Beth Ditto & Kristin Ogata

Mary Beth Patterson, known by her stage name Beth Ditto (born February 19, 1981, in Searcy, Arkansas), is an American singer-songwriter, most famous for her work with the indie rock band Gossip. In July 2013, Ditto married her girlfriend and best friend since she was 18, Kristin Ogata, in Maui, Hawaii. Both were outfitted entirely in white for the occasion; Ditto wore a gown by Jean Paul Gaultier and went barefoot while Ogata wore a jacket, a shirt, shorts, and shoes. In December 2014, seventeen months after the two first walked down the aisle in a wedding, the couple legally married. Ditto and Ogata had to wait until same-sex marriage became legal in their home state of Oregon (May 2014) to make their marriage official. (P: Georges Biard. Beth Ditto at the Cannes Film Festival, 2010)

At 13, she moved out of her mother’s house and went to live with her aunt. A resident of Portland, Oregon, she is a close friend of Scissor Sisters lead singer Ana Matronic, and considers her favorite song to be "Oh Bondage, Up Yours" by X-Ray Spex. She courted mild controversy in 2006 when, during an interview for NME magazine, she claimed to have eaten squirrels as a child, saying that "people in Arkansas just do – they'd think you were a freak if you ate squid there!"

Ditto is known for her noticeable stage dances and her unique and revealing image. She classes herself as a punk, and thus does not wear deodorant or shave under her armpits, having once remarked that "I think punks usually smell". She also formerly contributed an advice column on body image to The Guardian newspaper.

In February 2009, she was featured in London as the cover model for the premiere of Love magazine with prominent public advertising. On July 9, 2009, Beth's fashion collection for the UK retailer Evans was released for sale, both online, and in selected stores across the UK.


Mary Beth Patterson, known by her stage name Beth Ditto is an American singer-songwriter, most famous for her work with the indie rock band Gossip. Ditto, who is a lesbian, is well known for her outspoken support of both LGBT and feminist causes. In July 2013, Ditto married her girlfriend and best friend since she was 18, Kristin Ogata, in Maui, Hawaii. Both were outfitted entirely in white for the occasion; Ditto wore a gown by Jean Paul Gaultier and went barefoot while Ogata wore a jacket, a shirt, shorts, and shoes. Ditto released a memoir called Coal to Diamonds, which she co-wrote with Michelle Tea, in 2012.

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Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beth_Ditto

( Further Readings )

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

F.O. Matthiessen & Russell Cheney

Francis Otto Matthiessen (February 19, 1902 - April 1, 1950) was an educator, scholar and literary critic influential in the fields of American literature and American studies.

Matthiessen had a 20-year romantic relationship with the painter Russell Cheney. The couple shared a cottage in Kittery, Maine for decades. In planning to spend his life with Cheney, Matthiessen went as far as asking his cohort in the Yale secret society Skull and Bones to approve of their partnership (Levin 43-44). With Cheney having encouraged Matthiessen's interest in Whitman, it has been argued that American Renaissance was "the ultimate expression of Matthiessen's love for Cheney and a secret celebration of the gay artist." (Matthiessen and Cheney on a Normandy beach, summer 1925. Cheney’s nickname, Rat, and Matthiessen’s, Devil, came into use at Yale.)

Matthiessen was born in Pasadena, California, where he was a student at Polytechnic School. Following the separation of his parents, he relocated with his mother to his paternal grandparents home in La Salle, Illinois. He completed his secondary education at Hackley School, in Tarrytown, New York. In 1923 he graduated from Yale University, where he was a member of Skull and Bones. In his final year as a Yale undergraduate, Matthiessen received the Alpheus Henry Snow Prize, awarded to the senior who through the combination of intellectual achievement, character and personality, shall be adjudged by the faculty to have done the most for Yale by inspiring in classmates an admiration and love for the best traditions of high scholarship.


Matthiessen and Cheney on a Normandy beach, summer 1925.
Russell Cheney  (1881 - 1945) had a twenty-year love affair with English Literature Professor F.O. Matthiessen (1902 - 1950), an authority on American Literature, who taught at Yale and Harvard and who was also a Yale graduate and became a member of Skull & Bones in 1923. Matthiessen was twenty years Russell's junior. Their letter are collected into Rat & the Devil: Journal Letters of F.O. Matthiessen and Russell Cheney. Cheney’s nickname, Rat, and Matthiessen’s, Devil, came into use at Yale.

