WARREN MILLER was born (d: 1966) Author of The Cool World, Flush Times and Looking For The General. James Baldwin called The Cool World “one of the best novels of Harlem that has yet come my way."

The book was set in Harlem and was received well for its portrayal of Harlem in the early 1960s. June Jordan wrote that the novel contained "some of the most beautiful and rhythmic sentences ever printed." Miller was a white author writing about black life, but Jordan wrote that he was "gifted with an extraordinary, accurate and willing ear."

Miller counted among his friends and fans writers as diverse as Conor Cruise O’Brien, Dan Wakefield, Paul Engle, and Victor Navasky. Miller wrote that he "was striving for some kind of fusion of Miss [Djuna] Barnes’ sensibility and [John] Dos Passos’ social consciousness.”

DEL MARQUIS lead guitarist for the group Scissor Sisters, Marquis was born Derek Gruen in New York, and is one of three Gay band members in the group. He was introduced to the band at the insistence of his best friend, David Russell, who was dating lead singer Jake Shears at the time. He originally hated the band when he first saw them perform in a New York Gay bar named 'The Cock'.

His current membership of the band is due to his reappraisal of their music when he next came across them some months later, and subsequent reply to an advertisement the band had placed in a newspaper for a guitarist. According to his own account on the band DVD, he has stalked several renowned guitarists, sometimes sleeping outside the hotels they were sleeping in. One of these was Robert Smith of The Cure. Unlike the outrageously flamboyant stage image of Jake Shears and Ana Matronic, his fellow band members, Del possesses a slightly more subdued image on stage, although still has a recognizable style of his own. He has a keen interest in graphic design and film, is known as an advocate for civil rights and 'liberation concepts', and possesses an unofficial fan group who call themselves "The Deltoids," with whom he has a relatively good relationship.

The first day of the first Faerie Gathering that called itself "A SPIRITUAL CONFERENCE OF RADICAL FAERIES," was on this date, held in Benson Arizona, on Labor Day Weekend, 1979. Harry Hay, the "father of the gay rights movement" began the Mattachine society in 1950. In 1970, Hay moved to New Mexico in a quest to find a living berdache (a Native American Gay male spirit guide). In 1978, Hay, along with John Burnside, Don Kilhefner, and Mitch Walker, formed the Radical Faeries, a group devoted to ecology, spiritual truth and Gay centeredness. In 1979, the first gathering of Radical Faeries took place in the Arizona desert with over 200 gay men in attendance.

There had been earlier usage of the term "radical faerie" employed in San Francisco by author ("Witchcraft & The Gay Counterculture") and Gay philosopher, Arthur Evans, which a group of men who met regularly including Murray Edelman.  The desert Gathering seemed to create the "tipping point" for the movement which is now spread internationally, with Radical Faerie groups and sanctuaries in Europe, South America, India and Australia

The text of The Call for the first gathering:

THE FIRST CALL: To share new insights about ourselves; To dance in the moonlight; To renew our oath against patriarchy/corporations/racism; To hold, protect, nurture and caress one another; To talk about the politics of Gay enspiritment/the enspiritment of Gay politics; To find the healing space inside our hearts; To become Inspirer/Listener as we share new breakthroughs in how we perceive Gay consciousness; To soar like an eagle; To re-discover/re-invent our myths; To talk about Gay living/loving alternatives; To experience the groundedness of the calamus root; To share out Gay visions;To sing, sing, sing; TO EVOKE A GREAT FAERIE CIRCLE

Farewell Message Left By Edward Carpenter To Be Read Over His Grave

I SHOULD like these few words to be read over the grave when my body is placed in the earth; for though it is possible I may be present and conscious of what is going on, I shall not be able to communicate.

Too much, perhaps, is made of Death by us little mortals; and I think sometimes that we grieve too hardly over those that are gone. Of course, the parting from the daily sight and touch of dear friends is hard, very hard-but I doubt it after all this parting is so complete as we sometimes think. Who is there who has not felt the presence of one who has departed-a presence remaining still near him for weeks, months, and even years, and touching him so nearly that almost the voice could be heard and the form seen? Who is there who has not been conscious of strange intimations thus coming to him as from another world? Does it not seem, after all, that the friend is there, only speaking to our hearts more deeply, more intimately, more tenderly than in the ordinary life?

Nor need we be afraid of death, either for ourselves or for our friends, as if it were an evil or a harmful thing, lying ever in wait for us. On the contrary, it is surely a perfectly natural event, and part of the wholesome order of the world, as we see every day of our lives. Birth does not seem to us an evil thing, but rather a strange and wonderful passage from some other state of being into this present existence; and so death-which in many ways is the counterpart of birth-would seem to be just such a wonderful passage out of this world again; one perhaps out of many, many such passages which the far-journeying soul of man must make, under the wing of the ever-abiding Presence.

Nor would one perhaps—even if the chance were offered—wish to escape dying. That would hardly be desirable. For since everyone has to die-and such countless millions have made that passage into the unknown—there would seem to be something mean and unfriendly in trying to avoid the common lot. Better to share it frankly with others, whatever it may be. Probably indeed the escaping of this change would turn out in the end to be a considerable loss instead of a great gain. Fancy anyone being condemned to live, as now, for ever-and to wear out all his old clothes, and his old body, and all his old ambitions and passions, and to go on repeating the same old jokes and stories till even his old friends were worn out as well! What a Fate! But from such an end kindly Death does indeed deliver us.

And whatever the region to which we pass, Love saves us there, as it does here. It creates a world in which the soul can live and expand in freedom. The ties which bind us together here are not going to be snapt so easily as some of you may think. For indeed, I believe that those who truly love are already joined together in a world far beyond and behind the visible;—and in that world they are safe-and their love is safe-from the storms of time and misadventure.

Therefore do not think too much of the dead husk of your friend, or mourn too much over it; but send your thoughts out towards the real soul or self which has escaped-to reach it. For so, surely you will cast a light of gladness upon his onward journey, and contribute your part towards the building of that kingdom of love which links our earth to heaven.

E.C.

December 30, 1910