GAY WISDOM for Daily Living...
from White Crane a magazine exploring
Gay wisdom & culture http://www.Gaywisdom.org
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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY
December 1
World AIDS Awareness Day: dedicated to raising awareness of the AIDS pandemic caused by the spread of HIV infection. AIDS has killed more than 25 million people, with an estimated 38.6 million people living with HIV, making it one of the most destructive epidemics in recorded history. Despite recent, improved access to antiretroviral treatment and care in many regions of the world, the AIDS epidemic claimed an estimated 3.1 million (between 2.8 and 3.6 million) lives in 2005 of which, more than half a million (570,000) were children.
The concept of a World AIDS Day originated at the 1988 World Summit of Ministers of Health on Programs for AIDS Prevention. Since then, it has been taken up by governments, international organizations and charities around the world.
From its inception until 2004, UNAIDS spearheaded the World AIDS Day campaign, choosing annual themes in consultation with other global health organizations. In 2005 this responsibility was turned over to World AIDS Campaign (WAC), who chose Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise as the main theme for World AIDS Day observances through 2010, with more specific sub-taglines chosen annually. This theme is not specific to World AIDS Day, but is used year-round in WAC's efforts to highlight HIV/AIDS awareness within the context of other major global events including the G8 Summit. World AIDS Campaign also conducts "in-country" campaigns throughout the world, like the Student Stop AIDS Campaign, an infection-awareness campaign targeting young people throughout the UK.
1886 – REX STOUT, American novelist, born (d: 1975); American writer best known as the creator of the larger-than- life fictional detective Nero Wolfe, described by reviewer Will Cuppy as "that Falstaff of detectives." Wolfe's assistant Archie Goodwin recorded the cases of the detective genius from 1934 (Fer-de-Lance) to 1975 (A Family Affair). The Nero Wolfe corpus was nominated Best Mystery Series of the Century at Boucheron 2000, the world's largest mystery convention, and Rex Stout was nominated Best Mystery Writer of the Century. It's a mistake to assume there is any direct relationship between the subject matter of a novelist and the novelist himself, especially since imagination is the fundamental resource of the writer.
Before he turned to the detective novel in 1934, Rex Stout wrote an ambiguously Gay Western in which the married hero is attracted to his assistant. The notion, though psychologically plausible, is certainly unique to the Western adventure yard of the period and suggests an equally unusual relationship between two men that was to prove central to Stout's work over the next four decades. What exactly is the nature of the friendship, if it can be called that, between Nero Wolfe, Stout's famous detective hero, and his live-in assistant, Archie Goodwin?
Wolfe, of course, is the most eccentric of all detectives, an elephantine genius who is both a woman-hater and almost completely dependent on his assistant who is his junior sleuth, secretary, errand boy, bodyguard, bookkeeper and chauffeur. A third member of this melange housed in a brownstone on New York's West 35th Street is Fritz Brenner, the chef who prepares the gourmet meals that Wolfe prefers to women and which keep his weight at a seventh of a ton. William S. Barington's full-length biography of this fictional character, Nero Wolfe of West Thirty-fifth Street, doesn't touch on the fat one's sex life. But if Batman and Robin are "suspect," then what could possibly be so mysterious about Nero and Archie?
1913 – MARY MARTIN, American actor and singer (d. 1990); Tony Award winning American star of (mainly stage) musicals. Among the roles she originated were Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was also a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989. It has been reported that she was in a longtime relationship with actress Janet Gaynor. At some point, her ex-husband, Ben Hageman, stated that his ex-wife was having an affair with Gaynor. Though Martin denied the story, speculation on the gossip circuit continued. The speculation was overshadowed by the horrified reaction of entertainment industry workers in 1982 when a 36-year-old drunken driver named Robert Cato ran a red light in San Francisco and crashed into a taxi whose passengers were Martin, Ben Washer, described by the Los Angeles Times as her longtime confidant and business associate, Gaynor and her husband, Paul Gregory. Washer was killed instantly. Gaynor's injuries were critical and proven to cause her death two years later.
1945 – BETTE MIDLER, American song stylist and actress, born; During her career, she has won four Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, and a Tony Award, and has been nominated for two Academy Awards. In 1970, Midler began singing the Continental Baths, a Gay bathhouse in the city, where she became close to her piano accompanist, Barry Manilow, who produced her first major album, The Divine Miss M in 1973. To quote the Divine Miss M: "Despite the way things turned out [with the AIDS crisis], I'm still proud of those days [singing at Gay bathhouses]. I feel like I was at the forefront of the Gay liberation movement, and I hope I did my part to help it move forward. So, I kind of wear the label of 'Bathhouse Betty' with pride."