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.O._Matthiessen

The cultural system of gender emblematized by the fairy had enormous influence on the way even most queers understood themselves and structured their encounters. Most significantly, the belief that desire for a man was inherently a woman's desire led even many of those queers who regarded themselves as normally masculine in all other respects to regard their homosexual desire as a reflection of a feminine element in their character. In 1925, when F.O. Matthiessen, the noted Harward literary historian and critic, was still a graduate student at Oxford, he wrote to his lover, the painter Russell Cheney, "We are complex - both of us - in that we are neither wholly man, woman, or child." In another letter he noted: "Just as there are energetic active women and sensitive delicate men, so also there are... men, like us, who appear to be masculine but have a female sex element." Matthiessen's self-conception was thus different from that of many fairies, because he distinguished the sexual "element" from other elements of his gender persona and did not believe that the inversion of his sexual desire meant his entire gender character was inverted. Nonetheless, he did believe that his love for Cheney, as the sexological treatises written by Havelock Ellis explained and his grounding in his culture affirmed, must be a "female" love, even if he otherwise appeared to be masculine. --Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940 by George Chauncey

Russell Cheney (October 16, 1881 - July 12 , 1945) was an American painter. He graduated from Yale in 1904, where he was a member of the Skull and Bones secret society.

Born in South Manchester, Connecticut in 1881, he was the grandson of artist John Cheney. Following graduation from Yale in 1904, Cheney studied at the Art Students League in NYC under Chase, Cox, and Woodbury, and was its acting president in 1909-10, and in Paris at Académie Julian. Most of Cheney's career was spent in the East; however, bouts with tuberculosis forced him to seek warmer climates. Active in California from 1916, he often painted in Santa Barbara where his sister lived. He died in Kittery, Maine on July 12, 1945. A gay man, he had a twenty-year love affair with English Literature Professor Francis Matthiessen, an authority on American Literature, who taught at Yale and Harvard Universities and who was also a Yale graduate and became a member of Skull & Bones in 1923. Matthiessen was twenty years Russell's junior.

He held his first New York exhibition in Babcock Galleries 1922. His portrait of Professor Candle hung in the Paris Salon in 1909 and his work has been represented in many museums including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Art. Cheney illustrated F. O. Matthiessen's book Sarah Orne Jewett (1929), on the writer of the same name. A catalogue of Cheney's paintings was published in 1922. Cheney was a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, and San Francisco Art Society. 

 
The Jewett House at South Berwick, From a painting by Russell Cheney

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

Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time by Elisa Rolle
Paperback: 760 pages
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform; 1 edition (July 1, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1500563323
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
Amazon: Days of Love: Celebrating LGBT History One Story at a Time

Days of Love chronicles more than 700 LGBT couples throughout history, spanning 2000 years from Alexander the Great to the most recent winner of a Lambda Literary Award. Many of the contemporary couples share their stories on how they met and fell in love, as well as photos from when they married or of their families. Included are professional portraits by Robert Giard and Stathis Orphanos, paintings by John Singer Sargent and Giovanni Boldini, and photographs by Frances Benjamin Johnson, Arnold Genthe, and Carl Van Vechten among others. “It's wonderful. Laying it out chronologically is inspired, offering a solid GLBT history. I kept learning things. I love the decision to include couples broken by death. It makes clear how important love is, as well as showing what people have been through. The layout and photos look terrific.” Christopher Bram “I couldn’t resist clicking through every page. I never realized the scope of the book would cover centuries! I know that it will be hugely validating to young, newly-emerging LGBT kids and be reassured that they really can have a secure, respected place in the world as their futures unfold.” Howard Cruse “This international history-and-photo book, featuring 100s of detailed bios of some of the most forward-moving gay persons in history, is sure to be one of those bestsellers that gay folk will enjoy for years to come as reference and research that is filled with facts and fun.” Jack Fritscher

Paul Schmidt (1934 - February 19, 1999)

Paul Schmidt (1934 Brooklyn-February 19 1999) was an American translator, poet, playwright, and essayist. He wrote three plays. He won the Helen Hayes Award, and Kesselring Award for best play for Black Sea Follies. He taught at the Yale School of Drama. He was married to Stockard Channing. Paul Schmidt died on February 19 of this year from complications due to AIDS. He was 65 years old.

