A small welcome home party

One of the ladies that play cards here every night had to make a visit to the hospital. They replaced two heart valves and gave her a pacemaker. So we are planning a little “welcome home” for her. Nothing big, just some taquitos , guacamole dip and chips. This proves to be a great go to snack for impromptu get togethers. 

 

Since most of our guests will be seniors, this recipe will be on the bland side. Feel free to spice it up as you wish for your guests. Did you know: On the Ellipse of President's Park in Washington D.C. There stands a phallic fountain honoring a gay couple who drowned together on the Titanic. Read their story after the recipes!

Cinco de mayo is Battle of Puebla day! When a relatively small number of Mexican soldiers defeated Napoleon III's troops at Puebla. Eventually the French were driven from Mexico, but not until they left behind their tradition of Mariachi bands. I believe the definition of "Mariachi"... means instruments that cannot play in tune! LOL! Who Cares – a great excuse to have fun!

Taquitos or Mini Tacos

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon olive oil

½ yellow onion, diced 

1 lbs ground beef 

½ teaspoon chili powder 

½ tsp paprika + ½ tsp. salt 

½ tsp pepper + ¼ tsp crushed red pepper

2 roma tomatoes diced finely – no seeds

1 pkg shredded lettuce

1 pkg shredded Mexican blend cheese

1 pkg Egg Roll wraps

1 egg yolk

Directions:

Chop up the onion. Chop the Roma tomatoes in a fine dice. 

 

In a skillet, heat oil and brown the ground beef along with the onion – about 8 minutes stirring well. 

 

Drain the fat.

Add the chili powder, paprika, salt, pepper and crushed red pepper and stir to combine. Stir in the tomatoes and add ½ cup hot water and stir. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 15 minutes.

 

Take off heat and let cool.

Assemble:

Lay out some waxed paper.

Beat 1 egg yolk into a small bowl with 1 tbs water. Get out your pastry brush.

Set up a rack to hold the rolls before cooking.

Put the wraps with point towards you.

Place 2 tablespoons of meat down the center of each. Sprinkle with a tiny bit of lettuce to give each a crunch. Add a half a spoon full of tomato and about a ½ tsp cheese.
Roll the point that is towards you up over the filling.
Now fold over each side and hold with a touch of egg water.
Brush up to the upper point with a drop of egg water and roll this up. Place seam side down and continue until mixture is used up. 
 

Heat oil in a large skillet. Fry each for only about 1 – 2 minutes to give it a crunchy brown coating. Turning once and only frying about 4 at a time.
Place on a baking sheet in a 200 degree oven to keep warm as you finish the frying.

==========

Guacamole

The trick to perfect guacamole is using ripe avocados. Check by  

gently pressing the skin. If there is no give, the avocado is not 

ripe yet. A little give is OK. If it starts to feel mushy, it may be 

passed its prime and the insides be a gray-brown mess.

 All you really need for guacamole is ripe avocados, salt, and a 

little lime juice. Then the fun begins with varying amounts of 

chopped cilantro, chiles, onion, and even tomato.

Ingredients:

4 ripe Haas avocados - Use large ones, about 8oz each

Juice of a lime and a bit of its zest.

½ cup small -diced red onion

1 large garlic clove, either mashed or minced

1 Tbs chopped cilantro

1 tsp salt + ½ teaspoon pepper

6 medium Roma tomatoes, seeded, and diced

Directions:

Cut up the tomato and cover for latter.

In a large bowl, cut up the onion, and mash the garlic clove.

Cut the lime in half, do these steps first.

Now cut the avocados in half and remove the pit.

Run the knife down into the avocado till it hits the pit, then roll so that the piece is cut all the way around. 

 

Twist the two halves and one will come off.

Now lightly chop the knife down into the pit, just enough to hold it and twist that. It will come right out.

Run a table knife through the flesh of the avocado making a grid in both directions with the knife going down to the peel. Now these sections will scoop right out into the waiting bowl.

Squeezing some lime juice over this, as you finish retrieving all of the flesh. Finish squeezing the limes to cover. This keeps the avocados from turning brown with oxygen. 

Before throwing out the lime, zest some of the dark green skin into the bowl.

Sprinkle with the cilantro.

