Steve Walker (1961 - January 4, 2012)

On January 4, 2012, Steve Walker died unexpectedly at his home in Costa Rica. He was 50 years old. Steve Walker was perhaps the first gay themed modern artist I started to recognize and he was also the wonderful artist for the cover of Michael Thomas Ford, one of the first gay authors to go mainstream. According to me, Steve Walker launched a new era for all the LGBT artists and he will be really, really missed.

Drawing was one of Steve Walker's earliest childhood memories. He recollected drawing pictures from about the age of three or four years old. Drawing came naturally to the Toronto artist, and his love of the art form continued into his adulthood. As a self taught artist, Walker only began painting after a trip to Europe when he was 25 years old. During the trip, he spent much of his time in Europe touring the great galleries and museums. In his words it was the first time he was exposed to great painting, and the first time he recognized the potential power of the art form. "I was moved by something that I was capable of doing," he said. His first paintings were done in a somewhat secretive way, as he had no intention of exhibiting or selling, and had no aspirations of becoming a professional artist.


Trusted Hand, 1999

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More Artists at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Art

Literary Heritage: T.S. Eliot (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965)

Although Eliot liked to be thought of as the most impersonal of poets, looking at the world with a detached and objective eye, many personal elements in the poems deserve to be read with the poet's life in mind. Indeed, there may have been personal reasons for his "impersonality." Certainly, one of its effects was to give the impression that he had something to hide. A number of younger writers, including Hart Crane and Harold Norse, assumed he was homosexual.

At the emotional core of Eliot's poetry is his friendship with Jean Verdenal (1889-1915), a young Frenchman. All we know for certain is that the relationship took place in Paris in 1910 and 1911 while Eliot was studying at the Sorbonne and that Verdenal died in the Great War in 1915 at the age of 26.

A month later, Eliot hurriedly married his first wife, Vivien. In 1917, he dedicated Prufrock and Other Observations to Verdenal's memory, over an epigraph from Dante's Purgatorio that expresses "the measure of the love which warms me towards you."

This quotation comes from one of Eliot's two favorite segments of the Divine Comedy, both of which he kept returning to throughout his career: In Inferno XV, Dante meets Brunetto Latini among the sodomites (the "violent against nature"); and in Purgatorio XXVI, he meets Arnaut Daniel among more sodomites and "hermaphrodites."

Eliot's love for Verdenal is one of the central facts of The Waste Land. In particular, it is possible to identify the so-called Hyacinth girl of the poem's opening section with the poet's sentimental memory of "a friend coming across the Luxembourg Gardens in the late afternoon, waving a branch of lilac."

This figure is then subsumed into the theme of death by water, which is in turn mixed with references to the trenches of the Great War. The poem's despair is expressed as both personal and philosophical loss in the crucial line, "He who was living is now dead."

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Citation Information
Author: Woods, Gregory
Entry Title: Eliot, T[homas] S[tearns]
General Editor: Claude J. Summers
Publication Name: glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture
Publication Date: 2002
Date Last Updated February 21, 2005
Web Address www.glbtq.com/literature/eliot_ts.html
Publisher glbtq, Inc.
1130 West Adams
Chicago, IL 60607
Today's Date January 4, 2013
Encyclopedia Copyright: © 2002-2006, glbtq, Inc.
Entry Copyright © 1995, 2002 New England Publishing Associates

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Michael Stipe & Thomas Dozol

There was always a lot of speculation about the sexuality of Michael Stipe, lead singer of mega-band R.E.M, especially since his lyrics contain occasional homoerotic references. Then, in the February 1995 issue of Details magazine, an interview was printed where Stipe answered the question "Do you sleep with people of both sexes?" with an unambiguous "Yeah." And in a 2001 interview with Time he labeled himself a "queer artist." Then in 2008, prior to release of a new album and a world tour, he made it official in an interview with Spin, adding: "I recognize that to have public figures be very open about their sexuality helps some kid somewhere out there." Shortly thereafter he released a video on YouTube "outing" bandmates Peter Buck and Mike Mills: "They are both, after years of awkward speculations, heterosexual or straight." (Pictures: all photos by Todd Selby)

John Michael Stipe (born January 4, 1960) is an American singer, lyricist and visual artist. He was the lead vocalist of the alternative rock band R.E.M. from their formation in 1980 until their dissolution in 2011. (Picture: Thomas Dozol)

Stipe is noted and occasionally parodied for the "mumbling" style of his early career as well as his social and political activism. He was in charge of R.E.M.'s visual image; often selecting album artwork and directing many of the band's music videos. Outside of the music industry, he runs his own film production companies: C-00 and Single Cell Pictures.

With the success of the albums Out of Time (1991) and Automatic for the People (1992), R.E.M. became mainstream music stars. Around 1992, rumors that Stipe had contracted HIV began to circulate. According to Stipe, he did not start the rumor and he does not know who did.

Not that I can tell. I wore a hat that said 'White House Stop AIDS'. I’m skinny. I’ve always been skinny, except in 1985 when I looked like Marlon Brando, the last time I shaved my head. I was really sick then. Eating potatoes. I think AIDS hysteria would obviously and naturally extend to people who are media figures and anybody of indecipherable or unpronounced sexuality. Anybody who looks gaunt, for whatever reason. Anybody who is associated, for whatever reason – whether it's a hat, or the way I carry myself – as being queer-friendly. —Michael Stipe

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Stipe

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More LGBT Couples at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Real Life Romance

Ronald Muchnick (1938 - January 4, 1994)

Ronald Muchnick was an Hollywood talent agent, personal manager and producer.

A native of Ann Arbor, Mich., and a child actor there, Muchnick was educated at the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University.

Head of his own management firm since 1980, Muchnick represented such celebrities as Richard Gere, Joseph Mascolo, Clifton Davis, Lesley Ann Warren and Marian Mercer.

Muchnick worked in New York during the 1960s and 1970s, where he was house manager of New York's Helen Hayes Theatre and later co-artistic director of the URGENT Theatre Company, which produced off-Broadway plays.

He died at 56 on January 4, 1994, in Los Angeles for AIDS complications.

Source: http://articles.latimes.com/1994-01-07/news/mn-9237_1_management-firm

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A Marked Man (Assassin/Shifter) by Sandrine Gasq-Dion

The first in the Assassin/Shifter series, you can see the author is planning the structure of the entire story. Introducing Mateo, the hired assassin working for a semi-legal US government special unit, the author tried to make him “evil” but sincerely he comes through more like a man in need of “comfort” love. Mateo is alone, and he clings to everyone showing him a little love, it could be his lesbian best friend Naomi, or his closeted superior officer, Derek. Mateo claims to like his life on the run, without attachments, but he is the first to admit he is falling for Riley, the young CEO he is supposed to kill.

Lucky Riley, Mateo is always checking his orders, and when the target is an apparently innocent man, Mateo decides not to go through with it. And indeed they were set up, and they ended with Mateo being the guardian angel to Riley.

Riley is young and naïve in life like he is clever in his job as CEO of an electronics firm working for the government. Deeply in the closet, he is awakened to his desires from the close proximity with Mateo, and he got attacked to him like he would with a security blanket. Mateo represents his safe harbor, and on his side, Mateo is willing to play the role.

Even if the author tried to make this an high % adrenaline story, to me it was more romantic and sweet than else. And the happily ever after was obviously in the future of not only Mateo and Riley, but also of all the other men around them.

Amazon: A Marked Man
Amazon Kindle: A Marked Man
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (January 11, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1470033860
ISBN-13: 978-1470033866

Reading List: http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle