An Open Letter to Our Beloved American Family

Dear America - Let us start by saying  we have unwavering support for our incredibly positive American way of life. We lead the world in the newest ideas of making progress, and being positively progressive, contrary to much of what is said by many. We Americans, since our founding and throughout our history, continue to strive to be better, especially in expanding matters of freedom and equality.  

Tom and Robert, a married Gay couple for
20 years have
Loved America all their lives. 

It amazes us on how much We all work to improve our lives and our communities and our bellowed country--just look at the progress for LGBT rights over the last 30 years!  And We continue to find inspiration from our still cutting edge founding documents, confidant that tempered with understanding, history, and wisdom that each generation, both the young and old, will aspire to new heights as we celebrate our freedoms engaging freely in enterprise, civil rights, and important national priorities. 

We, more than ever, demand freedom of thought given to all, but without misrepresentation, which then flow towards actions which exalt good, and create beauty and order which is conducive to human flourishing. And We should always welcome newcomers from around the globe who are able to build up America, with their unique and exciting capabilities, as they contribute to strengthening our national fabric today and into the following centuries. 

So let's, together, raise up hard work, self-reliance, loyalty to and love of nation, faith in God, honesty, strong families, and minimal class consciousness--the American way. 

We are overwhelmingly a fair people, greatly underestimated by our adversaries. During this time of disruption, all should know that things are not always what they seem on the surface, or as we are being told by many. So don't be taken in by the rancor and chaos some contribute to around us. These are the crashing waves of a temporary storm but the strong calm currents have never been disturbed by the ferociousness of the violent and self-consumed. 

Do not be afraid to stand up for what is right--and America with all her blemishes, glory and hope is a shining light to the world. WE will build an even stronger and more resolute America able to further anchor to the enduring values developed and codified by imperfect messengers of liberty.  

Though inarticulately at times, we are fighting to sharpen our vision of needed changes to make America as great as possible. This is a wonderful goal. Now with the veil more removed, the true challenge to our past, present and future--America herself--stands is stark relief to the horrific history of man's inhumanity toward man. We are now actually even more up to slaying the true dragon--the hatred of the principles of liberty for all enshrined in our founding documents. Many now know that they have billions of miles to go, if they in fact can EVER sleep.

Like so many of us in our great American family, WE believe in equality for all and the idea that our country, despite the challenges we now face, is and will continue to be the best hope for the betterment of humanity. But we also know that our creator gave us the precious gift of conscience--of choice to do right or wrong--and that, unfortunately, many of us chose wrong over right far too often in the past, in our present and likely in our future. But this is not an indictment of America but rather the manifest human condition that our founding principles continually force us to examine and forge a more perfect union.  

With All Our Love and Devotion,

Tom Fulton and Robert Hudson Westover

BLM Mom Way Ahead of Her Time

[UPDATE: The official cause of my mother's death was "complications due to Covid-19". Please protect the most vulnerable in our population by at least wearing a face mask while in public spaces.]

Mardelle Hudson Westover 1938 to 2020

My mom has passed.

It was a tumultuous last two years of her fighting “the system” the term she used to describe the ten odd nursing homes she lived in during this time. Often lovely facilities she would liken to prisons and as she would later say she “escaped” from like some geriatric Houdini.

But this was to be excepted.

Mardelle was always a rebel, a fighter for the downtrodden and defiant almost literally to her last breath.

She lived her truth. She truly did.

For instance, even as a child, she felt strongly that racism was a disease that had to be eradicated. As a child in the 1940s she angered her teachers by opposing the inequality of the black community. In the 1940s!

As a child.

Wow.

Her BFF, Jackie, (literally they stayed friends to the end) enjoyed recounting the moment when as a teenager in the early 1950s in Santa Monica, California, mom took her new friend, a young black man from South Africa, to church at the very white 5th Church of Christ Scientists one bright sunny afternoon. “Your mom walked with him right down to the front of the church heads turning all the way!”

In the Calvinist-based Christian Science church there are no rituals including baptism. So some Christian Scientists “adopt” honorary god parents. My mom chose a black woman, a daughter of a slave, as her honorary family. We called her momma Broyels. She was a spiritual healer in the Christian Science church and was very effective. Momma Broyels died in the 1970s at nearly 100 years of age.

Mardelle in 1968 with her honorary
godmother "Mama Broyels".
(Westover family photos)

On a personal level my mother eradicated any sense of racial difference for her children by encouraging us to befriend black kids in our neighborhoods and at school. Because of this my best friend in junior high was a black kid named Tony Davis. We were inseparable and even broke in to MGM studios together running into a casting agent who was so amused by our “forwardness” that he cast us in a film.

