As the Allies began to beat the Axis in World War II, a mood of cautious celebration took hold in Detroit’s gay bar clubs. Downtown side streets Farmer and Bates, home to Rio Grande, Silver [...]
Monday, Oct. 11 offers three choices: LGBTQ+ celebration, Native American reconsideration, and some conflict of interest to Chris Columbus 1492 believers. As everyone knows, this date marks National Coming Out Day (and the Pride Source [...]
Tuesday, September 7, marked the observance of Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the Jewish New Year, 5782. Shanah Tovah! (Good Year!). Kenahorah! (Keep the evil eye away!) Last year, Jewish New Years, 5702, was [...]
“Your fine's been paid! Alexander. Ease up! Go back and get on the bus to the city limits." "This time, stay out of trouble!” I was 23 when I heard that bit of last-minute redemption, [...]
When I was about 22 or 23 years old, I had what one might call a confidential confrontation. A professor of English said to me bluntly, “I’ve been told you are or may be a [...]
Somewhere over the rainbow in the fabled Land of OZ there were rumors circulating like chatterbox whirlwinds that the latest, newly appointed Wizard of OZ is transgender. It wasn’t a sure thing who was responsible [...]
This year’s Pride Month was also the second year of my stay as a senior at Henry Ford Village (HFV) in Dearborn. The HFV “campus,” as it’s called (although it has nothing to do with [...]
Consult any daily horoscope worth its intrinsic wait in days, hours, star signs, planet probabilities and second guesses, and you’ll come to the probable (or, improbable) planetary conclusion that everything is indeed a matter of [...]
I celebrated the return of Spring three weeks ago by helping to fulfill a 135-year-old request by America’s beloved poet, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). That recent memorable day in March was occasioned by what poet Emily [...]
I received my first COVID-19 vaccination shot last week. My second right-arm shot is scheduled for March 11. Among 300 seniors inoculated in a well-coordinated system at Dearborn’s Henry Ford Village, I was number 13. [...]
Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1965 historic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, for African American voter rights changed the South forever. (Or, did it?) Few know that another King – William Rufus DeVane King – [...]
I started writing my Parting Glances column in 1999. Its premise was simple enough: choose an important LGB — and occasionally T — historical event that actually changed things for us, or challenged us to [...]
Mart Crowley’s “Boys In the Band” opened off-Broadway 53 years ago. I bought a copy of the play in Chicago in 1968 and read tryout dialog aloud while driving back to Detroit with my then-partner, [...]
For over 50 years, Life magazine informed Americans about what was happening here and abroad. Photos and content were dramatic. Mostly conservative. Occasionally controversial. Once in a while, downright shocking. Life folded in 1973; circulation [...]
As a gay teenager, I hung out at the Hub Grill in downtown Detroit, a greasy spoon of a place, located at Farmer & Bates in convenient walking distance of four quite popular gay bars, [...]
The mind-boggling possibility of recording dreams may soon be a reality, predicts a British monthly science magazine How It Works. Nanotechnology and brain scanning techniques are now such that translating neural impulses from brain neurons [...]
I keep on my laptop desk a corner of chalky red brick. It's all that's left of the Cassboro Apartments formerly at 444 Peterboro, Detroit. I found this memento among broken boards and shattered glass [...]
It must have been something cogent and articulately pleading in my weekly prayers, but recently I’ve just been darn lucky. Not once, but twice. This past week I received an email from an unknown generous [...]
In spite of the halo’d Wizard of Oz, Pride 2020 came to the Yellow Brick Road — for the first time ever — this June. Thanks to the determination, hard work — and loyal fan [...]
If one person single-handedly pushed this country into a War of Independence from England, it is patriot and pamphleteer Thomas Paine (1737 – 1809). His book “Common Sense” is a clarion call to open rebellion. [...]
About a dozen days ago tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow — at my age how can I be sure? — I was gifted with a pair of John Lennon enchantment glasses. Gold-rimmed. Sunset orange. [...]
It was a year ago this Memorial Day 2020 that I had a stroke and spent two weeks in Detroit Receiving Hospital and a month in physical rehab in the Senior Care Center in Henry [...]
When’s the last time I was hugged? I can’t remember. It’s been so long it seems. A month ago? Two months ago? Social distancing has all but rendered the time-honored practice obsolete. I do remember [...]
“It’s been 80 years this year since we debuted in the movies,” said Scarecrow on ZOOM to Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, Aunty Em, Glenda the Good Witch, and starlet Dorothy. “The weathers horrid, wild and [...]
This is the story of Dorian Lavender who has vanished from the party scene of music, stimulants and sex, and is now ironically beyond the saving grace of suddenly discarded friends of which there are many. (Perhaps you knew him too.)
As an emerging gay teenager, I attended Cass Technical High School where I was fortunate to soon discover there were others like myself in the process of coming out. Although back then there was no such thing as coming out, there was, however signaling — by dropping verbal hairpins — and exhibiting tell-tale touches of creative flamboyance.
