GayWisdom

Malcolm Boyd: Gettin' Kinda Jazzy!

White Crane friend, advisor—and all round mensch—Malcolm Boyd, will give a concert reading of his prayer-poems accompanied by a jazz trio at the 2010 Sausalito International  Film Festival on August 14. Musicians appearing with Boyd are guitarist Johnnie Valentino, composer Scott Page-Payter on keyboards and percussionist Marino Bambino.

Boyd's words are combined with musical themes by the late legendary jazz musician Vince Guaraldi. "The Anatomy of Vince Guaraldi," a new film in which Boyd appears, will be screened at the festival. Over four weeks in 1966 a remarkable series of performances at the hungry i nightclub in San Francisco's North Beach captured the imagination of hip audiences and resonated around the world. Dick Gregory gave the stage to Guaraldi and Episcopal priest-author Boyd.  Prayers, Beat poetry and jazz fused.  Though covered by global media the performances were never recorded.  Very few had an opportunity to experience this happening. Until now. The prayer-poems are from Boyd's bestselling classic "Are You Running with Me, Jesus?"

White Crane Books offers two other titles by Boyd Take Off The Masks, his classic spiritual biography and coming out story and A Prophet in His Own Land: The Malcolm Boyd Reader,  collected writings from five decades.

Gay Historian Stuart Timmons Recovering, Will Help with Harry Hay Tribute

You may remember Stuart Timmons as the co-author with Lillian Faderman of the book Gay LA. As members of this listserv, you may also recall that about two and a half years ago, Stuart suffered a massive stroke that left him at death's door for what seemed like a very long time. White Crane was involved in raising the funds necessary for the additional therapy Stuart was going to need. We knew then it was going to be a long hard road to recovery.

So it is with no small amount of pride and joy we report that with the attention and loving care of his family, especially his sister, Gay, and friends like as Mark Thompson - he's really made a remarkable recovery! So much so that it looks like he's going to help with the celebration of what would have been Harry Hay's 100th birthday. Nice to get some good news!

Thompson, a member of the White Crane Advisory Board, and former editor at The Advocate, sent this wonderful news about historian Stuart Timmons:

Longtime friends of author and community activist Stuart Timmons gathered last week to celebrate his remarkable recovery from a major stroke two-and-a-half years ago. Timmons, 53, is still wheelchair bound, but is now fully mentally alert and with the ability to speak and move about with assistance. He is expecting a return to his research and writing about GLBT history and is especially delighted with the invitation to participate in Centennial celebrations honoring the life and work of gay movement founder Harry Hay.

A two-day conference at City University New York and a major exhibition at the San Francisco Public Library are in the planning stages, with other cities soon to be included. Stuart wrote the award-winning biography on the legendary gay rights leader, The Trouble With Harry Hay, in 1990.  Harry Hay was born on Easter Sunday, April 7, 1912, in Worthing, England, although he lived many decades of his life in Los Angeles.

HRH Lee Mentley added:

Stuart is doing amazing well…, had a great lunch at “The Coffee Table” and he was alert with full memory correcting us on our history and although speaking slowly was participating in the conversation. Well on his way to full recovery! He spoke with Joey Cain on the phone and will be on the planning committee for the 100 Year Celebration for Harry Hay in San Francisco and New York City. It was a joy to be with him!

Many of you gave support for Stuart's recovery, so we wanted to let you know that it was money well spent. Stuart Timmons is a walking library of GLBT history and of Harry Hay and John Burnside in particular. We need him and we need his genius.

Pictured in the photo are: (left to right) Mark Thompson, Stuart Timmons, Robert Croonquist and HRH Lee Mentley.

West Hollywood Book Fair

Author and poet, Trebor Healey, moderated a panel on inter-generaltional love between gay icons, White Crane authors and contributors, Malcolm Boyd and Mark Thompson at this year's WeHo BookFair. For more pictures look here

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY MALCOLM!

t's our friend, Malcolm's, 86th birthday! Many happy returns of the day, Dear One!

Rise Up and Shout!

Got some good news in the morning email (almost called it "the post" which has a whole new meaning now) from psychotherapist and filmmaker, Brian Gleason, who works so hard in Los Angeles.

Some of you may be familiar with the Rise Up & Shout! project with which White Crane has been associated. It started in Los Angeles, with people like Brian, Malcolm Boyd, Don Kilhefner, Mark Thompson (I'm leaving out many, may other names of people...this kind of thing takes dozens of people...just don't have them in front of me as I write. I'll find them and include them later, promise) working with young GLBT people in L.A. to produce a talent show showcasing their various and sundry talents.

