I post birthdays. Single retired teacher, gay elder, gardener, community activist, actor, stage manager. #PrayForUkraine
Northeast Ohio
Joined March 2009
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#LGBTQ History 2. b. Nov. 7, 1962, Dirk Shafer, Carbondale, IL, fitness trainer, model, actor, screenwriter, film director, appeared in the mock documentary about a Playgirl centerfold, “Man of the Year” (1995), and “Circuit” (2001). d. 2015 of a drug overdose
Jeff retweeted
“A dandelion plant has moon and sun, and the stars too, as seeds fly one by one. And all is done, and all is new-begun.”
- Ruth Pitter
#LGBT History 1. b. Nov. 7, 1897, Ruth Pitter, CBE, Ilford, England, poet, “A Mad Lady’s Garland” (1934), 18 volumes of verse published during lifetime, 1st woman to receive the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry (1955), a painter & artisan in decorative furniture w/ partner. d. 1992
Poet Ruth Pitter died #onthisday in 1992. Fellow Poet Elizabeth Jennings said that Pitter's work has “an acute sensibility and deep integrity”, and she was the first woman to receive the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. #ruthpitter #poetry ed.gr/b8fhg
Jeff retweeted
On 07 November 1972, Bette Midler unleashed her debut album, The Divine Miss M, upon an unsuspecting America, and popular music was never quite the same. We put this one on the turntable and didn’t take it off for the next 6 months. It was something new, fun, and terrifically gay. Here was a brassy, bawdy, gloriously vulgar redhead with the voice of an angel, the mouth of a longshoreman, and the risqué wardrobe of a wildly flamboyant bordello madam.
At New York’s Continental Baths, with Barry Manilow at the piano, where she had been belting out torch songs and dropping double entendres as shameless as her audience dropping its towels, Bette single-handedly launched a new age of nostalgia and resurrected old-fashioned showbiz glamour with enough camp to make the Boy Scout Annual Jamboree look like a church picnic. Bette and the Baths—it was a match made in heaven. Or at least in a steam room.
Transferring her already legendary act to vinyl, for the LP, with Barry shaping the sound, Bette recreated forgotten oldies, reinvented girl-group classics, and made "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" sound as though Patty, Maxene, and LaVerne had spent a particularly memorable weekend in P-town. The album became a smash, went platinum, and earned Bette the Grammy Award for Best New Artist. America had discovered its newest sweetheart—but one more likely to tell a dirty joke than kiss a baby. And the gays sanctified their very own goddess.
Fifty-four years later, The Divine Miss M remains a monument to talent, theatrical excess, and the enduring proposition that good taste is terribly overrated.🏳️🌈
#LGBTQ History 5. b. Nov. 5, 1983, Andrew Hayden-Smith, Gateshead, England, actor, voiceover artist, television presenter, “Live and Kicking” (2001-2004), “Doctor Who” (2006), “Cucumber” (2015), “Hollyoaks” (2016-17), “Coronation Street” (2025).
#LGBTQ History 4. b. Nov. 5, 1955, Lesléa Newman, Brooklyn, NY, writer, editor, author “Heather Has Two Mommies” (1989), “Belinda’s Bouquet” (1991), “The Boy Who Cried Fabulous” (2004), “Sparkle Boy” (2017), “Gittel’s Journey: An Ellis Island Story” (2019).
