AIDS Hysteria In The 1980s

I recently leafed through the June 25, 1988 issue of TV Guide (when it was pocket-size and cost 75 cents). Before tossing it out, I tore out the "Cheers 'N' Jeers" column and put it in a folder marked "LGBTQ." Under "Jeers" was an item about how the openly gay AIDS activist Michael Callen, now deceased, was treated, or more accurately put, mistreated by the staff members at a New York television station where he was scheduled to be interviewed about being a person with AIDS.

According to TV Guide, based on information from the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), "a technician tossed him a microphone and refused to help him adjust it" and "the make-up artists refused to work on Callen."

I wonder if he pointed out this bad behavior to his interviewer when he went on-camera. If he didn't, he should have. There was a lot of misinformation and fearmongering in the media and elsewhere back then about how AIDS was transmitted.

When I met and spoke with Michael Callen at an AIDS forum held at Hunter College here in New York, I gladly and fearlessly shook his hand. This was back in the early nineties. After that handshake, I've lived to tell the story.

What was their problem?

Note: This blog post originally appeared on my Facebook page on March 27, 2023. I've made a few minor changes.

The Five Black Writers Who Got Away

The five black gay writers, now deceased, who I would have loved the "By the Book" Q & A column in the New York Times Book Review to have interviewed are Melvin Dixon, Joseph Beam, Assotto Saint, Essex Hemphill, and last but definitely not least, James Baldwin.

Their comments on literature, black writing, the publishing industry, race relations, favorite books, etc. would have been enlightening, inspiring, insightful, and enthralling. Maybe even irreverent at times.

Unfortunately, their premature deaths occurred long before "By the Book" ever appeared in the pages of the book review.

Spring Is Back! Hooray!

Ah, spring is here, at last. I've survived another New York winter, my 55th winter, to be exact. But it's still March, so I have to temper my joy with some caution. As the old folks would say of a person, without warning, March may decide to show its ass, hitting us with multiple inches of snow.

So for now, on the first day of spring, I can look forward to sunny days, the return of greenery, the buzzing and crawling of insects, and sitting for hours in Central Park with a good book in one hand and a cold, refreshing drink in the other.

A Biopic About An 18th-Century Black Violinist In France

As soon as I read in The New Yorker (March 13, 2023) that a biopic called Chevalier, about an 18th-century black violinist and composer, was slated for release in April, I wasted no time going to my bookshelves.

The book I took down is my go-to reference on blacks in the classical music world, the late Raoul Abdul's Blacks in Classical Music, published in 1977 by Dodd, Mead & Company. (Abdul was the music critic at the New York Amsterdam News.)

I turned to the chapter on Chevalier de Saint-Georges (1739-1799). He was born on the Caribbean island of Guadalupe to an African mother and the French governor of the island. (The movie synopsis described the father as a plantation owner.)

After reading the chapter, I could see why the director, Stephen Williams, chose this historical figure, played by Kelvin Harrison Jr., to make a movie about. Saint-Georges had a larger than life persona during his lifetime. He was a brilliant violinist who, wrote Abdul, "acquired a mastery of that instrument comparable to the best of his day." Saint-Georges also was "an outstanding swordsman, a brilliant conversationalist, and altogether the darling of French society."

Will people out of curiosity see Chevalier in large enough numbers to make it a hit? Who knows? Judging by the comments left on the movie's trailer page, there is a lot of interest in seeing it. And maybe that interest will encourage concert halls around the world to showcase his music.

A Story Idea That Was Shot Down

In the early 1980s, I did a few taped interviews by phone or in-person for the Inquiry page of the newspaper USA Today. The Inquiry page used a Q and A format. Among the people I interviewed were Arthur Mitchell, the artistic director and co-founder of the Dance Theatre of Harlem and the actress Cicely Tyson.

One person I wanted to interview was the African-American Life magazine photographer and film director Gordon Parks (1912-2006). Parks had written a series of autobiographies, beginning with A Choice of Weapons (1966). A subsequent book was called To Smile in Autumn (1979), which dealt with the latter years of his life.

In an interview, I wanted to focus on aging, not race or racial conflict. I pitched the idea by phone to Peter Prichard, an editor at USA Today. He wasn't interested.

If blogging had existed back then, I would have set up the interview and posted it. And today, in a society and at a time in which ageism has not receded, we would have had, I believe, a thought-provoking, life-affirming interview to add to the literature on gerontology.