More importantly, it offered young GLBT people a chance to come in contact with elder GLBT people and let the intergenerational transfer of wisdom and experience mingle with the exuberance and freshness of youth. The first Rise Up & Shout, was a live stage production at the Barnsdall Park theater, directed by award-winning Broadway director, Jim Pentacost, and benefited White Crane, among others. And it was filmed by Brian Gleason.

That film will now receive the wider audience it deserves when it is aired on the Sundance Channel, later this month. The schedule is:

Mon 06/22/09 9:00PM       Sat 06/27/09 3:35PM       Sun 06/28/09 06:40AM

This is MUST SEE TELEVISION folks! Stirring, inspiring, touching. Worth getting cable for, even.

Check your local listings, as they say, for airtimes in your area.

BUT DON'T MISS THIS WONDERFUL FILM.

The Rainbow Key Awards

 

The Rainbow Key Award was created to recognize individuals and organizations whose efforts have significantly benefited the Lesbian and Gay community, and since 1993, has been bestowed upon more than 70 artists, educators, activists, civic leaders, and community organizations. The Award is presented by the City Council on the recommendation of the Lesbian and Gay Advisory Board. Nominations may be made by anyone, and nominees may labor in any area of endeavor; eligibility is not restricted by geography or sexual orientation.

The 2009 Rainbow Key Award for significantly benefiting the Lesbian and Gay community will be presented to White Crane friends and advisors Canon Malcolm Boyd and Mark Thompson by the City of West Hollywood at a civic event on June 17. The Lesbian and Gay Advisory Board of West Hollywood cites the couple for "showing by example that Gay, intergenerational partnerships can be stable, loving and long-lasting." This year marks the couple's twenty-fifth anniversary.

It couldn't happen to two nicer people.

A Victory in California

Once again, the courts have dealt a blow of constitutional reality to religious bigots.

Word from California has been, at best, mixed, lately. But yesterday, we got word from our friend Mark Thompson, confirmed today in the NY Times, that the California State Supreme Court ruled that three parishes that left the Episcopal Church over its ordination of Gay ministers cannot retain ownership of their buildings and property...no small loss. And it was a unnanimous decision. We can only imagine it's only a matter of time before this gets kicked up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The full details are at the NY Times site, but the parishes are located in some high rent districts in Southern California: Newport Beach, Long Beach, and North Hollywood.

I guess the bigots are just going to have to move to some old abandoned drive-in.

Jesse's Journal -- In Praise of Books

I recently saw Mark Doty accept the National Book Award in Poetry for his book Fire to Fire: New and Collected Poems (Harper Collins).  During his acceptance speech Doty thanked his husband Paul; they were recently married in Massachusetts. Like Augusten Burroughs’s memoirs, and David Sedaris’s humor, Mark Doty’s poetry appeals to all readers regardless of sexual orientation. Needless to say, it is a great distinction for an out Gay poet to be honored, not as an "American Gay poet," but as an American poet, period. Doty’s honor was well-deserved. (He is, by the way, also the judge for the 2008 White Crane James White Poetry Prize, the winner of which will be announced in the spring issue of White Crane.)

 

 

Doty’s NBA acceptance speech was one of the most inspirational I have seen or heard in quite a while. Unfortunately, I had to go to the National Book Awards Web sit to see and hear Doty’s acceptance speech, and those of the other NBA winners. That is because, unlike awards ceremonies honoring movies, recorded music, television or theater, literary awards are never televised, except perhaps on C-SPAN (which, as the saying goes, “nobody watches”). The fact that literary awards are almost never televised is an indication of literature’s low standing in modern American society, gay or straight. While the major networks know that broadcasting the Oscars, the Grammys, the Emmys or the Tonys will win them large audiences, televising the National Book Awards would almost certainly be a ratings disaster and, even worse, drive away the advertisers.

 

 

There was a time, before recorded music, movies, radio and television, when literature was our culture’s most popular art form. Great writers like Voltaire, Goethe, Scott, Byron, Hugo, Dickens, Zola, Tolstoy and Mark Twain were celebrities in their own right, and their lives and loves enthralled the public the way that the antics of Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan do today. Today, of course, we have a wide variety of media to give books and their authors stiff competition.  Books have to compete with movies, television and recorded music for the public’s time, money and interest, and books generally lose. Only a few writers dominate bestseller lists and make fortunes from their works. J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter), Stephenie Meyer (Twilight), TV preacher and homophobe Rick Warren (The Purpose Driven Life) and, of course, Barack Obama are just four names in an all-too short list of popular and successful writers.

