Revisiting the love notes of Gertrude and Alice — #lesbianlit #amreading #GertrudeStein #YouTube

I thought I’d repost a part of the review I did of Baby Precious Always Shines: Selected Love Notes Between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, published by St. Martin’s Press in the year 2,000 – fifteen years before same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide in the United States. The review is recorded below and the text is below that.

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas: Love Notes

Edited by Kay Turner and published by the Stonewall imprint of St. Martin’s Press, Baby Precious Always Shines: Selected Love Notes Between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, published in the year 2,000 brings together for the first time a collection of private notes passed between Gertrude and Alice, the two women who had the distinction of being the most famous lesbian couple of the twentieth century.

Reading the book from cover to cover gave me the sense of looking through a keyhole into the everyday intimacies that made up the marriage of Gertrude and Alice. Gertrude was the husband, the hubby, and Alice was her wifie, her wife, her precious baby. Their partnership lasted for 39 years, from 1907 until Gertrude’s death in 1946.

In Gertrude Stein’s words, “It happened very simply that they were married. They were naturally married.”

Gertrude Stein, sometimes referred to as ‘The Mother of Modernism,’ has often been misunderstood. Her writing, with its use of repetition and unusual word patterns, is not nonsense as some would have us believe or the result of a psychological condition. Stein used language itself to break apart the conventions of literature and thought. In other words, instead of portraying reality, the words are their own reality.

Sometimes the notes were about domestic activities. Gertrude had oiled Alice’s scissors or had chopped the wood. More often the notes conveyed endearances and reassurances. Pet names abounded. Gertrude signed most of her notes “Y.D.,’ short for “Your Darling.” Gertrude’s nicknames for Alice included “birdie,” “sweetie,” her “boss,” and her “treasure.” In turn, Alice called Gertrude her “husband,” her “lovie,” “baby boy,” “Mr. Cuddlewuddle,” and “sweet pinky.”

Most of the notes included in this collection were written by Gertrude. But the small number written by Alice are very telling. Alice offers much insight into Gertrude’s work, telling her mate that she is “without peer.” She offers encouragement, inspiration, and lays down the rules of their relationship in no uncertain terms. In one note, the lines spaced out like a poem, Alice wrote: “Baby boy / You’re no toy / But a strong-strong husband / I don’t obey” 

This collection can be read as literature in itself and also as insight into Gertrude Stein’s great body of work. Ultimately, as the editors note in the introduction, these notes “disclose the intimacies of a deeply committed, very rare, and at the same time, very ordinary marriage.”

Rereading Baby Precious Always Shines: Selected Love Notes Between Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, published by St. Martin’s Press in the year 2,000 – fifteen years before same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide in the United States – reminds me that we have always existed. 

This is Janet Mason with commentary for Book Tube and Spotify.

For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

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What’s Love Got To Do With It? Everything — #UU #selflove #amreading

Recently, I participated in a service on the topic of Love at the Unitarian Universalists of Mt. Airy in Philadelphia. The YouTube video of my part of the service is above and the text is below.

The theme of this month’s service coincides with the evolving relationship I’ve been having with Love. In thinking about the evolving and central role that Love plays in the Unitarian Universalist faith, I got to thinking about my relationship with love and how loving the self is central to all love. I’ve long thought that not loving ourselves, and unfortunately sometimes hating ourselves or parts of ourselves, is the root cause of harboring hatred toward others. When I heard Toni Morrison’s quote, “If you can only be tall because someone else is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. And white people have a very, very serious problem,” I immediately related to it.

One of the things that drew me to Unitarian Universalism is the first principle which talks about, “The inherent worth and dignity of every person.” As a writer, I may have thought that I had it figured out that love of the self has to come first because, as I’ve long been aware, you can’t do anything else if you don’t take care of yourself first. I’ve also long been aware that as a writer, you have to love all of your characters, even your most villainous ones – for that writing to be relatable.