Please do not mush this. It is NOT mashed potatoes! 

Instead use two table knives to “cut” it together, like you would a pastry. Just keep running them through the mix until it is chunky and blended.

Place plastic wrap down onto the surface of the guacamole and up the insides of the bowl. This will help keep it from turning brown.

 

Let it sit on the counter (not in refrigerator) for about an hour to meld the flavors!

When ready to serve, remove the plastic and arrange the diced tomatoes

around the outside edge.

Serve with corn chips and the taquitos. Having fun IS mandatory!

So happy to have Angie back with new heart valves and a pace maker. Now maybe she will let someone else win a few games, LOL!

For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byQIPdHMpjc

socialslave

To satisfy and restore.

To nourish, support and maintain.

To gratify, spoil, comfort and please,

to nurture, assist, and sustain

…..I cook!

Please buy slave's cookbook:

The Little Black Book of Indiscreet Recipes by Dan White http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F315Y4I/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_vAT4sb0934RTMvia @amazon

 

 

============================

Francis Davis Millet was born in Massachusetts in 1848. At age fifteen, Millet entered the Massachusetts regiment, first as a drummer boy and then a surgical assistant (helping his father, a surgeon) in the American Civil War.

He graduated from Harvard with a Master of Arts degree. He worked as a reporter and editor for the Boston Courier and then as a correspondent for the Advertiser at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.

Millet had a studio in Rome in the early 1870s and Venice in the mid-1870s, where he lived with Charles Warren Stoddard, a well-known American travel journalist who had an active sexual interest in men.

Historian Jonathan Ned Katz presents letters from Millet to Stoddard that suggest they had a romantic and intimate affair while living a “bohemian life” together.

============

Archibald Butt was a Captain in the United States Army Quartermaster Corps. Theodore Roosevelt had become acquainted with Butt's logistics and animal husbandry work in the Philippines and was impressed. William Taft had served as chair of the Second Philippine Commission from 1900 to 1901. Taft knew Butt well from their time together overseas. Roosevelt asked Butt to serve as his military aide in April 1908. 

When Taft became president in March 1909, he asked Butt to stay on as military aide. Butt proved to have strong negotiating skills and a good head for numbers, which enabled him to become Taft's de facto chief negotiator on federal budget issues.

Butt lived in a large mansion at 2000 G Street NW (now demolished). Since about 1910, Butt and Millet had lived together in the house. (Millet's wife, Lily, resided in the Millet home in Italy.) "Millet, my artist friend who lives with me" was Butt's designation for his companion. 

They were known for large parties that were attended by members of Congress, justices of the Supreme Court, and President Taft himself. Newspapers characterized the intense, deep friendship the men shared as a "Damon and Pythias" relationship.

By 1912, Taft's first term was coming to an end. Roosevelt, who had fallen out with Taft, was known to be considering a run for president against him. Close to both men and fiercely loyal, Butt began to suffer from depression and exhaustion. Millet (himself one of Taft's circle) asked Taft to give him a leave of absence to recuperate before the presidential primaries began.

Taft agreed and ordered Butt to go on vacation. Butt and Millet left on a six-week vacation to Europe on March 1, 1912. They booked passage on the RMS Titanic for their return to the United States.

Butt and Millet were playing cards on the night of April 14 in the first-class smoking room when the Titanic struck an iceberg. The ship sank two and half hours later, with a loss of over 1,500 lives. Both Butt and Millet went down with the Titanic. Butt's remains were never found. Millet's body was recovered on April 27, and he was buried in Bridgewater, Massachusetts.

Taft was devastated by Butt's death. When he learned Butt had not survived, he "broke down and wept, 'his whole body was shaken with convulsive sobs'."

On May 2, 1912, a memorial service was held in the Butt family home in Atlanta, Georgia. Taft spoke at the service, almost breaking down twice as he said:

If Archie could have selected a time to die he would have chosen the one God gave him. His life was spent in self–sacrifice, serving others. His forgetfulness of self had become a part of his nature. Everybody who knew him called him Archie. I couldn't prepare anything in advance to say here. I tried, but couldn't. He was too near me. He was loyal to my predecessor, Mr. Roosevelt, who selected him to be military aide, and to me he had become as a son or a brother.

