Historical Spaghetti: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Image from http://www.absopure.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/healthy-halloween-candy-e1383051931832.jpg Fall not only brings forth crisper air and changing leaves, it also brings one of the most controversial holidays: Halloween. Many love it and many hate it, but most think of spiced apple cider, overly sweet candy corn, haunted houses, dressing up in ornate, albeit sometimes scary, costumes, parties, and all-around shenanigans when Halloween approaches in the 21st century. What most do not know is that this night mixing fun and fear actually began as a sacred, religious event, lasting from sundown on October 31st and throughout the day on November 1st. [1] The celebrations on October 31st, or what we traditionally call Halloween today, originated as the ancient Celtic fire festival celebrating the end of harvest, the beginning of the dark half of the year, the time to honor the dead, a time to thank the gods, and a time of great feasting: Samhain. [2] While there are...

Despite the expansion of lesbian and gay history during the past decades there are many places where the history of lesbian and gay people remains unwritten. Following nights of rioting on Christopher Street in New York City in June of 1969, gays and lesbians across the United States spoke more openly, and organized more actively, than had their counterparts in the 1950s. The Stonewall Riots, as those nights were later remembered, did not reach all corners of the United States, but they did extend to Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. By exploring sources from the long-running, daily student-newspaper The Evergreen this post and its counter-part will shed light on the history of lesbian and gay student activism at WSU. Part I examines the formation of the student organization Gay Awareness and its uneven work in uniting minority groups on campus. Part II will follow the response to the organization as seen in the The Evergreen . As I discuss below, the early 1970s, ...