 

 

For generations of Gay men, Lesbian women, bisexuals and transgender people, books were an important part of the coming out process. Books like Malcolm Boyd's Take Off the Masks, Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, Donald Webster Cory's The Homosexual In America, Christine Jorgensen’s Personal Autobiography, Rita Mae Brown's Rubyfruit Jungle or Patricia Nell Warren's The Front Runner, helped many of us come to terms with our own sexual or gender identity. 

 

 

Sadly, interest in books and writers is not what it used to be, not even in the GLBT community. For many years GLBT bookstores served as de facto community centers. Today, there is only one GLBT bookstore left in Florida, Lambda Passages in Miami. Wilton Manors, Florida’s leading “gayborhood,” has many types of stores on Wilton Drive, but no book store. And while book reviews are still a major part of such publications as White Crane, the Lambda Book Report, the Gay & Lesbian Review and the online Books to Watch Out For, most mainstream GLBT publications have dropped their book columns altogether for lack of interest. (Most mainstream journals, Gay or straight, have done the same.)

 

 

At their best, books are an important part of our lives: they educate us, they entertain us, they enlighten us, they inspire us. Unlike most media, books do not require expensive equipment (unless you consider reading glasses to be “equipment”). Long before other media deigned to notice us, books spoke to us and about our lives as GLBT people. And books will continue to do so (I hope) when the other media are long gone. So I urge you to support good Gay books, writers, literary journals, book stores and book clubs, for they give us so much in return.

 

 

Jesse Monteagudo is a South-Florida based freelance writer and Gay book buff.  Write him and express your views at jessemonteagudo@aol.com.

Helping A Brother in Need

Fundraiser to Benefit Writer Stuart Timmons

Saturday, November 15th 3 to 5 p.m. at the

ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives
909 West Adams Blvd - Los Angeles, California

Renowned Gay writers and artists will gather on Saturday, November 15, to honor celebrated author Stuart Timmons who suffered a major stroke last January. Malcolm Boyd, Chris Freeman, Trebor Healey, Michael Kearns, Felice Picano, Derek Ringold, Terry Wolverton, and others will read and perform from 3 to 5 p.m. at the ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives. The fundraiser target is $20,000 to help pay for much needed (and very expensive) medical support in Timmons' ongoing recovery.

Timmons wrote the biography of Gay movement founder Harry Hay, The Trouble with Harry Hay and most recently co-authored the best-selling history book, Gay L.A. In addition to his writing, Timmons is a longtime community organizer, active in ACT-UP LA, the Coors beer boycott, the labor movement through his recent work at the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, and as former director of ONE, the world's largest LGBT library.

After complaining to a friend of troubling neurological symptoms, Stuart was taken to Kaiser Hospital in Los Angeles where the stroke was diagnosed and he received life-saving surgery. Stuart is 51 years old. Timmons, who has been unable to speak or move during the past eight months, has been under the careful watch of doctors, concerned family and friends. Recent improvements in his physical condition have been encouraging, says his sister, Gay Timmons, but his recovery will be a long one.

The benefit afternoon will raise funds to provide much-needed (and did we mention very expensive and not covered by insurance?) hours of physical therapy and other medical necessities beyond what routine insurance can allow. "The more additional hours of therapy Stuart receives, the sooner he can return to a functional life," says Gay. "The signs for recovery are good, but now is a critical time for the community to step up and lend its support."

Contributions

Contributions can be made in person at the door or sent to:

The Stuart Craig Timmons Irrevocable Trust
c/o Gay Timmons
P.O. Box 472
Los Gatos, CA 95031.

You can also make a contribution online by Credit Card via Paypal.
Just use this link and you will be redirected to a benefit page where you can link to Paypal.

Copies of Timmons' books and works by some of the presenting authors will also be on sale.

The ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives is located at 909 West Adams Blvd., near the University of Southern California campus in Los Angeles. Parking is available behind the Archives building, located three blocks west of Figueroa Ave. at Scarff St., as well as in the immediate neighborhood.

Reservations are requested at (213) 741-0094.

The event is being sponsored by the ONE Archives, Lambda Literary Foundation, Monette/Horwitz Trust, White Crane Institute and the Drk/rm photo lab, which will be contributing rare photographic prints. Other artwork will also be available for purchase to further assist in the fundraising effort.

The LAmmys

I loved every minute of the Lammy's evening of awards. Congratulations to the Lammys, which have moved to Los Angeles (along with Charles Flowers, the real loss for New York). Twenty years is no small accomplishment. May you continue forever.

Alas, White Crane’s ALL: A James Broughton Reader was, inexplicably, not a finalist for the LGBT Arts and Culture category. I have to admit…all sour grapes aside…I don’t understand how this important collection of one of the leading voices of queer writing and film could be so blatantly ignored. Winning would have been gravy. But it should have been a finalist. There...I got that off my chest.

