Month: September 2014

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Reframing Reality by Ricky

Perhaps a better term would be Remaking Reality. I am sure most of us have at one time or another wished we could make changes in the actual reality we exist in or that surrounds us all. For example, changes that would allow all people to age but whose bodies would not show age or become infirm; diseases would not exist; no one would seek to harm anyone else; everyone would live peaceably; and everyone would practice good manners with common courtesy towards all. These seem to be examples of reframing or remaking reality that would be good, nice, and pleasant to have surrounding us. You could think of other changes that also would appear to be beneficial. Society could certainly gain much from such a remaking. But, what would society or more specifically, individual people lose with the changes?

At 12 years old, I remade my reality by mentality deciding that like Peter Pan, I did not want to “grow up.” To a very large degree, my subconscious made that happen mentality but could not stop the biological progression from boy to man. With some outside influences, I have lived within that reality my whole life from 12 forward. While my life’s “journey” has had great swings in stress levels and peacefulness, I have maintained a childlike personality that is able to see humor in the darkest of events and make jokes amid tragedy. I can even see the positive in negative events, sometimes even as the events are occurring.

Consequently, I can appreciate good health because I’ve experienced illness. I can appreciate the routine and proper operation of my body’s parts because I’ve experienced pain. I can appreciate and bask in love because I’ve experienced the lack of love and seen hate. I can appreciate life because I’ve seen and experienced the death of others. I can enjoy and appreciate good music because I’ve heard noise and screaming lyrics posing as music. I can enjoy family and friends because I’ve been alone. I am grateful for my finances because I’ve been poor. I appreciate my education because I’ve seen and experienced ignorance in myself and others. I can appreciate even modest food because I’ve seen starvation. I can work for peace because I’ve seen the results of war. I can be as generous as I can because I’ve seen greed destroy. I can be drug and alcohol free because I’ve grown up with alcoholics and seen the results of drug use. I can obey traffic laws because I’ve been to too many accidents where men, women, and children died. I know joy and happiness because I’ve suffered depression and sorrow. I can face life’s challenges because I’ve developed the inner strength and resourcefulness needed to overcome the challenges.

What one LOSES by remaking reality into what appears to be a happy, peaceful, bucolic existence is an appreciation of WHY such an existence IS happy, peaceful, bucolic, and desirable in the first place. The “silver lining” in the cloud of a “hard-knock-life” is, knowing exactly what happiness, joyfulness, peacefulness, goodness, and love really feel like when one encounters them. In other words, without the negatives for comparison, there can be no positives.

From a religious point of view, Adam and Eve HAD to eat that “apple” or they would not have known the difference between obedience and disobedience but would have remained in ignorance for as long as they lived. That one act introduced the negatives into Earth life and we have all been blessed as the result.

Homophobic ignoramuses don’t need to have their reality reframed or remade. All they need is an attitude adjustment by a swift kick in the pants—preferably by their fathers and a dose of castor oil from their mothers. That should do the trick. Maybe we can get the governor to arrange for “film at 11” reporting on the event.

© 18 June 2014

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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Long Ago, Far Away by Phillip Hoyle

Many years ago (at least fifty) and far away in the galaxy (at places like Kansas, Texas, Missouri, New Mexico, and Oklahoma) I lived a rational life. Reason guided my decisions, took precedence over desires or fears, led me in ways that served cultural, educational, career, and personal ideals. I followed this rational trajectory, not uncritically, but still in a somewhat ordinary fashion. I lived a good life yet one that signaled caution whenever feelings were on the rise—either mine or those of others around me. Were I to look for a metaphor, I’d certainly have to entertain the notion that I lived a rather Dr. Spockian life, if you know what I mean.

It wasn’t that I failed to experience emotion; I had plenty of feelings. After all, I was reared the only boy with four sisters. As a child I sometimes became so frustrated and angry that I stomped through the house slamming doors and throwing myself on the bed where I either screamed or cried. But before too long I gave up such childish ways and assumed a rational exterior. Then if I were still angry or felt frustrated, I’d go out to the garage and talk to Tippy my beagle. She was a great counselor with unlimited acceptance and constant warmth in my presence. She’d lick away my wounds and allow me to go on with my rational life. So, I grew up pulling in my emotions, always ruled by good manners. When I observed others throwing fits or getting too emotional, I’d evaluate their effectiveness and eventually distance myself.

