REGIE CABICO (U.S.) poet and spoken word pioneer was born on this date (though we can’t seem to find the year…so I’m guessing at an approximate insertion here). Cabico, who has been called the "Lady Gaga of Spoken Word" won the Nuyorican Poets Café Grand Slam in 1993. Television appearances include two seasons on HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam.” His work appears in over 30 anthologies. He co-edited Poetry Nation: A North American Anthology of Fusion Poetry (1998). He has directed two plays for the 2007 and 2008 Hip Hop Theater Festival, Elegies in the Key of Funk and The Other Side.

He has been artist-in-residence for New York University’s Asian American Studies program and at Deanza College. He is the artistic director of Sol & Soul, an arts and activist organization in Washington, D.C.

The French singer, songwriter and writer, CHARLES TRENET was born on this date (d. 2001). Born in Narbonne. He was one of France most famous chansonniers.

Trenet wrote his first song when he was ten. He studied at the Academie des Arts Decoratives in Paris and made his first recording in 1934, together with Swiss singer Johnny Hess as the duo 'Charles et Johnny'.

Trenet was known as 'Le Fou Chantant' ("The singing fool"). Hits: La Mer (popularized in the U.S. by Bobby Darin in 1960 under the title 'Beyond The Sea' and recently by Robbie Williams), Douce France (1943), Menilmontant, Printemps a Rio, Boum! Albums: Olympia 1975, Le Fou Chantant 1937-1950, Mon coeur s'envole (1994)

ROBIN BLASER - Author and poet Robin Francis Blaser born (d: 2009) A noted writer in both the United States and Canada, Blaser grew up in Idaho, and came to Berkeley, California, in 1944. There he met Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan, and became a key figure in the so-called San Francisco Movement of the 1950s and early 1960s. He moved to Canada in 1966, joining the faculty of Simon Fraser University; he held the position of Professor Emeritus. He lived in the Kitsilano neighborhood of Vancouver, British Columbia.

Blaser was also well known as the editor of The Collected Books of Jack Spicer, which includes Blaser's essay, The Practice of Outside. The 1993 publication The Holy Forest represents his collected poems to that date. In 2006, Blaser received a special Lifetime Recognition Award given by the trustees of the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry, which also awards the annual Griffin Poetry Prize. Blaser won the Prize itself in 2008. Blaser passed away on May 7th 2009.

DON BACHARDY was born. The lifelong partner of writer Christopher Isherwood, Bachardy is one of the most respected portrait artists in the U.S. and a widely respected artist in his own right.

Born in Los Angeles, Bachardy began drawing as a child. By his early teenage years, he was specializing in portraits rendered in ink and acrylics. Bachardy attributes his interest in looking at people to his childhood obsession with movies, a passion carried into his adult life. The close-ups of screen actors upon which he gazed as an impressionable child are at least partially responsible for his lifelong interest in portraiture.

Bachardy was only eighteen years old when he met Isherwood, who was thirty years his senior. The discrepancy in their ages shocked many of their friends; but in his memoir My Guru and His Disciple (1980), Isherwood observes that "I myself didn't feel guilty about it, but I did feel awed by the emotional intensity of our relationship, right from its beginning; the strange sense of a fated, mutual discovery. I knew that, this time, I had really committed myself."

Through his relationship with Isherwood over the years in Hollywood, Bachardy came in contact with most of the major names of the day, and painted their portraits. The book Stars in My Eyes catalogs some of the most famous of these fine line pen and ink drawings. He has moved on to full blown acrylic paintings of his subjects (this writer included). When I asked Don about the pen and ink drawings Bachardy simply said that he wanted to be “confident of my drafting skills” so he could move on to paint. He is the recent subject of a lovely documentary about his relationship with Isherwood, Chris and Don.

If you can find it, Bachardy's stunning collection of daily portraits of his dying lover, Last Drawings of Christopher Isherwood is a stunning study of love, devotion, art and death. A masterwork.

LANFORD WILSON'S The Madness of Lady Bright premiered at the Caffe Cino in New York. It was followed by a string of revolutionary gay plays long before The Boys in the Band or Angels in America. For more: http://caffecino.wordpress.com/1920/01/01/gay-plays-at-the-cino/

Gambian President Yahya Jammeh said he would 'cut off the head' of any homosexual caught in his country. Addressing supporters at the end of his “meet the farmers tour” Sunday, Jammeh also ordered any hotel or motel housing homosexuals to close down, adding that owners of such facilities would also be in trouble. He said the Gambia was a country of believers, indicating that no sinful and immoral act as homosexual would be tolerated in the country. He warned all homosexuals in the country to leave, noting that a legislation 'stricter than those in Iran' concerning the vice would be introduced soon. Unbelievably Jammeh gave the commencement address at St. Mary's College of Maryland in 2004.