I was then languishing at an all-boys high-school, overwhelmed by the intense bullying you can guess an effeminate 15 year old experiences. I wanted to read tales about gay men finding love, companionship, and self-realization in a larger unwelcoming world. There, I could checkout books without my parent’s knowledge, burying titles like To Kill A Mockingbird and Great Expectations on my way home for late-night flashlight reading.Īs a young gay boy growing up in the quiet suburbs, I hungered for the homoerotic. She roller skated to their wedding at City Hall.In my early teen years, one of the great treats of summer vacation was visiting my local library unaccompanied. He quit his job to marry her when she was 15. He then met his wife while teaching her at the Ferrer Modern School in New York. Will studied at Jesuit schools in New Jersey, where he flirted with the idea of joining the priesthood. Ariel was born in Ukraine and migrated to the United States at the age of three. He was born in North Adams, Mass., to Franco-American parents who came to America as part of the Quebec diaspora.

Will Durant and his wife Ariel wrote the 11-volume Story of Civilization, one of the most popular works of history and philosophy ever. His influence endures beyond the other members of the Transcendentalist circle that included Emerson, Elizabeth Peabody, Margaret Fuller, Bronson Alcott and William Ellery Channing. When he did, he taught school, surveyed or did odd jobs for Ralph Waldo Emerson. He never married and often didn’t have a job. Thoreau was born in Concord, Mass., in 1817, to John Thoreau, the son of French Protestant immigrants, and Cynthia Dunbar, of English descent. The nun made him recite a rosary before he could run home.Ĭormier graduated from Fitchburg State University and worked for 30 years as a reporter for the Fitchburg Sentinel. When growing up he looked out his classroom window and saw his house on fire. 15, 1925 in a tight-knit Franco-American community known as French Hill in Leominster, Mass. John suggested adding the ‘bury’ to differentiate the town from the one in New Brunswick. He befriended Benjamin Franklin and Ethan Allen, who suggested the town of Dunmore, Vt., rename itself St. His book, Letters from an American Farmer, is still in print.

John subsequently bought a farm in New York State and wrote about life in the American colonies. He then moved to New York when the French lost to the British, took the name John Hector St. He migrated to New France in North America at the age of 20, serving in the French and Indian War as a surveyor.

Again Peyton Place by Don Tracy