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October 2, 2017 333 × 499 White Crane Books
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Building Connections & Community for Gay Men since 1989

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Gay Wisdom – Today in Gay History

  • Born
  • 1880 -

    CARL VAN VECHTEN, American writer and photographer (d. 1964); It’s funny how these things work. Black pride has led to an exploration of black culture, and the Harlem Renaissance of the ‘20s, and ‘30s has been rediscovered. The renewed interest in the Harlem Renaissance has led in turn to the de-mothballing of the white man who was at the center of it all, its chief publicist in fact, Carl Van Vechten, photographer and writer, dandy and man about town. In many ways Van Vechten was the American Ronald Firbank, the early Evelyn Waugh from corn-fed Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Reading Van Vechten is not exactly like eating salted peanuts.

    But his books have all the flavor of a time when drinks were called cocktails and were served, with fancy little things called canapes, in matching blue-glass shakers, trays and glasses. Start reading Van Vechten with The Blind Bow-Boy, in which a randy duke emblazons his stationery with the motto: “A thing of beauty is a boy forever!” You get the idea.

    Most of Van Vechten's papers are held by the Beinecke Library at Yale University. The Library of Congress acquired its collection of approximately 1,400 photographs in 1966 from Saul Mauriber.

    See more images here

  • 1883 -

    MAURITZ STILLER, Finnish film director, born (d: 1928); Many of the men in Greta Garbo’s life were Gay, including some, still living, whose “affairs” with the film goddess easily threw a naïve public off the scent.

    Stiller, however, really meant something to Garbo. He was her discoverer, her mentor, her friend. The director – tall, lean, Gay, with a shock of hair and long expressive hands – was in demand in Hollywood, and his price to MGM to come to Southern California was a contract for the then pudgy Greta Gustafsson. That his failure as an MGM director was as spectacular as her success is at the very heart of Garbo’s eventual separation from Hollywood.

  • Noteworthy
  • 1963 -

    The United States Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 in Abington School District v Schempp against allowing the reciting of bible verses and the Lord’s Prayer in public schools. Fundamentalist’s lose their minds. With the current atmosphere, we'll have to hold our collective breath to see how long this holds.

  • 1972 -

    The Watergate scandal begins: Five White House operatives are arrested for burglarizing the offices of the Democratic National Committee, in an attempt by some members of the Republican party to illegally wiretap the opposition. It went downhill very fast from there. It is this writer's theory that Republicans have carried a grudge for the last 50+ years and won't be happy until they can impeach and drive a Democrat from the office of the Presidency. By comparison to today's White House this scandal now seems almost quaint. What saved the country then was the willingness of Republicans to stand for the country and not for their party, protecting the Constitution over politics. Whether or not we can expect the same today is in serious question.

  • 1982 -

    The body of "God's Banker", Roberto Calvi is found hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London. An Italian banker dubbed by the press as "God's Banker", due to his close association with the Vatican. On June 10th, 1982 Calvi went missing from his Rome apartment, having fled the country on a false passport in the name of “Gian Roberto Calvini.” He had shaved his mustache and fled initially to Venice, and from there he apparently hired a private plane to London.

    At 7:30 AM on Friday June 18th 1982 a passing postman found his body hanging from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge in the financial district of London. Calvi's clothing was stuffed with building bricks, and he was carrying around $15,000 of cash in three different currencies. Calvi had been a member of Licio Gelli's secretive Masonic lodge, P2, and members of P2 referred to themselves as frati neri or "black friars". This has led to a suggestion in some quarters that Calvi was murdered and his body left hanging under Blackfriars Bridge as a Masonic warning because of symbolism associated with the word "Blackfriars".

    On the day before his body was found, Calvi had been stripped of his post at Banco Ambrosiano by the Bank of Italy, and his 55 year old private secretary Graziella Corrocher had jumped to her death from a fifth floor window at Banco Ambrosiano. Corrocher left behind an angry note condemning the damage that Calvi had done to the bank and its employees. Corrocher's death was ruled a suicide, although as with Calvi's death there have been suggestions of foul play.

    Lesson: Don’t fuck with the Vatican.

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