As a translator, poet, scholar, and sometime actor, Schmidt enjoyed a distinguished theatrical career that bridged the classic and the avant-garde repertoires. If translation is a form of authorship, then he was the most frequently produced writer at the ART in recent years, having rendered the texts for productions of Brecht's In the Jungle of Cities (from German), Racine's Phaedra (French), and Euripides's The Bacchae (Greek), as well as the current Ivanov (Russian). "He was a genuine man of the theater," recalls artistic director Robert Brustein. "And his collaborations with directors were instrumental in helping us to re-vision these classical works."

Liz Diamond directed three Schmidt translations, the ART Phaedra and two productions at the Yale Repertory Theatre. "He never translated from a language that he didn't know the way a poet knows language," she points out. "He understood what it meant for words to live inside an actor's body, what it meant for language to be embodied in space by a living breathing performer."

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Source: http://www.bostonphoenix.com/archive/theater/99/11/25/IVANOV.html

( Paul Schmidt, 1993, by Robert Giard  )

( Further Readings )

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

Sylvia Rae Rivera (July 2, 1951 - February 19, 2002)

Sylvia Rae Rivera (2 July 1951–19 February 2002) was an American transgender activist. Rivera was a founding member of both the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance and helped found STAR (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), a group dedicated to helping homeless young street trans women, with her friend Marsha P. Johnson.

Rivera was born and raised in New York City and lived most of her life in or near the city. She was of Puerto Rican and Venezuelan descent. Her birth name was Ray (or Rey) Rivera. She was abandoned by her birth father José Rivera early in life and became an orphan after her mother committed suicide when Rivera was three years old. Rivera was then raised by her Venezuelan grandmother, who disapproved of Rivera's effeminate behavior, particularly after Rivera began to wear women's makeup in fourth grade. As a result, Rivera began living on the streets at the age of eleven, where she joined a community of drag queens.

Rivera's activism began during the Vietnam War, civil rights, and feminist movements and fully bloomed around the time of the Stonewall Riots. She often spoke of her presence within the Stonewall Inn the night of the riots. She also became involved in Puerto Rican and African American youth activism, particularly with the Young Lords and Black Panthers.

At different times in her life, Sylvia Rivera battled substance abuse issues and lived on the streets. Her experiences made her more focused on advocacy for those who, in her view, the mainline community (and often the queer community) were leaving behind.

In May 1995, Rivera tried to commit suicide by walking into the Hudson River. That year she also appeared in the Arthur Dong documentary episode "Out Rage '69", part of the PBS series The Question of Equality. Rivera died during the dawn hours of February 19, 2002 at New York's St. Vincent's Hospital, of complications from liver cancer. Activist Riki Wilchins noted, "In many ways, Sylvia was the Rosa Parks of the modern transgender movement, a term that was not even coined until two decades after Stonewall".

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

( Sylvia Rae Rivera by Robert Giard )

( Further Readings )

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

Blog Tour: Memories of the Heart by Felice Stevens

Memories of the Heart by Felice Stevens 

Publisher: Felice Stevens (February 9, 2015)
Amazon Kindle: Memories of the Heart

Ruthless, Controlling, A Loner. All words used to describe Dr. Micah Steinberg by the hospital staff for their next head of surgery. When a letter arrives from his grandmother’s friend at the assisted living facility, his orderly world tilts dangerously out of control.

Josh Rosen had everything until it was revealed much of his world was a lie. Forced to re-evaluate his life, Josh gives up his career and returns home to New York City to care for his beloved grandmother. What Josh didn’t figure on was an attraction to a man who on the surface, appears to be exactly like the life Josh chose to leave behind.

As Micah struggles with the reality of his grandmother’s illness, the bond they share deepens, as Josh helps Micah heal, then open his heart. Micah discovers there is more to life than work, control and success. Josh is in deep but has yet to tell Micah who he really is.

When the fight for the hospital’s head of surgery turns ugly, Josh’s past and present collide. Micah must let go of the past and accept who he is, if his life is going to move forward.

Life is full of surprises, and as both Micah and Josh learn, love can happen whether you plan for it or not.

