Hello fellow humans

letter from a mother of a gay man. sent to ONE magazine, 1958.

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This magazine. This shit is such a cool piece of history. This is a letter a woman sent to the guest ever openly gay and lesbian magazine in the US. ONE was revolutionary, and so many people wrote to them! From all over North America. And those letters are archived and an amazing person named Joshua Irving Gershick compiled an array of these letters into a script called Dear ONE:

It's a phenomenal piece of queer history. Straight supportive parents, closeted queers, 17 yr old looking to meet men, worldly bisexual polyamorists, stealth trans folk, dishonorably discharged gay veterans, cishet threats letters (anon hate), happily "married" gay people, letters from Black and other POC describing their intersectional experiences, and so much more. This collection is like touching the thoughts of queer people I'll never get to meet, but that I know. These letters are incredibly humanizing and one if the big steps towards are wider connected queer community in the 50s and 60s. This magazine gave people advice and legal help for being persecuted by systemic homophobia.

Im.so glad to see this in circulation. When this play and playwright (!!!) came to my workplace I was lucky enough to stage manage the shortened production that toured in middle and high schools (in spring 2022). It was pretty amazing to watch young folk connect to these letters. Not to mention getting to sit and chat with the playwright as a trans queer elder.

Anyway that's why queer archiving is so so important and valuable. Its connects us to the pieces of queer history that we lose connection to, because of active queerphobia and erasing of history, and because of the culture gap left by the AIDS crisis.

conservatives are already itching to start a witchhunt against LGBT people and monkeypox is something they are going to latch onto.

or for this review on google maps:

- the most secluded inhabited island in the world is a place called tristan da cunha. its in the middle of the atlantic ocean at a whopping fucking 1500 miles away from the closest inhabited location (south africa). people just fucking live out there??

- the oldest lake in the world is (probably) lake zaysan in kazahstan. nobodys entirely certain yet but theres evidence that suggests that this is a 65 million year old body of water, meaning theres a lake that exists and can be looked at today that could have had dinosaurs drinking out of it at one point

-the lake immediately following that is confirmed to be at least 25 million years old and thats lake baikal in siberia russia. the bitch is on a continental fault that expands about 2cm per year and as of right now this lake is over a mile deep. the bottom however is FULL of sediment and the actual rift floor is NINE MILES DOWN. this monstrosity of a lake contains literally 20% of the earths nonfrozen fresh water, it has its own unique species of seal, and eventually in millions of years this thing is gonna be an ocean. lake baikal is a baby fucking ocean. its gonna split russias ass in two. i am 100% certain it is sentient

- there is not a single river in saudi arabia and that blows my mind for some reason

- theres whats now considered a lost “eighth continent” thats submerged in the south pacific ocean. the islands of new zealand are the highest peaks of the chunk of continental crust that we now call zealandia. its about half the size of australia and its also connected to other little archipelagos like new caledonia. we found it. old zealand

- the entrance to this fucking ancient bay lake in venezuela (lake maracaibo, over 20 million years old) is the most likely place to get struck by lightning in the world. it gets around 1.2 million lightning strikes per year 

- LAKE HILLIER AUSTRALIA FUCKIGN PINK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

- and finally. more enclave border bullshit. i told yall about baarle hertog. now look at india and pakistan. i present to you the one and only third order enclave

this . this was a piece of india, surrounded by a piece of bangladesh, surrounded.. by a piece of india….. surrounded by bangladesh . it has since been ceded over to bangladesh but the fact that we allowed this to exist is incredible

The wikipedia article names all the enclaves and tells you what the border runs through, including such gems as:

– H7, De Loversche Akkers: Boundary runs through two dwellings, including the middle of one front door (giving it two house numbers: Loveren 2, Baarle-Hertog / Loveren 19, Baarle-Nassau).

– H13, Boschcoven:  Boundary runs through about 20 dwellings.