image, often selecting album artwork and directing many of the band's music videos. Stipe's work extends outside of the music industry, and he runs his own film production companies, C-00 and Single Cell Pictures. His hit songs with R.E.M include Losing My Religion (1991), Shiny Happy People (1991), Radio Song (1991), Drive (1992), Man on the Moon (1992), Everybody Hurts (1993), What's the Frequency, Kenneth (1994), Bang and Blame (1994), and Strange Currencies (1995).

JANUARY 5

1767 – On this date the French painter ANNE-LOUIS GIRODET DE ROUSSY-TRIOSON (also known as Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Triosson, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson) was born (d.1824). He was a pupil of the great Romantic painter Jacques-Louis David, famed for adding elements of eroticism through his paintings. Girodet is remembered for his precise and clear style and for his paintings of members of the Napoleonic family. Girodet: Romantic Rebel at The Art Institute of Chicago (2006), was the first retrospective in the United States devoted to the works of Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson. The exhibition assembled more than 100 seminal works (about 60 paintings and 40 drawings) that demonstrated the artist’s range as a painter as well as a draftsman.

1773 – RICHARD HEBER, British bibliophile, born (d: 1833); Anyone who has been privileged to attend a meeting of a certain famous bibliophilic club on the East Coast, realizes in a flash that a majority of the tuxedo clad gentleman gathered to discuss their common passion – book collecting – is  rich, recondite, Republican and remarkably Gay. Their ancestor of ancestors was English book collector Richard Heber, who made a habit of attending continental book sales, sometimes purchasing a single book, sometimes entire libraries. As an undergraduate at Brasenose College, Oxford, Richard Heber began to collect a purely classical library, but his taste broadening, he became interested in early English drama and literature, and began his wonderful collection of rare books in these departments. He attended continental booksales, purchasing sometimes single volumes, sometimes whole libraries. Sir Walter Scott,whose intimate friend he was, and who dedicated to him the sixth canto of Martnion, classed Heber's library as "superior to all others in the world"; Campbell described him as "the fiercest and strongest of all the "bibliomaniacs."

He did not confine himself to the purchase of a single copy of a work which took his fancy. "No gentleman," he remarked, "can be without three copies of a book, one for show, one for use, and one for borrowers." To such a size did his library grow that it over-ran eight houses, some in England, some on the Continent. It is estimated to have cost over £100,000, and after his death the sale of that part of his collection stored in England realized more than £56,000. He is known to have owned 150,000 volumes, and probably many more. He possessed extensive landed property inShropshire and Yorkshire and was sheriff of the former county in 1821. He was member of Parliament for Oxford University from 1821-1826, and in 1822 was made a D.C.L. of that University. He was one of the founders of the Athenaeum Club London. He was forced to leave England in exile after public disclosure of his “unnatural acts.”

1931 - On this date the African-American director, dancer and choreographer  ALVIN AILEY was born (d. 1989)  Best known as the founder of the still flourishing Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York, Ailey is credited with popularizing modern dance and revolutionizing African-American participation in 20th century concert dance. His company gained the nickname "Cultural Ambassador to the World" because of its extensive international touring and Ailey's choreographic masterpiece Revelations (1960) is believed to be the best-known and most often seen modern dance performance having been performed in front of tens of millions of people to date.

The first time Alvin discovered dance was during a high school field trip to see the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. He later studied with Katherine Dunham but his most important influence was choreographer and teacher Lester Horton.  After leaving his studies in romance language at UCLA Alvin Ailey began studying with Horton in 1949. His Broadway debut was in the 1950 production of Truman Capote's House of Flowers after which Ailey decided to stay in New York for a while and study ballet, modern dance and acting. He studied with, among others, Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey. During the 1950's Ailey became the longtime lover of American Socialist Politician David McReynolds.

