Happy Halloween 2024!

Happy Halloween!

The night is still
And the frost, it bites my face
I wear my silence like a mask
And murmur like a ghost

"Trick or treat"
"Trick or treat"
The bitter and the sweet

The carefree days are distant now
I wear my memories like a shroud
I try to speak, but words collapse
Echoing, echoing

"Trick or treat"
"Trick or treat"
The bitter and the sweet

I wander through your sadness
Gazing at you with scorpion eyes
Halloween... Halloween

A sweet reminder in the ice-blue nursery
Of a childish murder, of hidden lustre
And she cries

"Trick or treat"
"Trick or treat"
The bitter and the sweet

I wander through your sadness
Gazing at you with scorpion eyes
Halloween... Halloween

http://siouxsieandthebanshees.co.uk/

LGBT History Month: Friday of the Purple Hand, 1969

Tomorrow marks the 55th anniversary of a landmark event in the history of gay rights: Friday of the Purple Hand. I am always humbled and filled with gratitude and awe when I read stories of the bravery of my gay brothers and sisters from long ago. The article below from KQED in 2019 offers a fantastic recounting.


Armed with Ink, 1960s Activists 'Struck Back' Against Homophobic Media
by Sarah Hotchkiss fro KQED
Jun 13, 2019

The day that came to be known as “Friday of the Purple Hand” ended in 15 arrests, a broken rib, one set of knocked-out teeth and purple handprints scattered across the San Francisco Examiner’s exterior walls.

Four months after the infamous Stonewall riots in New York City, the Bay Area’s more radical LGBTQ+ organizations of 1969 refused to passively accept negative depictions of their community in the local news. So on Oct. 25, when the Examiner published an article by reporter Robert Patterson under the headline “The Dreary Revels of S.F. ‘Gay’ Clubs,” the newspaper unknowingly issued a powerful call to arms—to the very people it had derided.

The events of that day show that the battleground for the burgeoning gay liberation movement wasn’t just on the streets or in the bars—where LGBTQ+ people demanded the right to live openly and unmolested by police—but within the pages of America’s newspapers and magazines. There, mainstream media’s dismissive adjectives, ironic scare quotes and defamatory headlines had the power to shape public opinion of an increasingly vocal and visible minority group.

And they definitely weren’t expecting a coalition of gay liberation groups to strike back.

The headline of Robert Patterson's Oct. 25, 1969 article about gay breakfast clubs
in the 'San Francisco Examiner.' (Courtesy of the SF Examiner)

A community mobilizes
By today’s standards, Patterson’s article, ostensibly about after-hours “‘gay’ breakfast clubs” (note the scare quotes around the word “gay”), reads like a hit piece.

He described the clientele of these so-called “deviate establishments” in as many grossly homophobic ways as possible, all well beyond the pale: “semi-males with flexible wrists and hips,” “the pseudo fair sex,” and “women who aren’t exactly women.” (In a testament to Patterson’s ‘credibility,’ he was fired by the Examiner in 1972 for a series of stories he wrote about visiting China; the paper concluded he had not actually visited the country.)

The community he described was outraged. “The San Francisco Examiner has surpassed its traditional standard of tastelessness and its predictable appeal for redneck hysteria,” the newly formed gay liberation group, the Committee for Homosexual Freedom (CHF) wrote in a Berkeley Barb response piece. “The entire gay community and all those actively working for true liberation must mobilize to confront the brutal suppression of freedom that the Examiner consistently exemplifies and encourages.”

A date was set after several attempts to engage with the paper’s editor and Patterson directly: a large-scale protest would take place on Oct. 31, starting at 12pm on the sidewalk outside the Examiner’s Fifth Street building.

The “melee,” as the Examiner described it the next day, started when two unknown persons (widely thought to be newspaper employees) dropped bags of purple printer’s ink from the building rooftop onto the peaceful picketers below. “Indignation turned to anger,” one of the protesters later wrote in The San Francisco Free Press. “Feet stepped in the ink. It appeared all around the sidewalks. One or two hands dipped into the ink and a new symbol was born.”