Recommended Book of the Day - Written by Leslea Newman. Daddy, Papa, and Me. #LGBTQEarlyYears
lgbtqearlyyears.org/lgbtqia-…
#LGBTQ History 3. b. Nov. 5, 1942, Kenneth Sherrill, NY, NY, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Hunter College, co-author “Gays and the Military” (1993), article “The Political Power of Gays, Lesbians and Bisexuals” (1996); 56 year LTR. d. 2023
Apply for the APSA 2016 Kenneth Sherrill Prize, Applications due April 1st politicalsciencenow.com/appl…
#LGBTQ History 2. b. Nov. 5, 1912, Paul Dehn, Manchester, England, screenwriter, “Seven Days to Noon” (1950), “Goldfinger” (1964), “Murder on the Orient Express” (1974), the 2nd-4th “Planet of the Apes” films; relationship w/ composer, James Bernard. d. 1976
#LGBTQ History 1. b. Nov. 5, 1884, James Elroy Flecker, Lewisham, England, educator, poet “The Golden Journey to Samarkand” (1913), novelist, playwright “Hassan” (1922); intimate friendship with Oxford buddy, John D. Beazley. d. 1915
"O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet English tongue,
Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young."
Poems: mypoeticside.com/poets/james…
✒ #JamesElroyFlecker, English author, poet, and playwright, #BOTD 5 November 1884. #Poetry #Theatre #Literature
#LGBTQ History 7. b. Nov. 4, 1984, John Lam, Marin County, CA, Vietnamese-American ballet dancer (retired), choreographer, principal dancer with the Boston Ballet (2003-2024), professor at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
After two decades, the first Vietnamese American male principal ballet dancer is retiring from the Boston Ballet.
@VickyNguyenTV shares his message to the next generation of performers.
#LGBTQ History 6. b. Nov. 4, 1961, Jon Robin Baitz, Los Angeles, CA, playwright “A Fair Country” (Off-B’way 1996), screenwriter “Stonewall” (2015), producer “Brothers & Sisters” (2006-11), actor, “Last Summer in the Hamptons” (1995), “All’s Fair” (2025).
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#LGBTQ History 5. b. Nov. 4, 1946, Robert Mapplethorpe, Floral Park, NY, photographer, known for controversial subjects, celebrity portraits, nudes, homoerotic BDSM culture featured in the XYZ portfolios exhibited in 1989 National Tour “The Perfect Moment.” d. 1989 of AIDS
#LGBTQ History 4. b. Nov. 4, 1933, Barbara Grier, Cincinnati, OH, coming out in her teens, writer, publisher, co-founder Naiad Press, editor of the early lesbian publication, The Ladder; the San Francisco Library houses her extensive collection of lesbian lit. d. 2011
#LGBTQ History 3. b. Nov. 4, 1912, Frances Faye, Brooklyn, NY, cabaret entertainer, show tune singer, used lesbian & gay innuendo in her act, pianist, songwriter, “Well All Right” (1946), actress, “Pretty Baby” (1978); 31 year LTR w/ manager, Teri Shepherd. d. 1991
11/4は、フランシス フェイ (Frances Faye)さんのお誕生日。アメリカの歌手。ピアノの弾き語りでショーチューンを歌唱。2度の離婚を経て、同性のマネージャーのテリ シェパード (Teri Shepherd)さんが生涯の伴侶に。1991年死去、同性愛者であることを公にしていました。youtu.be/v8h_ez_WUIc
#LGBTQ History 1. b. Nov. 4, 1896, J. R. Ackerley, London, England, playwright, “The Prisoners of War” (1925), writer, editor of the BBC’s magazine, The Listener,” memoir “My Father and Myself” (1968); openly gay during the time it was illegal to be so in Great Britain. d. 1967
#FridaySuggestionParramon 0233-2023/03/03-Stardate 76634.49. Llibre | Libro | Book: - | “Mi padre y yo” (trad.) | “My Father and Myself” (J. R. Ackerley, 1968). Més | Más | More: facebook.com/photo/?fbid=257…
#LGBTQ History 6. b. Oct. 28, 1909, Francis Bacon, Dublin, Ireland, modern surrealist figurative painter; his complex relationship with model, George Dyer, is fictionalized in the film “Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon” (1998). d. 1992
Francis Bacon (b. 28 October 1909) was an Irish-born British painter whose disturbing, emotionally charged portraits of distorted human figures made him one of the most influential—and controversial—artists of the 20th century.