As a recent resident of the Henry Ford Senior Retirement Village Community, consisting of some 800 units — I live in Berkshire Gardens — I have had some interesting, shall we say, metaphysical, perhaps psychic experiences. At separate dinner times, for starters, I've encountered three fellow diners — the food served at the St. Clair and Windows restaurants is excellent and varied — who are double takes for friends I have known for some time.
My brand-name watch battery quit after six years of service. I replaced it last week for another six years of second-by-second, hour-by-hour, day-by-day, month-by-month timeline reassurance. It occurs to me that the battery replacement is [...]
About a dozen days ago tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow — at my age how can I be sure? — I was gifted with a pair of John Lennon enchantment glasses. Gold-rimmed. Sunset orange. Autumn-tinted. Pre-Donald Trump, to be sure.
this column first appeared in BTL 12/20/17 Contrary to rumors circulating for years in Story Bookland Weekly Tabloid there never was any real friction between Dorothy, Cowardly Lion, Tin Woodsman and Scarecrow.(And those horrid pictures [...]
First published in 2013 and again Dec. 2016, one month after the election Donald J. Trump President of the United States If one person can be truly said to have single-handedly pushed this country into [...]
Just a few generations ago, the term homosexual was often qualified by adjectives. Alleged. Avowed. Rumored. Known! The descriptions were used by cautious media, police enforcement agencies and courtroom attorneys.
"Prophet Jones Jailed on Morals Charge" blared the Feb. 21, 1956 banner Free Press headline, with other papers gleefully tooting in. Thanks to a smart lawyer, the jury found Prophet Jones not guilty. It was a case of entrapment, pure (but not so simple)
This first appeared in BTL in Sept. 2012 Footnoted in the pages of Civil War history is the intriguing story of a "Mrs. Nash." First name unrecorded. She's listed in 1878 U.S. Army military records [...]
This column first appeared in BTL Oct. 2012. Almost 125 years before the birth of Jesus a handsome youth named Antinous was declared a god by the Roman emperor Publius Aelius Hadrian. Hadrian fell in [...]
This column first appeared in BTL in April 2014, when Charles was 77. He’s now 83 years young. At my advanced age I've come to realize I really don't exist. With the exception of the [...]
There is little conscious planning as I create my art. I work intuitively and rather quickly. I start with a geometric shape, a humorous or serious doodle, a fluid symbol fished from my subconscious, a newly minted hieroglyph or alphabet, sometimes a line expressive of energy and movement, and I proceed from there.
Somewhere pressed in my book of tattered memories is a green carnation, still remarkably fresh with the passage of so much time.
Fifty years ago when closets were leased for a lifetime, it was SOP – standard operating procedure – to go by a catchy nickname.
As a teenager I learned the lay of the land from word-of-mouth sharing from those who had navigated Detroit's watering holes years before me. I did however once venture - daringly - on my own into the Greyhound Bus Depot to check out noonday comings and goings. I was cautious. I had been forewarned.
Editor’s Note: Contributor Charles Alexander fell ill last monthand was unable to provide his usual weekly Parting Glances Column. This selection was chosen in honor of Pride month and Stonewall’s 50th Anniversary. Everyone at Between [...]
“Gay is good. You are not alone.” This was the slogan when the Affirmations LGBT Center opened its doors in Ferndale more than 20 years ago. It was a bold statement to make at the time: reassurance for many cautious, confused, isolated young people in need of understanding, trained organizational support and a place to hang out.
About a dozen days ago tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow — at my age how can I be sure? — I was gifted with a pair of John Lennon enchantment glasses.
GATORADE, Ariz.: I’m a skeptic concerning things supernatural; but the wonder-working weekend I spend reporting for BTL on the Drag Queens for Jesus confab is, well, miraculous – awe-inspiring. It’s also ecumenical, as the three-day [...]
1. In the year of the Trumpeted Mongrel 666 Beast of War endlessly chasing his flea-bitten tail, a prophet of restless dudes scaled Mt. Rush-No-More, seeking counsel with the electrifying powers that sometimes to Be (or, not to
During the Nazi reign of terror that ended only in Germany’s defeat by the American, English and French Allies in 1945, about 15,000 gay men were incarcerated in concentration camps from 1935 to 1944, where an estimated 60 percent of homosexual "schweinhund" were brutally worked to death.
Fifty years ago when gay ID closets were leased for a lifetime, it was SOP – standard operating procedure – to go by a catchy nickname.
The “Coffee Table Book of Astrology” tattles that “taurus is the astrological sign of sexual deviancy.”Or, as a friend of mine used to tell me year after year of our 40-year friendship, “Brandy” — his nickname for me, as in the alcoholic beverage, brandy Alexander — "May babies are gay babies.” There may be some truth to this observation.
Just in time for Easter 2019, Fools for Christ (and Donald Trump) — an American Bible GOP group headquartered in Lumbago Falls, Texas — held a press conference on Palm Sunday to publicize “National Hate [...]
An open house I attended a blossoming spring or two ago was winding down at the home of BTL co-publishers Jan Stevenson and Susan Horowitz. Two boys of some of the invited party guests were fussing over who’d get to release balloons at the festive closing of the couple's full bloom garden showcase.