A second ceremony was held in Washington, D.C., on May 5, during which Taft broke down and wept—bringing his eulogy to an abrupt end.

In 1913, the Butt-Millet Memorial Fountain was erected in Washington, D.C., in memory of Millet and his long-time companion Archibald W. Butt.

On May 16, 1912, Senator Augustus Octavius Bacon of Georgia submitted a resolution in the U.S. Senate authorizing private persons to construct a memorial to Butt and Millet on federally owned land somewhere in the District of Columbia. Bacon argued that Butt (who was an aide to the president) and Millet (who was vice chair of the United States Commission of Fine Arts at the time of his death) were both public servants who deserved to be memorialized.

Plans for erecting a memorial to Butt and Millet began shortly after the introduction of the Senate resolution. Taft agreed to chair the memorial committee. Taft's personal secretary, Charles D. Hilles, and his military aide, Colonel Spencer Cosby, led the fund-raising on behalf of the committee. Taft himself had made the first contribution. At this point in time, The Ellipse (the southern part of President's Park) was chosen for the site of the memorial.

During work on the congressional legislation, plans for the memorial were altered several times. The memorial commission had also settled on Thomas Hastings and Daniel Chester French as the memorial's designers. By April 1913, the memorial commission had added a shaft with two bas-relief figures—one representing chivalry (Butt) and one representing art (Millet).

The Butt-Millet Memorial Fountain was dedicated without ceremony on October 25, 1913. Thus our nations capital was fitted with a phallic fountain honoring two gay lovers who drowned together, over a hundred years ago.

LGBT History is everywhere!

Next month is Pride

Here is a revised blog from a few years back. It is as fitting today and it was then.

Being Queer is More Than Genitals

Homosexual was a SIN

Homosexual was a disease

Homosexual was a perverted sex act.

In the 1970's we began to demand “homosexual” be considered a person!

We were not a “sin”, or a “disease”. We were more than a sex act, we were a people. A tribe was being formed.

A new culture was being built. We changed how we interacted, new values embraced, new customs created. More importantly, now we had communication with others. We were now a “tribe”. We could find out what the New York queers were doing as well as the West Coast queers. What had existed before in tiny pockets with regional customs where now unified.

It is safe to say homosexuals are the only minority that were routinely raised by non-minorities. In most cases the young homosexual was taught to hate or fear “those people”. It is a huge turning point when a gay person finds that there ARE others. When we find we are not alone. We are not freaks and that it is OK to be Gay!

Now we had to learn what being “gay” was! In the early 1970's this culture was being shaped and defined. Universal in that “normal” people could also see what it was. This unfortunately caused a backlash of hatred and anti gay bigotry that we had not seen for a quarter of a century.

This new culture did not have to be constrained by the old norms. Relationships did not have to be based on one person “being the man” and the other “being the woman”. We weren't allowed to marry: do we have to be monogamous? How about “open relationships”, maybe “menage a trois”, even “polymorphic relationships”. The whole spectrum of possibilities lay before us in a wide array. In the middle of an explosion of sexual freedom, we still knew we were more than sex. This was new territory for a people who were supposedly defined by “sex”.

Let me tell you about the moment when I discovered that being “queer” was about more than how my genitals reacted.

After graduating from college, I had discovered a church for people like me! It was called the Metropolitan Community Church. In the mid 70's, I learned about a group that had arraigned for a new film called “A Very Natural Thing” to be shown as a fund raiser to fight the Anita Bryant forces. Remember this was long before VCR's and Cassettes. Now we had all seen what we referred to as “training films”, (XXX film loops shown at “peep” shows). We could even buy 8 mm silent films to show on our home projectors. But this was different. It was not a “beat off” flick.

“A Very Natural Thing” was a real movie with a story line. It showed two gay men meeting and making a life together with everyday problems. There was no need to “translate” it like we had to do with every other film ever shown.

It made such a powerful impact watching one lead say: “being with you, I'm too excited to eat.” Then the other guy leaned in and together they kissed. It was electrifying. I KNEW what they were feeling! I knew what that kiss felt like.

Suddenly it hit me this was the reason people loved watching movie kisses. It had never caused a response in me. I had been watching screen kisses for 24 years.