Stevens McClave raises his purple fist in protest

The police initially apprehended just one demonstrator, the first one to put his inky hand on the building walls, but as others protested his arrest, the “Tac Squad” (sardonically described as “close by and ever on the ready”) moved in, raising their batons and declaring the picket line an illegal assembly.

In the ensuing “fracas” (another great 1969 word), a dozen protesters were arrested for disorderly conduct and thrown in the paddy wagon—several on felony charges that were eventually dropped (except for one instance of allegedly biting a police officer). Other protesters took the issue to City Hall, where an additional three were arrested for trespassing, unlawful assembly and remaining at the site of a riot (essentially, staying in the building past closing time).

Unsurprisingly, the SFPD’s heavy-handed response—and the ensuing cases against the arrested protesters—galvanized not just the members of more radical LGBTQ+ groups, but the old guard they initially sought to distance themselves from, creating a network of support that would propel the Bay Area’s gay liberation movement in the years to come.

Marc Robert Stein, professor of history at San Francisco State University and editor of The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History, thinks the timing of Patterson’s article wasn’t coincidental, and reflected the era’s homophobic attitudes to burgeoning gay organizing. “October was the month when mainstream magazines first covered Stonewall,” he says. “The movement is really growing. And it’s at that moment that there’s this incredibly hostile story.”

Join the gay revolution
Before the events of the Purple Hand and before the creation of the CHF, the largest gay organization in San Francisco was the Society for Individual Rights (S.I.R.), a homophile society (to use the language of the time) founded in 1964.

As the women’s rights, anti-war and Black power movements swept the country, some younger members of the LGBTQ+ community considered S.I.R. to be too conservative. In an April 1969 editorial, Leo Laurence, editor of Vector, S.I.R.’s monthly magazine, broke ranks with the mostly white, middle-class and nonconfrontational members of S.I.R., calling them “timid, uptight, conservative, and afraid to act for the good of the whole homosexual community.”

The time had come, Laurence argued, for everyone to come out to their friends, family and employers, and to be proud of their sexuality. They should be joining forces with other social causes, like the Black Panthers and local unions, and standing up for everyone’s rights.

To illustrate his idea of LGBTQ+ freedom in a subsequent Berkeley Barb interview, Laurence supplied the alt weekly with a picture of two men smiling: Laurence with his arms around his friend Gale Whittington. In no short order, S.I.R. asked Laurence to resign, and Whittington was fired from his job at the States Steamship Company.

The CHF, co-founded by Laurence, Whittington and a few others, was a direct reaction to this double rejection from both “straight” society and the existing gay establishment. And with this effort, they would be all about coalition-building.

The Purple Hand events were co-organized by at least three like-minded groups, including Gay Guerrilla Theater and the Gay Liberation Front. But despite the fracture between Laurence and S.I.R. that precipitated the creation of the CHF months earlier, the old-guard emerged as surprising supporters of the younger demonstrators as well.

In a Nov. 7 Berkeley Tribe piece reflecting on the demonstration and its aftermath, Laurence writes, “I was scared and felt alone in jail, until I learned of the help mobilized ‘outside.’” The Red Mountain Tribe gathered bail money, S.I.R.’s president saved Laurence’s camera film before he was thrown in the paddy wagon, Del Martin (co-founder in 1955 of the lesbian group Daughters of Bilitis) helped CHF find lawyers, writing several sympathetic articles for Vector in the months to come.

“When Gale Whittington and I founded the CHF last spring, we dreamed of a nationwide movement,” Laurence writes in the Tribe. “It’s no longer a fantasy.”

After the Purple Hand
Protests against mainstream media’s depictions of the LGBTQ+ community would continue for years to come. The Purple Hand events, Stein says, are just one example of protests across the country against newspapers and magazines in ’69 and ’70, along with a second wave of protests against television stations and individual shows in ’73.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca, who joined the Gay Liberation Front in Philadelphia when he was a 19-year-old student at Temple University, remembers those times well. “Back in the ’70s especially pretty much any time they did a feature on the community it would be very negative,” he remembers. The GLF would picket or actually enter the newspaper offices, confronting editors and writers of the specific stories.