As a working adult I served as a study of self-control in order to facilitate a group’s process. My work was effective! I watched how someone’s emotions would cloud issues impeding a program’s movement towards some goal, and then, setting aside my own emotional needs, would offer rational and workable solutions. I got along well.

Eventually I was done with all that. My memories of childhood served as my mentors in this change—not just my fits of pique, but my involvement in many childhood activities of play, dance, unstoppable laughter, and running around with my friends. My observations of artists further encouraged me to change. For instance, in a collage workshop, the teacher asked me about what I was doing. I described the “why” of my design. “But I can’t read your piece,” she observed. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant, but her comment pushed me right where I need pushing! I turned to the piece and angrily added the two essential figures that were missing, an older man adoring a younger man. When she came by my table about an hour later, she said, “Now that I can really read.” I was thrilled. I had something to say in my art! Furthermore, this terminal experience opened me to a new level of communication with my wife.

As healthy as that may sound, I realized that my artistic and personal self-indulgences would have the effect of focusing my life away from the groups that had so enriched my first fifty years. Away from my old life focused on church and family I moved to Denver and hoped thereby to learn how trust my feelings and let them lead me into helpful decisions.

I need to clarify. My half-century of life had not gone by without emotional outlets. I was a musician; such an artistic and emotion-filled pursuit allowed me to tolerate all the self-control demanded by the rest of my work. From about age thirty, I also lived with an increasing focus on visual arts and on writing. Finally I sensed I had things to express in both. So essentially at age fifty-one I replaced the loss of music making and self-discipline with wild dancing at Charlie’s of Denver, the Denver Wrangler, TRAX, and Denver BASIX. I employed recorded music of many varieties as a background in my new massage practice. I created collage after collage, painting after painting, works that helped move me along a road of emotional expression. Still, I am in touch with that Dr. Spock part of myself, that careful monitor of feelings and their possible misdirection.

But a few weeks ago, just after recording a Colorado Public Broadcast radio interview of an older and a younger gay man, the journalist/producer asked us if there were revelations in the taping we’d not want to hear in the eventual show. The twenty three-year-old guy said, “No, I’m always careful with what I say.” Then I, the sixty-six-year-old man, said, “Not at all. I’ve spent the past fifteen years learning to say what I am feeling. Use anything you want.”

Denver, 2013

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot

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Anger by Pat Gourley

It was often noted in my teens and twenties in particular that I had quite the Irish temper. This seems to have greatly diminished over the years and now is an emotion I rarely indulge in. Much of the anger I have expressed over the years has really been not much more that self-indulgent bravado. Often the sort of flash in the pan display that passes quickly usually followed by regret and at times an appropriate apology.

There have however been at least two instances in my life where my anger was sustained and in one of those seems at times to persist to this day. Both of these involve the suicides of two people close to me, one professionally and the other a dear friend of many decades. Today I will address the suicide of a co-worker from over twenty years ago. The other death will be the focus of an upcoming piece.

Even this anger, at a tragic death, certainly seems to have a quality of indignant rage – ‘how could you do this to me’ which in some respects seems quite silly since they are the ones who are dead, but then so much of my life has always really been about me.

This first suicide involved a psychiatric nurse who worked in the AIDS Clinic at Denver Health in the early 1990’s. She was a lesbian woman who on the surface seemed very strong and as put together as anyone I knew. Unbeknownst to me, but not to several others in her life, she purchased a handgun I believe in late 1992, saying she feared for her safety around the passage by referendum of Amendment Two by the voters of Colorado which read as follows:

Neither the State of Colorado, through any of its branches or departments, nor any of its agencies, political subdivisions, municipalities or school districts, shall enact, adopt or enforce any statute, regulation, ordinance or policy whereby homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or relationships shall constitute or otherwise be the basis of or entitle any person or class of persons to have or claim any minority status, quota preferences, protected status or claim of discrimination. This Section of the Constitution shall be in all respects self-executing.

I thought after the fact that if I had known about her gun purchase and the stated reason for it I would certainly have confronted it for the bullshit it turned out to be. Even back then I was sort of the resident out radical queer in an AIDS Clinic no less a place full of ACT Up members in 1992 and I would have said “oh honey all they are doing is finally being honest about how they hate us”. The statewide vote on the referendum was something like 53% in favor of literally codifying discrimination across the board based solely on sexual preference and 47% opposed. We were simply being put on notice to a fact that had always been the reality. This was of course challenged in court and overturned eventually by the United States Supreme Court in the case Evans vs. Romer in 1996.