In 1953 Lester Horton passed away and Ailey took over his performing troupe. During the next few years he appeared on and off Broadway and on film as a dancer, choreographer, actor and director. Ailey choreographed the debut performance at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Leonard Bernstein's Mass. He also choreographed the inaugural production for the Metropolitan Opera at the Lincoln Theater on Samuel Barber's opera Antony and Cleopatra. Even with those successes it was his choreography Blues Suite performed at New York's 92nd street in 1958 that marked the beginning of the Alvin Ailey Dance Company.   In 1963 Alvin Ailey integrated his company and was criticized by some black Americans. He explained his reasons for doing so saying that he had "met some incredible dancers of other colors who could cut the work" and that he had run into "reverse racism." In 1965 Alvin decided to stop dancing and concentrate on choreography and directing his company.  During his life Ailey has choreographed 79 works and to date more than 170 works by 65 choreographers have been performed by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

1930 - KAY LAHUSEN (also known as Kay Tobin) is considered the first openly gay photojournalist of the gay rights movement. Lahusen's photographs of Lesbians appeared on several of the covers of The Ladder from 1964 to 1966 while her partner, Barbara Gittings, was the editor. Lahusen helped with the founding of the original Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) in 1970, she contributed to a New York-based weekly newspaper named Gay Newsweekly, and co-authored The Gay Crusaders with Randy Wicker.

Lahusen was born and brought up in Cincinnati, Ohio and developed her interest in photography as a child. "Even as a kid I liked using a little box camera and pushing it and trying to get something artsy out of it," she recalled. She discovered while in college that she had romantic feelings for a woman and she had a relationship with her for six years, but after the woman left "in order to marry and have a normal life," Lahusen was devastated by the loss.

Lahusen spent the next six years in Boston working in the reference library of the Christian Science Monitor. She met Barbara Gittings in 1961 at a Daughters of Bilitis picnic in Rhode Island. They became a couple and Lahusen moved to Philadelphia to be with Gittings. When Gittings took over The Ladder in 1963, Lahusen made it a priority to improve the quality of art on the covers. Where previously there were simple line drawings, characterized by Lahusen as "pretty bland, little cats, insipid human figures,"

Lahusen began to add photographs of real lesbians on the cover beginning in September 1964. The first showed two women from the back, on a beach looking out to sea. But Lahusen really wanted to add full-face portraits of lesbians. "If you go around as if you don't dare show your face, it sends forth a terrible message," Lahusen remembered. Several covers showed various women willing to pose in profile, or in sunglasses, but in January 1966 she was finally able to get a full face portrait. Lilli Vincenz, open and smiling, adorned the cover of The Ladder. By the end of Gittings' period as editor, Lahusen remembered there was a waiting list of women who wanted to be full-face on the cover of the magazine. Lahusen also wrote articles in The Ladder under the name Kay Tobin, a name she picked out of the phone book, and which she found was easier for people to pronounce and remember..

Lahusen photographed Gittings and other people who picketed federal buildings and Independence Hall in the mid to late 1960s. She contributed photographs and articles to Gay Newsweekly, and worked in New York City’s Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookstore, the first bookstore devoted to better literature on gay themes, and to disseminating materials that promoted a gay political agenda. She worked with Gittings in the gay caucus of the American Library Association, and photographed thousands of activists, marches, and events in the 1960s and 1970s. Frank Kameny and Jack Nichols and many other gay activists became her subjects.

More recently, her photographs have been featured in exhibits at The William Way Community Center in Philadelphia and the Wilmington Institute Library in Delaware. In 2007, all of Lahusen's photos and writings and Gittings' papers and writings were donated to the New York Public Library. Lahusen and Gittings were together for 46 years when Gittings died of breast cancer on February 18, 2007. Lahusen still lives in Philadelphia

1943 - On this date the famed Dutch football (soccer here in the states) IGNACE VAN SWIETEN was born (d. 2005). He was also a teacher at the KNVB Academy. He was born in a Japanese (POW) camp near Semarang in Indonesia. Van Swieten was openly Gay at a time when it was not accepted in professional sports.  Hell it's still tough. According to a 2009 poll conducted by the Dutch football magazine, Magazine Voetbal International, 33% of professional football players in the Dutch league expressed the notion that if a footballer came out of the closet, he wouldn't have a life anymore. Twenty-five percent believe that homosexuality will always be a taboo. Sixty percent feel that there is no place for homosexuals in Dutch football. Only eleven players said that they do not consider it a taboo anymore. Van Swieten received a lot of hatred from players and fans alike but is now considered a great figure in Dutch Football and a valued teacher to other players.

