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Friday, June 7, 2024
Via Daily Dharma: Practice Goes On
Via White Crane Institute \\ E.M. FORSTER
1970 -
E.M. FORSTER, English author, died on this date (b. 1879); An English novelist, short story writer, and essayist, Forster is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th century British society. Forster's humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the famous epigraph to his 1910 novel Howard’s End: "Only connect".
Forster was homosexual, but this fact was not widely made public during his lifetime. His posthumously-published novel Maurice tells of the coming of age of an explicitly Gay male character. The film is ravishing.
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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Via White Crane Institute \\ ALAN TURING
Died
1954 -
ALAN TURING,
British mathematician and computer scientist died (b. 1912) from
cyanide poisoning, eighteen months after being given libido-reducing
hormone treatment for a year as a punishment for homosexuality. Turing
is generally considered to be the Father of Modern Computer Science. He
provided an influential formalization of the concept of the algorithm
and computation with the Turing machine.
In 'the Turing Test" Turing proposed that a human evaluator would
judge natural language conversations between a human and a machine
designed to generate human-like responses. The evaluator would be aware
that one of the two partners in conversation is a machine, and all
participants would be separated from one another. The conversation would
be limited to a text-only channel such as a computer keyboard and
screen so the result would not depend on the machine's ability to render
words as speech. If the
evaluator cannot reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine
is said to have passed the test. The test does not check the ability to
give correct answers to questions, only how closely answers resemble
those a human would give.
With the Turing test, he made a significant and characteristically
provocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial
intelligence: whether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is
conscious and can think. He later worked at the National Physical
Laboratory, creating one of the first designs for a stored-program
computer, although it was never actually built.
In 1948 he moved to the University of Manchester to work on the
Manchester Mark I, then emerging as one of the world's earliest true
computers. During WWII Turing worked at Bletchley Park, Britain's code
breaking center, and was for a time head of Hut 8, the section
responsible for German naval cryptanalysis.
He devised a number of techniques for breaking German ciphers, including the method of the bombe,
an electro-mechanical machine that could find settings for the Enigma
machine. Turing was Gay in a period when homosexual acts were illegal in
Britain and homosexuality was regarded as a mental illness and subject
to criminal sanctions.
In 1952, Arnold Murray, a 19-year-old recent acquaintance of
Turing’s, helped an accomplice to break into Turing's house, and Turing
went to the police to report the crime. As a result of the police
investigation, Turing acknowledged a sexual relationship with Murray,
and a crime having been identified and settled, they were charged with
gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of
1885. Turing was unrepentant and was convicted of the same crime Oscar
Wilde had been convicted of more than fifty years before. He was given
the choice between imprisonment and probation, conditional on his
undergoing hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido.
To avoid going to jail, he accepted the estrogen hormone
injections, which lasted for a year, with side effects including
gynecomastia (breast enlargement). His lean runner's body took on fat.
His conviction led to a removal of his security clearance and prevented
him from continuing consultancy for GCHQ on cryptographic matters. At
this time, there was acute public anxiety about spies and homosexual
entrapment by Soviet agents. In America, Robert Oppenheimer had just
been deemed a security risk.
On June 8, 1954, his housekeeper found him dead; the previous day,
he had died of cyanide poisoning, apparently from a cyanide-laced apple
he left half-eaten beside his bed. The apple itself was never tested for
contamination with cyanide, and cyanide poisoning as a cause of death
was established by a post-mortem.
Most believe that his death was intentional, and the death was
ruled a suicide. His mother, however, strenuously argued that the
ingestion was accidental due to his careless storage of laboratory
chemicals. Biographer Andrew Hodges suggests that Turing may have killed
himself in this ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother
some plausible deniability. Others suggest that Turing was reenacting a
scene from "Snow White", reportedly his favorite fairy tale. Because
Turing's sexuality would have been perceived as a security risk, the
possibility of assassination has also been suggested. His remains were
cremated at Woking crematorium on June 12, 1954.
There is an urban legend that the Apple Computer “bite out of an
apple” logo is a tribute to Turing. It is exactly that: an urban legend.