Through a combination of direct action, face-to-face conversations and larger shifts in society, Mecca says, things gradually changed, fulfilling in many ways Laurence’s early 1969 call-to-arms.

“I think one of the greatest things we did as a community was to come out of the closet,” Mecca says. “By being visible, we broke all the stereotypes. We forced people to engage with us, we forced our families to deal with us, we forced people to see we were just like them.”

https://www.kqed.org/arts/13859570/friday-purple-hand-gay-liberation-1969

BEAUTY: Art--Misc. Skull And Skeleton Art For Halloween 2024

Top to bottom: Bloom by Simón Prades; Memento Mori by Max Slevogt; Death At The Ball by Felicien Rops; The Reaper by Tyra Kleen;  Dancing Skeletons by Kawanabe Kyosai; 

BEAUTY: AI Digital Art for Halloween--Robert Mealing (Spiritus Loci)

Artist Robert Mealing uses the AI tool Midjourney to create some gorgeous, spooky imagery, and his ongoing October Misremembered series is perfect for this time of year. I posted his creations last year here, and he has updated the project with new images for 2024, seen below. This new crop reminds me of Victorian Ghost Photography, seen here.

https://spiritusloci.tumblr.com/

The York Ghost Merchants

For Halloween, I would love one of these delightful, little handmade ghosts from York, England. Alas, The York Ghost Merchants make them in small batches, released only a few times a year. I need to keep an eye out and catch one the next time they are released.

Their website offers a delightful summary:

Welcome to the Ghost Merchants
The ancient city of York has a reputation for being the most haunted city in Europe, perhaps even the world. There is rich tradition here of ghost story-telling which stretches back for many centuries. Ghosts are an integral although undeniably obscure part of our city’s story. York Ghosts are firmly embedded in this history.

Each York Ghost is handmade in our own workshops, combining the best of British materials with the sagacity and resource of generations of Guild craftsmen and women.

Our business follows the traditions imposed by The Sorrowful Guild of Master Ghost Makers. We adhere to traditional values and methods, our ghosts are always made by hand and the techniques that we use ensure that each York Ghost is a true original, complete with an embossed maker’s mark.

York Ghosts are individually packaged in exquisite travelling boxes featuring a hand drawn Ghost Merchants shop, to make the ghost feel at home on its journey from the Shambles to far away places. The Original York Ghost is wrapped in an 1852 map of York, and our Little York Ghost comes in the “Boo” box with oval gilt edged viewing aperture.

Our ghosts are made by hand in small batches and we do not operate a mass production business model. Our shop at No.6 Shambles is open 6 days a week and has over 600 Ghosts to choose from. Our second location ‘The Dispensary’ in St Anthony’s Garden opened in 2023 and stocks Original Ghosts, Little Ghosts and Phantoms.

Every ghost is unique, “with a spirit all its own”

Our one concern is your delight.

Black and White Sweep Ghosts

Black Friday Barnardo's Ghosts

Black Kraken Ghost

Solid hand-cast Bronze Ghost

The Comtesse

Crazed Grey Ghost

Drapery Misses

Firebrick Sweep Ghost

Grey Lady Ghosts

Jubbergate Huckster

Lost Woodland Ghosts

Ghosts created for release in March 2021

Mythe Ghost

Ghost in Oxidized Iron

Poison Garden Ghosts

Hand-cast Polished Aluminum Ghosts

Winter Green Ghosts

Website:
https://www.yorkghostmerchants.com/

And if you don't live in or near enough to York to get a ghost of your very own, keep an eye on their Instagram account for information regarding releases of new ghost batches!
https://www.instagram.com/yorkghostmerchants/

"Little Shrew (Snowflake)" An Animation by Kate Bush

Kate Bush released a beautiful animated video today. She tells the story at her site:

"In 2022, with war breaking out in Ukraine, I decided I wanted to make an anti-war animation. In particular, I hoped to draw attention to the children caught up in war.

