:-)

Music has been used as a healing force for centuries. Music therapy goes back to biblical times, when David played the harp to rid King Saul of a bad spirit. As early as 400 B.C., Hippocrates, Greek father of medicine, played music for his mental patients. Aristotle described music as a force that purified the emotions. In the thirteenth century, Arab hospitals contained music-rooms for the benefit of the patients. In the United States, Native American medicine men often employed chants and dances as a method of healing patients. Music therapy as we know it began in the aftermath of World Wars I and II. Musicians would travel to hospitals, particularly in the United Kingdom, and play music for soldiers suffering from war-related emotional and physical trauma.

Compton’s Cafeteria Riot

The Compton’s Cafeteria Riot occurred in August 1966 in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. This incident was the first recorded transgender riot in United States history, preceding the more famous 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City by three years.

Compton’s Cafeteria was one of a chain of cafeterias, owned by Gene Compton, in San Francisco from the 1940s to the 1970s. The Compton’s at 101 Taylor Street in the Tenderloin was one of the few places where transgender people could congregate publicly in the city, because they were unwelcome in gay bars at that time. Because cross-dressing was illegal, police could use the presence of transgender people in a bar as a pretext for making a raid and closing the bar down.

Many of the militant hustlers and street queens involved in the riot were members of Vanguard, the first known gay youth organization in the United States, which had been organized earlier that year with the help of radical ministers working with Glide Memorial Church, a center for progressive social activism in the Tenderloin for many years. A lesbian group of street people was also formed called the Street Orphans.

On the first night of the riot, the management of Compton’s called the police when some transgender customers became raucous. When a police officer accustomed to manhandling the Compton’s clientele attempted to arrest one of the transwomen, she threw her coffee in his face. At that point the riot began, dishes and furniture were thrown, and the restaurant’s plate-glass windows were smashed. Police called for reinforcements as the fighting spilled into the street, where a police car had all its windows broken out and a sidewalk newsstand was burned down.

The next night, more transgender people, hustlers, Tenderloin street people, and other members of the LGBT community joined in a picket of the cafeteria, which would not allow transgender people back in. The demonstration ended with the newly installed plate-glass windows being smashed again.

In the aftermath of the riot at Compton’s, a network of transgender social, psychological, and medical support services was established, which culminated in 1968 with the creation of the National Transsexual Counseling Unit, the first such peer-run support and advocacy organization in the world.


Gay History Project

The Lover's Story

A few weeks ago, I received an email from the poet Christopher Hennessy saying how much he appreciated my poetry posts.  Christopher asked if he could send me a copy of his first book of poetry Love-In-Idleness.  I was absolutely delighted and waited with eager anticipation to read his poetry.  I was not disappointed and found Christopher's poetry to be quite moving.  The poem "The Lover's Story" is one of my favorites.

The Lover's Story
by Christopher Hennessy

Emperor Ai of the Han Dynasty, rather than wake his lover, asleep on his royal gown, cut the sleeve as proof of his devotion.

To trace my name onto his back
was enough to make him want me.
I needed only a push to the ground,
the choke of his panicked kiss.

Sleepily, I circled him, entranced,
then a languorous fall
to his feet to trail my tongue
ankle to waste,

the seduction concealed
under the robes. Blindness,
the perfect muscle of faith.
Imagining ourselves strangers.

After sex, I only pretended to sleep,
nesting in the folds of his robe.
Hidden in the sleeve—a purple sail.
I chewed my lip to keep awake,

fearing I might admit to a trust
in his love or a promise of mine.
Had I heard the rip as his teeth cut
into the robe's silk, I'd have shouted:

Old Fool, you ruin your gown
for a delicate coward, for the hush
of your mouth on mine.
Or, had we not been so in love,

I could have whispered:
My emperor, make soft noises
as you leave, quick gasps of grief,
so I can hold myself to the dark.

Christopher Hennessy is the author of Outside the Lines: Talking with Contemporary Gay Poets(University of Michigan Press). He earned an MFA from Emerson College and currently is a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He was included in Ploughshares' special "Emerging Writers" edition, and his poetry, interviews, and book reviews have appeared in American Poetry Review, Verse, Cimarron Review, The Writer's Chronicle, The Bloomsbury Review, Court Green, OCHO, Crab Orchard Review, Natural Bridge, Wisconsin Review, Brooklyn Review, Memorious, and elsewhere. Hennessy is a longtime associate editor for The Gay & Lesbian Review-Worldwide.

Thank you, Christopher.