Friend, Kitt Cherry, was nominated for her boook Art That Dares was one of five books chosen in the LGBT Arts and Culture category. Unfortunately it didn't win, but congratulations Kitt. You do wonderful work and we're proud to feature your work in White Crane. [2008 Lammy winners]

It was a wonderful evening. It was a delight to be in an auditorium with all the hardworking GLBT authors. I think the Lambda Literary Foundation needs to rethink the process and break down and let the winners know they’ve won. Too many of them opted not to fly cross country (when flying is nothing short of a penance!) only to find out that they hadn’t won. Personally I think we owe it to our own institutions to support them, whether we’re winners or not (or…ahem…finalists!) But practical is practical and if the Lammys really want to be the important award they are, it sort of undercuts that end when the winners aren’t present to receive their beautiful crystal book award. And there's far too much attention to the big publishers...[and they wonder why Gay publishers are folding left and right?]

I’m not quite sure what our sisters made of all the “penis humor” which was…shall we say…somewhat flaccid? But equal time for bad Lesbian humor was well-represented by a Lesbian comic troupe called "The Gay Mafia" performed a Lesbian science fiction scene that was, at best, sort of obligatory. And why is it that Lesbians get to make penis jokes and if Gay men said anything about women's genitalia we would lose ours? Let it be duly noted: Lesbians can be as embarrassingly bad as Gay men.

For the most part, this is a graying (if eminent) crowd. Youth was represented, but there was, overall, a nice balance of age. The President of the LLF has been handed off (in another series of penis allusions with a "baton") from the eminent and splendid Terry Decrescenzo to best-selling author (and son of newly-minted Christian, Anne Rice) Christopher Rice in a clear play for the Los Angeles celebrity and youth crowd. I get it. Lambda needs to do this. The whole publishing world needs to get connected with the short-attention span crowd. At least he's out-Gay. For the Los Angeles Gay scene, this is not always a given (see "Hilton, Paris/Gay Pride 2005").

There was a moving (if somewhat overlong) "In Memoriam" slide show, that had all the authors who had died in the past 20 years -- 1988 to 2008, since it was the 20^th anniversary of the Lammys. Tears and fond sighs were the order of the day as all our literary heroines’ and heroes’ faces looked out at us from the silver screen. Even Valerie Solanas, the radical feminist who wrote "Scum Manifesto" and who shot Andy Warhol, was up there. The obligatory applause response sort of faded away long before the slide show was over. Maybe some of the authors in the slide show were not well-known to everyone in the audience. But my suspicion was more along the lines that the reaction was “Why are we doing this?” Is it really necessary to parade this dirge-like presentation? I’m all for acknowledgment of our elders and our ancestors, to be sure…but it seems to me it might have been a little more celebratory in tone as opposed to the somber tone it took.

Mystery pioneer Katherine V. Forrest presented a Pioneer award to Ann Bannon, who wrote the  Lesbian Beebo Brinker novels in the 1950s, which has recently been staged by our friend Linda Chapman (The Beebo Brinker Chronicles), and whom every Lesbian of a certain age has read and revered. Her character Beebo Brinker is nothing short of legend. Forrest attested, as she struggled not to cry, she that Ann Bannon’s books had saved her life. This is what all this publishing is all about. And we must never forget that. Every day, somewhere, there is some Gay kid looking to find some reflection of himself or herself in the world. Like most people, the only place I ever found it was in the dictionary. Ann Bannon is a lovely woman, whose warm smile lit up the room. Her books saved lives. I had the pleasure of meeting her in New York when The Beebo Brinker Chronicles opened and she couldn’t have been more delightful then, and more deserving of this acknowledgment now. Congratulations to Ms. Bannon.

Finally, the other Pioneer awards went to our dear friends Malcolm Boyd, who is going to be 85 years young this very weekend, and his lion-hearted partner, Mark Thompson, both White Crane authors and contributors. They’re both grand old gay men of letters. White Crane has published the essential Malcolm Boyd reader in recognition of his 85^th year, A Prophet in His Own Land: A Malcolm Boyd Reader.

In all...a lovely event. On a personal note, Mark and Malcolm hosted me in their beautiful home for a very smart (in every sense of the word!) cocktail party with the literati of Los Angeles in attendance. I must admit it was a real honor to have such an illustrious and accomplished crowd assembled...to say nothing of it being in my honor (and Malcolm's, too). To return to the City of Angels after 25 years and receive such a welcome was gratifying, humbling and sweet. Thank you M & M!