In late June this year, Dale and I travelled to the small city of The Dalles, Oregon along the Columbia River for me to deliver a talk about the notorious Dr. Marie Equi. She and her girlfriend were  homesteaders from Massachusetts who lived a quiet life in the city in the early 1890s -- until Marie changed all that with one impulsive act: she horsewhipped a school superintendent (who was also a Baptist minister) in the center of town. (She demanded the final payment owed to her girlfriend for teaching at a local school). The man was regarded a scoundrel in town, and people cheered Marie's efforts for justice. 

For the rest of her life, even as an early woman doctor in the West, Marie was known as the notorious Dr. Equi who lived with and loved other women as she fought for justice, women’s and labor rights, and opposed unjust wars.

I gave my talk, titled “IT ALL STARTED HERE IN THE DALLES,” in the historic and ornate Moroccan-style Granada Theater, located at the same intersection where the raucous horsewhipping had shocked the citizenry. It was a fabulous night! 

More than 125 people, mostly locals with a sprinkling of dedicated historians from Portland, crowded into the elaborately muraled interior that reminded me of San Francisco’s fabled Castro Theater. The audience was enthusiastic and generous with their applause. After already delivering more than 60 book talks in years passed, this one was a highlight.

Thanks to the architectural archeologists Eric Gleason and Jacqui Cheung, who hosted us, and for the support of the Original Wasco County Courthouse Museum, the Wasco Cultural Coalition, the Oregon Cultural Trust, and the Oregon Historical Society. And to Dale for exceptional projectionist skills, editing, and guidance. 

For more about Marie Equi: see my biography, MARIE EQUI: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions, 2015, Oregon State University Press. Available on the major book selling sites.

Note: Marie Equi is memorialized as one of the Heroines in Portland State University’s Walk of the Heroines and with a bronze sidewalk plaque in the Rainbow Honor Walk in San Francisco. Until recently before business closure, she was celebrated at Portland’s lesbian bar, Doc Marie’s. The National Whaling Museum in Equi’s hometown of New Bedford, MA honors her as well. 

To recognize Pride Month this June, check my site for the remarkable, notorious Marie Equi, the labor rights agitator who FBI director J Edgar Hoover described as the “most dangerous woman on the West Coast.”  

Equi was passionate and fearless in her fight for social and economic justice. She picketed and marched for worker rights, agitated against World War One, and distributed family planning brochures with Margaret Sanger. She reached beyond her working class roots to become one of the first women physicians. She did all this in the early 1900s in Oregon while living openly with her female companions. She became the most well-known lesbian of her time on the West Coast. 

Every week of June I will feature a post about Marie Equi.  I hope you’ll salute her  in your celebrations. 
​
ALSO, for those in the greater Portland, Oregon area and the mid-Columbia River region, please join me for my FREE presentation about Marie Equi in downtown The Dalles, on Thursday, June 25, at the historic Granada Theater, 211 East Second Street. 7 pm, open seating, no rez needed. Happy to sign your copy of my biography of Marie Equi.

When I was a teenager in Oregon in the 1960s, I imagined the pope would one day name me a bishop. But I went even further. I expected to become a bishop in charge of dozens of parishes. I thought I could get the red hat and robes of a cardinal, an even higher ecclesiastical honor. I wanted to wear the robes, be a leader, and make a difference in a worldwide institution. (never interested in the (literal) trappings of Catholic clergy?  Google “cardinals in red robes.”)

Reality caught up with me, and I thought better of my grandiose crimson dreams.

I thought of all this today as I applauded a new brilliant but delicate golden bloom on my Bishop’s Cap (Astrophytum Myriostigma ) cactus. The shape mimics a “bishop’s hat,” also known as a mitre.

Coming Soon! 
A new biography of gay journalist Randy Shilts.  A new gay sex memoir. And magic mushrooms, anyone?  I follow Publisher’s Weekly to track what’s new in the book publishing world. Last week, I noticed a tempting, teasing list of new books expected in the next few months. I haven’t read any of these as advance copies, and I’m not reviewing them here, but you might want to be among the first to take a look at these titles.

First, San Francisco’s gay journalist Randy Shilts will receive the biographical treatment with When the Band Played On: The Life of Randy Shilts, America’s Trailblazing Gay Journalist by Michael G. Lee, Chicago Review Press, 320 pages, hardcover. Available October 8, 2024.

Shilts has been profiled before and after his death from AIDS in 1994, mostly in magazines and journals, but this is the second book-length biography of the much-applauded but controversial writer. I’m curious to read how this new book treats Shilts’  reporting style, the controversy over the fabrication of Patient Zero, and whether the book provides a meaningful look at Shilts' inner life.

Esteemed Author Edmund White Makes Sense of 60-Plus Years of Sex.  Not many men can compile more than sixty years of their gay sex lives, much less with the literary and popular reputation of gay writer Edmund White who does so at age 85. Yet we can look forward to White’s accounts next January 2025 with the publication of The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir, Edmund White, Bloomsbury (publisher), 246 pages.

I was slow to become an eager fan of each of White’s books – novels, fictional memoirs, and sagas of travel. Now, I’m ready to delve into his work with anticipation, especially at my own advanced age as I prepare my own memoir for publication. I’ll be signing up for one of his pre-release copies. How about you?

Magic Mushrooms Are Everywhere, right? I’m told that Colorado and Oregon are the two places to be for everything magic mushrooms. As a native Oregonian, I hear intriguing stories about the legalized but facilitated trips with psilocybin mushrooms. A new report by Grant Singer, a reporter for Oregon Public Broadcasting counts 3500 clients who have taken a guided trip with psilocybin in Oregon.  

