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Gay Wisdom – Today in Gay History

Born

1848 -

KATHERINE HARRIS BRADFORD, English author and poet, the “other half” of Edith Emma Cooper, born; together with her niece (and lover) Cooper, Katherine Harris Bradford wrote poetry and plays under the joint pseudonym “Michael Field.”Katharine called Edith “Henry” and Edith called Katherine “Michael” and for the rest of their lives they were known to each other and to their friends by these names. Where the name “Field” came from is anybody’s guess. Among their closest friends were Royal Academy painter, Charles Ricketts and Charles Shannon, who lived together near them in a relationship comparable to their own. The poems of “Michael Field” are rich in love lyrics to women, and they were well received until it was discovered that the “male” poet was in fact two women. From that time on their work was treated by ever-increasing coldness by the literary world.

Of course, many people knew the identity of “Michael Field” from the beginning, including Robert Browning, who was a friend. But even Browning asked for an explanation when Long Ago, based on fragments from Sappho, appeared in 1889. Their friendship with Browning is telling. The Brownings wrote their poetry separately. The two women, on the other hand, wrote theirs jointly, believing themselves to be “two bodies joined as one.” The contrast was not lost on “Michael Field.: “These two poets, man and wife, wrote alone; each wrote, but did not bless and quicken one another at their work; we are closer married.”

1930 -

GILLIAN JAGGER (d: 2019), on this date in New York. She was a British, multimedia sculptor and installation artist based in the Hudson Valley. She is known for her plaster castings of manhole covers on the streets of New York City in the 1960s, during which time she was “erroneously being identified as a Pop artist.” In her work Jagger “[appropriates] materials from nature,” and incorporates tracings, rubbings, and castings of found objects in both urban and rural environments.

Her father was sculptor Charles Sergeant Jagger, was known for his war memorials , most notably the Royal Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park in London. Jagger’s maternal grandmother was also a sculptor. After the death of her father Jagger’s mother remarried, when she was aged 7, to an American coal industrialist and the family relocated to Buffalo, New York.

The artist worked and resided in a converted "five-barn" dairy farm in Kerhonkson, New York with her wife Consuelo (Connie) Mander since 1978.

Jagger received her BFA in painting at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University), where artist Andy Warhol was also an alumnus. Although Jagger and Warhol were contemporaries and friends, Jagger disaffiliated herself from the Pop Art movement associated with Warhol. She wrote, "...the worse for me was that I was identified in all those news programmes and newspapers as a "Pop artist". I was certain I wasn't. I didn't know much about Pop Art. But I knew that I did not like beer cans or pieces of pie under plastic covers."

Jagger died after a brief illness in Ellenville, New York.

1935 -

LOLA PASHALINSKI is an Obie Award-winning, American theatre artist born on this date, who is known for her work as a founding member of Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company. Pashalinski became involved in theatre as an assistant director with John Vaccaro's Playhouse of the Ridiculous, a resident company at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, during the 1960s. S

he left the Playhouse of the Ridiculous with Ludlam when he and John Vaccarro had a disagreement during rehearsals for Conquest of the Universe in 1967. Ludlam then founded his Ridiculous Theatrical Company, and Pashalinski was a founding member, working with the company from its establishment in 1967 until 1980. During those years, she appeared in seventeen of the company's productions, including as Lola Lola in Corn (1973), Brunhilde in Der Ring Gott Farblonjet (1977), and Miss Cubbidge in Bluebeard (1970). After leaving the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, Pashalinski appeared in a range of theatrical productions and in film and television. In 1999, she and her partner Linda Chapman performed in a play they wrote called Gertrude & Alice: A Likeness to Loving, based on Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas' relationship.

1966 -

MATTHEW "MATT" DRUDGE is a right-wing (he would say "populist") American "yellow journalist" and the creator/editor of the Drudge Report, an American news aggregator. Drudge is also an author and a former radio and television show host.

Drudge was unknown before he began the news aggregation site, the Drudge Report. For many years, he took odd jobs such as night counterman at a 7-Eleven convenience Store store, telemarketer for Time-Life books, McDonald's manager, and sales assistant at a New York City grocery store.

In 1989, he moved to Los Angeles, where he took up residence in a small Hollywood apartment. He took a job in the gift shop of CBS studios, eventually working his way up to manager. Here, he was apparently privy to some inside gossip, part of the inspiration for founding the Drudge Report. Worried about his son's aimlessness, Drudge's father insisted on buying him a Packard Bell computer in 1994. The Drudge Report began as email notes sent out to a few friends.