Exams, Exams, Exams

It's the end of the semester and it is time for exams again.  My college exam is tonight, I know my students are dreading it, but it shouldn't be that bad.  I will be reviewing with my high school kids on Monday and Tuesday for their exams which will be Wednesday through Friday.  Then Friday, I will be off work for two weeks for Christmas and New Year's.  I can't wait.

With exams coming up, I thought I would share a list of unintentionally funny exam answers on history exams.  I've never gotten these answers before, but I have had a few funny ones.  My all-time favorite that I received was that "There was nothing to do before the Industrial Revolution but hand jobs."

1. Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies and they all wrote in hydraulics.They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere.
2. The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible,Guinessis, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. One of their children,Cain, asked, “Am I my brother’s son?”
3. Moses led the Hebrew slaves to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread which is bread made without any ingredients. Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. He died before he ever reached Canada.
4. Solomom had three hundred wives and seven hundred porcupines.
5. The Greeks were a highly sculptured people, and without them we wouldn’t have history. The Greeks also had myths. A myth is a female moth.
6. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.
7. Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock. After his death, his career suffered a dramatic decline.
8. In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, and threw the java.
9. Eventually, the Romans conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long.
10. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Dying, he gasped out: “Tee hee, Brutus.”
11. Nero was a cruel tyranny who would torture his subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
12. Joan of Arc was burnt to a steak and was cannonized by Bernard Shaw. Finally Magna Carta provided that no man should be hanged twice for the same offense.
13. In midevil times most people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the futile ages was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and verses and also wrote literature.
14. Another story was William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son’s head.
15. Queen Elizabeth was the “Virgin Queen.” As a queen she was a success. When she exposed herself before her troops they all shouted “hurrah.”
16. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented removable type and the Bible. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes and started smoking. And Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper.
17. The greatest writer of the Renaissance was William Shakespeare. He was born in the year 1564, supposedly on his birthday. He never made much money and is famous only because of his plays. He wrote tragedies,comedies, and hysterectomies, all in Islamic pentameter. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Romeo’s last wish was to be laid by Juliet.
18. Writing at the same time as Shakespeare was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.
19. During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe.
20. Later, the Pilgrims crossed the ocean, and this was called Pilgrim’s Progress. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.
21. One of the causes of the Revolutionary War was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. Finally the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis. Delegates from the original 13 states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin discovered electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, “A horse divided against itself cannot stand.”. Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
22. Soon the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.
23. Abraham Lincoln became America’s greatest Precedent. Lincoln’s mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposedly insane actor. This ruined Booth’s career.
24. Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltaire invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy.
25. Gravity was invented by Issac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the autumn when the apples are falling off the trees.
26. Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German half Italian and half English. He was very large.
27. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.
28. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened and catapulted into Napoleon. Napoleon wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn’t have any children.
29. The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is In the East and the sun sets in the West.
30. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. She was a moral woman who practiced virtue. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.
31. The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts and inventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing by machine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of river to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men.
32. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madman Curie discovered radio. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx brothers.
33. The First World War, caused by the assignation of the Arch-Duck by an anahist, ushered in a new error in the anals of human history.

Hungover

Not me, but I feel the way he looks.

I had a Christmas party to attend last night. Lots of hot rednecks (I live in a rural area remember), but sadly, all are straight. When you live in a rural area, there are always going to be rednecks at a party.  It was a lot of fun, but too much beer, so I feel like crap today.  There is this one guy who is always at these kinds of things, and he is so freaking hot, it is amazing.  His jeans were so tight, that he had to have been poured into them.  Oh, to see that ass naked, LOL, but at as tight as those jeans were, there was not much left to the imagination.

Moment of Zen: Cooking

I love to cook, not generally in the nude, but I love this picture nonetheless.  You can get lost in cooking and your worries go away.  Generally when I cook, especially things like the cookies I made the other night, I am cooking for other people, so I enjoy the joy they get out of eating what I made.  So that is my moment of Zen for today, because with the holidays, there will be lots of cooking going on around here.

Tait requested that I share the recipe for my pistachio/cherry cookies.  I first saw this recipe on a Food Network holiday cookie special, but have since made it enough times to make some adjustments of my own to them.  People always seem to love them.

Sugar Cookies with Pistachio and Dried Cherries
Prep Time:15 min
Inactive Prep Time:30 min
Cook Time:11 min

Ingredients
1 (8-ounce) roll refrigerated sugar cookie dough
1/2 cup pistachios, chopped
1/2 cup dried cherries, chopped
1 (11-ounce) bag white chocolate chips

Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Open sugar cookie log and press into a rectangle on cutting board. Add pistachios and cherries, kneading/mixing into the dough, and refrigerate overnight. Using a cookie scoop or spoon, scoop out cookies and make a one inch ball of dough. Slightly press the ball to flatten the cookies a little. Transfer cookies to a baking sheet.

