MARILYN MONROE, American actress born (d. 1962); Poor Norma Jean. Packaged and sold around the globe as a male wet dream, exploited even after death by necrophiliac writers, great and small, vilified in a gross and pompous play by her former husband, is it any wonder that she once found a rare moment of comfort in an affair with a female drama coach?

Of the mountain of words written about her, this one nugget, mined from an otherwise useless book by her personal maid, seems to make good psychological sense. And isn’t it interesting that the incident should be related in the only book written about her by another woman?

FERRON, (nee Debby Foisy) was born on this date. A Canadian folk singer/songwriter and poet. In addition to being one of Canada's most famous folk musicians, she is one of the most influential writers and performers of women’s music, and an important influence on later musicians such as Ani DiFranco, Mary Gauthier and the Indigo Girls.

Of her earliest musical memories, she wrote, "my mother’s French Canadian family played music. I heard guitars and banjo and accordion and scrub board and my grandfather clogging. I put it together...music meant fun, meant love and laughter. I started writing songs when I was ten, never saved them after some kids at school found them and teased me about it. I wrote songs and remembered them and when I forgot them I felt they were not important anymore. The next time I saved a song I was eighteen. It was 1970." It was with that first saved song that she made her professional debut in 1975, playing the song "Who Loses" at a benefit for the Women's Press Gang, a feminist publishing house.

In 1971, Foisy changed her name to Ferron when one of her friends had a dream in which she was called Ferron.

She has recorded fifteen albums and established her own record label, Lucy Records. She released her debut album, Ferron in 1977. The album was recorded in a video studio on two-track equipment, and, as she stated, "the production quality was pretty poor". Nonetheless, all one thousand copies printed sold quickly.
1980's Testimony was her first professionally produced album, and brought her much interest in the United States, particularly in the women's music community. Her 1984 album Shadows on a Dime received a rating of four stars (out of five) from Rolling Stone magazine, which called Ferron "a culture hero" and the album "cowgirl meets Yeats...a thing of beauty."

Ferron teaches master classes in writing and has opened an artist retreat for women in Three Rivers, Michigan, called "The Fen Peace and Poetry Camp for Women." For Ferron, "artistic expression is not only essential, it’s revolutionary." "Art is really the expression of the soul," Ferron says. "I'm asking women to remember that if we remember our soul, we keep our soul, and we can do it through artistic connections. Art is connected to the soul, and the soul is connected to God, and God is connected to humility, so if you want to take control of a person's soul, don't let them have art. To me it's a revolutionary act to continue keeping your artist soul alive"

BRANDI M. CARLILE was born on this date;  Carlile is a Grammy-nominated American folk rock and Americana singer-songwriter. Born in Ravensdale, Washington, she dropped out of high school to pursue a career in music, teaching herself piano and guitar. Her debut commercial album, Brandi Carlile, was released to critical acclaim but to limited commercial success. She garnered wider recognition and commercial success with her 2007 single "The Story", from the album of the same name, The Story turned gold in 2017, having sold 500,000 copies to date. 

Carlile's most successful album to date, The Firewatcher's Daughter earned her a Grammy Nomination for Best Americana Album and peaked at number 9 on the Billboard 200.

Carlile has released six albums including The Story (2007), Give Up the Ghost (2009) and Live at the Benaroya Hall with the Seattle Symphony (2011), the last reaching number 14 on the Top Rock Album chart. In May 2017, Carlile released Cover Stories, Brandi Carlile Celebrates 10 Years of The Story, An Album to Benefit War Child. Featuring fourteen artists covering tracks from the original The Story album, including Adele, Pearl Jam and Dolly Parton, it debuted at number 30 on the Billboard Chart. She released her seventh album, By the Way I Forgive You, on February 16, 2018.

She said of her style, "I've gone through all sorts of vocal phases, from pop to blues to R&B, but no matter what I do, I just can't get the country and western out of my voice." Carlile has been a part of several activism campaigns and advocates for causes ranging from spreading awareness for health issues to women empowerment.