That was the moment. It was then I realized that I was gay, that it was more than just sex, it was a deeper part of me as a person. Even if I never had sex again, I would still be gay.

This film is also important in that it includes actual footage and interviews shot at the 1973 Gay Pride/Christopher Street West parade. It also has scenes filmed inside the Club Baths and the “Sanctuary” disco. This was as “real life” as you could get. It even featured full frontal male nudity! This was made 1974?

Today it is easy to forget what the world was like when this film was made. The Nixon – Watergate hearings, the Vietnam war, the civil rights marches and now we were starting to have gay rights marches. The whole fabric of our culture was changing.

Make no mistake: a “queer culture” had existed before. Yet it was so cloaked and hidden, few ever learned of it. Gay men in the early 1900's had few choices. They could resort to flamboyant mannerisms, which lead to beatings, arrests, and in some cases death.

For a good look at what that culture was like, watch “The Naked Civil Servant” about Quentin Crisp, (as well as the sequel “An Englishman in New York” which shows how deeply different that culture and modern gay culture were).

Homosexuals could remain celibate or marry a woman. This lead to untold heartache and self destruction. About the only other course was to keep very secretive. You could “drop hairpins”. This was the use of certain words or terms. You had to be constantly aware of facial reaction to them. Either they “got it” or had no idea what you were talking about and ignored you.

“Dropping hairpins” lasted well into the 1980's in many areas. For example: asking if they were a “Friend of Dorthy”. Or if they knew any of the “boys in the band”. Making references to the popular “diva's” such as: Mae West, Sophie Tucker, on down to Cher and Madonna. Judy Garland was perhaps one of the biggest touchstones in the “homosexual heaven”.

When we look back on this time, a great resource can be found in certain movies. Advances in technology opened the door for a new type of video entertainment. Just a few years previous, films cost huge amounts of money. Even short 20 minute amateur endeavors cost the equivalent of two or three high end luxury cars.

Then with the advent of video tape in the 70's television networks found they could afford to make TV movies and have the cost returned in just a few showings.

With the unbelievably quantum step of home video players in the early 80's, for the first time the average person could own a movie and watch it any time they wanted. Those tapes and the evolution to DVDs allowed sales to return even more profit while the costs plummeted for the independent director/writers.

So out of “made for TV movies” came the chance for video stories that were written by, of, and for Gay people. Thus began “Gay Cinema”. We no longer had to rely on what mainstream movie accountants told us we had to view. We can now see ourselves, not what the straight world told us we were supposed to be like.

Gay leader Vito Russo pointed out in his pivotal classic “The Celluloid Closet” the dangers we had faced. Up to the 1970's nearly EVERY form of entertainment taught by example that a homosexual needed to die. If not being killed by righteous “Justice” then by suicide! These images were especially powerful because many were hidden and subconsciously delivered. Thanks to his efforts and his founding of GLAAD, we now have reliable presentations. Movies are powerful tools. They can transport us into an understanding of how and why we got to where we are.

For example the films “Gay Sex in the 70's” and “How to Survive a Plague” guide us through one of the most difficult times our culture ever faced. Any major change like this causes fear and problems. Mistakes were made and reversals happened. However changes were moving ahead faster than many were comfortable with.

Now we have a body of movies that reflect a true image of who we are and how we got to be here. This, as opposed to great films like “Jeffery”: Hollywood’s best effort to present a sympathetic look at the AIDS crisis. A truly landmark film, yet for all of its support, it was still what straight media thought that “gays” were like. Gay Cinema is so important to maintain our identity. Yet these movies are threatened by free downloads and piracy.

Today we see gay marriage. At the same time new laws protecting the right to discriminate are being written and passed. Along with some ability to adopt, to live where we chose and have workplace protections, queer people are being assimilated. While we have fought for this over the years, it can take a great toll. It is no stretch of the imagination to foresee a future with no gay bars, coffee houses or just places where we can be around others of our tribe. Suddenly this new culture with its new customs may disappear.

we risk losing those hard fought protections as we cease to be recognizable. We could discover ourselves back into a different kind of closet where others could not find us.