It’s strange when your last parent passes. When my dad, Lawrence Robert, died, I was 31. He only lived to 58 but he and mom had a powerful love, so powerful that mom never remarried--out living dad by 25 years! 

My husband, Tom, told me a lot of soul searching begins when the last parent is buried. 12 hours into mom’s passing it has already begun for me.

Without her influence of equality for all I would have been a very different person.

Without her constant and emphatic insistence on forgiving all who had harmed her I would be a very different person.

Without her love for the arts and humanities I would be a very different person.

And, without her love for God, and the Universe He created, I would most certainly been a different person.

As the sediment of life with my “crazy” mom is sifting away, now faster than ever, the peaks and valleys are coming into stark relief and I am beginning to see this woman as the complicated, loving, angry, forgiving, defiant, selfish and generous person she was and will be remember by those who knew and loved her.

Welcome to heaven, mom, where the only skin color is the light of Love.

Mom and dad shortly before they were married in 1957.
(Westover family photos.)

(I have included this link to a testimony my mother wrote many years ago. I can think of no better eulogy as the highest mountain peak of her life—risking her life to save another: https://sentinel.christianscience.com/issues/1967/9/69-39/one-summer-afternoon-while-at-the-beach-with-my-four-children

The Restoration of a 1902 Colonial Revival Mansion in Northern Virginia

An American Painting Music in Paris’s City Hall

James Purpura is emerging as one of the most profound and uniquely talented artists of a generation

Paris - For artists to distinguish themselves is never easy. To distinguish themselves in Paris is an altogether bigger deal. James Purpura, a native of Ohio, has done exactly that. Starting April 1 and ending on April 13 Purpura’s wide range of paintings, including landscapes, portraits and the fanciful, will be exhibited in one of the City of Lights most magnificent buildings the City Hall of Paris' 5^th Arrondissement.

A cityscape by Jame Purpura. (Used by permission.)

Purpura, who sees colors in music, an almost sixth sense called synesthesia, has also accomplished another rare feat among artists in that he has been able to translate this concomitant sense for the world to see. According to Purpura he sees colors in “Beats, instruments, layering, vocals, and lyrics can evoke certain colors and brush strokes, and pieces of music in an infinite number of ever-changing visuals.” His musical inspirations for painting includes classical, pop, transcendental, and remixes.

The artist's work is innovative and spontaneous, and never scripted. He likes to play with colors and lets them answer each other on the canvas. Often, characters such as animals and people begin to appear magically in the story and he will give them finishing touches to complete these characters.

A landscape by James Purpura. (Used by permission.)

“My approach gets people involved in the canvas as they lose themselves in color and the story on the canvas. It allows them to escape and ask ‘Why is the moon black? Why is the sun green? Why are there two suns? Why is there one sun but the reflection of seven?’ This is how I see. This is how I interpret the world.” said Purpura.

To learn more about James Purpura and his new exhibit in Paris visit: http://www.jamesmpurpura.com/

TAGS: Art, Paris, James Purpura, synesthesia

HASHTAGS #ArtInParis, AprilArtEvents, ArtExhibition

Robert Westover Featured by US Forest Service for LGBT Month

Meet Robert Hudson Westover

Final Bow

By Robert Hudson Westover

Chairman Emeritus, S.S. United States Foundation

Seeing the film Titanic when it was released in December 1997 proved to be pivotal moment for me. That’s because watching Mr. Cameron’s near exact replica of the 1912 White Star ocean liner reminded me of another ship I had adored, imagined and built (the Revel model that is!) as a child. A ship whose very name made me feel patriotic.

The S.S. United States.

Titanic made me want to know where the S.S. United States had gone. I went on (what we called then) the World Wide Web and discovered (to my delighted surprise) that America’s flagship was very much still afloat and a former passenger, Mike Alexander, had started a Website to bring awareness to her plight.

That following January I went to visit the United States for the first time. I could hardly sleep the night before! I felt like a little boy going to Disneyland for the first time! I’ll never forget seeing her red, white and blue funnels for the first time that day. Her sleek profile. Her dramatic and cutting bow.

She was weather beaten for sure, but where others saw discouragement and a badly decaying vessel I saw hope and a glorious restoration like the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, CA.

I was 33 years old and full of excitement and possibilities. I didn’t care that the herculean task of saving this ship would take years of my life. I didn’t care that many other interests where vying with their own visions--and, sadly, personal self-aggrandized agendas.

I just knew I could do this.

And I began by starting an organization I named the S.S. United States Foundation.

I’m not going delve into the details--the impossible odds of creating and leading one of the largest all volunteer preservation non-profits in the country--because this amazing story has been covered in many news stories and in books.

