LGBTQ+ History bedtime and relaxation stories, aiming to offer comfort, representation, and a touch of magic to listeners drifting off to sleep.
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Cherry Grove: America's First Gay and Lesbian Town | LGBTQ History
Long before Stonewall, there was a little town on the sand where people could step off the ferry and be themselves.
Tonight we travel to Cherry Grove on Fire Island, often called America's first gay and lesbian town. From the black cherry trees of 1868 to the 1938 hurricane that cleared the way, from the Cherry Grove Follies of 1948 staged in a carriage house floated across the bay, to Audrey Hartmann's walk down the beach in 1953, the jury acquittals that ended the police raids in 1968, and the first Invasion of the Pines on July 4, 1976.
Along the way: a ferry crossing the Great South Bay at dusk, gray boardwalks under holly trees, women by candlelight behind a cottage window, a curtain hung on a clothesline, and a water taxi full of sequins. Revolutionary, in a really quiet way.
Told twice, as always: first at a natural pace, then slowly, with longer pauses, to carry you into sleep.
☕ Restful Rainbow is independent and listener-supported: https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support (https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support) And if not, no need at all. Sleep well either way.
29 Oct 2026
Pride Before Pride: A Queer History of Halloween
For decades, Halloween was the one night a year queer people could walk out the door as themselves.
Tonight we travel through many Halloweens, from Alfred Finnie's 25-cent drag ball in a Chicago tavern basement in 1935, to Finnie's Ball at the Pershing Ballroom with crowds on the sidewalk, to José Sarria at San Francisco's Black Cat handing out "I am a boy" tags, the Halloween buses rolling from bar to bar, and the party's move from Polk Street to Castro Street in 1979.
Along the way: balloons in a Bronzeville basement, gowns stepping down from a streetcar, a cardboard tag shaped like a black cat, a tour bus full of sequins in the fog, and a variety store window full of masks. Pride before Pride.
Told twice, as always: first at a natural pace, then slowly, with longer pauses, to carry you into sleep.
☕ Restful Rainbow is independent and listener-supported: https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support (https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support) And if not, no need at all. Sleep well either way.
27 Oct 2026
No Kisses Is Like Yours: The Love Letters of Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus
In 1859, a young woman who had never been to school began writing love letters. Her sweetheart kept every one.
Tonight we travel to Hartford, Connecticut, in the years around the Civil War, to meet Addie Brown, a self-taught domestic worker, and Rebecca Primus, a schoolteacher who went south in 1865 to teach freedpeople in Royal Oak, Maryland, and built a schoolhouse the community named for her.
Along the way: a kitchen table at the end of a long workday, a parlor full of thread and books on Wadsworth Street, the evening steamboat gliding down the Connecticut River, a little schoolhouse on the Eastern Shore where the marsh turns silver at dusk, and a box of letters kept safe for more than a century. No kisses is like yours.
Told twice, as always: first at a natural pace, then slowly, with longer pauses, to carry you into sleep.
☕ Restful Rainbow is independent and listener-supported: https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support (https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support) And if not, no need at all. Sleep well either way.
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