Andrew Howard & Charles Karel Bouley

Charles Karel Bouley (born November 7, 1962), known on-the-air as Karel, is an American talk radio host and author. He is chiefly known for his two stints of work on KGO radio show in San Francisco, California. Prior to working for KGO the first time, Bouley and his late domestic partner, Andrew Howard, were the first openly gay radio talk show hosts on KFI in Los Angeles. Karel and Howard met in 1989 and were together until Howard's death in 2001. Born and raised in Big Bear, Calif., Howard met Bouley at a Garden Grove club. At the time, Bouley was writing copy and shooting pictures for music publications. Howard waited tables at Reuben's Steak House.

He was fired from KGO in November 2008. Bouley was forced to recreate himself, returning to stand-up comedy and re-entering radio in a market where no one would hire him. Subsequently, he independently syndicated his show five days a week, going nationwide after negotiating a satellite hookup. In November 2011, Karel returned to KGO, where he currently occupies his previous weekend time slot, in addition to his weekday show.

Bouley is a high profile blogger for The Huffington Post, and his editorials have appeared in The Wall Street Journal. He was also an editor and columnist for The Advocate.com, and a celebrity photographer for Billboard Magazine.

Charles Raymond Bouley, II was born November 7, 1962, in Miami Beach, Florida, to Charles Raymond Bouley (1929-1987) and Rose Marie (née Tremblay) Bouley (1930-2003). He has been an entertainer since childhood, emceeing his first event in 7th grade, the talent show, "Car Wash", at his junior high school. While attending Long Beach Poly High School, Bouley was editor of the high school's newspaper, "High Life." and reviewing plays for his school paper for free by taking the words "high school" out of the paper's masthead and getting on all the PR lists. As a member of the press he was able to be included on press-only lists for premieres and openings in the Los Angeles area. With this type of press access, Bouley began attending stage productions and writing reviews of the shows for publication in his school and community newspapers. Unable to afford tickets to movies, he became an usher at the Long Beach Terrace Theatre so he could review the new releases.


Karel and Andrew by Judy Jones
Charles Karel Bouley, known on-the-air as Karel, is an American talk radio host and author. Bouley and his late domestic partner, Andrew Howard, were the first openly gay radio talk show hosts on KFI in Los Angeles. Karel and Howard met in the late 80s and were together until Howard's death in 2001. Following the death of Andrew, Bouley went on to file and win a lawsuit in the Court of Appeal of the State of California to establish the rights of domestic partners to be recognized.

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

( Further Readings )

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

Chrystos (born November 7, 1946)

Chrystos (born November 7, 1946) is a Menominee rights activist and poet. Prior to being published, she worked as a home caretaker, and an activist for Turtle Mountain Band of Chipewa, Norma Jean Croy (involved in a firefight with police), and Leonard Peltier.

Born in San Francisco, United States, Chrystos is a Lesbian- and Two-Spirit-identified writer who focuses on themes revolving around the violence that adjoins everyday life in many urban areas. She also tries to incorporate an awareness of universal currents in her works, introducing a diverse mixture of characters and ideas. Her first published work, Not Vanishing, concentrates on a Native American woman and the environment she returns to after work, a life shielded from mainstream cultural understanding.

Bibliography
This Bridge Called My Back (anthology) Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1981, contributor
Not Vanishing, Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 1988, ISBN 0-8897-4015-1
Dream On, Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 1991
In Her I Am, Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 1993
Fugitive Colors, Cleveland: Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1995, ISBN 1-8808-3411-1
Fire Power, Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 1995, ISBN 0-889-7404-7X
Some Poems By People I Like (anthology of 5 poets) Toronto: sandraslittlebookshop, 2007, ISBN 978-0-9739540-1-2

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

( Chrystos, 1994, by Robert Giard )

( Further Readings )

More Particular Voices at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Particular Voices

Isobel Gunn (c. 1780 – 7 November 1861)

Isobel (Isabel or Isabella) Gunn (c. 1780? – 7 November 1861), also known as John Fubbister or Mary Fubbister, was a Scottish labourer employed by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), noted for having passed herself as a man, thereby becoming, not just a pioneer of feminism, but the first European woman to travel to Rupert's Land, now part of Western Canada.

