Horace (December 8, 65 BC – November 27, 8 BC)

In his highly accomplished and influential poetry, Horace reflects the easy bisexuality of the Roman upper class in the first century B.C.E. (Picture: Horace, as imagined by Anton von Werner)

Quintus Horatius Flaccus, or Horace, as he is usually known among English speakers, was the son of a freed slave of Venusia in southeastern Italy. His father was sufficiently successful in business, and sufficiently ambitious for his son, to afford him a literary education. Accomplishment in literature could give access to a career in the Roman civil service or, in the case of a budding poet, to the networks of aristocratic patronage.

In addition, at about the age of twenty, Horace was sent to Athens to study philosophy. Such training was common for the sons of established and upwardly mobile families. He would have been exposed at least to the lineaments of several philosophical traditions, and his later writings suggest that he achieved some depth, as well as breadth, in his philosophical studies.

During his years in Athens, Horace also began to establish "friendships": relationships with young Roman aristocrats that were not only social but also political and professional.

With the outbreak of civil war, triggered by the conflicts between Octavian, Mark Anthony, and their supporters on the one hand, and Brutus, Cassius, and their supporters on the other, Horace's student career abruptly ended.

Brutus was received with great enthusiasm by the Romans in Athens, many of whom favored the established order that he represented. Horace undertook an appointment as a junior officer (tribunus militum) in Brutus' army, a rather exalted position for a freedman's son. However, Horace's military career, which was spent chiefly in plundering the eastern provinces to finance the war, was cut short by the defeat of Brutus and Cassius at Phillipi, Macedonia, in 42 B.C.E., a battle in which Horace took part.

On his return to Italy, Horace found that his estates in Venusia had been confiscated for distribution to Octavian's veterans. He had enough money, however, to purchase a lucrative position as a civil servant (scriba quaestorius) in the Roman government.

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Citation Information
Author: Walton, Brad
Entry Title: Horace
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 10, 2007
Web Address www.glbtq.com/literature/horace.html
Publisher glbtq, Inc.
1130 West Adams
Chicago, IL 60607
Today's Date November 27, 2012
Encyclopedia Copyright: © 2002-2006, glbtq, Inc.
Entry Copyright © 1995, 2002 New England Publishing Associates

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Magnus Enckell (November 9, 1870 - November 27, 1925)

Magnus Knut Enckell (Hamina, November 9, 1870 – Stockholm, November 27, 1925) was a Finnish symbolist painter. At first he painted with a subdued palette, but from 1902 onwards used increasingly bright colors. He was a leading member of the 'Septem' group pf colorist painters.

Magnus Knut Enckell was born on 9 September 1870 in Hamina, a small town in eastern Finland, the son of Carl Enkell, a priest, and Alexandra Enckell (born Appelberg). He was the youngest of six sons.

In 1889, at the age of 19, he began his artistic studies in Helsinki, at the Drawing School of the Finnish Art Association, but he dropped out and continued his studies privately under Gunnar Berndtson. Enckell was the first Finnish artist to break with Naturalism, which was the established style during his education in Helsinki 1889-1891.

In 1891 he went to Paris for the first time, where he became a student of Jules-Joseph Lefebvre and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant at the Académie Julian. There he was drawn to the Symbolist movement, and was influenced by the painter Pierre Puvis de Chavannes as well as Symbolist literature.

During a stay in Brittany he made two paintings in spare colors: Self-Portrait and Breton Woman. He was enthusiastic about the Renaissance and about the idealistic and mystical ideas Sâr Péladan, from whom he took the androgynous standard of beauty which he applied in his work.

During his second stay in Paris in 1893, he painted The Awakening, in which he used a rigorous composition and transparent colors to suggest a spiritual atmosphere; and, through contact with the Swedish artists, O. Sager-Nelson and I. Agueli, he deepened his interest in mysticism.

Enckell was homosexual, as seems indicated in some erotic portraits which were quite uninhibited for their time. As Routledge's "Who's who in gay and lesbian history" puts it, "His love affairs with men have not been denied ... Enckell's naked men and boys are openly erotic and sensual."



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Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Enckell

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

Marilyn Hacker (born November 27, 1942)

Marilyn Hacker (born November 27, 1942) is an American poet, translator and critic. She is Professor of English at the City College of New York. Hacker lives in New York and Paris and has retired from teaching at the City College of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center. Her partner from 1986 to 1999 was physician assistant Karyn London.

Her books of poetry include Presentation Piece (1974), which won the National Book Award, Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons (1986), and Going Back to the River (1990). In 2009, Hacker won the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for King of a Hundred Horsemen by Marie Étienne, which also garnered the first Robert Fagles Translation Prize from the National Poetry Series. In 2010, she received the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry. She was shortlisted for the 2013 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation for her translation of Tales of A Severed Head by Rachida Madani.