From a Buddhist perspective, if you hate your characters or other people, there’s a strong possibility that you are projecting parts of yourself onto them and that you are limiting yourself with self-hatred. But recently it has occurred to me, through the self-examination of my writing that I still have some work to do on loving myself first. I also recognize that I have to consciously work on loving myself first and remembering that I am secure in myself and that this is connected to a sense of belonging to myself and being at home in the world. Recently in a qi (chi) gong class with my teacher Jane Hulting, who you may remember as our music director emeritus, she mentioned that we “have a sea of chi, inside of us which is always there.” This boundless energy (or life force) that she spoke of is located in our bellies about two inches below our belly buttons.

This prompted me to come up with a meditation in which I send myself love. Since we are taught not to love ourselves or (especially for women) to put others first, I thought you may benefit from doing this meditation with me. If you feel so inclined, put one hand over your heart and place your other hand about two inches below your belly button. Begin by sending yourself kindness. You can think of the word “kindness” and let it resonate around the inside of your body. Then picture the love you have for yourself radiating behind your belly button in a large ball and then radiating down your limbs, your fingers and toes as you say silently or aloud “I love myself.”

We’ll begin when I ring the bell and end when I sound the bell again. Ring bell Put one hand on heart – say “I send myself kindness” Then with the other hand just below the belly button “visualize a golden orb inside of you that is filled with love – see it filling your abdomen, stomach, and chest cavity and then filling your extremities also – If you want, you can say aloud with me, I love myself, I love myself, I love myself.

Ring closing bell

Thank you.

May we all remember the power of love and the importance of loving ourselves first. After all, love is a major reason we come here — to be together and to remember that with love on our side, we can go into the world and help to heal it.

–Namaste—

For information on my most recently published novel Loving Artemis click here

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In Review, The Blue Zones: Secrets for Living Longer — #BookTube #BlueZones #Intersectional #amreading

I’m posting a of The Blue Zones: Secrets for Living Longer (Lessons From the Healthiest Places on Earth) written by Dan Buettner and published by National Geographic. You can view the review below or read it below that. I hope you enjoy it.

I first connected with the Blue Zones during the 2020 pandemic when I saw a few videos highlighting the Blue Zones featured on YouTube. The Blue Zones are areas of the world – usually isolated mountainous regions – where people live the longest.

I was excited when I learned that Dan Buettner, the man who identified the Blue Zones, was coming out with a book titled The Blue Zones: Secrets for Living Longer (Lessons From the Healthiest Places on Earth). I had watched Buettner’s Netflix special “Live to 100—Secrets of the Blue Zones” — when it came out last year.

People who live in the Blue Zones are traditional people, and my sense is that not everyone can live there. For example, I didn’t see any lesbians in the Netflix special or the book. However, there are many things we can learn from people who live in the Blue Zones.

For starters, people living in the Blue Zones eat a mostly plant-based diet. Most live in towns in hilly regions and spend a lot of time walking up and down those hills to see friends, and to go to cafes and churches. Being sociable is a big part of living longer. Buettner writes that genes account for twenty-five percent of how long we live, and the rest is lifestyle — how we eat and move.

This is not new for those who have followed the growing information associated with healthy plant-based diets. However, it is fascinating to me that entire cultures live so differently from the rest of the world and particularly from the culture in the United States which has aptly been described as a “toxic-food culture.” Interesting is that the poorest people in the Blue Zones, those who must grow their own vegetables, are also the healthiest, the happiest, and those who live the longest.

I found all the stories interesting but was particularly moved by the story about the people who live in the Blue Zone on the island of Okinawa in Japan. At each meal, the people in the Okinawa Blue Zone consciously “reduced calories in a way that delayed the aging process.”

I am not normally a judgmental person — at least I try not to be, but when I read that Okinawa is a fading Blue Zone because of an United States military base which has moved nearby and that has attracted fast-food establishments and other chain restaurants that promote the Standard American Diet (SAD), I was angered and saddened.

As Buettner writes: “Their new diet turned out to be toxic. Younger Okinawans now die from heart disease at a rate higher than most other Japanese do. The incidence of low birth-rate is 20 percent greater than the rest of the country. And Okinawan men under 55 have the distinction of being the most obese in Japan.