Bake 10 to 15 minutes, until golden around the edges. Transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

While cookies are cooling, melt white chocolate chips in a bowl over simmering water. (Microwaving for 1 min. 30 sec. on medium power gets this process working quicker. Then place bowl over simmering water to finish the melting process.)

When cookies are cool, dip bottom half of cookies into melted white chocolate and place on waxed or parchment paper to cool.

The green of the pistachios and the red of the dried cherries makes a wonderful Christmas themed cookie. To add a little more festivity to them, I often sprinkle some red and green nonpareil holiday sprinkles on the white chocolate before it hardens.

A nice variation to these is to use dried peaches and pecans instead of dried cherries and pistachios.  It gives them a totally different but very "Southern" flavor to them.

Happy Holidays

It's that time of year again, and I am in a holiday mood. Christmas will be here in three weeks. I decorated my Christmas tree last night and spent most of the night making cookies for my students. Two of my high school classes decided that they wanted me to have their Christmas parties in my classroom this year. I always make pistachio/cherry cookies that are dipped in white chocolate, and I have yet to find anyone who did not like them. Next week I give my final exam in my college class and I will give my semester exams for all my other classes. It's going to be a busy week but then we will have two weeks off for the holidays.

The Gay History Project

John Clevesy and Damien Barnes

I am going to brag for just a minute.  A very dear friend of mine gave me an iPad for my birthday and Christmas.  (Thank you, because I know you are reading this. I have thanked you numerous times for this very generous gift, but it needs repeating so you know how wonderful you are.)  The iPad is absolutely wonderful, and I love it.  One of the apps that I have downloaded is the Gay History Project.
The Gay History Project is the first and only iPhone/iPad app to be solely based on providing LGBT history to its users. It is a global interactive project started in 2009 by John Clevesy in an attempt to spread awareness about LGBT historical figures and events. It also features personal stories by Clevesy and any contributors who wish to share their experiences. Users can also contribute new articles about events as they occur to keep the project constantly growing.
In 2009, John Clevesy (born February 27, 1986 in Lawrence, Massachusetts) received the news that his husband Damien Barnes (born December 24, 1984 in Bristol, United Kingdom) would not be allowed to apply for a green card because of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Because this Act proclaims that one state does not have to recognize marriages performed in other states, the federal government does not recognize the Clevesy-Barnes union (which took place in Boston, MA, in 2008), nullifying Clevesy as a sponsor for his husband.

http://www.gayrightssite.com

Shocked to learn this, Clevesy decided to do something about it. As a student in graphic design at Northeastern University, in Boston, MA, Clevesy decided to focus his senior design project on spreading awareness about gay rights. Having some ties with media already as a photographer in association with Spectrum Literary Art Magazine and featured on websites such as Creative Photography Tips & Videos, he was familiar with mass media. He created an interactive application which features his story along with gay history spanning over four-thousand years of information and color-coded maps displaying where and when different territories from around the world began to create and void laws regarding homosexuals. Clevesy’s project was met with great reception from peers and professors and displayed in Northeastern’s 360 Gallery to be viewed by the public. It has since been published on GayRightsSite.com.
John Clevesy, however, was still not satisfied with the final outcome. Due to time constrictions of the class he was forced to omit a lot of information. He decided it was necessary to create a book which could hold much more information. As of June 2009, this book is still in production but can be preordered on the website.
Realizing that a book has a definite beginning and end, and because he wanted to reach more people, John Clevesy decided to take all of the information that is to be included in his book and create an iPhone App. The application entitled “Gay History Project” shares John’s story along with the articles from his senior project, over a hundred more write-ups, and a section for users to share their stories and news events as they occur around the world from their mobile devise, allowing the Gay History Project to grow as the information grows unendingly. This final outcome of Clevesy’s design project was released on the Apple iTunes App Store on June 23, 2009.
As of June 2009, the Gay History Project features over 150 built-in articles about LGBT events and people from around the world. The articles span over four-thousand years of history and are ordered chronologically. They are divided into nine categories: Ancient Times, The Roman Empire, England & America (1000CE - 1800CE), Life in the 1800s, The early 1900s, Social Revolution (1960-1979CE), The eighties, The nineties, and A new millennium. Clevesy’s personal story is also featured in a separate section entitled “Forward.” Each section contains articles relating to the time-period in which the user has selected along with an article that lists additional events that occurred during that timeframe. The sections relating to periods after the 1700s also include color-coded maps which display information about laws regarding homosexuals in various territories around the world.