She was born and raised in Bronx, New York, the only child of Jewish immigrant parents. Her father was a management consultant and her mother a teacher. Hacker attended the Bronx High School of Science, where she met her future husband Samuel R. Delany, who became a well-known science-fiction writer. She enrolled at New York University at the age of fifteen (B.A., 1964). To marry, Hacker and Delany traveled from New York to Detroit, Michigan. Delany explained in his autobiography The Motion of Light in Water the reason that they married in Detroit was that, because of their ages and because he was African-American and she was Caucasian, "there were only two states in the union where we could legally wed. The closest one was Michigan." They settled in New York's East Village. Their daughter, Iva Hacker-Delany, was born in 1974. Hacker and Delany, after being separated for many years, were divorced in 1980, but remain friends. Hacker identifies as lesbian, and Delany has identified as a gay man since adolescence. Their daughter, Iva Hacker-Delany, was a theatre director in New York City for a decade before becoming a physician.

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

( Marilyn Hacker, 1987, by Robert Giard )

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

Nicole Brossard (born November 27, 1943)

Nicole Brossard, O.C. (born November 27, 1943 in Montreal) is a leading French Canadian formalist poet and novelist.

She lives in Outremont, a former city in Montreal, Quebec. She wrote her first collection in 1965, Aube à la maison. The collection L'Echo bouge beau marks a break in the evolution of her poetry. She participates in numerous cultural events (such as poetry recitals). In 1975 she participated in a meeting of writers on women. From there she has been involved in the feminist struggle, her poetry becomes more personal. She founded a feminist newspaper, Les têtes de pioches, and writing a play Le nef des sorcières. In 1982, she founded a publishing house: L'Intégrale éditrice.

Amazon Selection of Nicole Brossard's books: Nicole Brossard

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

( Nicole Brossard, 1992, by Robert Giard )

( Further Readings )

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

Simon Bailey (June 16, 1955 – November 27, 1995)

The Reverend Simon Bailey (16 June 1955 – 27 November 1995) was an Anglican priest and writer.

Simon Bailey was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, one of five children - Rosemary, Simon, Martin, Jacqueline, and Caroline. His father, the Reverend Walter Bailey, was a Baptist minister who combined conservative evangelical theological convictions with social radicalism. He bought his first television in order to be able to watch the funeral of Sir Winston Churchill in 1965. Walter Bailey supported the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and actually died while distributing leaflets for the Labour Party. The socialist historians E. P. Thompson and Dorothy Thompson as well as the writer J. B. Priestley were regular visitors to the family home in Halifax.

The family moved first to Birkenhead and then to Stoke-on-Trent, following Walter Bailey as he was called to different churches. Eventually he became so idiosyncratic that he ran his own church from home.

Simon Bailey continued his education at Regent's Park College, the Baptist Permanent Private Hall of the University of Oxford, where he read English Language and Literature under John F. Kiteley (himself once the pupil of J. R. R. Tolkien). He gained a First Class degree.

Despite having chosen to study at the Baptist Regent's Park, Simon Bailey was by now unhappy in the Baptist tradition. He received the sacrament of confirmation in the Church of England, embracing Anglicanism as more "aesthetic and sensual".

After Oxford, Simon Bailey studied theology at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and did his theological training for the Ministry at Westcott House, Cambridge.

Simon Bailey's first experience of pastoral work was as curate in the parish of Norton, Sheffield.

Simon Bailey was inducted as Rector of St. Leonard's parish church, Dinnington in South Yorkshire in December 1985. Dinnington was a South Yorkshire mining community, whose colliery closed in 1991.

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Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Bailey

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Steve Tracy (October 3, 1952 – November 27, 1986)

Steve Tracy (October 3, 1952 – November 27, 1986) was an American film and television actor. Tracy is best known for his role on Little House on the Prairie as Percival Dalton.

He attended Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, and the Theatre Department at Los Angeles City College in Los Angeles, California, as well as the Harvey Lembeck Comedy Workshop.

Tracy is best known for his recurring role as Percival Dalton in the television series Little House on the Prairie in the early 1980s. After the end of the series, Tracy maintained a friendship with his on-screen wife Alison Arngrim (Nellie Oleson). Alison Arngrim and Tracy were very close while filming on the set. During the series, there were rumors that he and Arngrim were having a love affair. According to Arngrim that was untrue. Arngrim has also stated that she was the only one on the set of Little House on the Prairie who knew that Tracy was gay.

He appeared in several films and other television programs from 1977 to 1986, including Quincy, M.E., Desperate Moves, The Jeffersons, National Lampoon's Class Reunion and Say Yes.