1952 – The New York Daily News reports the first successful sexual reassignment operation.
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We've had a pretty good run over the past few years and now it's a new day (with a new president.)
White Crane will reach its twentieth year (that's right 20 years!) of publication with the summer 2009 issue. Along the way, we've been nominated for an Utne Independent Press Award in 2004 and we've upgraded the graphics and survived the loss of our distributor and the desertion by our fulfillment house (who, more than simply going out of business, were actually dumping the magazine!)
We have entered the fourth year of sponsoring the Gay Men's Health Leadership Academy on both coasts and in our first two years of publishing books we had a Lammy finalist and kept great books of Queer wisdom and culture available that might have remained out of print. We've offered the first collected writings of Malcolm Boyd with Prophet in His Own Land: A Malcolm Boyd Reader.
We sponsor Pride Counseling's Queer Spirit work in Salt Lake City and we have raised monies for the Harvey Milk Memorial in San Francisco City Hall. We continue to tour Mark Thompson's inspiring photo portraiture of Gay Elders and mentors, Fellow Travelers.
We are sponsoring the first Gay men's poetry prize with the James White Poetry Award (this year judged by Mark Doty) and we are one of the sponsors of the Washington D.C. OutWrite Authors Series as well as the Split This Rock Festival in the nation's capital. And every day we send out the Daily Gay Wisdom mailing to Gay men and our allies all over the country and the world.
We offered fiscal sponsorship to support the rehabilitation fund for historian and Harry Hay biographer, Stuart Timmons (helping to raise more than $20,000!)
That's the good news.
Now here's the big bite of reality: we need your help now.
http://gaywisdom.org/contribute.html
Postage costs have skyrocketed. Added to that, while our original fulfillment house was still actually fulfilling, they were donating those costs. Now we are actually paying for postage. Our pretty pages don't come cheaply, even if you take into account that we have found the best possible deal with our printer in Canada (where Gay people are full citizens, we like to note.) Each issue now costs an average of $4,000 to produce and mail…and still not one person receives a salary or recompense for their writing or work.
http://gaywisdom.org/contribute.html
We still want to produce a DVD of the archive and we'd like to make all the past issues available via Kindle (most of our books already are.)
http://gaywisdom.org/contribute.html
It's the end of the year. Tax time is coming. If you are planning to make charitable donations, please consider supporting White Crane Institute with a gift. It's easy. You can do it via PayPal or you can do it via NYCharities. org, both of which are easily accessible on the White Crane website at http://gaywisdom. org/contribute. html
We are, in fact, slowly running out of money. Utility costs, necessary travel to various important Gay conferences …all these things cost money that is not renewed by income we can generate. We have always tried to make everything pay for itself. But to continue, we need your financial support.
http://gaywisdom.org/contribute.html
Please make a generous contribution to help us to support the Gay community. And if your employer offers matching funds, that can double the impact of your contribution.
We've had a pretty good run. Help us to get our second wind.
http://gaywisdom.org/contribute.html
Sincerely,
Bo Young Dan Vera Malcolm Boyd Mark Thompson
HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT WHITE CRANE
1. Subscribe. Your subscription gives you White Crane four times a year, and enables White Crane Institute to publish classics of Gay Wisdom, and sponsor workshops, retreats and programs. We're more than a magazine, but your subscription to the magazine is the ticket to building stronger communities across the country.
2. Invite friends and colleagues to learn about preserving Gay wisdom, spirituality, and culture by forwarding them this newsletter or refer them to www.Gaywisdom. org
3. Get a friend to subscribe! Give a gift subscription. Expand the circle.
4. Make a financial gift to support the ongoing work on www.Gaywisdom. org. Click on the "Make A Gift" box in upper left corner of the page. Your contribution enables White Crane to publish new and out-of-print classic Gay books, sponsor workshops and retreats and provide free subscriptions to Gay community centers everywhere.
5. Write an article! Tell your story. White Crane is read in 22 countries. Join the global conversation.
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living...
from White Crane
a magazine exploring
Gay wisdom & culture http://www.Gaywisdom.org
Share this with your friends...
\ \ | / / | \ \ | / /
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