This was a banner year for advocates of same-sex marriage. Although the state supreme court upheld last year's high-profile vote in California on Proposition 8, which defined marriage as being between a man and a woman, Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont all joined the company of Massachusetts and Connecticut by legalizing the practice of same-sex wedlock, as did the nation of Sweden (six other countries-Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, and Spain-had already legalized it). Even in California, where Proposition 8 narrowly passed, there was more public support for gay marriage than at any other time in history.What's often lost in the banter about same-sex marriage is the effect the institution could have on children. That is, on gay children. Traditionally, a homosexual young person is told-whether explicitly or tacitly, by means of our societal mechanisms-that he or she will have no spouse, no children, and no chance to enter into a lifelong social contract with another person. The result is a relegation to isolation and, as the political commentator Andrew Sullivan wrote earlier this year, "That's a brutal psychic wound that leads to all sorts of subsequent problems and pathologies."What those who decry gay marriage don't realize (or perhaps they do) is that in arguing against it, they propagate the falsehood that there's an inherent schism between homosexuality and virtue, thereby furthering the tired narrative of gay culture as defined by promiscuity and vice. On the flip side, in a world that celebrates the institution, the perceptive distance between being gay and virtuous collapses, and a young person can look forward to a life of commitment, father- or motherhood, and inclusion in the shared experience that binds us as a people.
In 1825, at the approximate age of 8, Jordan Anderson (sometimes spelled “Jordon") was sold into slavery and would live as a servant of the Anderson family for 39 years. In 1864, the Union Army camped out on the Anderson plantation and he and his wife, Amanda, were liberated. The couple eventually made it safely to Dayton, Ohio, where, in July 1865, Jordan received a letter from his former owner, Colonel P.H. Anderson. The letter kindly asked Jordan to return to work on the plantation because it had fallen into disarray during the war.
On August 7, 1865, Jordan dictated his response through his new boss, Valentine Winters, and it was published in the Cincinnati Commercial. The letter, entitled “Letter from a Freedman to His Old Master," was not only hilarious, but it showed compassion, defiance and dignity. That year, the letter would be republished in the New York Daily Tribune and Lydia Marie Child's “The Freedman's Book."
The letter mentions a “Miss Mary" (Col. Anderson's Wife), “Martha" (Col. Anderson's daughter), Henry (most likely Col. Anderson's son) and George Carter (a local carpenter).
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
"Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jordon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance."
"I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy, — the folks call her Mrs. Anderson, — and the children — Milly, Jane, and Grundy — go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again."
"As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars."
"Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire."
"In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve — and die, if it come to that — than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits."
"Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me."
Our world is grappling with critical issues: climate change, a surge in authoritarianism, and potential military conflicts. Amid these challenges, finding joy becomes essential, and actor Christopher Walken's dance moves offer a delightful escape.
A few years ago, an inspired editor at HuffPo Entertainment compiled a montage of Walken dancing across 50 of his films. Although initially removed, it resurfaced in 2014, brightening the world once again.
Walken gained renown through his compelling roles in “Annie Hall" (1977) and “The Deer Hunter" (1978). Thus, his tap dancing performance in 1981’s “Pennies from Heaven” with Steve Martin surprised many.
But Walken actually started his career in entertainment as a dancer. He took his first dance lessons at the age of three. “It was very typical for people—and I mean working-class people—to send their kids to dancing school," he told Interview Magazine. “You'd learn ballet, tap, acrobatics, usually you'd even learn to sing a song," he later explained to Interview magazine.
As a child, he also studied tap dance and toured in musicals. He even danced with a young Liza Minelli. “I'd been around dancers my whole life, having watched my parents make musicals at MGM, and Chris reminded me of so many of the dancers I knew growing up," Minelli said, according to Entertainment Weekly. “He's talented in every way."
Craig Zadan, Executive Producer of “Peter Pan Live!," agrees with Minelli. “I think that if he had been around in the heyday of MGM, he would have been a big star of musicals on film," he told Entertainment Weekly.
His dance moves were put center stage in 2001 in Spike Jonze's video for Fatboy Slim's song “Weapon of Choice." Walken says he did it because one day he'll be too old to cut a rug. “You think, 'Well, do it now!' You know, you get too decrepit to dance," he told Entertainment Weekly.
