ROMAINE BROOKS (born Beatrice Romaine Goddard; was an American painter born on this date (d: 1970) who worked mostly in Paris and Capri. She specialized in portraiture and used a subdued tonal palette keyed to the color gray. Brooks ignored contemporary artistic trends such as Cubism and Fauvism, drawing on her own original aesthetic inspired by the works of Charles Conder, Walter Sickert, and James McNeill Whistler. Her subjects ranged from anonymous models to titled aristocrats. She is best known for her images of women in androgynous or masculine dress, including her self-portrait of 1923, which is her most widely reproduced work.

Brooks had an unhappy childhood after her alcoholic father abandoned the family; her mother was emotionally abusive and her brother mentally ill. By her own account, her childhood cast a shadow over her whole life. She spent several years in Italy and France as a poor art student, then inherited a fortune upon her mother's death in 1902. Wealth gave her the freedom to choose her own subjects. She often painted people close to her, such as the Italian writer and politician Gabriele D'Annunzio, the Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein, and her partner of more than 50 years, the writer Natalie Barney.

Although she lived until 1970, it is erroneously believed that she painted very little after 1925; despite evidence to the contrary. She made a series of drawings during the 1930s, using an "unpremeditated" techniques predating automatic drawing. She spent time in New York City in the mid 1930s, completing portraits of Carl Van Vechten and Muriel Draper. Many of her works are unaccounted for, but photographic reproductions attest to her ongoing artwork. It is thought to have culminated in her 1961 portrait of Duke Uberto Strozzi.

Despite being a lesbian, on June 13, 1903, Goddard married her friend John Ellingham Brooks, an unsuccessful pianist and translator who was in deep financial difficulty. He was gay as well, and Goddard never revealed exactly why she married him. Her first biographer Meryle Secrest suggests that she was motivated by concern for him and a desire for companionship, rather than the need for a marriage of convenience. They quarreled almost immediately when she cut her hair and ordered men's clothes for a planned walking tour of England; he refused to be seen in public with her dressed that way. Chafing at his desire for outward propriety, she left him after only a year and moved to London. His repeated references to "our" money frightened her, as the money was her inheritance and none of it his. After they split, she continued to give Brooks an allowance of three hundred pounds a year. He lived comfortably on Capri, with E. F. Benson, until he died of liver cancer in 1929.

Brooks left St. Ives on the Cornish coast where she had lived for a number of years, and moved to Paris. Poor young painters such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse were creating new art in the Bohemian districts of Montparnasse and Montmartre. In contrast, Brooks took an apartment in the fashionable 16th arrondissement, mingled in elite social circles, and painted portraits of wealthy and titled women. These included her current lover, the Princess de Polignac.

In 1911, Brooks became romantically involved with the Ukrainian-Jewish actress and dancer Ida Rubinstein. Rubenstein was the rock star of her day; and caused quite a stir by appearing with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. D'Annunzio had an obsessive but unrequited attraction to Rubinstein as well. Rubinstein was deeply in love with Brooks; she wanted to buy a farm in the country where they could live together—a mode of life in which Brooks had no interest.

Although they broke up in 1914, Brooks painted Rubinstein more often than any other subject; for Brooks, Rubinstein's "fragile and androgynous beauty" represented an aesthetic ideal. The earliest of these paintings are a series of allegorical nudes. In The Crossing (also exhibited as The Dead Woman), Rubinstein appears to be in a coma, stretched out on a white bed or bier against a black void variously interpreted as death or floating in spent sexual satisfaction on Brooks' symbolic wing; in Spring, she is depicted as a pagan Madonna strewing flowers on the ground in a grassy meadow. When Rubinstein starred in D'Annunzio's play The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, Brooks painted her as a blonde Saint Sebastian—tied to a post, being shot with an arrow by a masked dwarf standing on a table. The dwarf is a satiric representation of D'Annunzio.

JULIAN MITCHELL born. The English screenwriter and novelist is best known for his plays including Another Country, which won the Olivier award for best play of the year (1981) and his screenplays for five movies, including the 1984 film adaptation of Another Country, Wilde and Vincent & Theo. In 2007 Mitchell wrote the BBC4 drama Consenting Adults about pioneering Gay Rights activist Sir John Wolfenden and his celebrated 1957 report which called for the decriminalization of homosexuality.

The start of the general strike which eventually wins the eight-hour workday in the United States. These events are today commemorated as May Day or Workers Day in most industrialized countries.

Across the U.S., thousands of people are expected to participate in protests against the Trump administration, its policies and the billionaires supporting them in what organizers are calling "a war on working people."

Over 1,000 demonstrations and rallies are scheduled in every state and abroad, with most being held Thursday, May 1 – historically known as May Day or International Workers' Day. The volunteer-led 50501 movement, which spurred other nationwide protests this year, is helping organize the demonstrations along with labor unions, student groups and other grassroots organizations.

One of the larger protests is expected in Washington, D.C., where a "May Day Movement USA" rally on the National Mall is planned. In Philadelphia, Sen. Bernie Sanders will join the "Workers over Billionaires" rally hosted by the city's AFL-CIO chapter.

