(August 26, 1904 – January 4, 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist. Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in the North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Brithish Army, was stationed. After his father was killed in the First World War, he settled with his mother in London and at Wyberslegh. Isherwood attended preparatory school St. Edmund’s, Surrey, where he first met W. H. Auden. At Repton School he met his lifelong friend Edward Upward, with whom he wrote the extravagant “Mortmere” stories, only one of which was published during his lifetime (a few others appeared after his death, and others sere summarised in his “Lions and Shadows”). He deliberately failed his tripos and left Corpus Christi College, Cambridge without a degree in 1925. For the next few years he lived with violinish Andr’e Mangeot, working as secretary to Mangeot’s string quartet and studying medicine; during this time he wrote a book of nonsense poems, “People One Ought to Know” (published 1982), with illustrations by Mangeot’s eleven-year-old son, Sylvain. In 1925 he was reintroduced to W. H. Auden, and became Auden’s literary mentor and partner in an intermittent, casual liaison, as Auden sent his poems to Isherwood for comment and approval. Through Auden, Isherwood met Stephen Spender, with whom he later spent much time in Germany. His first novel, “All the Conspirators”, appeared in 1928; it is an anti-heroic story, written in a pastiche of many modernist novelists, about a young man who is defeated by his mother. In 1928-29 Isherwood studied medicine at King’s College London, but gave it up after six months to join Auden for a few weeks in Berlin. Rejecting his upper-class background and attracted to males, he remained in Berlin, the capital of the young Weimar Republic, drawn by its reputation for sexual freedom. There, he “fully indulged his taste for pretty youths. He went to Berlin in search of boys and found one called Heinz, who became his first great love.” Isherwood commented on the Berlin sex underground, and his own participation in it, in a note to the American publisher of John Henry Mackay’s “Der Puppenjunge (The Hustler)”, “a classic boy-love novel set in the contemporary milieu of boy prostitutes in Berlin.” “It gives a picture of the Berlin sexual underworld early in this century,” wrote Isherwood, “which I know, from my own experience, to be authentic.” In 1931 he met Jean Ross, the inspiration for his fictional character Sally Bowles; he also met Gerald Hamilton, the inspiration for the fictional Mr. Norris. In September 1931 the poet William Plomer introduced him to E. M. Forster; they became close and Forster served as a mentor to the young writer. Isherwood’s second novel, “The Memorial” (1932), was another of his stories of conflict between mother and son, based closely on his own family history. During one of his returns to London he worked with the director Berthold Viertel on the film “Little Friend”, an experience that became the basis of his novel “Prater Violet” (1945). He worked as a private tutor in Berlin and elsewhere while writing the novel “Mr. Norris Changes Trains” (1935) and a series of short stories collected under the title “Goodbye to Berlin” (1939). These provided the inspiration for the play “I Am a Camera”, the subsequent musical “Cabaret” and the film of the same name. A memorial plaque to Isherwood has been erected on the house in Schoneberg, Berlin, where he lived. During these years he moved around Europe, living in Copenhagen, Sintra and elsewhere, and collaborated on three plays with Auden, “The Dog Beneath the Skin” (1935), “The Ascent of F6″ (1936), and “On the Frontier” (1939). Isherwood wrote a lightly fictionalized autobiographical account of his childhood and youth, “Lions and Shadows” (1938), using the title of an abandoned novel. Auden and Isherwood travelled to China in 1938 to gather material for their book on the Sino-Japanese War called “Journey to a War” (1939). In the opinion of many reveiwers, Isherwood’s finest achievement was his 1964 novel “A Single Man”. On Valentine’s Day 1953, at the age of 48, he met teen-aged Don Bachardy among a group of friends on the beach at Santa Monica. Although one can find Bachardy’s age at the time variously reported, in the biographical film “Chris & Don: A Love Story”, Bachardy himself recalls that, “at the time I was, probably, 16.” Despite the age difference, this meeting began a partnership that, though interrupted by affairs and separations, continued until the end of Isherwood’s life. The more than 30-year age difference between Isherwood and Bachardy raised eyebrows at the time, but the two became a well-known and well-established couple in Southern Californian society, with many Hollywood friends. Isherwood and Bachardy lived together in Santa Monica for the rest of Isherwood’s life. 04-07-10 Began reading “A Single Man” for the Los Angeles LGBT book reading group that I belong to.