I would in hindsight have been right to call her on this purchase since she used the gun along with some alcohol and prescribed medications as lubrication to drive up to St. Mary’s Glacier in early January of 1993 and blow her brains out. I would hope I would have insisted on a better reason, than homophobes run amok, for buying a lethal weapon by a person who was in many instances a very out and proud queer woman.

You must remember this was in 1993 and the peak of the AIDS nightmare. So many of our clients were valiantly struggling to often just stay alive for one more day and this crazy-ass women who I loved and admired, in excellent physical health as far as we knew, goes and kills herself. It was a great blow to many of my staff and her clinic patients to whom she provided psychotherapy. It was difficult for me to even speak her name for many months but we did finally put up a plaque in her memory when our own unbelievably raw feelings subsided and perhaps I personally better appreciated whatever the mental anguish she was suffering from. There were apparently major relationship issues in her life and perhaps these involved anger on her part or maybe it was simply an overwhelming depression made worse by well intentioned use of psychiatric medicines that unfortunately proved to be disinhibiting in the long run and maybe even direct facilitators in pulling the trigger. Suicides seem to often to be impulsively facilitated in our society by the criminally easy access to guns along with alcohol and certain psychotropic medications most often legally prescribed.

My feelings around suicides of people in my life are not however universal and do not always involve anger. In those days in particular end of life decisions to speed the dying process along by many suffering terribly from the ravages of AIDS were not uncommon. For those unfamiliar with this time and its nearly unbearable realities I would encourage you to see the current HBO movie version of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, visually at least it is much more riveting and intensely in your face than the play ever was.

The best suicides as I recall from those days were well thought out and often involved much support from lovers, family and friends. The act was rarely impulsive, rarely to my knowledge involved a gun and rarely if ever done in isolation. News of these passing when they would reach the clinic often invoked great sadness and sometimes a sense of relief but no anger.

If this is to be an act with integrity it seems to me it should never occur as a result of subterfuge and certainly not as an expression of anger toward others or one’s self. That itself seems to be a very angry last dance that certainly does not affect in any positive fashion others in your life, many of who may care deeply about you. It strikes me as not only very angry but selfish. I appreciate that deep depression can often set the stage but a common caveat about suicide is that it is mostly the choice when one is coming out of depression.

As mentioned above I will again explore suicide in a future piece, one by a dear friend of many decades and my own personal feelings about it. Most days I tend to take a Buddhist approach that suicide will only result in another reincarnation something to be avoided and continued samsara on the wheel of death and rebirth, which could go very wrong with one perhaps returning as a banana slug.


June, 2014

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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Goofy Tales: Draggin’ Main by Lewis

Draggin’ Main Street is a uniquely American teenage ritual. At least, it was in my home town of Hutchinson, Kansas. It didn’t matter whether you were male or female, drove a new Corvette or Thunderbird or your grandfather’s 1951 Plymouth. The main point was just makin’ the scene.

Of course, there were rules of decorum. If you were a boy-becoming-man, you were expected to look like Marlon Brando in The Wild One, aloof and unapproachable. Above all, you had to appear the master of all you surveyed, most especially, your “wheels.” “Goofiness,” meaning any mistake as insignificant as forgetting to put your tranny in a lower gear at a red light or, heaven forbid, stalling your engine on a jackrabbit start, was certain to make you the subject of an urban legend that would shame your progeny for generations.

Such was the milieu within which the story of my most embarrassing goofiness unfolded.

I was about 20 and the season was summer. My “baby” was a British racing green 1958 Ford Fairlane 500 convertible. Ensconced within, loosely speaking, were I and three long-time best buds. The Main Street run extended from downtown to a Sandy’s (nee McDonald’s) restaurant near 27th Street—a distance of about 2 miles. Just past the restaurant was a gas station.

On this particular day, my attention was captured by something other than the rapid approach of the driveway into which it was customary to turn to make the southbound leg of the Main Street Drag. Realizing my predicament, I attempted to compensate by making my version of a ‘J Turn’ which, as every bootlegger knows, involves a skillfully coordinated application of the brakes combined with a violent spin of the steering wheel. As executed by me, however, it resulted in a yawing, skewing slide across three lanes of opposing traffic, up the drive of the gas station, and coming to a stop in a cloud of tire smoke within arm’s reach of the first pump.

The looks on my passengers’ faces reminded me of the time I had taken a group of friends to see Psycho at the South Hutch drive-in. Wanting to set their minds at ease—and mine, as well—I said the first thing that popped into my head, “Fill ’er up!”