1966 - Today's the birthday of drummer and producer KATE SCHELLENBACH. Born in New York City, she was the drummer for The Beastie Boys from 1981 to 1984, and drummed for Luscious Jackson until the band broke up in spring of 2000. Schellenbach is currently a segment producer on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. She occasionally appears on the show, last time playing the bongos with Ellen.

1974 – On this date the "BRUNSWICK 4" were arrested in Toronto, Ontario, Canada after refusing to leave a bar when asked to do so by the bar owner. Their crime? They'd sung the popular song of that time "I Enjoy Being a Girl," changing the lines to "I Enjoy Being a Dyke!"  The owner took umbrage and called the police.

JANUARY 6

 

1412 – JOAN OF ARC, Roman Catholic Saint and national heroine of France (this is a legendary date) (d. 1431); Joan wore men's clothing between her departure from Vaucouleurs and her abjuration at Rouen. This raised theological questions in her own era and raised other questions in the twentieth century. The technical reason for her execution was a biblical clothing law. The nullification trial reversed the conviction in part because the condemnation proceeding had failed to consider the doctrinal exceptions to that stricture.

Doctrinally speaking, she was safe to disguise herself as a page during a journey through enemy territory and she was safe to wear armor during battle. The Chronique de la Pucelle states that it deterred molestation while she was camped in the field. Clergy who testified at her rehabilitation trial affirmed that she continued to wear male clothing in prison to deter molestation and rape. Preservation of chastity was another justifiable reason for cross-dressing: her apparel would have slowed an assailant, and men would be less likely to think of her as a sex object in any case.

She referred the court to the Poitiers inquiry when questioned on the matter during her condemnation trial. The Poitiers record no longer survives but circumstances indicate the Poitiers clerics approved her practice. In other words, she had a mission to do a man's work so it was fitting that she dress the part. She also kept her hair cut short through her military campaigns and while in prison. Her supporters, such as the theologian Jean Gerson, defended her hairstyle, as did Inquisitor Brehal during the Rehabilitation trial.

Because Joan wore men's clothes and armor, scholars have speculated about her gender identity and sexuality. Did Joan wear male apparel because she was transgendered? Or did she do so in order to be taken seriously by the men whose support she needed to carry out the orders given by her visions? Was Joan a lesbian or bisexual, if those English terms may be applicable to a French woman living almost six hundred years ago? What relationship did her gender expression have with her sexuality? What about Joan's emphasis throughout her life on her virginity?

It is difficult adequately to address these personal issues based on the historical evidence that we now possess. It is clear, however, that Joan's cross-dressing was a significant part of her life, and that as a cross-dressed warrior and military leader she was venerated by French royalty, soldiery, and peasantry alike.

1854 – English fictional detective, SHERLOCK HOLMES born; What!?? Why include the famous, hawk-nosed detective, a figment of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fertile imagination, when today is also the birthday of the very real KING RICHARD II (b: 1367), whom even the staid Encyclopedia Britannica called “tall, handsome, and effeminate”? Why? Because Sherlock, whom his creator almost named “Sherinford,” is simply more interesting. And, besides, almost anyone who has read Shakespeare knows about Richard, whereas almost no one realizes that Sherlock Holmes was Gay. He was, of course, the first consulting detective, a vocation he followed for 23 years. In January 1881, he was looking for someone to share his new digs at 221B Baker Street, and there being no personal ads in the Village Voice or The Advocate (remember those?) in those days, a friend introduced him to Dr. John H. Watson.

