Monday, February 22, 2021
Happy Birthday -- 'Peace Sign'
Sunday, February 21, 2021
Via White Crane Institute // GEORGE BIRIMISA
GEORGE BIRIMISA born (d: 2012) an American playwright, actor and director who contributed to the explosion of gay theater in the mid-1960s during the early years of Off-Off-Broadway. His works feature sexually explicit, emotionally charged depictions of working class Gay men, often closeted, in the years before the Stonewall uprising (1969) triggered a national and international Gay Rights movement. Contemporary Authors said that "Birmisa's plays feature themes of human isolation, frustrated idealism, and rage against needless suffering, usually centered around homosexual characters.“ According to critic and playwright Michael Smith, Birimisa's writing “links the pain of human isolation to economic and social roots.”
Birimisa’s first produced play, Degrees (February 1966),[1] a portrait of a Gay relationship, premiered at Theater Genesis in the East Village, Manhattan. At the time, gay plays usually received no serious artistic or critical attention. “For years,” the playwright recalls, “even gay people would ask me, ‘When are you going to write your first real play?’” Degrees included autobiographical elements, which became stronger and more explicit in Birimisa's later works. Above all, he writes out of a need to tell the truth about his own life. "I don't agree that there are ‘shades of truth,’” he says. “We all know the truth, deep inside ourselves. As artists, we have a responsibility to reveal who we truly are, not to work in shades of gray. This truth includes our sexual beings.”
Birimisa directed and acted in his best-known Off-Off-Broadway play, Daddy Violet[12] (1967), a semi-improvised indictment of the Vietnam War. Daddy Violet opened at the Troupe Theatre Club, premiered in June 1967 at the Caffe Cino, Joe Cino’s's famous coffeehouse in Greenwich Village that is generally acknowledged as the birthplace of Off-Off-Broadway. The play subsequently toured colleges in the United States and Canada and appeared at the 1968 International Theater Festival in Vancouver. Today, the playwright acknowledges that he wrote Daddy Violet as a parody of the abstract,improvisational theater then in vogue Off-Off-Broadway, an attempt to “out avant-garde everyone else.” For a revival at the Boston Conservatory in 2006, Birimisa revised the script to refer to the war in Iraq.
In 1969, Birimisa became the first out gay playwright to receive a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. This enabled him to attend rehearsals for the London production of his first two-act play, Mr. Jello (April 1968), an arrangement of realistic vignettes that intersect to form a surrealistic social statement, with characters that include a female impersonator, a Gay married man, and a hustler.
In 1976, Birimisa moved to Los Angeles, California. He dismisses the three plays he wrote there, A Dress Made of Diamonds (1976), Pogey Bait (1976), and A Rainbow in the Night (1978) as inferior to his earlier works. However, A Rainbow in the Night, an autobiographical portrait of two Gay men living in New York City’s Bowery in 1953, won a 1978 Drama-Logue Award, and Pogey Bait, a comedy based on Birimisa’s wartime experiences as a gay apprentice seaman, received subsequent productions in Minneapolis, San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles.
Birimisa moved to San Francisco in 1980 and did not write another play for almost 10 years. Then he began a revised version of A Rainbow in the Night titled The Man With Straight Hair (1994), which premiered at the Studio at Theater Rhinocerous. A one-man play, Looking for Mr. America (1995), debuted at Josie’s Cabaret and Juice Joint and subsequently played in New York at the La MamaExperimental Theater Club. Birimisa himself performed the show at age 71, in the role of a man recounting his lifelong sexual addiction. Dean Goodman's review noted that the play offers “an eloquent and touching portrait of a particular gay man’s journey through the last half of the 20th century.” Viagra Falls (2005) received a concert performance at La MaMa E.T.C. on September 17, 2007, under the direction of Daniel Haben Clark. The play chronicles a young gay man's long-term sado-masochistic relationship with a closeted opthamologist.
With Steve Susoyev, Birimisa edited Return to Caffe Cino (2007), an anthology of essays and plays by writers associated with the Cino. The book won a 2007bda Literary Award for theater and drama.
Birimisa: Portraits, Plays, Perversions (2009), an anthology of collected works and essays about Birimisa's personal life and career, includes an un-produced screenplay, The Kewpie-Doll Kiss, which chronicles Birimisa's childhood loss of his father, abandonment by his mother, and discovery of his sexuality, subjects explored earlier onstage in A Dress Made of Diamonds.
George Birmisa taught Creative Writing since 1983, sponsored by New Leaf Services. He received the 2004 Harry Hay Award in recognition of his writing and community service. He was writing an autobiography titled Wildflowers. His unpublished manuscripts are in the Joe Cino Memorial Library at Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts in New York.
Via What Crane Institute // This Day in Gay History February 21 - BARUCH SPINOZA
BARUCH SPINOZA, Dutch philosopher born (b. 1632); One of the great rationalists of 17th century philosophy, he laid the groundwork for the 18th century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism. By virtue of his magnum opus, the posthumous Ethics, Spinoza is also considered one of Western philosophy's definitive ethicists. He was raised and educated in the Orthodox Jewish fashion, also studying Latin and was thoroughly familiar with European humanism. What exactly is it that caused him to be excommunicated from the synagogue when he was only 24 years old?