Gunn was born on the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland, perhaps near the town of Kirkwall. Little is known of her early life until the summer of 1806, when, under the pseudonym John Fubbister, she entered into a contract with the HBC as a labourer for three years at £8 per annum. Although her motivations for doing so are uncertain, tradition holds that she may have been following a lover who had cast her aside. Her brother George was also employed by the HBC, and it is also possible that she was enticed to join by his stories of adventure. Modern commentators point out that the modest HBC salary was nevertheless more than Gunn could have hoped for as a woman in Orkney at that time. Official HBC policy forbade employment of European women, although First Nation women were employed as cooks and domestic servants in company outposts.

In the Autumn of 1807 Gunn was assigned to a brigade tasked with provisioning more distant outposts, and travelled with them to Martin Falls and then on to the HBC outpost on the Red River at Pembina in modern North Dakota, a distance of more than 2,900 kilometres. Once again, Gunn worked unsuspected alongside the men. The pretence was maintained until the morning of 29 December 1807, when to general astonishment, Gunn gave birth to a baby boy at the home of Alexander Henry the younger, then chief of the North West Company's Pembina post. According to Henry's journal:

I returned to my room, where I had not been long before he sent one of my own people, requesting the favour of speaking with me. Accordingly, I stepped down to him, and was much surprised to find him extended out upon the hearth, uttering most dreadful lamentations; he stretched out his hand towards me and in a piteful tone of voice begg’d my assistance, and requested I would take pity upon a poor helpless abandoned wretch, who was not of the sex I had every reason to suppose. But was an unfortunate Orkney girl pregnant and actually in childbirth, in saying this she opened her jacket and display’d to my view a pair of beautiful round white breasts.

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

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Lawrence Durrell (February 27, 1912 - November 7, 1990)

Although a heterosexual, Lawrence Durrell created in his novels a sophisticated literary world in which both male and female homosexuality are significant and recognized presences.

Durrell was born on February 27, 1912, in Julundar, India, of an Irish mother and a British civil-engineer father. He attended the College of St. Joseph, Darjeeling, India, and St. Edmund's School, Canterbury, England. He chose not to qualify for Oxford or Cambridge.

In 1935, the family moved to Corfu, Greece. From there, Durrell regularly visited London and Paris, where he met Henry Miller in 1937 after a two-year correspondence. Miller introduced him to T. S. Eliot; and while he was in Paris in 1937 and 1938, Durrell, Miller, and Alfred Perlès formed an avant-garde literary magazine entitled Booster (renamed Delta in April 1938).

Durrell's early life is reflected in his autobiographical poem "Cities, Plains, and People" (1943). Although Durrell was a heterosexual man who married many times, his art reflects an unusual degree of sexual liberation and incorporates characters of diverse sexualities.

A novelist, poet, translator, playwright, critic, and travel writer, Durrell is best known for The Alexandria Quartet, a series of four novels (Justine [1957], Balthazar [1958], Mountolive [1959], and Clea [1960]), which encompasses themes of sex, lust, and decadence in the twentieth century. Each of the novels is prefaced by an epigraph from the Marquis de Sade, who is one of Durrell's artistic heroes.

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Citation Information
Author: McClanahan, Clarence
Entry Title: Durrell, Lawrence
General Editor: Claude J. Summers
Publication Name: glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture
Publication Date: 2002
Date Last Updated October 25, 2005
Web Address www.glbtq.com/literature/durrell_l.html
Publisher glbtq, Inc.
1130 West Adams
Chicago, IL 60607
Today's Date November 7, 2012
Encyclopedia Copyright: © 2002-2006, glbtq, Inc.
Entry Copyright © 1995, 2002 New England Publishing Associates

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Lisa Ben (born November 7, 1921)

Edith Eyde (born 1921), also known by her pen name Lisa Ben, is an American editor, author, and songwriter. She created the first known lesbian publication in the world, Vice Versa. Ben produced the magazine for a year and distributed it locally in Los Angeles, California in the late 1940s. She was also active in lesbian bars as a musician in the years following her involvement with Vice Versa. Eyde has been recognized as a pioneer in the LGBT movement.