But that’s not to say that the idea of paying homage to Turing is
something the creators of Apple were against. When actor Stephen Fry
once asked his good friend Steve Jobs if the famous logo was based on
Turing, Jobs replied, “God, we wish it were.” Hodges biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma is the basis of the film The Imitation Game (a reference to “the Turing Test” which is also referenced in the film Ex Machina.
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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Via GBF: Flashback Friday: "F*#ck Coping"
"F*#ck Coping!" with Sister Mary Media & Sister Merry Peter
Has mindfulness become a numbing agent instead of a tool to sharpen our awareness?
In this highly engaging call to action, two Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence explore how our capitalist society has co-opted mindfulness and commodified it. In this way, it has become a means to distract individuals from distressing societal problems that demand our attention.
They explore:
- The fascinating history of SPI, its roots in the Radical Faeries, and its formation in response to Harry Hay’s theory of Queer Consciousness.
- The foundational role of mindfulness and meditation in SPI’s quest to bring liberation to those at the margins.
- The trap of practicing in isolation and believing it is our individual responsibility to internally cope with the suffering caused by the extractive nature of society.
- How our practice of mindfulness can be social and build community rather than foster isolation.
- When situated in context as just one of the Eightfold Path, mindfulness can sharpen our awareness and enable us to actively make a difference in the world.
Listen to the talk on your favorite podcast player or our website:
______________
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are
devoted to community service, ministry and outreach to those on the
edges, and to promoting human rights, respect for diversity, and
spiritual enlightenment.
______________
Sister Mary Media, SPI, a long-time member of GBF, is one of the original Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence from
the Order’s founding in 1979 where she currently serves as Mistress of
Grants. She speaks frequently about the group’s history and her vocation
as a secular nun.
______________
Sister Merry Peter, SPI,
is a poet, writer, and former sex-worker who found her vocation through
the Radical Faeries in 1987. Her life-long activism focuses on
HIV-AIDS, queer youth, civil rights and social justice. Her efforts
include partnerships to provide street-level health services to sex
workers, legal aid for LGBTQ refugees and resistance to police violence.
Enjoy 800+ free recorded dharma talks at www.gaybuddhist.org/podcast/
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Thursday, June 6, 2024
Via Daily Dharma: Standing on Your Own
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Via Dhamma Wheel | Right Action: Reflecting upon Social Action
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Via White Crane Institute // *0 Years - D-Day
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Noteworthy
1944 -
Today was D-DAY. The Normandy landings (code named Operation Neptune)
were the landing operations on Tuesday, June 6, 1944 (termed D-Day) of
the Allied Invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War
II. The largest seaborne invasion in history, the operation began the
liberation of German-occupied northwestern Europe from Nazi control, and
contributed to the Allied victory on the Western Front. Nearly 5,000
landing and assault craft, 289 escort vessels, and 277 minesweepers
participated. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on
D-Day, with 875,000 men disembarking by the end of June.
Allied casualties on the first day were at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead. The Germans lost 1,000 men.
Caen, a major objective, was still in German hands at the end of
D-Day and would not be completely captured until July 21. The Germans
had ordered French civilians, other than those deemed essential to the
war effort, to leave potential combat zones in Normandy. Civilian
casualties on D-Day and D+1 are estimated at 3,000 people.
On June 6, 1944, a 20-year-old closeted gay American GI named Ferris LeBlanc sheltered with his Army unit—the 665th Ordnance Ammunitions Company—at a remote base near Manchester. Across the English Channel, approximately 156,000 Allied soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy in one of the largest amphibious assaults in human history: D-Day. Men like LeBlanc waited their turns. Chills ran down spines as they wondered whether the Germans would beat their friends back into the cold waters.
LeBlanc, a California boy, had seen much since his enlistment in Sacramento. His unit, the 665th, was duly activated in April 1943 at Camp Maxey, Texas, and he participated in that year’s Louisiana Maneuvers, a major military exercise in the backwoods of the Pelican State. He shipped out to Europe aboard US Navy Transport NY 198 on February 27, 1944 and passed the Statue of Liberty on his way to Bristol, where a British Army band and one lone American Red Cross attendant provided a solemn welcome. Chow was powdered food and spam until he tasted the candy in his invasion pack on June 25, 1944, when his troop transport ship slipped the docks of Southampton, destination Utah Beach.