Before agreeing to share the flat, the two men, immediately attracted to one another, listed their respective character deficiencies. Holmes admitted to smoking a smelly pipe, although he didn’t mention that he was a frequent user of cocaine. Watson owned up to a peculiar habit of leaving his bed at odd hours of the night. “I have another set of vices,” he admitted, but, then, so did Sherlock. The two became friends and roommates for the rest of their lives. For the sordid details of the famous marriage of true minds that followed, read Rex Stout’s astonishing “Watson Was Woman,” in which the famous creator of Nero Wolfe (himself hardly a paragon of butch studliness) reveals that Watson and Holmes were the most extraordinary Gay team in sleuthing history.

1931 – Today is the birthday of JUAN GOYTISOLO, the Spanish poet and novelist. Goytisolo was born in Barcelona in 1931, in an aristocratic family; two of his brothers José Agustín and Luis are also well known writers. His father was imprisoned by the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War while his mother was killed in the first Francoist air raid in 1938.

After law studies, he published his first novel, The Young Assassins, in 1954. His deep opposition to Generalissimo Francisco Franco led him into exile in Paris in 1956, where he worked as a reader for Gallimard. In the early 1960s, he was a friend of Guy Debord and Jean Genet was his mentor.  He says of the playwright who could fit all his belongings in a suitcase: "He was alien to all kinds of vanity. Because of him, I discovered I was interested in literature, not in literary life. I try to take my work seriously but not myself." He quotes Genet: "If you know your point of arrival, it's not a literary adventure, it's a bus journey."   Breaking with the realism of his earlier novels, he published Marks of Identity (1966), Count Julian (1970), and Juan the Landless (1975). Like all his works, they were banned in Spain until Franco's death.

Juan Goytisolo was married to the publisher, novelist and screenwriter Monique Lange, a cousin of novelist Marcel Proust, Emmanuel Berl, and the philosopher Henri Bergson. Monique Lange died in 1996. After her death, he is noted as saying their once shared Paris apartment had become like a tomb. In 1997 he moved to Marrakesh, in part due to the Arab culture's acceptance of his homosexuality.  In Edmund White's view Goytisolo "is an apostle of the revolutionary, anarchic power of sexuality, of the desiring body, to break through the sterile confines of class."

1934 - On this date the American lyric poet JOHN WIENERS was born (d. 2002). From 1954, when he graduated from Boston College with an A.B. in English, to 1970, when he published Nerves, Boston-born poet John Wieners was thoroughly immersed in the art, culture, and turmoil of the time. He spent 1955-1956 at Charles Olson's experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina, studying writing with Robert Creeley and Robert Duncan. Wieners journeyed to San Francisco where he published his breakthrough Hotel Wentley Poems in 1958, at age twenty-four.

Wieners returned to Boston in 1959 to be institutionalized, in part because of drug abuse. In 1961 he moved to New York City with the help of a grant from Allen Ginsberg's Poetry Foundation. He worked as an assistant bookkeeper at the Eighth Street Bookshop from 1962-1963. Wieners went back to Boston in 1963 and worked as a subscriptions editor for Jordan Marsh department stores until 1965. In 1964 Robert Wilson, of The Phoenix Bookshop, published Wieners's second book, Ace Of Pentacles.

In 1965 Wieners moved west, spending time in Los Angeles and at the Berkeley Poetry Conference where he met up with his old friend, Charles Olson. Olson, then an endowed Chair of Poetics at S.U.N.Y. Buffalo, invited Wieners to enroll in the graduate program there, which is where he stayed until 1967. Pressed Wafer (1967) was published chronicling those years.

In 1967 Wieners's lover left him and went to Europe with a mentor of his, but not before aborting his child first. In late 1967 Wieners, back in Boston, resorted to further drink and drugs. In the spring of 1969 Wieners was again institutionalized, resulting in The Asylum Poems (For my Father), published later that year.

Wieners published Nerves in 1970, which contained his work from 1966 to 1970, including all of the Asylum Poems. In the early 1970s, despite brief periods of institutionalization, Wieners taught a course entitled "Verse in the U.S. Since 1955" at the Beacon Hill Free School in Boston. He was also involved in the antiwar movement, crusaded against racism, and campaigned for the rights of women and homosexuals.