Eyde was born in San Francisco in 1921 and grew up an only child on an apricot ranch. Her father was an insurance agent and her mother was a housewife. She studied violin for eight years. Eyde developed her first crush on another girl when she was in high school, although she did not identify as lesbian until several years later. When her crush broke off the relationship, a devastated Eyde spoke with her mother. Her mother's adverse reaction convinced Eyde not to discuss her personal or romantic life with her parents again. After attending college for two years, Eyde acquiesced to her parents' demands and took a secretarial course in 1942. After three years of saving her money, she defied her parents and moved, first to Palo Alto, and then to Los Angeles in 1945.

Eyde first identified as a lesbian in 1946, when she noticed that many of the other women in her apartment building did not spend time talking about boyfriends and breakups. One of the women asked Eyde if she was gay, and Eyde realized that she was. She began frequenting lesbian bars with her new friends and, while she was never directly caught up in one of the frequent police raids on such bars, was on one occasion questioned by police. Eyde began publishing Vice Versa in 1947 as a way of expanding her social circle. "I was by myself, and I wanted to be able to meet others like me. I couldn't go down the street saying 'I'm looking for lesbian friends'...[Vice Versa] gave me a way of reaching out to other gay gals—a way of getting to know other gals....when I had something to hand out and when I tried to talk girls into writing for my magazine, I no longer had any trouble going up to new people."

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

( Lisa Ben, 1997, by Robert Giard )

( Further Readings )

More Particular Voices at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Particular Voices

Tom of Finland (May 8, 1920 – November 7, 1991)

I showcased a lot of artists and many of them said in their biographies that they were inspired by Tom of Finland. So I couldn't not to feature him, but one reason more is that I have just read a little book, Nothing Pink by Mark Hardy, where the main character, a teenager in the '70, discovers sex through a "forbidden" book illustrated by Tom of Finland.

Touko Laaksonen, best known by his pseudonym Tom of Finland (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991) was a Finnish artist notable for his stylized homoerotic and fetish art and his influence on late twentieth century gay culture.

He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade.

Over the course of four decades he produced some 3500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with exaggerated primary and secondary sex traits: heavily muscled torsos, limbs, and buttocks, and large penises. Tight or partially removed clothing showed off these traits, with the penis often visible as a bulge in tight trousers or prominently displayed for the viewer. His drawings frequently feature two or more men either immediately preceding or during explicit sexual activity. Nearly all of his characters were versatile and obviously enjoyed the bottom as well as the top role in sexual intercourse.

Laaksonen's work had predominantly been segmented to private collectors and collections seen only by consumers who sought out the underground gay pornography industry. With the decriminalization of male nudity gay pornography became more mainstream in gay cultures, Laaksonen's drawings also came to the attention of mainstream gay communities, and by 1973, he was both publishing erotic comic books and making inroads to the mainstream art world with exhibitions. In 1973 he gave up his full-time job at the Helsinki office of McCann-Erickson, an international advertising firm. "Since then I've lived in jeans and lived on my drawings," is how he described the lifestyle transition which occurred during this period.


Amazon: Tom of Finland XXL

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Source: http://www.tomoffinlandfoundation.org/

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

Vito Russo (July 11, 1946 - November 7, 1990)

Vito Russo (born July 11, 1946, New York City – died November 7, 1990, New York City) was an American LGBT activist, film historian and author who is best remembered as the author of the book The Celluloid Closet (1981, revised edition 1987).

Russo developed his material following screenings of camp films shown as fundraisers for the early gay rights organization Gay Activists Alliance. He traveled throughout the country from 1972 to 1982, delivering The Celluloid Closet as a live lecture presentation with film clips at colleges, universities, and small cinemas such as the Roxie Cinema in San Francisco. In both the book and in the lecture/film clip presentation, he related the history of gay and lesbian moments – and the treatment of gay and lesbian characters – in American and foreign films of the past.

