Terri Schlichenmeyer

It ain’t none of your beeswax.

None of your business, so just keep your nose out of things. You’re on a need-to-know basis, and you don’t need to know. It’s being taken care of, never you mind, it isn’t your concern. In “Wendy Carlos: A Biography” by Amanda Sewell, some things just aren’t discussed.

No one who knew Wendy Carlos as a child should’ve been surprised that she became the musician she did: Carlos’ mother’s family loved to sing and dance, and Carlos’ parents wanted to make sure she continued the tradition. They gave her piano lessons but they couldn’t afford a piano, so Carlos’ father drew piano keys on a piece of paper so she could practice.

Though she was “assigned the male sex at birth,” Carlos knew early in her life that she was a girl, and was baffled that others couldn’t see that. It grew to greatly affect her: somewhat of a prodigy in music and early computing, Carlos won awards and accolades for her studies but her gender identity left her feeling awkward and alone, Sewell says. This was a time when transgender people were largely held up as “freaks.”

So Carlos kept her gender identity private, only revealing her truth to one friend with similar passions for music experimentation. Enjoying a spirited mutual challenge, she and Rachel Elkind played with new sounds until the day Elkind became intrigued by Carlos’ rendition of a Bach composition reproduced with a Moog synthesizer. As it happened, Carlos needed money to continue her work and with Elkind’s help, that composition became an entire album they called “Switched-On Bach.”

It did the trick: Carlos indeed made money from the million-selling album. But it also made her famous, which led to requests for interviews and intrusions about her gender identity, a subject that she felt unnecessarily superseded her musical career.

And that was something she absolutely did not want.

Over the past 40 years, Wendy Carlos has denied most requests to be interviewed, including an offer extended by author Amanda Sewell for this book. No problem; Sewell used an abundance of other sources to craft this biography, indicating that Carlos’ refusals were likely due to her ire at reporters who’ve continued to focus on her gender, rather than on her work. The irony is that a good portion of “Wendy Carlos: A Biography” deals with Carlos’ gender identity and her transitioning.

And yet – how could it not? Sewell shows how Carlos’ giftedness and her pioneering use of then-new technology changed music, as a whole; in a way, her respectful reporting on Carlos’ transition, relative to 1960s social perceptions and to LGBTQ history, both occurring at roughly the same time, also shows another aspect to Carlos’ personality and her dogged reach for what was then rather new.

Still, one can sympathize with Carlos’ wishes, which makes reading “Wendy Carlos: A Biography” feel sometimes voyeuristic.

 

Every day, you try to catch a little news.

It might be online, maybe in a newspaper, magazine, or on TV, but you’re a smart kid and you like to stay informed. Lately, you’ve been hearing a lot about gay rights and gay marriage, and you want to know more. Read Gay & Lesbian History for Kids by Jerome Pohlen, and your questions might be answered.

Knowing someone who’s gay, lesbian, or transgender is nothing new; in fact, history indicates that our earliest ancestors acknowledged and were “comfortable with” LGBT people. Homosexuality appears in mythology, royalty, battlefields, art (Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were said to be gay), and in some religions. In North America, many beloved nineteenth-century authors, poets, and songwriters were gay or lesbian, and Native American culture embraced people who were of “two-spirits.”  Transgender individuals fought in the Civil War or were pioneers or settlers. We know that LGBT individuals existed elsewhere and at other times, too, because laws were made against them.

That was especially true through the early 1900s. Though we entered “the Progressive Era” in the beginning of the century, it was anything but progressive for people who were gay. When the country was stricken by The Great Depression in the 1930s, things got even worse for the LGBT community and many people had to hide their lives from general society.

In some ways, things got better during World War II. The government needed military personnel and LGBT individuals, like everyone else, needed jobs, so they signed up in droves to fight for their country. Very few were denied a chance to serve but, sadly, after the war was over, many gay and lesbian personnel received “blue discharges,” and were denied veteran’s benefits. Once again, LGBT individuals needed to closet themselves and their lifestyles. Not doing so could mean arrest or worse.

And then, finally, things started to turn around. Activism in the 1960s and ‘70s helped the LGBT community to gain rights and support on other issues, unfair laws were changed, and many people helped make “things get better.”

I struggled with “Gay & Lesbian History for Kids,” but not for the reasons you might think. My biggest issue comes with its potential audience, vis-à-vis the content: mainly, that it contains either a lot of very advanced information for kids who are young enough to be excited about the “21 Activities” here; or a lot of silly, juvenile “activities” for kids who are old enough to handle very advanced information.  Then, too, the presence of said activities may be moot, since they mostly had little to do with LGBT history.

Conversely, and to the positive, I appreciated the pre-twentieth-century info that author Jerome Pohlen offers; it was interesting, but is it enough to save this book?  I don’t know: the target audience here is 9-and-up, which I think is way too young. Fresh-eyed 12-to-15-year-olds may appreciate what’s inside Gay & Lesbian History for Kids, but hand it to a reader over 16, and the news probably wouldn’t be good.

 

There’s always been a picket fence in your future.

You could just picture it: charming spouse, two-point-five kids, minivan, Cape Cod with manicured lawn, birthday parties on the patio, all surrounded by that picket fence. It was a perfect dream of a blissful life. And, as in The Wedding Heard ‘Round the World by Michael McConnell with Jack Baker, as told to Gail Langer Karwoski, making history would be a nice bonus.

As a child playing with neighborhood girls, Michael McConnell remembers wanting the same thing they wanted: to grow up and marry a handsome man. Their crushes were his crushes, too, but in the 1950s, that kind of thing wasn’t discussed.

By the time he entered college at the University of Oklahoma in the mid-‘60s, however, McConnell had come out to his family and was comfortable with his sexuality. He met other gay men and enjoyed an active social life on campus and then, on October 29, 1966, he met Jack Baker.

For the first minutes of their get-to-know-you, McConnell thought Baker was much older, or perhaps straight. Baker’s demeanor was businesslike, almost military in mien; McConnell had recently had his heart broken, and was guarded. Still, by the end of the evening, they were lovers; soon after, they were a couple.

By the early ‘70s, though their relationship had to be kept quieter, McConnell and Baker were “out” enough to want to make real change. Baker, a Minneapolis law student, filed suit against the U.S. Military over an unfair downgrade in his discharge status. After following Baker north, McConnell fought job discrimination. And then there was the wedding Baker promised McConnell on Baker’s twenty-fifth birthday. It would happen – they just had to figure out how.

That would take some time, but Baker was on it. His legal training tickled his methodical mind, until he discovered two loopholes the state of Minnesota hadn’t closed. One led to the next, and both led to their history-making wedding in 1971.

That, of course, isn’t the end of the story. Authors Michael McConnell and Jack Baker continued their activism but their nuptials, the first in America for same-sex celebrants, are the real focus in “The Wedding Heard ‘Round the World.”

And that’s a good thing, too, because the love story in this book is what makes it so readable. McConnell’s account (as told to Gail Langer Karwoski) is mostly what’s here, and it’s the quintessential romance: boy meets boy, boy marries boy, they live Happily (Almost) Ever After.

Conversely, it’s the almost that makes this book so important: the battles the authors accepted caused emotional hardship in many ways and that almost caused a break-up. And yet, for the sake of others that came after them, they continued to take on gay rights issues – stories of which are told humbly, yet proudly.

Overall, this is a sweet story wrapped inside a righteous fight, told with charm and grace. It’s deep, yet lighthearted and definitely worth a look. Start “The Wedding Heard ‘Round the World” – and you’ll have no defense.