In 1975 Wieners published Behind the State Capital, or Cincinnati Pike, a book of letters, memoirs, and brief lyric poems. He has published little new work since 1975 and has remained largely out of the public eye. In 1986 he produced a retrospective collection, Selected Poems, 1958-1984 with a forward written by Allen Ginsberg. In 1996 he appeared with Ed Sanders at Stone Soup in Boston for what would have been Jack Kerouac's 76th birthday celebration. Also in 1996, The Sun and Moon Press released an edited and previously unpublished diary and journal by Wieners documenting his life in San Francisco around the time of The Hotel Wentley Poems. The book, The Journal of John Wieners is to be called 707 Scott Street for Billie Holiday, 1959, contains prose, poetry, and assorted musings from Wieners at age twenty-four at the dawn of the Sixties.

Wieners died on March 1, 2002 at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, having collapsed a few days previously after an evening attending a party with his friend and publisher Charley Shively. Kidnap Notes Next, a collection of poems and journal entries edited by Jim Dunn, was published posthumously in 2002. A Book of Prophecies was published in 2007 from Bootstrap Press. The manuscript was discovered in the Kent State University archive's collection by poet Michael Carr. It was a journal written by Wieners in 1971, and opens with a poem titled 2007.

1968 – Today is the birthday of the Hungarian politician GáBOR SZETEY.  Szetey is the former Secretary of State for Human Resources, a role he held since July 2006. He is a member of the Hungarian Socialist Party.

Szetey publicly declared that he was gay at the opening night of Budapest's Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, on July 6, 2007. He is the first LGBT member of government in Hungary, and the second politician to come out, after Klára Ungár. Szetey's coming out came at the end of a speech on equality and tolerance:

“When we can be proud of being Hungarian, Romanian, Jewish, Catholic, Gay or Straight... If we can be proud of our differences, we will be proud of our similarities. I believe in God. And I believe that all men and women have the right to love and be loved. Everywhere. Love has no party preference. Neither does happiness or choosing a partner. So: I am Gábor Szetey. I am European, and Hungarian. I believe in God, love, freedom, and equality. I am the Human Resources Secretary of State of the Government of the Republic of Hungary. Economist and HR director. Partner, friend, sometimes rival. And I am Gay.”

In the audience was Klára Dobrev, the wife of Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány, as well as four other members of the Hungarian cabinet. The Prime Minister supported Szetey on his blog and called for public debate about same-sex relationships in Hungary. Hungary currently recognises same-sex registered partnerships. After the coming out of Mr. Szetey, the Parliament adopted the Registered Civil Union Act, which came into force 1 January 2009.

In a subsequent interview, Szetey declared:

“There is a small but vocal group of right-wing extremists which is intent on offending everyone... According to a survey, 51 percent of the respondents thought my speech was courageous and that it would improve the situation for homosexuals. It's strange that the conservatives, who attach such great importance to neighboring states giving their Hungarian minorities equal rights, couldn't care less about equal rights in their own country."

1976 - Today's the birthday of child actor DANNY PINTAURO. Pintauro played Jonathan Bower, son of Angela Bower in the series 'Who's the Boss' from 1984 till 1992. He was born as Daniel John Pintauro in Milltown, New Yersey, USA. Pintauro studied English and drama at Stanford University.

1993 - The iconic ballet dancer RUDOLF NUREYEV died on this date (b. 1938) Nureyev's artistic skills explored expressives areas of the dance, providing a new role to the ballet male dancer who once served only as support to the women.

He defected from the Soviet Union despite KGB efforts. According to KGB archives studied by his biographer Peter Watson, Nikita Khrushchev personally signed an order to kill Nureyev. Meow. No means No Nikita.

For an aesthetic treat, go see Nureyev’s exquisite grave...here: http://kevinflanagansblog.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/tombeau-noureev.jpg

 

 

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