December 8th

12-09-1950   Joan Armatrading, CBE – Born in Basseterre, on the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts. When she was three years old, her parents moved to Birmingham, England, sending Joan to live with her grandmother on the island of Antigua. At the age of seven, she joined her parents in England. Armatrading is a British singer-songwriter and guitarist. A three-time Grammy Award nominee, she has also been nominated twice for BRIT Awards as Best Female Artist. In 1996, she received an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contemporary Song Collection. In April 2011, The Shetland News reported that Armatrading and her girlfriend Maggie Butler were to enter into a civil partnership in the Shetland Isles. In 2001, she was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) and in 2020 she was made Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for her services to music, charity, and equal rights.

12-09-1902 – 02-04-1966 Lucius Beebe – Born in Wakefield, Massachusetts. He was an American author, gourmand, photographer, railroad historian, journalist, and syndicated columnist. From the 1930s through 1944, he wrote a syndicated column for the New York Herald Tribune. The column focused on the doings of high society at restaurants and nightclubs such as El Morocco, the 21 Club, the Stork Club, and The Colony. He is credited with popularizing the term “cafe society.” In 1940, Beebe met Charles Clegg. The two developed a romantic and professional relationship that would continue for the rest of Beebe’s life. Their relationship was relatively open and well-known. Beebe died of a heart attack at the age of 63. Clegg committed suicide in 1979, at the same age that Beebe had reached when he died.

12-09-1755 – 1831 Sarah Ponsonby – Born in Ireland. She was a second cousin of Frederick Ponsonby, 3rd Earl of Bessborough, and a second cousin once-removed of his daughter Lady Caroline Lamb. Ponsonby and Eleanor Charlotte Buttler are best known as the Ladies of Llangollen. The Ladies of Llangollen were two upper-class women from Ireland. Their families lived 2 miles apart. They met in 1768 and quickly became friends. Rather than being forced into unwanted marriages, they left County Kilkenny together in April 1778. They ended up in Wales and set up home at Plas Newydd near the town of Llangollen in 1780. Their life attracted the interest of the outside world and their house became a haven for visitors, mostly writers such as Robert Southey, William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron, and Sir Walter Scott. They were also visited by the Duke of Wellington, Josiah Wedgwood, and Lady Caroline Lamb. Queen Charlotte wanted to see their cottage and persuaded the King to grant them a pension. Out lesbian, Anne Lister (born April 3, 1791) was also a visitor. The ladies lived together for the rest of their lives, over 50 years. Their books and glassware had both sets of initials and their letters were jointly signed. They are both buried at St. Collen’s Church in Llangollen.

12-09-1869 – 03-27-1947 Edith Craig – Born in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom. She was a prolific theatre director, producer, costume designer, and early pioneer of the women’s suffrage movement in England. Openly lesbian, Craig lived in a ménage à trois with the dramatist Christabel Marshall and the artist Clare ‘Tony” Atwood from 1916 until her death. Craig appeared in a number of silent films, including Fires of Fate (1923). On stage, she often played the role of the lesbian artist Rosa Bonheur. The character of Miss LaTrobe in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts (1941) is based on Edith Craig.

12-09-1949 Eileen Myles – Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She is an American poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades. In 2012 she received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Myles has served as a Professor of Writing at the University of California, San Diego and has been a Visiting Writer at many other universities. She is an out lesbian. As of 2015, she is in a relationship with Jill Soloway, creator of Transparent, an Amazon original series.

12-09-1959 Mario Cantone – Born in Stoneham, Massachusetts. He is an American stand-up comedian, writer, and actor. Cantone has had numerous appearances on Comedy Central. He played Anthony Marentino on Sex & The City. In his stand-up shows, he is known for his campy impressions of entertainment personalities such as Liza Minnelli, Judy Garland, Bruce Springsteen, Jim Morrison, and Bette Davis. Cantone is openly gay. In Oct. 2011, Cantone married his partner of 20 years, musical theater director Jerry Dixon. The ceremony was officiated by Pastor Jay Bakker, the youngest child of Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker Messner.

12-09-1988 Keelin Winters – Born in Cleveland, Ohio. She is an American professional soccer midfielder who currently plays for the Seattle Reign FC of the National Women’s Soccer League. Her father played nine years in the NBA for the Los Angeles Lakers and Milwaukee Bucks and later went on to coach in both the NBA and WNBA. Winters was on the USA soccer team at the Rio Olympics. She is openly gay and married her longtime girlfriend Paige Pattillo on October 3, 2015.