by itabix | Nov 30, 2019 | War poets, War poets, Wildred Owen, Writing
Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost...
by itabix | Aug 5, 2018 | AIDS, Alcoholism, Ceremonies, Courage, Daniel D'Addario, Fighting Back, Middlebrow Queer, Publishing, Race Point Light, Writing
Race Point Light What kind of person is Fair Shaw? Only partially like me, I should say at the beginning. Taller, darker, more handsome, certainly sexier, that long dolorous list of qualities that show we don’t measure up. I think he is more in control of his emotions...
by itabix | Jul 7, 2018 | Ceremonies, Earthrise, Gay literature, LGBTQ suicide, Middlebrow Queer, Teenage Suicides, Writing
Ceremonies When my friend Charles Howard was murdered on July 7, 1984, in Bangor, Maine, I had already quit my job teaching and was planning to leave Bangor at the end of the summer, in about two months. After Charlie’s murder, and thinking that someone was going to...
by itabix | Apr 19, 2018 | Books, Earthrise, Where meaning comes from
Three images This picture was taken December 24, 1968, while three astronauts from NASA’s Apollo 8 program were circling the moon. Bill Anders took the picture, and the other two astronauts on the craft with him were Frank Borman and Jim Lovell. The picture was the...
by itabix | Jan 20, 2017 | Adam in the Morning, Anger, Barack Obama, Ceremonies, Coming to terms with the past, Courage, Fighting Back, gay community, Generational Divide, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Michelle Obama, Race Point Light, Stonewall National Monument, The Myth of Sisyphus, Winter Rain, Writing
Many people are quoting Martin Luther King’s “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” And many people believe that means that eventually things are going to get better. But you know that’s bullshit. There is no “moral universe.” And we...
by itabix | Nov 11, 2016 | Hillary Rodham Clinton, The future, The Myth of Sisyphus
We’ve always known that nothing lasts forever, despite the fairytale, whose last words are “happily ever after.” We know that everything changes. Decay is real. Divorce is real. We have known that this time in our lives was going to end. Barack Obama’s term will end...
by itabix | Nov 6, 2016 | A single man, Adam in the Morning, Anger, APA, Ceremonies, Charles Howard, Coming out, Coming to terms with the past, Fighting, Fighting Back, Gay Pride, Publishing, Race Point Light, Stonewall Riots, The future, Winter Rain
At the time I started writing my first gay political novel, I had only been out for 24 months, and I was steeping in the literature of gay political theory. The weekend that Charles Howard was murdered (July 7, 1984)—he was the man on whom Bernie Mallett of Ceremonies...
by itabix | Nov 6, 2016 | A single man, APA, Charles Howard, Coming to terms with the past, Gay literature, Generational Divide, Middlebrow Queer, Publishing, Sexuality, The Gay Revolution, Writing
Even though I didn’t have many extended, free-wheeling conversations with friends about the military’s rules against my serving (I served anyway), still the fact that what I was doing sexually was a crime occupied me deeply. A novel about me during the sixties in...
by itabix | Nov 3, 2016 | A single man, Publishing
Writers write about political subjects all the time—Henry James wrote about the place of women in late nineteenth century England, and Charles Dickens wrote about the legal system and the poor in the nineteenth century, William Faulkner wrote about black people in the...
by itabix | Oct 1, 2016 | Anger, Coming to terms with the past, Gay kid, Gay literature, Generational Divide, Middlebrow Queer, Sexuality
In 1957, when we were students at a school in Tennessee (I was eighteen), students understood that it was against the law to engage in same-sex sex. You could be arrested, tried, and convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for a felony. What I think we were more...
by itabix | Jul 26, 2016 | Gay Pride, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Marriage, Queer, Sexuality, Stonewall Riots, The future, The Gay Revolution, Transgender
Chris Hayes is said to have said, “Great political theatre,” just after Bernie Sanders proposed that the nomination of Hillary Rodham Clinton be accepted by the convention and just after the roll call of states was concluded. But it was much more than that. As Andrea...
by itabix | Jun 26, 2016 | Assimilation, Barack Obama, Books, Celebration, Coming to terms with the past, Don't Tell Me to Wait, Fighting Back, Gay Pride, Stonewall National Monument, Victory
Monday, tomorrow, is the forty-seventh anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, and today is the forty-sixth Gay Pride Parade in New York. Two-and-a-half million people watched last year’s parade, and organizers expect at least that many today. Click here for information...
by itabix | Jun 10, 2016 | Assimilation, Barack Obama, Celebration, Coming out, Coming to terms with the past, Fighting Back, Freeing yourself of it, Queer, SCOTUS, Sexuality, The future, The Gay Revolution, Transgender
Last night, Rachel Maddow interviewed Elizabeth Warren. Warren endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Presidency and, toward the end of her comments, spoke of Clinton’s character and what she has shown through the long primary fight. (counter 8:00) She won because she’s a...
by itabix | Jan 21, 2016 | Black Mountain, Books, the South
Between October 10, 2015 and now, I have been to see the exhibition on Black Mountain at the ICA maybe half a dozen times. I read a 600-page book on Black Mountain, written by Martin Duberman and published in 1971. I have also studied the catalogue for the show. Aside...
by itabix | Nov 15, 2015 | Black Mountain, Books
Twice in the last week, I have heard or overheard other men speak of the new show at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston called Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College, 1933-1957. I figured something was prodding me, and on Thursday, I went to see for...