So don't work more than eight hours today! Also...a general strike has a nice ring to it.

The first wide-circulation Gay periodical in North America, ONE MAGAZINE: The Homosexual Viewpoint was first published by the Mattachine Society.

Gay activists march in PORTUGAL, for the first time, demanding an end to the country's sodomy laws and a repeal of all statutes that discriminate against Gays and Lesbians.

MAINE Legislators decriminalize homosexuality between consenting adults in private by repealing its sodomy laws, and lower the age of consent to fourteen.

Published reports confirm that Paul Newman is having financing trouble with his attempt to bring an adaptation of the gay classic "The Front Runner" to screen. Newman eventually allows his option to lapse.

The great CHRISTOPHER STREET magazine debuts under the guidance of founder and publisher Michael Denneny.

The unapologetically, LGBT-oriented magazine published in New York City was known both for its serious discussion of issues within the LGBT community and its satire of anti-homosexual criticism. It was one of the two most-widely read Gay-issues publications in the United States. Christopher Street printed 231 issues before closing its doors in December of 1995.

Wyoming decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN publishes an ad from the Lesbian and Gay Associated Engineers and Scientists. Science News refused to run the ad. An interesting note: I went looking for an image of the cover o the May 1982 edition of Scientific American to accompany this entry. I spent the better part of an hour on line, searching, and finally finding a site where every cover of Scientific American could be seen from as far back as September 1846 (this is a venerable publication that has been around for a long, long time.) I found all the covers for 1982...all except the one for May, 1982. I could get April (which is the illustration here) and I could find June. But May was not there. If anyone can find this cover, I would be interested in seeing the cover, just out of sheer curiosity. Also, it seems the "Lesbian and Gay Associated Engineers and Scientists" no longer exists. Did they break up into Lesbian Associated Engineers and Scientists? Or Gay Associated Engineers and Scientists? Or Just Gay Engineers? Or just Lesbian Scientists?

Inquiring minds want to know.

On this date Lesbian ANN BANCROFT becomes the first woman to reach the North Pole by dogsled. The trip, which started from Ellesmere Island, took two months.

Bancroft, 62, was the first woman to reach both the North Pole and the South Pole. In 1986, she and Will Steger and six other explorers drove dogsleds to the North Pole; seven years later, she successfully led the American Women’s Expedition to the South Pole.

Bancroft made history again in 2001 when she and her polar-trekking partner Liv Arnesen, 63, of Norway, became the first women to cross Antarctica.

Now the women, who co-own an exploration company called Bancroft Arnesen Explore, will follow the Ganges from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal with six other women from six continents. She lives in St. Paul Minnesota.

Today is BELTANE. This festival officially begins at moonrise on May Day Eve, and marks the beginning of the third quarter or second half of the ancient Celtic year. It is celebrated as an early pastoral festival accompanying the first turning of the herds out to wild pasture.

The rituals were held to promote fertility. The cattle were driven between the Belfires to protect them from ills. Contact with the fire was interpreted as symbolic contact with the sun. In early Celtic times, the druids kindled the Beltane fires with specific incantations. Later the Christian church took over the Beltane observances, a service was held in the church, followed by a procession to the fields or hills, where the priest kindled the fire. A rowan branch is hung over the house fire on May Day to preserve the fire itself from bewitchment (the house fire being symbolic of the luck of the house).

This is a holiday of Union — both between the Goddess and the God and between man and woman. Handfastings (Pagan marriages) are traditional at this time. It is a time of fertility and harvest, the time for reaping the wealth from the seeds that we have sown. Celebrations include braiding of one's hair (to honour the union of man and woman and Goddess and God), circling the Maypole for fertility and jumping the Beltane fire for luck. Beltane is one of the Major Sabbats of the Wiccan religion.

Those who observe this holiday celebrate sexuality, something seen as holy and intrinsic to humans and they celebrate life and the unity which fosters it. The myths of Beltane state that the young God has blossomed into manhood, and the Goddess takes him on as her lover. Together, they learn the secrets of the sexual and the sensual, and through their union, all life begins.

May Day has long been marked with feasts and rituals. May poles, supremely phallic symbols, were the focal point of old English village rituals. Many people arose at dawn to gather flowers and green branches from the fields and gardens, using them to decorate the village Maypoles. The insertion of the May-pole into the hole in the earth is symbolic of this erotic theme.

The May Queen (and often King) is chosen from among the young people, and they go singing from door to door throughout the town carrying flowers or the May tree, soliciting donations for merrymaking in return for the "blessing of May". This is symbolic of bestowing and sharing of the new creative power that is stirring in the world. As the kids go from door to door, the May Bride often sings to the effect that those who give will get of nature's bounty through the year.

In parts of France, some jilted youth will lie in a field on May Day and pretend to sleep. If any village girl is willing to marry him, she goes and wakes him with a kiss; the pair then goes to the village inn together and lead the dance which announces their engagement. The boy is called "the betrothed of May."