May 7, 1840 – November 6, 1893, often called Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky in English, was a Russian composer of the Romantic era. As his style developed, Tchaikovsky wrote music across a range of genres, including symphony, opera, ballet, instrumental, chamber and song. He wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the current classical repertoire, including the ballets “Swan Lake”, “The Sleeping Beauty”, and “The Nutcracker”, the “1812 Overture”, his First Piano Concerto, his last three numbered symphonies, and the opera “Eugene Onegin”. Thchaikovsky was born into a middle-class family. His education prepared him for a career as a civil servant, despite the musical precocity he had demonstrated. Against the wishes of his family he chose to pursue a musical career, and in 1862 entered the St Petersburg Conservatory, graduating in 1865. This formal, Western-oriented training set him apart, musically, from the contemporary nationalistic movement embodied by the group of young Russian composers known as “The Five”, with whom Tchaikovsky sustained a mixed professional relationship throughout his career. Although he enjoyed many popular successes, he was never emotionally secure, and his life was punctuated by personal crises and periods of depression. Contributory factors were his suppressed homosexuality and fear of exposure, his disastrous marriage, and the sudden collapse of the one enduring relationship of his adult life, his 13-year association with the wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck. Amid private turmoil Tchaikovsky’s public reputation grew; he was honored by the Tsar, awarded a lifetime pension and lauded in the concert halls of the world. His sudden death at the age of 53 is generally ascribed to cholera, but some attribute it to suicide. Tchaikovsky scholar and biographer Alexander Poznansky showed through his research that Tchaikovsky had homosexual tendencies and that some of the composer’s closest relationships were with males. Tchaikovsky’s valet Aleksei Sofronov is thought to have been one of his romantic interests, and while the relationship was apparently never consummated, the composer’s nephew, Vladimir “Bob” Davydov, was one of the great loves of his life. Tchaikovsky’s love for his nephew dates back to 1883, when the boy was 12 years old. Poznansky maintains that even when Bob grew past the age Tchaikovsky normally found sexually attractive, “his hold on his uncle’s heart never slipped, and in the last years of Tchaikovsky’s life bob reigned supreme”. Tchaikovsky dedicated his Sixth Symphony, the “Path’etique”, to Bob. More controversial than Tchaikovsky’s reported sexual proclivities is how comfortable the composer might have been with his sexual nature. After reading all Tchaikovsky’s letters (including unpublished ones), Poznansky concludes that the composer “eventually came to see his sexual peculiarities as an insurmountable and even natural part of his personality … without experiencing any serious psychological damage.” Relevant portions of his brother Modest’s autobiography, where he tells of his brother’s sexual orientation, have also been published. Modest, like Tchaikovsky, was homosexual. Some letters previously suppressed by Soviet censors, where Tchaikovsky openly speaks out about his homosexuality, have been published in Russian, as well as by Poznansky in English translation. However, biographer Anthony Holden claims British musicologist and scholar Henry Zajaczkowski’s research “along psychoanalytical lines” points instead to “a severe unconscious inhibition by the composer of his sexual feeling”: One consequence of it may be sexual overindulgence as a kind of false solution: the individual thereby persuades himself that he does accept his sexual impulses. Complementing this and, also, as a psychological defense mechanism, would be precisely the idolization by Tchaikovsky of many of the young men of his circle (the self-styled “Fourth Suite”), to which Poznansky himself draws attention. If the composer’s response to possible sexual objects was either to use and discard them or to idolize them, it shows that he was unable to form an integrated, secure relationship with another man. That, surely, was Tchaikovsky’s tragedy. Musicologist and historian Roland John Wiley suggests a third alternative, based on Tchaikovsky’s letters. He suggests that while Tchaikovsky experienced “no unbearable guilt” over his homosexuality, he remained aware of the negative consequences of that knowledge becoming public, especially of the ramifications for his family. His decision to enter into a heterosexual union and try to lead a double life was prompted by several factors–the possibility of exposure, the willingness to please his father, his own desire for a permanent home and his love of children and family. While Tchaikovsky may have been romantically active, the evidence for “sexual argot and passionate encounter” is limited. He sought out the company of homosexuals in his circle for extended periods, “associating openly and establishing professional connections with them.” Wiley adds, “Amateurish criticism to the contrary, there is no warrant to assume, this period (of his short-lived marriage) excepted, that Tchaikovsky’s sexuality ever deeply impaired his inspiration, or made his music idiosyncratically confessional or incapable of philosophical utterance.”