Next month is pride month. So please, whither you chose a documentary, a love story, or a comedy, invest the time to watch a few of these movies. Ask yourself: How do we maintain who we are in a time of blending in? If we can not pass on that hard won sense of self – it will be lost forever.

A short list of available Gay Cinema DVD's:

A Very Natural Thing Drama

Parting Glances One of the first Aids Drama

Boys Life: Three short films: ”Pool Days”(1993), “A Friend of Dorothy”(1994), “The Disco years”(1991)

A Beautiful Thing Coming of age

Third Man Out / by Ron Oliver (or any of the Donald Strechy mysteries)

Were the World Mine Musical

Shelter Codependent Surfer movie

Breakfast with Scot Comedy – ice hockey

Big Eden Comedy with C/W music set in the great northwest

Strapped Avaunt guard - Existential

Latter Days Love story, when spirituality meets sexuality

Role/Play Coming out/marriage equality

Straight Jacket 50's Hollywood Comedy

The Big Gay Musical On & off stage with the musical “Adam and Steve”

Is It Just Me? A modern gay Cyrano

Bear City Diversity in diversity gets hairy, snappy dialogue

Any of the “Eating Out” comedy series

eCupid A downloaded love app goes wrong

What Happens Next? May - December relationship over walking the dog

The Men Next Door Discovering you're dating a man as well as his son.

Judas Kiss A gay take on the old question of time travel

Hot Guys with Guns Wanna be private eyes

Wishmakers with a gender-queer character

Documentaries such as:

A Naked Civil Servant

An Englishman In New York

The Laramie Project

Exposed: the making of a Legend

The Celluloid Closet

Sex in the 70's

How to Survive A Plague

Bridegroom

The Times of Harvey Milk

Stonewall: Uprising

Vito

My Trip Down the Pink Carpet

Becoming Chas

These just scratch the surface of what is available in the gay movies. There are also many more quality lesbian films as well as transgender, etc. Truly now we have something for every interest. We must support these resources or run the risk of losing them forever. 

So happy to be serving my Master Indy.

 

Balwin's Stewed Slumgullion

Wither you call it slumgullion or goulash, it is a favorite filling meal just crammed with a healthy great comfort taste. This one pot creation can be stretched when the budget can't be. It is named to honor Guy Balwin a true hero of the LGBT and BDSM communities. Read a short write-up about this leader after the recipe.

Beef, canola beans, tomatoes, and mixed vegetables simmered into a healthy comforting meal. What's not to love? It is a simple honest dinner that helps clean out the refrigerator. Serve this and honor the man who once pointed out that sacred cows make the best hamburgers! 

 

Ingredients

• 1½ to 2 lbs. stew beef
• ½ cup cornstarch
• 1 tsp Old Bay Seasonings
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 tablespoon chopped garlic
• 2 cups beef broth (low salt)
• 2 (15.5-ounce) cans canola beans, drained
• 1 (14.5 ounce) can stewed tomatoes Un-drained
• 1 pkg frozen mixed vegetables - thawed
• ½ lbs sliced mushrooms
• 1 tsp salt + ½ tsp pepper
• 8 ounces uncooked elbow macaroni

Directions:

Do the cutting. Chop the onion and mince the garlic. 

 

In a bowl, mix 1 tsp Old Bay seasonings into the ½ cup cornstarch. Roll the pieces of stew meat in that.

In a dutch oven over medium heat, saute beef 5 to 6 minutes, or until browned. You might have to do this in batches removing to a paper towel pieces that are browned so as not to crowd. 
 

When meat is browned, add onions to the pot and stir as you loosen the bits from the bottom. Cook and stir for 7 minutes adding garlic during the last minute. Pour in the beef broth to make sure bottom of pot has yielded the last bits of “fond”.

Pour in the cans of beans and stewed tomatoes. Then stir in the meat. Let come to boil, cover and lower heat to a slight simmer.

Let simmer for 20 minutes.

Uncover and add the thawed mixed vegetables and uncooked macaroni.

When that returns to heat, finish with the rinsed mushrooms.

Continue to simmer for 15 minutes covered.

If the mix looks to “soupy” uncover and raise heat for 5 additional minutes to cook off the extra liquid. The meat should be fork-tender.

Serve with a crusty hot bread.