Born in Dublin to English parents, Bacon endured a difficult childhood dominated by an authoritarian father who reportedly expelled him from the family home at 16 after discovering his homosexuality. Largely self-taught, Bacon drifted through Berlin, Paris, and London, working as an interior designer before devoting himself to painting.
Considered his definitive breakthrough work, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944), was a nightmarish triptych that captured the widespread shock, trauma, and horror of World War II and the Holocaust.
Other famous masterpieces include:
The "Screaming Popes" Series—inspired by Diego Velázquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X, Bacon subverted traditional religious authority by rendering the holy figure as a terrified, vulnerable victim trapped inside a claustrophobic cage.
Painting 1946—a complex, haunting collage of butchered meat, a black umbrella, and a distorted figure, which was eventually acquired by the Museum of Modern Art.
The Black Triptychs (Post-1971) —a somber, deeply personal series painted in the wake of the tragic suicide of his longtime lover and muse, George Dyer.
Openly homosexual when gay sex was still criminalized in Britain, Bacon embraced London's bohemian underworld of drinking, gambling, and promiscuous sex. His turbulent romantic relationships frequently involved violence, jealousy, and emotional dependency. Among his lovers was a former RAF pilot Peter Lacy, whose sadomasochistic relationship with Bacon ended with Lacy's death in 1962. Their decade-long relationship was intense, obsessive, and marked by heavy drinking and severe sadomasochism, with Bacon often provoking volatile outbursts and physical abuse from Lacy. Bacon once described his obsession with Lacy as "like having some dreadful disease".
Another lover, George Dyer, a petty criminal from London's East End, became one of Bacon's most important artistic subjects. Their tempestuous relationship ended in 1971 when Dyer died from an overdose in their Paris hotel, just before the opening of Bacon's prestigious retrospective at the Grand Palais.
Among his closest platonic friends was fellow-artist Lucien Freud. They met in 1945 through fellow artist Graham Sutherland and from the late 1940s through the 1960s, they spent nearly every day together, drinking and gambling in London's Soho district, most frequently at the Colony Room. Their friendship collapsed in the 1980s, largely driven by Freud's refusal to lend Bacon his 1953 painting Two Figures (which Freud owned) for Bacon's 1985 retrospective at the Tate. Bitterness over the painting, conflicting egos, and jealousy ended their decades-long friendship, and they remained estranged until Bacon's death.
In his later years, Bacon maintained a relationship with the considerably younger John Edwards, who became his closest companion and principal heir. An illiterate former bartender from London's East End, Edwards met the artist in the mid-1970s. While both men were gay, Edwards claimed that their relationship was entirely platonic. Francis, who was 40 years his senior, became a deeply supportive, protective, and loving father figure to him.
Francis Bacon died of a heart attack in Madrid on April 28, 1992, at age 82, leaving his entire estate—worth roughly £11 million ($18 million) at the time—to Edwards. Despite facing pushback from art establishment figures stunned by the inheritance, Edwards spent his remaining years successfully stewarding the painter's legacy.
Today, Francis Bacon's masterpieces reside in prestigious collections worldwide, including the Tate Collection and the Centre Pompidou. He remains an absolute titan of the modern art market—his 1969 Three Studies of Lucian Freud sold at auction for a record-shattering $142.4 million. And while he is regarded as a towering figure of postwar art, celebrated for his uncompromising exploration of desire, mortality, loneliness, and the terrifying vulnerability of the human condition, his chaotic personal life remains nearly as fascinating as his art. 🏳️🌈
[Bacon, left; with Lucien Freud, right]
#LGBTQ History 5. b. Oct. 28, 1903, Sir Evelyn Waugh, London, England, student at Oxford, writer of novels, biographies & travel books, essayist, social critic, “Decline and Fall” (1928), “A Handful of Dust” (1934), “Brideshead Revisited” (1945); a complex character. d. 1966.