Safe to say, the attention I sought to bring to the ship via the SSUS Foundation, went well beyond anything I could have imagined. For the first time since the ship won the Blue Riban for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean (and her untimely retirement in 1969) her story appeared in the New York Times, then the BBC World News Service, then ABC World News Tonight and on and on.          (Click on video below)

This constant national and international media attention began in April 1999 and has never let up.

With success came attention and many now wanted to become part of what had been a few, but highly devoted, Big U (her nickname) fans in varying fields of expertise from advertising, public relations, media relation, maritime and legislative-based professions.

The SSUS Foundation's greatest accomplish happened when we lead the effort and succeeded in placing the S.S. United States on the National Register of Historic Places when she was less than 50 years old. This "less than 50 years old" is important because we had to prove the Big U met the National Register's stringent “National Significance” criterion.

We did and the Big U was placed on the National Register in June 1999 resulting in another round of national attention including a prime time broadcast on CNN. (Click on video below)

But soon the reality of having to actually convince a municipality to take her in as a Queen Mary type attraction set in. Meetings were held with elected representatives but no one seemed to grasp (or have the vision) of what a huge tourist attraction the SS United States could become—a classic problem in preservation efforts.

Then the owner, who had allowed the SSUS Foundation free and near unfetter access to the ship passed away. She was sold to NCL and the Foundation’s noble vision to see the S.S United States preserved as a monument to her splendor (and being able to keep her on the National Register) seemed lost.

Then everything changed.

The official logo of the S.S. United States Foundation.

The Foundation's confrontational approached to NCL’s renovation plans didn’t sit well with some members of the board of directors.

In the ensuing heightened climate of profound ideological differences a new non-profit, the S.S. United States Conservancy, was created (or reemerged from an existing organization as some would insist) and they succeeded in purchasing the United States from NCL after the cruises line abandoned its renovation plans.

Not long after the remaining board of the SSUS Foundation voted to suspend any further activities and to not compete for our vision of preservation.

Since that time I have maintained a social media presence as a fascinated spectator of the SSUS Conservancy’s efforts to bring their vision of the Big U to fruition--I even donated my last royalty proceeds from the book SS United States Fastest Ship in World (Turner) to the Conservancy. And until their recent announcement about the deal worked out with Crystal Cruise Lines I was as unaware of their vision as anyone else.

Cover to the successful book
SS United States Fastest ship in the World (Turner)

Let me be clear. I cannot begin to express my profound disappointment in the future chosen by the SSUS Conservancy for this great historic site.

To me the plans are an abomination of what I, and many others feel, was the epitome of ship building. And I realize many feel differently but I very much disagree with the argument that all that matters is that she sails again.

Sails as what?

To me it’s analogous to giving Queen Elizabeth a Hollywood-style face lift, collagen lip injections, massive Dolly Parton-esque breast implants, a tummy tuck and a rear-end lift, put her in a red, skin-tight beaded dress and parade her around with the Kardashian sisters.

Yes, what a comical and ridiculous site that would be and what horrid last visual memories of a great queen!

Yet, I’m supposed to feel that what is planned for the S.S. United States is any different?

Well, I can’t.

Now that the board of the SSUS Conservancy has made their choice to, what I strongly feel, eviscerate the remaining historic integrity (as I believe is clearly spelled in the requirements for historic designation by The National Register of Historic Places), I will suspend any involvement in and abandon my watch as a preservationist seeking to protect this amazing relic of maritime greatness.

Good-by once great Queen of the Seas.

I did my best to save you.

Lessons in Nobility - A Real Downton Abbey Story

Now Available on Amazon 

Who wouldn’t want a fairy godmother? They would lavish you with gifts, of course, but more importantly they would teach you how to be a better person by bringing out your inner nobility. Lessons in Nobility is about how a very real fairy godmother changed the author’s life from a self-destructive one to a life of noble aspirations and wonderful achievements. 

While still a teenager, Robert Westover was introduced to his “fairy godmother” who, like the plot of so many Russian novels, was a delightfully eccentric countess. Countess Olga de Chravpovitsky was raised in the court of Tsar Nicholas II. She was a playmate of the legendary Grand Duchess Anastasia and at one point even encountered the mysterious Siberian monk, Rasputin. 

Despite the horrors of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Olga’s family managed to escape. Exiled in America, she became a relative (through marriage) to Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and helped influence the former First Lady’s fascination with imperial Russia—a fact known by few. But all these things were just the baubles of a life of any well-born person with great connections. What made Olga special was the nobility she expressed in nearly everything she did—and how she taught it to Robert. 