“The truth is, it’s probably too late for this blue zone. When Okinawa’s oldest generation is gone, the phenomenon of long life here will likely vanish with it. Which makes it even more urgent that we capture their recipe for successful aging while we can.”

The Blue Zones–Secrets for Living Longer (Lessons From the Healthiest Places on Earth) written by Dan Buettner, and published by National Geographic is a good read, a beautiful and well-done book with gripping photographs. It is a good reminder of how big the world is and how much we have to learn.

 This is Janet Mason with reviews for Book Tube and Spotify.

For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

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Learning more about Oscar: #LGBTQ #amreading #intersectional

I am posting a review of Wilde Nights & Robber Barons, The Story of Maurice Schwabe (The Man Behind Oscar Wilde’s Downfall, who with a Band of False Aristocrats Swindled the World) written by Laura Lee (2022; Elsewhere Press).

The review that I recorded for Book Tube is below and the written review is below that.

Oscar Wilde was not the first one. Of course, I knew that rationally. But this was also the first thought that popped into my head after finishing the book Wilde Nights & Robber Barons, The Story of Maurice Schwabe (The Man Behind Oscar Wilde’s Downfall, who with a Band of False Aristocrats Swindled the World) by Laura Lee (2022; Elsewhere Press).

No stranger to the world of Oscar Wilde, Lee is the author of the 2017 nonfiction book titled Oscar’s Ghost, The Battle for Oscar Wilde’s Legacy from Amberly Publishing in England.

Her new book interested me because it tells the story behind the story of how Oscar Wilde became the gay icon that he is – including the impetus and name of the infamous and historically important Oscar Wilde Bookshop in New York City which closed its doors in 2009.

Wilde was born in 1854 in Dublin, Ireland; went to college in England; married a woman as custom dictated; became a well-known writer; discovered he was gay, fell hopelessly in love with a younger man named Lord Alfred Douglas; and went to jail for that love in 1895. He was then released from jail in 1897 and in 1900 died penniless.

Wilde is the author of numerous and often satirical writings including his novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his plays including his most popular, The Importance of Being Earnest.

In Wilde Nights & Robber Barons, Lee used her research and writing to bring to light the story behind Oscar Wilde. He came to be known because of his writings, and he came to ruin because he was being blackmailed for his homosexuality along with other gay men in a certain class in what was commonly called “polite society.”

Maurice Schwabe, key to the international circle of card sharks and blackmailers, just happened to have been lovers with Lord Alfred Douglas, the man who was known for his long-term love affair with Oscar Wilde. Douglas, also known as Bosie, was with Schwabe before he was with Oscar Wilde, making me think that jealousy and revenge were likely motives in the blackmailing along with financial gain.

In doing her research and presenting the facts, Lee gives the reader some interesting insight into Wilde’s important role in the early gay rights movement:  “Oscar was starting to be known as someone a young man in a certain kind of trouble could call on for help. In September 1893, Bosie had written to Charles Kains-Jackson, the editor of The Artist and the Journal of Home Culture, which was a showcase for homoerotic verse. He talked about Oscar’s role in advancing the “new culture,” a society that was accepting of same-sex love, an early form of the gay rights movement. ‘Perhaps nobody knows as I do what [Oscar] has done for the ‘new culture,’ the people he has pulled out of the fire and ‘seen through’ things not only with money, but by sticking to them when other people wouldn’t speak to them…’ In the years leading up to his trial for gross indecency, Wilde spent a fair amount of time negotiating with blackmailers, and only a small portion of this involved letters of his own.”

In reading Wilde Nights & Robber Barons, The Story of Maurice Schwabe (The Man Behind Oscar Wilde’s Downfall, who with a Band of False Aristocrats Swindled the World) by Laura Lee (2022; Elsewhere Press), I learned more about Oscar Wilde than I knew before.

This is Janet Mason reviewing for Book Tube.

For more information on my most recent novel Loving Artemis, an endearing tale of revolution, love, and marriage, click here:

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