Playlist

Link: http://open.spotify.com/user/1261953451/playlist/3UhRa9cfgHISt66jWlnIKm



Author Bio: I have always been a romantic at heart. I believe that while life is tough, there is always a happy ending just around the corner. I started reading traditional historical romances when I was a teenager, then life and law school got in the way. It wasn’t until I picked up a copy of Bertrice Small and became swept away to Queen Elizabeth’s court that my interest in romance novels became renewed.

But somewhere along the way, my tastes shifted. While I still enjoys a juicy Historical romance, I began experimenting with newer, more cutting edge genres and discovered the world of Male/Male romance. Once I picked up her first, I became so enamored of the authors, the character-driven stories and the overwhelming emotion of the books, I knew I wanted to write my own.

I live in New York City with my husband and two children and hopefully soon a cat of my own. My day begins with a lot of caffeine and ends with a glass or two of red wine. I practice law but daydream of a time when I can sit by a beach somewhere and write beautiful stories of men falling in love. Although there is bound to be angst along the way, a Happily Ever After is always guaranteed.

Social Media Links
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Giveaway: 1 eCopy of Memories of the Heart (INT)
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Blog Tour: A Restored Man (The Men of Halfway House #3) by Jaime Reese

A Restored Man, The Men of Halfway House #3, by Jaime Reese
Series: The Men of Halfway House
Paperback: 362 pages
Publisher: Romandeavor, Incorporated; 1 edition (February 15, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0991457072
ISBN-13: 978-0991457076
Amazon: A Restored Man (The Men of Halfway House 3)
Amazon Kindle: A Restored Man (The Men of Halfway House 3)

Cole Renzo thinks his greatest challenge is to behave for the remainder of his term at Halfway House. Until he meets his new boss, Ty Calloway, a man who ticks off every box on Cole's list of interests.
A sought-after restorer and customizer of exotic and collectible cars, Ty had enough confidence to command what he wanted in life, until one fateful night changed everything. Almost two years later, he’s slowly rebuilding his life with great control. He's defied the odds and works tirelessly to be the man he once was—but he still feels broken.
Cole’s candor and unfiltered personality awaken Ty’s barely-remembered desire to greet each new day with a smile, while Ty’s unwavering acceptance of Cole’s quirks and brash humor makes Cole feel as if he fits in for the first time in far too long. When a nemesis threatens Ty’s personal restoration and the things he holds dear, Cole is determined to protect their relationship, even if that means sacrificing everything he’s worked so hard to achieve.
But Ty will have to let his guard down, surrender control, and admit he needs Cole first, even if that puts himself at risk of breaking beyond repair.

( Excerpt )

In The Series:

A Better Man (The Men of Halfway House #1)
Series: The Men of Halfway House
Paperback: 210 pages
Publisher: Romandeavor, Inc.; 2nd edition (February 6, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 099145703X
ISBN-13: 978-0991457038
Amazon: A Better Man (The Men of Halfway House 1)
Amazon Kindle: A Better Man (The Men of Halfway House 1)

A Hunted Man (The Men of Halfway House #2)
Series: The Men of Halfway House
Paperback: 378 pages
Publisher: Romandeavor, Incorporated; 1 edition (April 27, 2014)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0991457064
ISBN-13: 978-0991457069
Amazon: A Hunted Man (The Men of Halfway House 2)
Amazon Kindle: A Hunted Man (The Men of Halfway House 2)

Author Bio: Jaime Reese is the alter ego of an artist who loves the creative process of writing, just not about herself. Fiction is far more interesting. She has a weakness for broken, misunderstood heroes and feels everyone deserves a chance at love and life. An avid fan of a happy ending, she believes those endings acquired with a little difficulty are more cherished.

Social Media Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaimeReeseAuthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jaime_Reese
Website: http://jaimereese.com/
Goodreads: http://goodreads.com/Jaime_Reese
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Jaime-Reese/e/B009FM4FMI/

Giveaway:
Black Coach tote + signed copy of A Restored Man + Calloway's keychain. US ONLY
Coach umbrella + signed copy of A Restored Man + Calloway's keychain. (International)
(5 winners) Signed copies of A Restored Man + Calloway's keychain (International)
(3 winners) ONE eBook of either A Better Man or A Hunted Man (gifted via Amazon)
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