a weight loss regimen developed by author Judy Mazel (1943-2007) in her 1981 bestseller, “The Beverly Hills Diet”. The six-week long program, which begins with 10 days of eating fruit exclusively, has been the target of criticism from the medical community. Mazel had tried and failed to lose weight with existing programs, and developed the diet plan after spending six months working together with a nutritionist in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Under her program, she was able to trim down to from a weight of 180 pounds to 108 pounds, having struggled with her weight since childhood. After completing development fo the program and returning to Los Angeles, she opened a weight-loss clinic whose clients included a number of celebrities. The Beverly Hills Diet is predicated on the enzymatic actions of foods in the digestive process, and controlled weight by controlling when foods were eaten and in what combinations. The plan begins with the consumption of a series of specified fruits in a designated order for the initial ten days of the program. On Days 11 to 18, the dieter can add bread, two tablespoons of butter and three cobs of corn. Sources of complete protein, such as steak or lobster, cannot be consumed until Day 19 of the plan. The book, published by Macmillan Publishing spent 30 weeks on “The New York Times” bestseller list, and sold more than one million copies. The book featured endorsements from Linda Gray, Engelbert Humperdink, Sally Kellerman and Mary Ann Mobley. I was fortunate enough to meet and work with Miss Judy before her passing, and this program, as well as her follow-up book, “The New Beverly Hills Diet”, has been my salvation when my weight has risen through the years. I have found this to be the most healthy and inclusive eating plan that I have been to adhere to consistently throughout the years. I highly recommend this plan to anyone who struggles with weight issues or simply wants a cleaner, healthier eating plan. 03-26-10 I want to make these posts more personal. Because my personal experience with this food plan is why I selected it as an inspiration. I am currently maintaining my weight loss of over 240 lbs last May, to my current weight in the 160s. My “goal weight”, as given to me by Judy herself, is 159. I will allow 5 lbs above & 5 lbs below, this will be my window of acceptance, but nothing outside of that ten pound window, and I have the tools to accomplish this without too much strain. A Delicious Lifestyle!!

is an American playwright, considered one of the founders of the Off-off Broadway theater movement. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980, was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame, and in 2004 was elected to the Amercan Academy of Arts and Letters. Wilson began his active career as a playwright in the early 1960s at the Caffe Cino in Greenwich Village, writing one-act plays such as “Ludlow Fair”, “Home Free!”, and “The Madness of Lady Bright”. “The Madness of Lady Bright” premiered at the Caffe Cino in May 1964 and was the venue’s first significant hit. The play featured actor Neil Flanagan in the title role as Lelsie Bright, a neurotic aging queen (gay slang). “The Madness of Lady Bright” is considered a landmark play in the representation of male homosexuality. It was the longest running play ever to appear at the Caffe Cino, where it was performed over two hundred times. Wilson was subsequently invited to present his work off-Broadway, including his plays “Balm in Gilead” and “The Rimers of Eldritch” produced at Cafe LaMama. Wilson is a founding member of New York State Summer School of the Arts. Wilson was a founding member of the Circle Repertory Company in 1969. Many of his plays were first presented there, directed by his long-standing collaborative partner, Marshall W. Mason. The Circle Rep’s production of Wilson’s “The Hot l Baltimore” won the New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, and the Obie Award, and in 1979 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for “Talley’s Folly”. Wilson’s style and approach has evolved over the years, sometimes resulting in drastically different effects. Some of his plays are extremely radical and experimental in nature while others clearly have a more mainstream, if still creative, sensibility. His first full length play, “Balm in Gilead”, is perhaps his most radical, yet it also remains one of his most popular. The play had a memorable off-Broadway revival in the 1980s, directed by John Malkovich, a co-production of the Circle Repertory Company and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. In addition to writing plays, Wilson has written the texts for several twentieth century operas, including at least two collaborations with composer Lee Hoiby: “Summer and Smoke” (1971) and “This is the Rill Speaking” (1992) (based on his own play).

the United States House Representative for Massachusetts’s 4th congressional district since 1981. He is a member of the Democratic Party. In 1982, he won his first full term, and he has been re-elected ever since by wide margins. In 1987, he became the second openly gay member of the House of Representatives, and he has become one of the most prominent LGBT politicians in the United States. Frank is known for his quick wit and self-deprecating sense of humor. He is also widely considered to be one of the most powerful members of Congress. He has been described as “one of the brightest and most energetic defenders of civil rights issues.”

Sir Noel Peirce Coward (16 December 1899 – 26 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what TIME magazine called “a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise”.

directed by Jeff Dupre. This film documents the efforts of one girl, Kelli Peterson, to form a club for gay, lesbian and straight teens at her high school. Kelli expresses the feelings she had when she discovered she was a lesbian in 6th grade; of killing herself, and feeling alone. This is why there is nothing more important in my life than to make gay-themed films!!

Received a gift card from Blockbuster Video for Christmas & puchased (previously viewed) “The History Boys” DVD. Based on the play by Alan Bennett, who also wrote “The Madness of King George”. Directed by Nicholas Hytner. The beauty of this marvelous find; the language, the ideas, and the frankness of subject matter, is breathtaking. The cast had appeared in the Broadway production, from the jacket notes. I had never read, nor seen, the play, so it unraveled in front of me for the first time, and what a delight!! The use of music from the ’80’s was inspired. When I discover gems like this it is simply ‘catnip’ to me!