The final section of the Gay History Project is an area in which users can write to inform others about new stories as they occur. This allows the Gay History Project to continue growing indefinitely through time. Because of the iPhone’s portability, news can be posted from anywhere the user has service even as the event is taking place. Users of the Gay History Project are, therefore, kept up to date on news regarding gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. By allowing the content to continually build and grow, this section allowed Clevesy to achieve the unending expansion of the Gay History Project.
In addition to news about people and events, this last section also includes other areas for users to write in. A person can ask questions to be answered by other users regarding anything informational that they could not find elsewhere. There is also an area for anyone to tell others their own personal stories in order to receive support with their own personal struggles or triumphs.

Remember Pearl Harbor

It began as an ordinary December day. People were gathered around the radio listening to a football game or planning holiday parties, not girding for battle. But on Dec. 7, 1941, when the first Associated Press report came over the radio at 2:22 p.m. Eastern Standard Time of a “bombing in Hawaii,” the news was electrifying. Seventy years later, every American living now who heard it then can still tell you exactly what he was doing when he learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

My grandmother will never forget that day seventy years ago. Her first child died of pneumonia on that day. She came home from the hospital to turn on the radio just as they were announcing the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Not only had she just lost her baby, but also, she realized that she would soon lose her husband to the war as well. My grandfather fought in WWII and luckily he safely returned, and they had two more children, my father and my aunt.

Pearl Harbor marked a watershed in the nation’s history and we knew it. What came after would be very different from what came before. It was the war that changed the world. “The Day of Infamy” thrust us into a conflict more than four years long that altered nearly every aspect of American life, large and small - from rationing gas and sugar to the harnessing of atomic power to the new role of women in the workplace. We united to defend our democracy. For more than 400,000, it would be the ultimate sacrifice.

That is why it is so important to remember the 70th anniversary of Pearl Harbor and all the 70th anniversaries of World War II events that follow.

Now Winter Nights Enlarge

Now Winter Nights Enlarge
by Thomas Campion

Now winter nights enlarge
     This number of their hours;
And clouds their storms discharge
     Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze
     And cups o'erflow with wine,
Let well-tuned words amaze
     With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
     Shall wait on honey love
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
     Sleep's leaden spells remove.

This time doth well dispense
     With lovers' long discourse;
Much speech hath some defense,
     Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well:
     Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
     Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys,
     And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys
     They shorten tedious nights.

Thomas Campion

Born in London on February 12, 1567, to John and Lucy Campion, Thomas Campion was a physician, a composer, and a poet. His parents died while he was a child, and at the age of fourteen he and a stepbrother were sent away to Cambridge. Campion did not earn a degree at Cambridge, but he came into contact with writers such as Thomas Nashe and Gabriel Harvey. In 1586, he enrolled at Gray's Inn, a law school, where he performed in plays and masques. The facts of his life from this time until 1602 remain vague; in 1602 Campion entered the University of Caen and shortly thereafter, at the age of forty, took up a medical practice in London.

His first published works were five songs, which appeared in 1591. Campion's first collection of poems, Thomae Campiani Poemata, was published in Latin in 1595. The book included over 129 epigrams as well as a number of elegies and an incomplete epic poem. The epigrams show Campion's ability to draw a portrait in a few precise lines, and he would later publish 453 epigrams in Epigrammatum Libri II (1619). By 1597, Campion had focused his attention almost completely on writing the words and music for songs. In 1601, he contributed twenty-one songs, and a brief treatise on song, to the Philip Rosseter's Book of Ayeres. Rosseter was the King James' lutenist. Campion would publish four more books of ayeres, or solo songs, including Light Conceits of Lovers (1613), and The Third and Fourth Booke of Ayres (circa 1617). The lyrics in these books are distinguished by their fine musical quality; as Campion noted in the preface to one of his books, "I have chiefly aimed to couple my words and notes lovingly together."

Campion's book of prosody, Observations in the Art of English Posie, was published in 1602. In it, he explored the relationship of music and poetry, and warned against "the childish titillation of rhyming." Campion also wrote a number of libretti for masques performed in King James' court, including Lord Hay's Masque (1607) and The Squire's Masque (1614). These works, commissioned by King James, allowed Campion to associate with many of England's artistic and aristocratic elite. Campion died on March 1, 1620, in London, probably of the plague, and was buried at St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, Fleet Street. He never married and died with only twenty-three pounds to his name, which he left to his friend and collaborator, Philip Rosseter.