The photograph is of my great-aunt who died two decades before I was born. She is holding her not yet four year old son. It was taken by her lover, Lucia Larranga. It is, all at once, triumph and love and dignity.
— Mark R. Miller (@4T9NER) January 28, 2021
It is a celluloid talisman against the vampire of lesbian erasure that seeks to bury and discard the corpses of their lives and each time I let my eyes fall upon it I can conjure the power of their lives beautifully led. pic.twitter.com/HZyIm8Y630
— Mark R. Miller (@4T9NER) January 28, 2021
Leslie is her name. She was born in 1895 in San Francisco and her mother died before her first birthday. Her mother was Einnim Tucker Miller and she is, I kid you not, interred in a fucking pyramid. pic.twitter.com/MOPeCDZPTD
— Mark R. Miller (@4T9NER) January 28, 2021
Einnim was named after (you will not see this coming) her mother Minnie by spelling the name backwards. I had suggested this tactic to my wife Kiki who violently opposed the idea of children named Kram and Ikik. Yet she is considered to be *fun* at parties and people *like* her.
— Mark R. Miller (@4T9NER) January 28, 2021
By 22 (1917) she had met Lucia Larranga who was ten years older. She fell harder than an inebriated first-time snowboarder. They wanted a child...badly. There was no reciprocal in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination. After what must have been unimaginably agonizing
— Mark R. Miller (@4T9NER) January 28, 2021
deliberations, they decided Leslie must marry a <shudder> man. They settled on Kenneth Moore, a friend and junior army officer getting ready to go fight WWI in France. Leslie laid out the deal: They would marry and once she was pregnant they would divorce. And that’s exactly what
— Mark R. Miller (@4T9NER) January 28, 2021