Gay Pirates and Gay Aristocrats

Despite vast differences spanning some 400 years, the 17th century was in some ways like today in the 21st century.  Kings and aristocrats, lower class male youth, and pirates all seemed to accept homosexual acts without the extreme aversion characteristic of the...

Great War Novels

After reading Homer’s Iliad, I’m continuing with the theme of great war novels. I recently read Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine motivated me to finally read War...

Male Friendships in Homer’s Iliad

War and Greek Mythology     I was interested in male friendships in Homer’s Iliad, when I bought a copy of Madeline Miller’s recent bestseller The Song of Achilles, but I challenged myself to first read The Iliad of Homer. (I’ve long held a paperback...

Hooray for Dystopias!…Are we living one?

As portrayed in Medicine For The Blues, fear and intimidation were tools of the KKK in the 1920s as they attempted to create a homogeneous society, but nothing on the scale of 1984 (published in 1949) and Brave New World (1932). Too much has been written about these...

Homosexuality in Dracula by Bram Stoker

It took me a long time to understand that my fascination with vampires resulted from elements of homosexuality in Dracula, which I first encountered at the movies as a kid.   While doing research for Medicine For The Blues trilogy, I read a lot of footnotes and...

Mayday! Mayday! – Wake Up, America!

Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix “Mayday! Mayday!” America and its democracy are in need of help. “Mayday!” as a distress signal was first used in 1923, when air traffic between England and France increased over the English Channel. Communications were...

Trump & Hitler: abused children

  Mary Trump’s book, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man (2020) makes it clear that Donald Trump was emotionally abused by his father. Martin Pengelly’s review of this book [bold type indicates reference below] points...

Movies, Books, & the Great Conversation

  Movies Those of you who have known me for several decades remember that I was obsessed with movies and filmmaking for the first half of my life. During that time I completed a few short films, most significantly a collection of four linked shorts titled Western...