I based the storyboard around the song, Snowflake, which was sung by my son when he was a child. I think his performance is extremely moving and although I‘d originally written the song to capture his beautiful descant voice before he entered adolescence, it has taken on a haunting new meaning within the context of this animation.

The original track runs for over seven minutes, but as animations take a long time to make, it made a lot of sense to shorten it to three or four minutes. I was concerned that the song might lose something by being edited so intensely but actually it’s held up pretty well.

I knew I wanted the featured character to be a child caught up in war, so I made a very rough, off the cuff story board.

Although I’d initially thought to make the character a human child – a little girl – I settled on the idea of a Caucasian pygmy shrew (Ukrainian shrew): a tiny, fragile little creature. I felt that people might have more empathy for a vulnerable little animal than a human…

This little shrew would take a journey on a moonlit, winter’s night through a war-torn city, initially unaware of what was going on around her in this land of the giants. She can sense that she’s being called by a kind of spiritual presence… HOPE.

She starts to search for HOPE. Sometimes hope is all there is to hang on to."

The wonderful story of the artist and animation team continues on her site here.

Kate concludes:

"There’s not meant to be an exclusive focus on the war in Ukraine, but it was that war that instigated the making of this animation. All wars leave horrific scars: ruined lives, families ripped apart, life-changing injuries, trauma and loss on a massive scale – but it’s the children who suffer the most in so many ways. Their past, present and future melt away into fear and uncertainty.

I would like to ask that if you watch the animation, please make a donation to War Child, or to another charity that aids children in war.

Even a tiny donation will help enormously. War can be an unimaginable horror for a child.

You could be hope for that child caught up in war. You could make a real difference.

Thank you for supporting this project,

Kate"

https://www.warchild.org.uk/
https://www.katebush.com/

LGBT History Month: WW II and Paragraph 175

For LGBT History Month, I would like to highlight an aspect of WWII that is not talked about much...not only the persecution, imprisonment, torture, and slaughter of gay men at the hands of the Nazis, but the continued persecution and imprisonment of gay men after the war at the hands of ordinary German citizens due to a monstrous law called Paragraph 175.

At the end of WWII, tens of thousands of people were liberated from Nazi concentration camps. But what is deliberately overlooked is the fact that gay male prisoners wearing the pink triangle (the Nazis’ symbol to brand homosexuals) were forced to serve out the rest of their sentence as it was laid out in this draconian law.

In an article for the news outlet Los Angeles Blade, journalist Karen Ocamb succinctly wrote:

"According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the total number of those murdered by Nazis and their collaborators during the Holocaust was 17 million men, women and children: 6 million were Jews and 11 million were other ethnicities, including Soviets, Slavs, Poles and Ukrainians, Romanis/Gypsies (classified as enemies of the state, like Jews), the disabled – and homosexuals.

No one really knows or seems to care how many LGBTQ people were killed, tortured, maimed or castrated, except, thankfully, the US Holocaust Museum. 'More than one million gay Germans were targeted, of whom at least 100,000 were arrested and 50,000 were convicted and imprisoned,' reports the Museum via Wikipedia. An estimated 5,000 to 15,000 gay men were imprisoned in concentration camps and died at high rates, according to a survivor. They were forced to wear identifiable pink triangles, as were those convicted of pedophilia and bestiality.

But unlike other survivors liberated from concentration camps as World War II ended, gays were persecuted and re-imprisoned under Germany’s anti-gay law, Paragraph 175."