In October this year, look for the new “Have A Good Trip: Exploring the Magic Mushroom Experience,” by Eugenia Bone, Published by Flatiron Books, 352 pages. Tell us what you think.

​The citizens of Barga, a small city in Tuscany, officially honored Dr. Marie Equi by naming a street after her on Saturday, May 18, 2024. Dr. Equi’s ancestors lived in and near Barga for many generations. The new “via Marie Equi”  recognizes the doctor’s contributions to society and her family origins in the city. Barga is located 25 miles directly north of the walled city of Lucca. The two cities are located in the Tuscany region of Italy.

Equi became known for her fortitude and courage in fighting for women's rights, including reproductive rights, economic justice for working people, and free speech. To many, Equi was also controversial as a lesbian; she lived openly with her female companion in Portland. She is the first publicly known lesbian in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California.

Equi enflamed the sensitivities of many – including FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover – with her opposition to what she considered the “capitalistic” World War I. The U.S. Government prosecuted Equi on a charge of sedition for protesting U.S. involvement in the war. She was found guilty and sentenced to San Quentin Prison. She lived and practiced medicine in Portland, Oregon. Equi died in 1952 at age 80.

The street-naming honor was bestowed in memory of Dr. Equi (1872-1952) with the initiative of Barga librarian Ms. Maria Elisa Caproni, who contacted Equi biographer Michael Helquist for assistance.  A copy of his book “Marie Equi: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions” was displayed at the naming ceremony.

Equi has also been publicly recognized in New Bedford, Massachusetts, her hometown; in Portland, Oregon, where she lived her adult life; in the Walk of the Heroines; in a mural of notable Oregonians on the campus of the University of Oregon in Eugene, and with a granite plaque placed along the Rainbow Honor Walk in San Francisco that recognizes significant LGBTQIA+ individuals.

​Familiar Territory
I covered the Atlanta AIDS conference as a reporter for the LGBTQ newspaper Coming Up! in San Francisco. Afterwards I stitched together a national readership by syndicalizing my articles in other media that served New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Seattle, Phoenix, Portland, and Oakland. I had worked the “AIDS beat” for nearly three years before I registered for the Atlanta conference. More importantly, I began collaborating in mid-1982 with Mark Feldman, one of the first 50 men in San Francisco diagnosed with AIDS. We began writing about his experience of having “the condition.” The stigma and pain, depression and defiance, the horrors, and the treasured calm periods of relief and joy. Mark Feldman was the first to coin the term “People with AIDS (PWA).”  This became a fundamental aspect of his message; he wanted to counter the notion that those with the disease were “victims,” “helpless,” and to be pitied. Mark went on to become one of the best known PWA speakers in that early wave of AIDS in 1981-1985. He died of AIDS at age 31 on June 2, 1983. The experience of being present with Mark and loving him changed me in ways I try to understand fully even today.
 
Why Atlanta?
I don’t know the backstory on why Atlanta was selected to host this stand-out AIDS conference, but the city had the Centers for Disease Control within its boundaries. The CDC connection was likely enough. The U.S. bid for sponsorship easily drew upon the prestige of the vast federal bureaucracy; including the CDC, the National Cancer Institute, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Those realms of scientific expertise included Robert Gallo, MD, the prominent virologist who misappropriated credit for being the first to identify the AIDS virus.
 
U.S. Scientist Takes Credit for French Discovery of AIDS Virus
For those unfamiliar with the scandal triggered by Robert Gallo’s lab, the episode was a dark period in the history of AIDS science. Gallo and his colleagues, purposefully or not, misidentified the virus sample shared with him by researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and called it their own. Drs. Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier had already announced in May 1983 that they identified the AIDS virus which they named “Lymphadenopathy-Associated Virus, LAV.” But wait, Gallo declared that he was the first in the world to identify the AIDS virus. He named it HTLV-3.
 
In reality he had “identified” the already discovered French LAV that had been shared with him. That was a mistake from the start; it risked cross-contamination. Almost a full year after the French announced in a medical journal their discovery of LAV, Gallo reported his own “discovery” of HTLV-3 in Science in May 1984. He failed to mention the earlier French finding. With high stakes of the Nobel Prize, worldwide fame, millions of dollars in revenue from sales of the eventual antibody test, and national pride, the U.S. government initially attributed sole discover to Gallo and, later at the Atlanta conference, to the “discoverers in France and the U.S.”  
 
At the conference, Gallo advised his colleagues, “Science becomes debased when nationalism and chauvinism come with competition.”    
 
First American to Independently Identify the AIDS Virus
Jay A. Levy, MD, University of California San Francisco Professor of Medicine and Director of the Laboratory for Tumor and AIDS Virus Research, deserves the honor and accolades for being the first American to independently identify the AIDS virus ((meaning he did so without having the French drop it on his laboratory bench). In early May 1984 Levy isolated what he named AIDS Associated Retrovirus, or ARV. Levy’s discovery ranks him as the second worldwide and the first American to discover the virus that caused the worst epidemic of illness and death in the 21st century. Granted that COVID-19 may soon claim that distinction).   
 
Jay Levy’s ARV discovery was recognized at the 1985 Atlanta conference only in presentations and papers by himself or his team. He is among the most under-reported and under-appreciated of medical science pioneers. Jay Levy continues his lab work at UCSF today.
 
Quick Notes from the Atlanta Conference
· The lag time between AIDS infection and development of symptoms may be more like seven to ten years rather than the five years earlier believed.
· AIDS-infected individuals may remain capable of infecting others for several years after their initial exposure.
· One study suggested that closure of gay bathhouses may have little impact on the spread of AIDS.  (San Francisco had ordered 14 such establishments to close in October 1984).
 
Viewing Note: These articles appear on my website, michaelhelquist.com, as part of my “Politics and Passions Blog” on the left side of the Home page.