Many scholars have speculated that the horror Spinoza inspired in the Jewish community may have come not only from his espousal of advanced economic theories, but from his espousal, as well, of Greek love among impressionable students in the liberal circle where he taught. A Dutch physician, J. Roderpoort, wrote at The Hague in 1897: “Spinoza excites the youth to respect women not at all and to give themselves to debauchery.” Was Spinoza merely teaching the Greek and Roman classics, with their inevitable passages on pederasty? What were Roderpoort’s motives for discrediting the Jewish philosopher? Was Spinoza, in fact a pederast? It’s all open to speculation.
Via NPR // 500,000
by Jill Hudson |
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Win McNamee/Getty Images |
The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 is on track to pass a number next week that once seemed unthinkable: Half a million people in this country dead from the coronavirus. Losing half a million lives to this disease was unimaginable when the first few people died of COVID-19 in the U.S last February.
After nearly a year, it's easy to forget how suddenly the pandemic upended our lives. NPR would love to see your photos. Click here to send your images and tell us your story.
What will it take to finally halt the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S.? Here's a look at how herd immunity works.
Via Daily Dharma: You Are Already Accepted
In accepting yourself, you’re simply agreeing to the fact that you are already accepted by the entire universe, just as you are.
—Ruben L. F. Habito, “Be Still & Know”
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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - February 21, 2021 💌
The first being one must have compassion for is oneself. You can't be a
witness to your thoughts with a chip on your shoulder or an axe to
grind.
Ramana Maharshi said, "If people would stop wailing 'alas I am a sinner'
and use all that energy to get on with it they would all be
enlightened."
He also said, "When you're cleaning up the outer temple before going to
the inner temple, don't stop to read everything you're going to throw
away..."
- Ram Dass -
Saturday, February 20, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Connect to the Buddha Inside You
You lack nothing of the wisdom and perfection of the Buddha, right at this moment.
—Elihu Genmyo Smith, “No Need to Do Zazen, Therefore Must Do Zazen”
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Via White Crane Institute
ROY COHN, American lawyer born (d. 1986); An evil, dramatic, controversial and dangerous man in life, Cohn inspired many dramatic fictional portrayals after his death. Probably the most famous is his role in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on A Theme, in which Cohn is portrayed as a self-hating, power-hungry hypocrite who refuses to accept himself as a homosexual, and is haunted by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg as he lies dying of AIDS. In the 2003 HBO version of Kushner's play, Cohn was played by Al Pacino, and Rosenberg was played by Meryl Streep. Cohn is also a character in Kushner's one-act play, G. David Schine in Hell. He was a despicable, vile person.
His sleazy soul-less mind still haunts us today in the person of his protégé, Donald Trump. Cohn’s influence on Mr. Trump is unmistakable. Mr. Trump’s wrecking ball of a Presidency — the gleeful smearing of his opponents, the embracing of bluster as brand — has been a Roy Cohn number on a grand scale. "If you get a punch, you punch back....harder." Mr. Trump’s response to the Orlando massacre, with his ominous warnings of a terrorist attack that could wipe out the country and his conspiratorial suggestions of a Muslim fifth column in the United States, seemed to have been ripped straight out of the Cohn playbook. Even more recently, his response to the impeachment has been to bray about his being "the chief law enforcement officer of the country"....which he is decidedly NOT. Clearly, whatever "lesson" Republican Senators think he's learned has nothing to do with restraint. We now find ourselves in a country where the rule of law has been seriously undermined, if not destroyed. Thanks Roy.
For 13 years, the lawyer who had infamously whispered in McCarthy’s ear whispered in Mr. Trump’s. In the process, Mr. Cohn helped deliver some of Mr. Trump’s signature construction deals, sued the National Football League for conspiring against his client and counter-sued the federal government — for $100 million — for damaging the Trump name. One of Mr. Trump’s executives recalled that he kept an 8-by-10-inch photograph of Mr. Cohn in his office desk, pulling it out to intimidate recalcitrant contractors.
The two men spoke as often as five times a day, toasted each other at birthday parties and spent evenings together at Studio 54. Roy Cohn....Cryptmaster. One final story that my friend Robert reminded me of... Cohn gave his services to Trump free of charge. Finally, as a gift Trump gave the pathetic homo a set of gold and diamond Bulgari cufflinks. Upon the settlement of Cohn’s estate, the links were found to be fakes.
Friday, February 19, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Communicate by Listening
Few of us communicate really well. We think explaining ourselves is key, but listening is the most important part.
—Sallie Tisdale, “Travel Guide to the End of Life”
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Thursday, February 18, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Experiencing Things as They Are
When
we train ourselves by constant practice to stop verbalizing, the brain
can experience things as they are. By silencing the mind, we can
experience real peace.
—Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, “Do Thoughts Ever Stop?”
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Wednesday, February 17, 2021
Jefferson Airplane - Crown Of Creation
Via Daily Dharma: Finding Your Personal Path
When we place our hearts upon the practice, the teachings come alive. That turning point, which transforms an abstract concept of a spiritual path into our own personal path, is faith.
—Sharon Salzberg, “How Important Is Faith?”