Weeks blurred into months on the European mainland as his unit ran Depot 100 for the First Army and then headed west to Depot 13 in Brittany. There, they supplied “hurry-up” ammunition to General George S. Patton as the Third Army made its mad dash across France and Belgium. Nearly trapped behind advancing Germans in the Battle of the Bulge, the 665th was ultimately saved when Patton’s Third Army reached Bastogne and broke the counteroffensive. One of LeBlanc’s final posts, Depot 0-609, was situated in a former German concentration camp surrounded by barbed-wire fences, providing a stark reminder of the stakes of the conflict. LeBlanc made it through the war uninjured, at least physically, and with his sexuality undiscovered. His core unit, the 665th, suffered but one casualty.
Decades later, after he had embraced his sexuality and resettled in Louisiana, Ferris LeBlanc would burn to death in a notoriously, infamously, unsolved arson fire at a second-story gay bar on the fringe of New Orleans’ French Quarter, known to us today as THE UPSTAIRS LOUNGE FIRE.
LeBlanc, who had just celebrated his 50th birthday, would be identified among the dead through an anonymous phone caller, who was too closeted or fearful to say anything more. Thus was Ferris LeBlanc, an honorably discharged veteran who had served in the European theater, buried without a flag ceremony or a grave marker alongside three unidentified fire victims that July 31. Despite pleas from a local church willing to take responsibility for his remains, the City of New Orleans interred Ferris LeBlanc in a remote potter’s field for the unclaimed and indigent dead called Resthaven. News of the death never reached his family back in California, in large part because local authorities never thought to examine LeBlanc’s military records.
And there he rested in obscurity, behind a chain-link fence in a field off Old Gentilly Road in New Orleans East. For years, LeBlanc’s younger sister Marilyn wondered what happened to her brother, his absence a painful question mark, until she learned with horror in January 2015 about the circumstances of his passing. LeBlanc’s remains still lie in Resthaven today, despite a campaign from the family to fight Louisiana bureaucracies, exhume his body, and bring him home for a hero’s burial. The major logistical challenge? Neither city nor cemetery can produce the records that would identify his burial plot.
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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| This Day in Gay History | ||||
June 06Born 
1875 -
THOMAS MANN,
German writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1955); a German novelist, short
story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel
Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic
novels and mid-length stories, noted for their insight into the
psychology of the artist and intellectual.
His analysis and critique of the European and German soul used
modernized German and Biblical stories, as well as the ideas of Goethe,
Nietzsche and Schopenhauer.
Mann's diaries, unsealed in 1975, tell of his struggles with his
sexuality, which found reflection in his works, most prominently through
the obsession of the elderly Aschenbach for the 14-year-old Polish boy
Tadzio in the novella Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig, 1912).
Anthony Heilbut's biography Thomas Mann: Eros and Literature (1997) was widely acclaimed for uncovering the centrality of Mann's sexuality to his oeuvre. Gilbert Adair's work The Real Tadzio
describes how, in the summer of 1911, Mann had been staying at the
Grand Hôtel des Bains in Venice with his wife and brother when he became
enraptured by the angelic figure of Władysław Moes, an 11-year-old
Polish boy. Considered a classic of homoerotic passion (if
unconsummated) Death in Venice has been made into a
film and an opera. Blamed sarcastically by Mann’s old enemy, Alfred
Kerr, to have ‘made pederasty acceptable to the cultivated middle
classes’, it has been pivotal to introducing the discourse of same-sex
desire to the common culture.
Mann himself described his feelings for young violinist and
painter Paul Ehrenberg as the "central experience of my heart." Despite
the homoerotic overtones in his writing, Mann chose to marry and have
children; two of his children, Klaus, also a writer, who committed
suicide in 1949, and Erika, an actress and writer who died in 1969 and
who was married to W.H. Auden for 34 years, were also Gay. His works
also present other sexual themes, such as incest in The Blood of the Walsungs (Wälsungenblut) and The Holy Sinner (Der Erwählte). |8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8 Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute "With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989! |8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8|O|8 | ||||
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