In 1983, Russo wrote, produced, and co-hosted a series focusing on the gay community called Our Time for WNYC-TV public television. This series featured the nation's first GLBT hard news and documentary video segment produced and directed by social behaviorist D. S. Vanderbilt.

Russo's concern over how LGBT people were presented in the popular media led him to co-found the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), a watchdog group that monitors LGBT representation in the mainstream media and presents the annual GLAAD Media Awards. The Vito Russo Award is named in his memory and is presented to an openly gay or lesbian member of the media community for their outstanding contribution in combating homophobia. Russo was also actively involved in the AIDS direct action group ACT UP.


AIDS quilt

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

Russo´s invaluable scholarly work is also crazy-readable in its coverage of absolutely every film containing homosexual themes, most of them objectionable in some way. This book´s activist tone informed my entire outlook on the issue of outing and made me realize it´s okay to be offended by offensive material and that there is no such thing as harmless entertainment when that entertainment contains elements that cast homosexuality in a negative light (as opposed to those that cast someone who just happens to be a homosexual in a negative light). "I´m tired of trying to figure out whether the latest well-meaning soap opera has succeeded in convincing America that I don´t have horns and a tail, that I am not interested in molesting their dreary children or that the Bible doesn´t really say I´m headed for their world-famous but quite imaginary hell," Russo wrote in an afterword in the $6 used updated edition I bought. We need another Russo. --Matthew Rettenmund

( Vito Russo, 1987, by Robert Giard  )

( Further Readings )

More Particular Voices at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Particular Voices

Sean Meriwether

Sean Meriwether has been working his own brand of magic on the page, drafting immersive fiction and transporting boys and girls into the tumultuous landscape of his imagining. He has published over fifty short stories in venues including Best of Best Gay Erotica 2, Best Gay Love Stories, and Lodestar Quarterly. His collection of short fiction, The Silent Hustler , was released by Lethe Press (2009). He is currently working on Kingdom Falls , an online novel about finding love at the end of the world.

The Silent Hustler won a 2010 Rainbow Award as Best Gay Contemporary, 3rd place.

Further Readings:

The Silent Hustler by Sean Meriwether
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Lethe Press (October 25, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 159021062X
ISBN-13: 978-1590210628
Amazon: The Silent Hustler
Amazon Kindle: The Silent Hustler

Best known for being the editor of edgy gay fiction of the Velvet Mafia website, Sean Meriwether has quietly been writing short fiction and building up a body of his own work. The Silent Hustler collects his short fiction published over the last decade. Meriwether's fiction spans in range from the literary (''Things I Can't Tell My Father'') to the revolutionary (''Burn the Rich'') to the downright raunchy (''Sneaker Queen''). Slip into bed with The Silent Hustler. You won't feel guilty in the morning.

More Rainbow Awards at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, Rainbow Awards

Rainbow Awards pre-party and 7th anniversary (Day 7)

November 2013 marks the 7th anniversary since I opened my first journal (and yes, I have an itch, but I will scratch it!), on LJ, and the 5th anniversary of the Rainbow Awards. So, of course I decided for a big bash party. 187 authors, all of them in the 2013 Rainbow Awards, have donated or an ebook, or a print book, and I will use them for a Treasure Hunt. Every day, for all November, I will post 6 excerpts (a random page of the book). No reference to title, or author, or publisher. You have to match it with the book ;-) comment on the blog, you can comment 1 time for more matchings (you can even try for all 6 books if you like, so 6 chances to win every day). Until the end I will not say which matching is right, so you will have ALL month to try. No limit on how many books you can win, the more you try the better chance you have to win. End of November, among the right matchings, I will draw the winners. So now? let the game start!

( The books are (Author - Title - Format of prize): )

Previous Post: http://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/3918325.html

( Today excerpts are: )