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The New York Times
Real Estate
Habitats | Livingston
Manor, N.Y.
Do Ask, Do Tell
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Chris Ramirez for The New York Times
His Eternal Flame One of David Mixner’s artworks is a
Lucite sculpture of the faces of friends who died of AIDS.
It’s lighted from behind, and Mr. Mixner calls it ‘my eternal
flame,’ because he never turns it off. |
By FRED A. BERNSTEIN,
nytimes.com from the Web, July 21, 2007
Livingston Manor, NY July 15
-- "IT’S not the first crime I’ve committed,” said David Mixner as he prepared
to toss an apple into his backyard in Livingston Manor, N.Y.
The apple was for Attila, one of more than a dozen deer Mr. Mixner has
befriended since moving to this tiny town in Sullivan County.
Feeding deer is illegal in New York. But Mr. Mixner is both an animal
lover (in winter, when the deer look gaunt, he goes through two bushels of
apples a day) and an experienced lawbreaker.
He has been jailed, he said, more than a dozen times, all as a result of
fighting to end segregation and the Vietnam War and later to secure rights for
gay men and lesbians.
His most famous arrest came in 1993, when he chained himself to the fence
outside the White House to protest President Bill Clinton’s policy on gays in
the military, known as “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
That incident made news because Mr. Mixner had been a friend of Mr. Clinton
since the 1960s and had worked to help him win the presidency. Mr.
Clinton’s victory in 1992 was, for Mr. Mixner, a triumph soon followed by
anguish over “don’t ask, don’t tell.” And then came a public
reconciliation, in 1999, when Mr. Mixner gathered nearly 1,000 gay men and
lesbians in Los Angeles to thank Mr. Clinton for his efforts to advance equal
rights.
In those days, Mr. Mixner was, according to The New York Times, “the premier gay
political impresario” in Los Angeles. He was able to bring in millions of
dollars from gay men and lesbians for candidates he favored.
But Mr. Mixner’s roots are in Salem County, in southern New Jersey, an area so
rural — and so reminiscent of the Deep South, he said — that when he was growing
up in the 1950s it was known as Little Dixie. Though he despised the
segregation and poverty of Elmer, his hometown, Mr. Mixner also has fond
memories of an agrarian society where neighbors relied on one another.
“If someone’s house burnt down, we took them clothes and blankets — it didn’t
matter what race they were,” he said.
By the time he was in high school, Mr. Mixner had found his calling in political
activism. Eventually, his work took him to cities: Washington, where
in 1969 he helped organize a moratorium against the Vietnam War; Los Angeles,
where he founded a political consulting firm; and New York, where in the 1990s
he became a media presence. (His memoir, “Stranger Among Friends,” was
published by Bantam in 1996.)
In 2004, he decided to settle in Manhattan, where he rented an apartment near
Tudor City. “I went to plays, galleries, openings — all of it,” he said.
But he was alone, he said, a result of losing most of his close friends (and one
longtime partner) to AIDS. All together, Mr. Mixner said, 286 friends have
died of the disease. “I was growing old without peers,” he said, “and
nothing I could do could change that fact.”
True, he has a wide circle of younger friends, including numerous gay activists,
who regard him as a mentor. But when it came to socializing, he said, “I
was no longer willing to do the things that younger people do.” It was
time, he said, to plan for the next chapter of his life. And that, he
said, meant getting back to nature.
Mr. Mixner, now 60, began looking for a country house. But it wasn’t going
to be a second home (he didn’t have the money, he said), and it wasn’t going to
be in the Hamptons (same reason).
So he looked in Sullivan County, where many properties sell for less than
$300,000. Last summer, he found a ranch house under construction, on a
concave mountainside called Turkey Hollow, approximate population 10.
Mr. Mixner was able to buy the house, the detached garage and the surrounding
six acres for $273,000.
He moved in last October, just in time for a brutal winter. He knew the
place was isolated — there is no cable TV, no mail delivery and only sporadic
cellphone service. But those problems were the least of it. The dirt
road to Mr. Mixner’s house is so steep that it’s difficult for snowplows to
reach his driveway. As a result, he was snowed in for eight days last
winter, including one three-day stretch in March.
It didn’t help that Mr. Mixner, a large man, was having trouble walking.
He explained that his left leg was injured by police officers with nightsticks
during a protest in Chicago in 1968, the right in a slip in his backyard last
winter. (For much of the spring, he used a cane.)
But partial immobility had a plus side. He has learned that he can rely on
his neighbors. “In the pioneer days, you had to count on your neighbors,”
he said. “It’s the same here — we need each other. I have to get to
know them, and they have to get to know me. And even if we have political
differences, or different backgrounds, we keep it civil.”
Most of Mr. Mixner’s socializing is with activist friends from New York, like
Alan Van Capelle, the 32-year-old director of the Empire State Pride Agenda.
Mr. Mixner doesn’t cook, but he owns cookbooks: he has been known to
e-mail recipe “suggestions” to his friends before they drive up from Manhattan.
(The nearest market is six miles away, and the restaurants in the area, he said,
close at 7 p.m.)
The house is a modest ranch with a full basement. To make it more to his
liking, Mr. Mixner had the exterior painted bright yellow and added a front
porch, where he sits in a rocking chair while waiting for visitors to arrive.
He also had a screened porch built in back; there, he watches (and occasionally
converses with) the deer.
“I thought I’d be living like Thoreau, but it’s more like Dr. Dolittle,” he
said. (The porch contains a statue of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron
saint of animals.)
Inside, the cheerful rooms are filled with artwork and memorabilia, including
antiwar posters and newspaper clippings. One sculpture consists of the
faces of friends who died of AIDS, molded in Lucite and lighted from behind with
neon. He never turns it off. “It’s my eternal flame,” he said.
His other eternal flame is the computer screen. Mr. Mixner’s main activity
these days is blogging — his site, davidmixner.com, offers a mix of political
discourse, arts criticism and folksy commentary on day-to-day life in Turkey
Hollow. “People will stop me on the street in New York and ask me about
Attila and Kate,” he said, referring to the deer mentioned in many of his
postings.
Not that he has forgotten about politics. “I have more political influence
here than I did living in the city,” he said.
Last winter, Mr. Mixner endorsed John Edwards for president. The leading
Democratic candidates, he said, have similar views on gay rights, but Mr.
Edwards, he believes, has the best position on Iraq. Although Mr. Mixner
no longer raises money for candidates, he is closely connected to people who do.
But mostly, he said, he is interested in nurturing deer like Attila and young
gay activists like Mr. Van Capelle. The house, he said, “is a sanctuary
for animals and a sanctuary for ideas.”
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