Charles Alexander
Parting Glances: Take Your Time, Mary!
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 timing. For most of [...]
Parting Glances: A 135-Year-Old Request Fulfilled
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 might say was radiantly [...]
Shots and Shutdown
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. That's the benefit, if indeed [...]
Billy and Miss Nancy: Selma Sweets
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 – gave Selma its name 145 years [...]
700 PGs later
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 speak out on behalf of LGBTQ human rights, [...]
Parting Glances: Band Boys I Tooted With
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, Larry. We saw a groundbreaking local production a few [...]
Parting Glances: Other voices; Other Gay Back Rooms
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 13 [...]
Parting Glances: From a book in progress
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, city hall and the 1st Precinct Police Station! Just out of [...]
Parting Glances: Dreams Come and Go...
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 and [...]
Parting Glances: Book in Progress No. 1
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 of the recently razed, four-story building. The [...]
Win $2.5 Million (Save. $499)
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 "friend" who said he himself had won $3 [...]
Parting Glances: ShaZOOM! Oz Pride 2020
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 base — of that redoubtable foursome: Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow, Tin Woodman [...]