So how did a middle class kid from LA become the “honorary godson” to such a regal and highborn woman? That will be for the reader to decide. Some will see it as pure luck while others will see it as fate. But, no matter the conclusion, the story of how Robert was taught to be noble is one that everyone can gain from. 

The reader will walk away with a better understanding of what being noble is and how they can apply these lessons in their own lives. Sometimes dramatic and often moving, Lessons in Nobility has a timeless appeal. 

Never before Published Insight into Jackie Kennedy’s Life 
As an exciting addition to the book, the author has included an article he wrote about the relationship between Jackie Kennedy Onassis and Hugh D. “Yusha” Auchincloss III, Olga's newphew. Step brother and sister, Yusha and Jackie shared a love that lasted their entire lives. 

Mr. Westover had unique access to Yusha Auchincloss and interviewed him on several occasions at Hammersmith Farm in Newport, Rhode Island. The interviews, in the twilight of Mr. Auchincloss' life, reveal just how much love he and Jackie had for each other. 

Available on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B012OIEGV4?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Robert Hudson Westover is a professional writer of articles, humorous columns, and was the subject of many national news stories including ABC World News Tonight (2000), The New York Times (1998/2003) and the BBC (1998/2000). His "Lord Westover" blog was nominated to the Washington Post's "Best Blog Award" by its readers and mentioned in the Christian Science Monitor. Mr. Westover is co-author of the well-received “S.S. United States – Fastest Ship in the World” (Turner). He and his husband, Gay rights activist Tom Fulton, live in Virginia.

Lord Westover: A Christmas Story for All - The Forgotten History ...

Lord Westover: A Christmas Story for All - The Forgotten History ...: By His Grace, Lord Westover and the Earl of Fulton Millions of children believe in Santa Claus, a mystical fat man who brings them pre...

Getty Images: Same sex couples activists celebrate US Supreme Court decision

You know you’re part of LGBT media history when Getty Images, the world’s largest repository of pictures and broadcast roll media has you in their database. Tom, me and our friend Phil Attey appear in the attached clip—note the caption! So proud to be a “Flag waving LGBT rights” advocate!

This news clip (or portions of it) were broadcast around the world to over 100 countries. Take that LGBT haters!

Getty Images: Same sex couples activists celebrate US Supreme Court decision

Credit: AFP Footage

More from this filmmaker

Caption: Flag waving LGBT rights advocates on the packed Supreme Court forecourt some in tears cheered danced shouted USA USA and sang The Star Spangled Banner in celebration of the high court’s decision to make same sex marriage legal throughout the US

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/video/flag-waving-lgbt-rights-advocates-on-the-packed-supreme-news-footage/479216098

Let’s Talk Story - Be a Witness to Climate Change

By Robert Westover

On our way into work this morning my husband, Tom, was reading an article in The Atlantic about Microsoft founder Bill Gate’s perspective on climate change when Tom abruptly turned to me and said: I hear so much about the science of climate change but I rarely hear people tell how it has affected them...on an individual level. I want to hear about their personal experiences.

Tom enjoying New Zealand's great outdoors
 (Photo credit Robert Westover)

I was astounded that I hadn’t thought to promote this type of anecdotal climate change awareness on a more focused level in the ten years I’ve been writing about global warming. (Full disclosure: for many years I’ve been a “true believer” in the effects of climate change, as a man-made phenomenon. Tom has always been a keen observer and skeptic of political/environmental trends but he now agrees wholeheartedly with me that climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing mankind and we need to do something about it.)

Well, I got to work—immediately (as in today).  And here's the start.

I’ve launched a Facebook page called Witness to Climate Change https://www.facebook.com/witnesstoclimatechange/ to capture in one location as many personal storied of how climate change has affected You and Me—all of us on an individual level. This is how the story needs to be told. This is how people learn. Anecdotes of this-is-what-happened-to-me have guided humanity for millennia and I now feel this should be the focus of a worldwide climate change awareness campaign I’m calling (like the Facebook handle) Witness to Climate Change.  

Shortly after meeting Prince Charles
 (Photo credit Robert Westover)

Back a few years ago, I had the opportunity to meet one of the great climate change spokespersons (if you will) in the world. I shook hands with Prince Charles and told him I worked on climate change issues to which he responded, “But is anyone listening?" to which I replied, "We're making progress. They will listen..."

I hope the Witness to Climate Change grassroots awareness campaign is an answer so that many more will start “listening”.

Please go to the new Witness to Climate Change Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/witnesstoclimatechange/ and share your own experiences of what you've seen, lived or how you’ve been affected by climate change. I’ll choose stories to be promoted on this blog and my Twitter site @MrClimateChange.

