VITA SACKVILLE-WEST, aristocratic English writer and gardener, born (d. 1962); The story of her marriage to Harold Nicolson ‒ she a Lesbian writer and he a Gay diplomat ‒ and of her passionate but disastrous affair with Violet Trefusis, is too beautifully told by their son Nigel Nicolson’s book Portrait of a Marriage to require any further comment here. "Men are cut out either to be lovers or husbands," West said of her marriage to Nicolson. "He was the latter."

WILL GEER, American actor, was born on this date (d. 1978); An American actor. Geer's real name was William Aughe Ghere. He is best known for his portrayal of the character Grandpa Walton, in the popular 1970s TV series The Waltons. Geer was a social activist, touring government work camps in the 1930s with folk singers like Burl Ives and Woody Guthrie, and participating in the 1934 West Coast waterfront strike.

In his biography, fellow organizer and Gay Rights pioneer Harry Hay details Geer's involvement in these strikes, and their intimate relationship while organizing for the strike. Geer is credited with introducing Guthrie to Pete Seeger at the Grapes of Wrath benefit Geer organized in 1940 for migrant farm workers.

On this date the American composer SAMUEL BARBER was born. A prolific composer of music ranging from orchestral, to opera, choral, and piano music, Barber is probably best known for his "Adagio for Strings" which was an immediate success after being performed by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Arturo Toscanini in 1938. Toscanini had very rarely performed music by American composers before. At the end of the first rehearsal of the piece, Toscanini remarked: "Semplice e bella" ("simple and beautiful"). Barber was 28 years old at the time.

The composition would became an important piece of the 20th century classical repertoire. It has been heard in films such as Platoon, The Elephant Man, El Norte, Amélie, Lorenzo's Oil andReconstruction. In 1945, it was played at the funeral of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Many of his compositions were commissioned or first performed by such famous artists as Vladimir Horowitz, Eleanor Steber, Raya Garbousova, John Browning, Leontyne Price, Pierre Bernac, Francis Poulenc, and Dietrich Fischer Dieskau.

The great love of Barber's life was probably the composer GIAN CARLO MENOTTI. The two met when Barber was eighteen-years old and Menotti arrived at the Curtis Institute, where Barber was a student. Menotti and Barber instantly found a connection, one which started as a shared passion for similar music styles and drifted slowly into a passionate sexual relationship. Around the campus, their "close relationship" was well known. But this was an artistic institute and few of the other students cared for prejudice. With all minds, eyes and ears focused on music, the boys were able to conduct a blossoming relationship undisturbed.

After leaving the Curtis Institute, Barber and Menotti traveled around Europe after Barber won a Pulitzer Travel Grant and the award was immediately followed by another; the American Prix de Rome, allowing him to study at the American Academy, itself based in Rome.  It was there that Barber was to produce one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, the Adagio for Strings.

With the Adagio's near immediate success there came recording contracts and several commissions. When war broke out, the couple both managed to avoid active service, Menotti through his Italian nationality, Barber by joining the band of the American Air Corps. After the war was over, the couple bought a large house in New York with the intention of living and writing there together for the rest of their lives. Barber continued to work on choral pieces as well as his symphonies. Barber would win two Pulitzers, for a piano concerto and for an opera based on a libretto by Menotti.

Although his work was on a high, Barber found it hard to live up to the early success of the Adagio and he eventually slipped into a deep depression. He split with his long term partner Menotti and moved to Switzerland, living in almost total seclusion. Menotti moved to other successes and eventually married. Barber died of cancer in 1981 in New York City at the age of 70. Menotti was at his side.

Today is the birthday of Belgian/Flemish singer, actor, radio host and lyricist WILL FERDY.  Born in Ghent as Werner Ferdinande, Ferdy was the first Flemish Gay celebrity to come out on national TV (in 1970) in Belgium.

MARK MERLIS, who died on this date, was an American writer and health policy analyst. Born in Framingham, Massachusetts and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Merlis attended Wesleyan University and Brown University. 

He subsequently took a job with the Maryland Department of Health to support himself while writing. In 1987, he took a job with the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress as a social legislation specialist, and was involved in the creation of the Ryan White Care Act.

Beginning in the 1990s, Merlis published a series of novels. His first novel, American Studies, won the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Literature and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction in 1995, and his second, An Arrow’s Flight, won the 1999 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction. Merlis lived in Philadelphia, with his husband Bob Ashe, and continued to work as an independent health policy consultant up until his disease made it impossible. He died from complications of ALS.

ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE, American artist, died on this date (b. 1946); An American photographer, known for his large-scale, highly stylized black & white portraits, photos of flowers and male nudes. The frank, erotic nature of some of the work of his middle period triggered a more general controversy about the public funding of artworks. Mapplethorpe made most of his photographs in the studio. Common themes were flowers, especially orchids; portraits of famous individuals, including Andy Warhol, Deborah Harry. Richard Gere, Peter Gabriel, Grace Jones and Patti Smith (Patti Smith's portrait  was inspired by Durer's 1500 self-portrait) and nude works that include homoerotic imagery from classic nudes to BDSM acts.


Mapplethorpe is best known for his Portfolio X series, which sparked national attention because of its explicit content and the funding of the effort by the National Endowment for the Arts, including a self-portrait with a bullwhip inserted in his anus. The title of this photograph given to it by its creator is Self-Portrait, 1978.


From the late summer of 1990 forward, some commentators writing about the Portfolio X and NEA controversies for audiences unlikely to have extensive prior knowledge of Mr Mapplethorpe's work refer to this photograph as Indiana Jones & The Tunnel of Doom. Likewise the tryptique Jim and Tom, Sausalito, 1977-1978, the one involving urination, as Recycled Lemonade and the photograph Helmut and Brooks, N.Y.C, 1978, involving fisting as Iron Fist and others as Into The Wiener Tunnel etc. His photographs of black men have been criticized as exploitative.


Singer Patti Smith writes eloquently and movingly of their early relationship in her 2010 National Book Award-winning book, Just Kids. It can be obtained here.