In a November 2002 interview, Carlile identified herself as a Lesbian. She later told the Los Angeles Times, "I don't have to have a lot of formality around it ... there were people before me who paved the way." In June 2012 she announced she was engaged to Catherine Shepherd. The two were married in Boston, Massachusetts on September 15, 2012. They welcomed their first child on June 15, 2014, a daughter named Evangeline Ruth Carlile. In February of 2018, Carlile announced via Instagram that her wife is expecting their second child.

Her website: http://bytheway.brandicarlile.com/ 

JAMES BUCHANAN, 15th President of the United States died on this date (b. 1791); For fifteen years in Washington D.C., prior to his presidency, Buchanan lived with his close friend, Alabama Senator William Rufus King.

King became Vice President under Franklin Pierce. He took ill and died shortly after Pierce's inauguration, and four years before Buchanan became President. Buchanan and King's close relation prompted the Donald Trump of his day, Andrew Jackson (who could be a serious horse’s ass without much effort before he had even had his morning whiskey...no surprise the current occupant hung his portrait in the Oval Office) to refer to King as "Miss Nancy" and "Aunt Fancy," while Aaron V. Brown spoke of the two as "Buchanan and his wife."

Further, some of the contemporary press also speculated about Buchanan and King's relationship. Buchanan and King's nieces destroyed their uncles' correspondence, leaving some questions as to what relationship the two men had, but the length and intimacy of surviving letters illustrate "the affection of a special friendship", and Buchanan wrote of his "communion" with his housemate. Such expression, however, was not necessarily unusual among men at the time. Circumstances surrounding Buchanan and King's close emotional ties have led to speculation that he was America's first Gay president.

The only President never to marry, Buchanan turned to Harriet Lane, an orphaned niece whom he had earlier adopted, to act as his First Lady. "I feel that it is not good for man to be alone", he wrote, "and [I] should not be astonished to find myself married to some old maid who can nurse me when I am sick, provide good dinners for me when I am well, and not expect from me any very ardent or romantic affection."

HELEN KELLER, American humanitarian, died (b. 1880); an American author, activist and lecturer. She was the first deaf and blind person to graduate from college.

The story of how Keller's teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become known worldwide through the dramatic depictions of the play The Miracle Worker.

What is much less well known is how Keller's life developed after she completed her education. A prolific author, she was well traveled, and was outspoken in her opposition to war. She campaigned for women’s suffrage, worker’s rights and socialism, as well as many other progressive causes.

Keller never married and when she died in her sleep on June 1, 1968, passing away 26 days before her 88th birthday, at her home in Arcan Ridge near Westport, Connecticut, a service was held in her honor at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC and her ashes were placed there next to her constant companions, Anne Sullivan and Polly Thompson.

London's underground newspaper, the INTERNATIONAL TIMES (IT), loses its appeal of a recent conviction for indecency, for having run personal ads for Gay men. The judge rules that while the acts may be legal, public encouragement of the acts is not.

DRUMMER magazine debuts.

West Virginia decriminalizes private consensual adult homosexual acts.

Jerry Falwell forms THE MORAL MAJORITY. It is, of course, neither.

File under “You Can’t Make This Shit Up”: On this date the United States Pentagon receives a proposal from the Air Force requesting funds to build a "GAY BOMB" that would turn enemy troops Gay. The proposal would not come to light until 2007 when the Sunshine Project would discover it through a Freedom of Information Act disclosure.

As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."

The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon. In both of the documents, the possibility was canvassed that a strong aphrodisiac could be dropped on enemy troops, ideally one which would also cause "homosexual behavior."

The documents described the aphrodisiac weapon as "distasteful but completely non-lethal". The "New Discoveries Needed" section of one of the documents implicitly acknowledges that no such chemicals are actually known. The reports also include many other off-beat ideas, such as spraying enemy troops with bee pheromones and then hiding numerous beehives in the combat area, and a chemical weapon that would give the enemy bad breath.

The Wright Laboratory, which had made the proposal, won the 2007 Ig-Nobel Peace Prize for "instigating research & development on a chemical weapon—the so-called 'Gay bomb' / 'poof bomb' —that will make enemy soldiers become sexually irresistible to each other." However, Air Force personnel contacted were not willing to attend the award ceremony at Harvard University's Sanders Theater to accept the award in person.