Paragraph 175 is extensively detailed on a dedicated Wikipedia page, which states that:

"Paragraph 175 (known formally as §175 StGB; also known as Section 175 in English) was a provision of the German Criminal Code from 15 May 1871 to 10 March 1994. It made sexual relations between males a crime, and in early revisions the provision also criminalized bestiality as well as forms of prostitution and underage sexual abuse. While the Nazi persecution of homosexuals is reasonably well known today, far less attention has been given to the continuation of this persecution in post-war Germany.[4] In 1945, after the concentration camps were liberated, some homosexual prisoners were recalled to custody to serve out their two-year sentence under Paragraph 175.[7] In 1950, East Germany abolished Nazi amendments to Paragraph 175, whereas West Germany kept them and even had them confirmed by its Constitutional Court. About 100,000 men were implicated in legal proceedings from 1945 to 1969, and about 50,000 were convicted.[4] Some individuals accused under Paragraph 175 committed suicide. In 1969, the government eased Paragraph 175 by providing for an age of consent of 21.[8] The age of consent was lowered to 18 in 1973, and finally, in 1994, the paragraph was repealed and the age of consent lowered to 16, the same that is in force for heterosexual acts."

It remains heartbreaking that so many thousands and thousands of men were denied human treatment after a war that saw their humanity crushed to begin with. I recall going to the site of the Dachau concentration camp on a visit to Germany in 1988 where there were monuments to every persecuted and slaughtered religious or ethnic group, except gay men (lesbians were not included in Paragraph 175). In one of the interpretive libraries, I saw a pink granite triangle plaque on an easel with an accompanying petition to sign, urging the organization that oversees the Dachau site to place the small monument in memory of all those men. Even in 1988, we were still fighting to be recognized as having been in the camps at all. The survivors of the camps, in particular Dachau, did not want to be seen as having anything in common with what they clearly viewed as prisoners lesser than themselves, prisoners who, one suspects, they believed deserved to be there, and to have died at the hands of Nazis. It was not until 1995 that the plaque was allowed to be placed.

Stone Alphabet by Clotilde Olyff

I am captivated by this collection of rocks and stones which creates a font...by Belgian typeface designer Clotilde Olyff.

I can't find a dedicated web presence for Olyff but you can find her bio at Type Network.
https://typenetwork.com/font-designers/clotilde-olyff

And a page of her typeface designs here:
https://luc.devroye.org/fonts-25498.html

"Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine)" by Kara Walker at SFMOMA

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of seeing multi-media artist Kara Walker's newest installation, a commission for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, entitled "Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine)" where a group of mystical, archetypal, mechanized characters perform magical rituals.

Photo: SFMOMA

SFMOMA's summary explains:

"Kara Walker has long been recognized for her incisive examinations of the dynamics of power and the exploitation of race and sexuality. Her work leverages expressions of fantasy and humor to confront troubling histories and dominant narratives, repossessing control in the process. Inspired by a wide range of sources, from antique dolls to Octavia Butler’s novel Parable of the Sower, Walker’s new commission, Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine), considers the memorialization of trauma, the objectives of technology, and the possibilities of transforming the negative energies that plague contemporary society. Here, automatons trapped in a never-ending cycle of ritual and struggle are repositories of the human soul. They recall mechanized medieval icons that evidenced divinity, vitality, and the promise of faith. Situated within an energetically charged field of black obsidian from Mt. Konocti in Lake County — a volcanic glass with deep spiritual properties — Walker’s Gardeners evoke wonder, reflection, respite, and hope. Just past this prophetic vignette, the installation’s namesake, Fortuna, responds to each visitor with a choreographed gesture and a printed fortune fresh from her mouth — an offering of absolution and contemplation."

A figure with a hole in her torso plays a musical instrument through it. A wise and powerful figure levitates a young boy...or perhaps facilitates and eases his fall to the ground. A young girl displays a hand puppet to tell her story. A lone figure with arms torn off, and still wriggling on the ground, stands helpless. And the tall figure of Fortuna stands independent of the Garden, dispensing ticker-tape fortunes from her mouth. I got one that says "Woman and children, women and children. And men and dogs too. Cats. Mice. No one of us is safe and free."

Astoundingly, this piece is free to see, located in a public atrium, and not in the paid admission areas of the museum. It will be displayed until Spring of 2026! If you are in or near--or will be in or near--San Francisco, I highly recommend a visit to see this stunning, overwhelming installation in person.

https://www.karawalkerstudio.com/
https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/fortuna-and-the-immortality-garden-machine/