A couple days shy of All Saints Day and Día de los Muertos, Bert made sure he was in Brooklyn to hear his dearest Ummi Modeste‘s last performance as a member of the choir at St. P’s, a church where three generations of the Modeste family had worshipped and helped steward the organization. Her granddad was the treasurer for decades and her aunt was leader of the vestry. Ummi, to hear her tell it, actually got kicked out as a teen because her mouth was too reckless in Confirmation class!
Category: Black Queer Life Matters
Teaching Credentials
Licensed to teach in New York City . . .
And certified to teach in New York State . . .
Turkey + Greece
Given Bert’s teaching schedule, summers afforded more time and space to take international trips. In 1994, Bert and John, newly domestically-partnered, visited dear friends, Paola and Sertaç, in Istanbul. The above photo of Bert is, most likely, taken at the harbor in Bodrum, a coastal town where Turks vacationed (translation: a destination without a lot of tourists from the US). Visiting Bodrum required an internal flight to Dalaman Airport.
And since Greece is so close to Turkey, they thought, how cool would it be to touch down on the islands of Lesbos and Mykonos, which loom large in the collective queer historical consciousness? Turned out that scenario would require more time than was available so they opted to visit two of the easternmost Dodecanese Islands, Kos and then Rodos (Cos and Rhodes in English respectively).
An enduring undercurrent of tensions between the two countries was evident in the way Greeks spoke about Turks/Turkey and vice-versa. On the ferry boat between Kos and Rodos — both islands in super-close proximity to the western Turkish coast — the wall maps included Turkey’s monochromatic land mass but did not label it.
While in Tigaki, a beach town seven miles from the city of Kos, B.Michael awoke in the middle of the night to wrote a poem.
Below are some scrapbook items — which include unexpected words like “saloon” and “tango” — as well as a lot of terms translated into German, given that Turkey was, at least at that time, a popular destination for German tourists.
More photos from this trip are viewable here!
Yokohama, Japan
In early August 1994, B.Michael was all set to accompany his partner, John, who was slated to attend the Tenth International Conference on AIDS as a representative of Asian & Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Inc.
Additionally, through his networks, John was able to arrange for he and B.Michael, post-Conference, to meet with students from Kyoto Seika University who were interested in learning about HIV/AIDS, community organizing efforts, and civil rights movements in the U.S.
Unfortunately, B.Michael learned, just a week before their scheduled departure, that he had to complete a professional education course ahead of September 1st in order to maintain his teaching license. He was forced to cancel his plans to join John on what would have been their first trip to Asia.
Bread Loaf
B.Michael attended Bread Loaf, a life-changing summer program that braided his passions for learning, teaching and writing. He manifested a handful of poems (scroll to 1994) that are included on this site.
Below are a couple of B.Michael’s writing exercises from that summer.
And here, for the record, his final grade!
Bill T. Jones: Still/Here
[Choreographer Bill T. Jones’] Still/Here (1994) is an evening-length work exploring the experience of receiving and living with a life-threatening medical diagnosis, rooted in Jones’s responses to being diagnosed HIV-positive. It features a video score by artist Gretchen Bender based on excerpts from interviews with people who had received such diagnoses, together with a commissioned musical score, spoken text and movement. [Wikipedia]
B.Michael is one of the interviewees whose words are included in this work.
Source : Maison de la Danse Programme, 1994
Black Hands-Green Thumbs
B.Michael fostered growth in everyone around him. His deeply nurturing spirit also benefited the natural world. He was a big fan of houseplants and derived joy from caring for them in his urban settings.
His East Village home, which he shared for a time with lover John, included a bank of five sun-drenched windows, each connected to a tiny room, that ran along the same wall of the East 11th Street apartment building. The sills were chock-full of potted plants of different heights and widths.
Whenever B.Michael went away, he would leave John’s clear instructions for providing them TLC . . .
Arts Resume
Yves François Lubin (aka Assotto Saint) ~ Rest In Power
In 1994, B.Michael wrote a poem inspired by his Other Countries brother Yves the week after his passing.
Below is the iconic portrait of Assotto Saint taken by Robert Giard in 1987 and featured in the photographer’s Particular Voices, where B.Michael’s image also appears.
Particular Voices
Sometime in 1994, B.Michael and John Manzon-Santos were approached by the artist Robert Giard, who subsequently photographed them via the natural light in their apartment at 528 East 11th Street #11 in Manhattan. They donned their slightly wrinkled Commitment Ceremony shirts and the beads they had exchanged at that occasion on April 2nd of that year.
In 1997, they received a copy of Giard’s Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers, honored to find themselves included among the publication’s 182 images.