Addenda: Polyamory

Polyamory — a long-term relationship more "crowded" than a couple — may be the next big thing. As gays and lesbians obtain the right to legally marry and act out their lifestyles on TV, including reality shows, they are naturally becoming ever more mainstream. But box office demands shock, and there has got to be some newer love story.

Polyamory remains a mystery to most. Yet its adherents hold regular get-togethers from New York to New Zealand, across Canada, in Mexico, the Philippines, Switzerland, and the U.K., with more countries coming on board all the time. Hot spots of activity in the U.S. include Boston, Connecticut, Philadelphia, Washington, the Chesapeake Bay, Rochester, MN, Fargo, ND, San Antonio, TX, Seattle, and L.A., among others.

Polyamory has a magazine (Loving More), a research foundation (The Institute for 21st Century Relationships), and plenty of websites devoted to resources for those who wish to investigate "responsible nonmonogamous relationships" — just go to Google and type in "polyamory." The movement can boast of causing some turmoil in a Christian denomination — this time not the Episcopalians but the Unitarian/Universalists. How long will it be before polyamorous marriage becomes legal?

Polys like potluck suppers. In smaller cities they meet at a church or home and share dinner, each person contributing a dish. What they lack in numbers, they make up for in communal spirit. In the Big Apple Polys gather monthly in a restaurant — they call it a "munch" — to meet, talk, and shmooze. Some of the folks are committed threesomes, others a more open grouping, and there are singles who are trying out the style. There is even a manual, "How to Date a Couple."

Poly Pride Day takes place each October in Central Park's Sheep Meadow. So far the crowd has been made up of a few hundred enthusiasts, children included, who listen to poets, musicians, and speakers extolling the virtues of romantic abundance. There is lots of mingling, eyeing, and hoping — but nary a Schwarzenegger grope.

Barbara Foster is an Associate Professor in the Library Department at CUNY. She is a world traveler in the tradition of the heroic women she writes about. She has acted as a referee for the Royal Geographical Society (London). She is co-author of the biography The Secret Lives of Alexandra David-Neel (Overlook Press, 1998). The New York Times reviewed an earlier biography Barbara co-authored on David-Neel favorably on three occasions: the Book Review's "Bear in Mind" column called Forbidden Journey (Harper Collins, 1989) "a wonderful biography," and "New and Noteworthy" asserted, "Hers was a great human life very well written up."

Barbara's lectures on David-Neel (the French explorer of Tibet) at universities, academic conferences, museums, public libraries and organizations have taken her from coast to coast in the U.S., Vancouver and the B.C. area, Australia and Mexico. Barbara has written forty articles on Women's Studies and International Librarianship. Her articles also have appeared in Travel and Leisure, on the internet in The Richmond Review (London), Passionfruit, Projected Letters, etc.

Barbara's latest investigation is focused on Adah Isaacs Menken (1835-1868), America's first superstar known worldwide in the nineteenth century, now a brief, factually incorrect mention in biographical encyclopedias. Barbara has published articles on Menken in the North Dakota Quarterly (1995), Jewish Quarterly (UK) (1994) and Journal of the West (1995). Her biography of Menken is finished. She presented her slide lecture on Menken at Yale Drama School among other venues. She is a speaker in the New York Council for the Humanities Program which will take her all around New York state. Her article "Adah Isaacs Menken: Broadway's First Star" appeared in the Summer 2000 Culturefront. Another essay on Menken appeared in the Nineteenth Century, Spring 2002. In 2003 two other essays on Menken were published on the internet: one in Moondance Magazine, another in the Encyclopedia, Women in Judaism. Barbara's website is threeinlove.com.

Michael Foster: novelist, biographer, and historian, graduated from Cornell with honors in philosophy. He received an MFA from the Writers Workshop, Iowa, attended Harvard Law School, and taught at NYU. His first novel, Freedom's Thunder was praised by Nobel laureate Isaac Singer. His writing style has been described by Entertainment Weekly as "racy and engaging." He is presently working on an epic set during the French and Indian War.