Let’s fight Climate Change one story at a time!

An Open Letter to Pope Francis on Gay Marriage

“In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” – Christ Jesus

Dear Pope Francis:

As a baptized and loving Catholic I have worked to thread my Catholic upbringing into daily living as I have sought to lead a life with integrity, dignity, and personal success as a natural gay man created by God as Gay.  I have a wonderful loving husband named Robert who, although not Catholic (I’m working on it), loves God with such profundity that it was one of the reasons I married him.

My often difficult but blessed personal journey has occurred while at the same time, throughout the advanced world we all have witnessed, as part of each generation’s spiritual revelation, a deeper understanding of same-sex attraction within the human race, as well as the animal kingdom. And are not animals in their simplistic innocent creatures of God? If same sex attraction was not natural, why did God instill it in a small percentage of his lessor creation?

My Husband and me after the US Supreme ruled that our
marriage, our devotion and love for each other, was
equal to every other married couple in America.
This picture was the lead photo on the Huffington Post's
website and was picked up all over the world

I, and others like me, seek to demonstrate that values such as wholesome living, honor, love and fidelity can be lived while having a spouse of the same-sex. Millions of us seek to live a life in Christ.  As with all people, this walk is often a challenge, but made unnecessarily difficult by unloving, uniformed, or less spiritually developed forces which attack and demonize Gay people. 

And, we as LGBT Catholics have an additional cross put upon our shoulders by our own church. Many of us turn in despair to anti-spiritual fronts, often exemplified by popular culture which often elevates and glorifies baser ways of living, which many do know, through often tragic personal experience, leads to a spiritual dead end--yet even as this “front” has offered us refuge when the Church has turned against us! 

Indeed, this is a challenge calling for great gifts of discernment.

I too have a concern for the “family”, Pope Francis, which I agree can be greatly healed by individuals committing to living lives far more focused on self-less love, and service. Please pray to understand, though, that physical expressions, depending upon body parts, DO NOT, Pope Francis, change “fundamental relationships” that you expressed concern about in the marriage covenant.  Rather sexuality, including Gay sexuality, is truly a mysterious wonder which according to God’s plan, when property used, can lead to a deeper, richer life in every way. 

With our natural sexuality intact we can develop towards a deeper life in Christ.  Many things threaten all types of family life today, I agree: a culture which too often degrades or ridicules wholesome values, rather than the transformational power of love for another. Or others: worldwide economic pressures, self-centeredness, declining discipline, delaying gratification, a changing socialization which focuses on short-term versus long-term goals, and many many other challenges. 

This ostracized community of Gay people, especially middle-age elders, can actually offer tremendous insight into how to counter these corrosive visions within the flock. Holy Father, you can seize this opportunity and actually help by understanding and speaking compassionately about our rightful place within the body of Christ!  

You can speak forth that our dreams too reflect the dream that Martin Luther King Jr. had that men and women should be judged by the content of their character, and people who are LGBT should not in any way be discriminated within the public realm, and this must be clearly stated in federal law, and throughout the world. 

Your Holiness you are actually in concert with another fellow Catholic, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Kennedy.  Yes, in removing the splinter from the Church’s eye, you may see symmetry, mathematical beauty.  You reiterated the importance, above all, of the richness and the beauty of family life, likewise through the movement of the Holy Spirit, Justice Kennedy affirmed in his ruling regarding marriage equality that no union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, and sacrifice, and FAMILY.  In forming a marital union two people (regardless of body parts which soon enough turn to dust) become something greater than they once were.

Marriage embodies a love that may endure even beyond death.  It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. We in the LGBT community respect it so much that we want to be part of it, find fulfillment in it for themselves and proclaim its great value to others. 

The loving and equal affirmation of LGBT people, Holy Father, is human dignity. It is this generation’s spiritual revelation, that I deeply pray every night that your will ultimately proclaim during your Papacy. 

I know in this life I will never meet with you, Holy Father, to sit down together and share in the spirit of Christ's Love, but in heaven when all is clearly seen, I pray we will see eye-to-eye as brothers of the faith in the most holy council of Our Lord. 

I’d like to end this letter with another mention of my husband. Holy Father you took the name of my most admired saint. Fifteen years ago when I showed Robert, the film Brother Son, Sister Moon by Franco Zeffirelli’s he cried. Two weeks before your ascendancy to the Throne of Saint Peter, Robert told a friend, who had hardened their heart toward our one true and Apostolic Church, they should watch the film because “Saint Francis of Assisi was what being a Christian and Catholic means…”

With Great Love in Christ Our Savior,

Thomas Eugene Fulton,
Washington, DC