For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOY6Sd9Q82Y

So honored to serve my Master Indy

socialslave

To satisfy and restore.

To nourish, support and maintain.

To gratify, spoil, comfort and please,

to nurture, assist, and sustain

…..I cook!

Please buy slave's cookbook:

The Little Black Book of Indiscreet Recipes 

by 

Dan White

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F315Y4I/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_vAT4sb0934RTM via @amazon

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Guy Baldwin, M.S. (b. 1946) is a psychotherapist, author, activist, and educator specializing in issues of particular relevance to the BDSM and leather communities, and more generally in issues relating to non-heteronormative practices.

I read that he never knew his father. Just after his high-school graduation, his mother discovered he was gay and gave him a week to move out. The year was 1965.
Baldwin rented a room at a boardinghouse in Denver, where he went to work as a brakeman/switchman for the Union Pacific Railroad, then later as a page for Colorado House of Representatives.

Beginnings in the Leather Community

Baldwin stumbled upon Denver’s gay leather underground, and it was there he found the men and relationships he has described as his new family. “Most of them felt like dads,” he wrote. “A few were downright motherly. I remember two who most resembled a couple of really crazy aunts, too.”
In 1968, He was introduced to the Rocky Mountaineers, a bike club.  They encouraged Baldwin to go to college. The group rode miles on their bikes to witness his graduation from the University of Colorado in Boulder, where he studied anthropology and education.


That same summer of 1972, Baldwin moved to San Francisco, a kind of mecca for young leathermen. Soon after Baldwin’s arrival, he read a classified ad in the Berkeley Barb, and decided to attend a meeting for “fans of S and M and B and D.” 
The group, as it turned out, gathered in the living room of Cynthia Slater, who had begun to host a monthly “rap meeting” she called the “Society of Janus,” after the Roman God of gates and doors.
Cynthia’s Society of Janus was only the second all-orientation SM political, educational, and support organization in the United States.  Baldwin and Slater became friends, and he was soon teaching classes for Janus.

Career in Psychotherapy

In Los Angeles in the 1970s, Baldwin began retraining for a new career in psychotherapy.
While in graduate school, he met such important figures who were getting homosexuality de-classified as a disease. People like Evelyn Hooker and Judd Marmor, and was invited to attend The Gender Identity Research Group.
Baldwin received his Master’s degree in 1981 and in 1983 was licensed as a psychotherapist in California.


In 1986, Baldwin himself, ran a small classified ad in Drummer, asking for contact from other kink-fluent professional mental-health providers.
He hoped to build a network of like-minded professionals like himself. Race Bannon, Baldwin’s long-time friend, came forward to help. 


Bannon eventually published it online, expanding it to include other kink-friendly medical, dental, and legal professionals, giving birth to the vital international resource now known as the Kink-Aware Professionals List. 
Today the list is managed by the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom as a free service to all.

1990s

In demand for 35 years as an educator and writer, Baldwin has presented lectures, workshops and seminars about leather and SM sexuality. He may still be best known to readers for his monthly Drummer column on leather relationship issues, “Ties That Bind,” which appeared between 1986 and 1992.  Those essays and others were collected in his 1993 book, Ties That Bind, edited by Joseph Bean.

SlaveCraft appeared in 2002, Baldwin’s most controversial and possibly most influential book, detailing one man’s deeply personal and intimate discoveries on his journey into profound submission.

Arguably, Baldwin’s greatest impact has been as a visible public figure in the leather, kink and M/s communities. His experience and service have made him possibly the most honored leatherman who ever lived.

Guy has delivered memorable keynote speeches for the Leather Leadership Conference and the International Master/slave Weekend Topics like: "Sacred Cows Make the Best Hamburger" and "Rad-sex Rising Tide: Turbo-Pervo Tonic."

Guy Blawin has never been president of any club, organization or foundation.  His stature, his authority, his recognition as a leader and spokesman comes solely from his personal qualities - his insight, eloquence, and courage. 

For Guy Baldwin is that rarest, maybe most important kind of leader:  he's changed the world not by telling anyone what to do, but by telling us the truth. 

Let me admit that slave was truly honored to chat with this man on the internet the other day. Thank You for all you continue to do.