The original issues were part gossip and part opinion. They were distributed as an email newsletter and posted to alt.showbiz.gossip Usenet forum. In 1996, the newsletter transitioned slowly from entertainment gossip to political gossip and moved from email to the Web as its primary distribution mechanism.

In March 1995, the Drudge Report had 1,000 email subscribers; by 1997, Drudge had 85,000 subscribers to his email service. Drudge's website gained in popularity in the late 1990s after a number of stories which he reported before the mainstream media. Drudge first received national attention in 1996 when he broke the news that Jack Kemp would be Republican Bob Dole's running mate in the 1996 presidential election. In 1998, he gained popularity when he published the reporting of then-Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff, becoming the first media outlet to publish the news that later became the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

A story by Business 2.0 magazine from April 2003 estimated that Drudge's website received $3,500 a day (almost $1.3 million a year) in advertising revenues. Subtracting his relatively minor server costs, the magazine estimated that the Drudge Report website netted $800,000 a year. An article in The Miami Herald from September 2003 said that Drudge estimated he earns $1.2 million a year from his website and radio show. During an April 2004 appearance on C-SPAN, he confirmed that he earns over $1 million.

For many years, Drudge was based out of his one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood. Today, he maintains the website from his two properties in Miami, Florida. In updating the site, he reportedly monitors multiple television news channels and a number of websites on several computers in his home office.

Drudge's relationships have always been with older men. He was a regular at gay clubs in Washington, D.C. when he was a teenager.

Died

1992 -

US Navy radioman ALLEN R. SCHINDLER, JR. is brutally murdered by shipmates for being Gay, precipitating first military, then national debate about Gays in the military that resulted in the United States "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" military policy. Schindler was from a Navy family in Chicago Heights, Illinois and was serving as a radioman on the amphibious assault USS Belleau Wood in Sasebo, Japan.

According to friends of his, Schindler had complained repeatedly of anti-Gay harassment to his chain of command in March and April 1992, citing incidents such as the gluing-shut of his locker and frequent comments from shipmates like "There's a faggot on this ship and he should die."

While on transport from San Diego to Sasebo, Nagasaki, Japan, The Belleu Wood made a brief stop in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Afterwards en route to Japan, Schindler made a personal prank announcement "2-Q-T-2-B-S-T-R-8” on secured lines reaching much of the Pacific Fleet. When he was brought before the disciplinary “captain’s mast” for the unauthorized radio message. Schindler requested the hearing be closed. It was open, with two to three hundred people in attendance. Schindler was put on restrictive leave, unable to leave the ship until a few months after arriving to Sasebo and four days before his death.

The captain had been visited by Schindler, who had many times requested to be transferred to another location because he was being threatened by other shipmates for being Gay. The captain denied Schindler's request and kept the man's sexuality and death a secret for months. It was not reported until a special team composed of a psychologist, two lawyers, a counselor, and a corpsman from Yokosuka incidentally met at a bar in Sasebo.

Airman Apprentice Terry M. Helvey who was a member of the Ship's weather department stomped Schindler to death in a toilet in a park in Sasebo, Nagasaki. Schindler had "at least four fatal injuries to the head, chest, and abdomen," his head was crushed, ribs broken, and his penis cut, and he had "sneaker-tread marks stamped on his forehead and chest" destroying "every organ in his body" leaving behind a "nearly-unrecognizable corpse." Schindler was left lying on the bathroom floor until the Shore Patrol and the key witness to the incident (Jonathan W.) carried out Schindler's body to the nearby Albuquerque Bridge. Jonathan W. witnessed the murder while using the restroom. He noticed Helvey jumping on Schindler's body while singing, and blood gushing from Schindler's mouth while he attempted to breathe. The key witness was requested to explain in detail to the military court what the crime scene looked like, but would not because Schindler's mother and sister were present in the courtroom.

After the trial, Helvy was convicted of murder and the captain who kept the incident quiet was demoted and transferred to Florida. Helvey is now serving a life sentence in the military prison at the United States Disciplinary Barracks, although by statute, he is granted a clemency hearing every year. Helvey's accomplice, Charles Vins, was allowed to plea bargain as guilty to three lesser offenses, including failure to report a serious crime, and to testify truthfully against Terry Helvey and served a 78-day sentence before receiving a general discharge from the Navy.