Thursday, May 27, 2021

Via White Crane Institute // WILD BILL HICKOK

 This Day in Gay History

May 27

Born
James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok
1837 -

WILD BILL HICKOK is born in Troy Grove, Illinois. His real name was James Butler Hickok. Like many men in the wild west, Wild Bill really was wild with the men on the frontier and used his Lesbian buddy, Calamity Jane as a blind.

Few people ever knew the pair's secret, and in the movies about their lives, not a mention was made by either Doris Day or Howard Keel. The American West of the nineteenth century was a world of freedom and adventure for men of every stripe—not least also those who admired and desired other men.

Among these sojourners was William Drummond Stewart, a flamboyant Scottish nobleman who found in American culture of the 1830s and 1840s a cultural milieu of openness in which men could pursue same-sex relationships.

William Benemann’s recent book, Men In Eden traces Stewart’s travels from his arrival in America in 1832 to his return to Murthly Castle in Perthshire, Scotland, with his French Canadian–Cree Indian companion, Antoine Clement, one of the most skilled hunters in the Rockies. Benemann chronicles Stewart’s friendships with such notables as Kit Carson, William Sublette, Marcus Whitman, and Jim Bridger. He describes the wild Renaissance-costume party held by Stewart and Clement upon their return to America—a journey that ended in scandal.

Through Stewart’s letters and novels, Benemann shows that Stewart was one of many men drawn to the sexual freedom offered by the West. His book provides a tantalizing new perspective on the Rocky Mountain fur trade and the role of homosexuality in shaping the American West. For more: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13594189-men-in-eden

Via White Crane Institute // RACHEL CARSON

 

L to R: Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman
1907 -

Marine biologist RACHEL CARSON was born on this date. She was born in Springdale, Pennsylvania and spent the majority of her life outside of Washington, DC with summers in Maine. She is best known as the author of Silent Spring, which is considered one of the foundational documents for the modern environmental movement.

Silent Spring, published in 1962, awakened society to its responsibility to other forms of life. Carson had long been aware of the dangers of chemical pesticides and also the controversy within the agricultural community. She had long hoped someone else would publish an expose' on DDT but eventually realized that only she had the background as well as the economic freedom to do it.

Silent Spring provoked a firestorm of controversy as well as attacks on Carson's professional integrity. The pesticide industry mounted a massive campaign to discredit Carson even though she did not urge the complete banning of pesticides but called for research to ensure pesticides were used safely and to find alternatives to dangerous chemicals such as DDT.

The federal government, however, ordered a complete review of pesticide policy and Carson was asked to testify before a Congressional committee. As a direct result of that review, DDT was banned. With the publication of Silent Spring, Carson is credited with launching the contemporary environmental movement and awakening concern by Americans about the environment.

She died from cancer in 1964 at the age of 57. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service named one of its refuges near Carson's summer home on the coast of Maine as "the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge" in 1969 to honor the memory of this extraordinary woman.

In the early 1950s Carson moved with her mother to Southport Island, Maine and subsequently began a extremely close relationship with a neighbor Dorothy Freeman. The relationship would last the rest of Carson's life. The two women had a number of common interests, nature chief among them, and began exchanging letters regularly while apart. They would continue to share every summer for the remainder of Carson's life, and meet whenever else their schedules permitted. Carson and Freeman knew that their letters could be interpreted as lesbian.

Freeman shared parts of Carson's letters with her husband to help him understand the relationship, but much of their correspondence was carefully guarded. Shortly before Carson's death, she and Freeman destroyed hundreds of letters. The surviving correspondence was published in 1995 as Always, Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, 1952–1964: An Intimate Portrait of a Remarkable Friendship, edited by Freeman's granddaughter.

Wednesday, May 26, 2021

Via FB


 

O perrengue nosso de cada dia.

Webinar da Rede Comunica Educação: "A diversidade que habita o chão da e...

Via Daily Dharma: Finding Ease Exactly as You Are

 Awareness is not about trying to be someone else: it’s about finding a sense of ease with you as you are, right now.

—Andy Puddicombe, “10 Tips for Living More Mindfully”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - May 26, 2021 💌

 

Since we’re not starting other than from our humanity, all we can do is use the situations in which we close down as exercises to work on ourselves, to watch how we lose it again and again. We must be very compassionate with ourselves, and each time just center again, quiet again, and begin again.

- Ram Dass - 

Lama Foundation, 1983

Tuesday, May 25, 2021

Via Lion's Roar // Celebrating Vesak, or “Buddha Day” Vesak falls on May 26th this year. What makes this day special?

 

Celebrating Vesak, or “Buddha Day”

Vesak falls on May 26th this year. What makes this day special?
 

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Dance of the 41 | Official Trailer | Netflix

Via White Crane : This Day in Gay History // RALPH WALDO EMERSON

 This Day in Gay History

May 25

Born
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803 -

On this date RALPH WALDO EMERSON the poet & essayist was born. Emerson had a wild crush on a classmate at Harvard. Martin Gay, the subject of Emerson's growing infatuation, was the subject of numerous entries in Emerson's journals which modern editors have been able to reconstruct. As the scholar Martin Greif has written, "they provide a rare view of the future philosopher in the thrall of same-sex love." With an unembarrassed frankness he wrote in his journal about the disturbing power of the glances he and Gay exchanged.

Emerson wrote of Martin Gay in his notebook, “Why do you look after me? I cannot help looking out as you pass.” Emerson heavily crossed out the Martin Gay journal notes at some later time. He would later tell Walt Whitman to cross out the homoerotic portions of the Calamus cluster of poems in Leaves of Grass. Fortunately for us and for posterity Whitman did not take the "advice." In Emerson's mature life "his craving for friendship and love seldom found adequate satisfaction," as his biographer Stephen Whicher put it.

Via IMS

 

https://www.dharma.org/

To experience emptiness is not a descent into an abyss of nothingness but a recovery of freedom.

—Stephen Batchelor, “Nagarjuna’s Verses from the Center”

CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE

Via Radical Dharma


 

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