Tracy died of AIDS-related complications in 1986, after which Arngrim became involved in AIDS activism. His ashes were scattered under the Hollywood Sign in the Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles, under the letter "D".


AIDS Quilt

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Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Tracy

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New Release Blog Tour: Grime Doesn't Pay (The Brothers Grime #2) by ZA Maxfield

Today my guest is ZAM (aka Z.A. Maxfield) and I ask her: "The trick to forming lasting partnerships?"

Wow, no pressure! I wish there was such a thing as a single trick, but if there is it’s likely to be as unique as the people in the partnership, isn’t it?

When I started The Brothers Grime series I did so with the awareness that it was a series, and that all three partners are gay. Because it’s a business they started together, that seemed to make more sense to me than if the all lived on the same cul-de-sac and discovered each other’s orientation “quite by accident”.

I use egregious coincidence sometimes. I admit My Cowboy Heart has a WAY more-than-statistically-likely number of gay cowboys on the ranch. But actually, I think it likely that three childhood friends -- who formed a bond of loyalty because they were gay high school kids together -- would form a business partnership as well. But their sexuality is really only part of why they’re friends and good business partners.

The Brothers Grime are great partners because they share common interests, similar backgrounds and beliefs, lots of good and bad memories, and personality traits. Jack and Gabe are cousins. Whether we’re talking about fictional characters or real life men and women, those things make forming lasting partnerships easier.

For me the bottom line is the capacity for empathy and the ability to act compassionately when a disagreement occurs. That is the key to a lasting relationship in any part of life.

I think it’s fundamental to have a sense of humor. The Grime boys can laugh with each other and dissolve tension with humor. They laugh at the horror of their job. That makes things easier. They also know when to force a partner to answer questions and when to let him keep silent.

These guys don’t keep much of a distance between their business and personal lives, though, not as much as I would. Their work is pretty heavy, and like a lot of people who do tough jobs, like police officers and soldiers, they get together to wind down and blow off steam.

And they balance between being all up in each other’s business and allowing each other to have space.

The rest is love for one other, loyalty to one other --both at work and at home -- and a simple desire to live a life with as little conflict as possible.

I may not know exactly what I’m talking about, but I have been married to the same guy for thirty years and I’d say I’m happier today than I ever was!




Grime Doesn't Pay (The Brothers Grime, Bk #2) By Z.A. Maxfield
Publisher: Loose Id LLC (November 25, 2013)
Amazon Kindle: Grime Doesn't Pay (The Brothers Grime, Bk #2)

Eddie Vasquez is hot for his niece Lucy’s third grade teacher, B. Andrew (call me Andrew) Daley. Eddie can’t wait to take Andrew dancing to show him his moves. The only problem is, Andrew keeps talking about books Eddie hasn’t read, that he can’t read — at least not in the usual way — because Eddie’s dyslexic.

When the two men find Eddie’s favorite teacher, Mrs. Henderson, wandering the school grounds confused and smelling of human decomposition, they come together to help her. Eddie’s fiercely loyal, and this is the teacher who uncovered Eddie’s learning disability and helped him regain his self-esteem. He’ll do anything, even take on a massive cleaning job pro bono to pay Mrs. Henderson back for the support she’s given him.

Andrew and Eddie come from different worlds, Eddie can’t read, Andrew can’t dance. Andrew’s father is a horrible snob and if all Eddie’s secrets are laid bare, he’ll have plenty to feel superior about. But Eddie and Andrew have taken on a massive project together, and their growing attraction can’t be denied. They learn the trick to forming a lasting partnership in dance and in life might be finding a partner whose weaknesses you can live with and whose strengths make you look good, in Grime Doesn’t Pay.

 

 

Available for purchase at

 

About the Author

 

Z. A. Maxfield started writing in 2007 on a dare from her children and never looked back. Pathologically disorganized, and perennially optimistic, she writes as much as she can, reads as much as she dares, and enjoys her time with family and friends. Three things reverberate throughout all her stories: Unconditional love, redemption, and the belief that miracles happen when we least expect them.

If anyone asks her how a wife and mother of four can find time for a writing career, she’ll answer, “It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you give up housework.”

 

You can find ZA Maxfield at

 

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Rainbow Awards pre-party and 7th anniversary (Day 27)

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. 190 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 (do not leave anonymous comments, if you post as anonymous, leave a contact email (comments are screened)), 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!

Be aware that these previous excerpts: 11, 23, 25 have not yet been matched, so if you go back there is good chance to win them! if at the end of the treasure hunt they will be still unmatched they will go to the one who matched more books.

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

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

Previous Post: reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/3940863.html

Today excerpts are:

( Today excerpts are )