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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Falling among Forbidden Fruit by Gillian

Oh, Adam and Eve have a lot to answer for! Things have gone downhill ever since she gave him that damn apple. Much of humankind seem to consider themselves sufficiently righteous to sit in judgment of others; not to say that applies to all of the people all of the time, but sadly it’s probably true for most of the people most of the time. Equally sadly, it’s not confined to those who proclaim themselves to be Christians, either, so we cannot hold Adam and Eve completely responsible.

We judge others to be different and therefore inferior, but worse than that we fear and hate them. Why, I have never understood. I’m sure I have my parents to thank for that, as they never understood it either. It may also be, at least partly, in our case, that we simply did not encounter these ‘others.’ I grew up in a very homogeneous area, as perhaps many of us of our generation did, and so was really not challenged in acceptance until I left home for college. One would like to believe that a university is not the place where one learns prejudices, so all in all I think I was fairly well sheltered from bigotry until a later stage of maturity by which time I was pretty well protected against acquiring it.

The bigots of this world make ‘them’ the forbidden fruit. In this country, as in many others, it was anyone of a different national origin, ethnicity, language, religion, and especially race. And now, of course, the big battle over same-sex relationships. Multiple prejudices been writ large throughout the history of this ‘melting pot’ of which we are so proud. I observed the horror of it in amazement. I have no more comprehension of it now than I have ever had. I simply cannot get inside the head of prejudiced hate-mongers and so have little hope of gaining any understanding. The very beast inclusivity we can hope for from most people seems to be the old joke,

“Oh yeah I guess they,” whichever particular ‘they’ you may be discussing, “are OK. But you wouldn’t want your sister to marry one!”

So it was with further amazement that I suddenly found myself to have fallen among forbidden fruit.

When I came out, I suddenly realized; I am now one of the Undesirables. I intuited that I should not talk about what I did at the weekend; people might not want to hear it. I had become that person who wouldn’t be coming to dinner; at least not unless I could be trusted to keep my mouth shut and ‘act normal.’ As forbidden fruit I could lie on the orchard floor and rot. Quickly understanding that I was allowing myself to be victimized by the judgment of others, I ceased to modify my reality for their comfort and relaxed.

Then, in 1992, along came Amendment 2. I cried, as I’m sure many of us did, waking in the morning following Election Day and finding myself to be, and really feel to be, someone who could be discriminated against. Legally. It hit me like a ton of bricks that I was one of God knows how many throughout the world and over the ages. I had sympathized with them, but until that moment never actually empathized. And my problems were essentially non-existent compared with those of so many others. I was not immediately threatened with death, imprisonment, or deportation. I would not lose my home nor would I lose my job. Practically, I had no fear that the passage of Amendment 2 would effect my life in any way. Yet I felt insulted and violated. Also, luckily, I was very, very, angry.

That was the final point, I think, in my total ‘outing’ process. I will not let these ignorant bigots make me feel like this. I will not be their victim. I will not let the attitude of others make me feel bad about myself. I will not apologize, even to myself, no, above all not to myself, for who I am. I know I have done nothing wrong and that is all that matters.

And if I have become forbidden fruit to others, it is their problem and not mine.

I will not lie silently, invisibly, under the tree and rot, while the wasps buzz hungrily, angrily, around me.

I will pick myself up and dust myself off, and mix with pride with the rest of the beautiful shiny forbidden fruit, enclosed in that strongly woven basket of understanding, support, and caring that fills me with pure joy at what and who I am, without one single ounce of regret.

April, 2014

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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Right Now by Will Stanton

From time to time, I have heard the phrase, “You think too much.” That probably applies to me. I’m a thinky type of person. Of course, the type of thinking one does determines whether or not the thinking is “too much.” We often waste too much time with non-productive thinking. I’m good at that; I’ve had lots of experience with it.

Opposed to that, I’m reminded by a recent news story about the brilliant fifteen-year-old Jack Andraka who spent so much time in the Johns Hopkins lab that he often slept on a cot, and he even missed his own birthday. All his thinking resulted in his discovering a new, fast way of detecting pancreatic cancer. He won the youth-achievement Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award along with $75,000. So, all that thinking resulted in something truly worthwhile. His efforts and thinking were in the right-now.

I suppose that I can admit to having an “artist’s nature,” as opposed to a “scientist’s nature.” Dreamy minds may not be the best for focusing on the right-now.

Having been part of Story Time for going on three years, I have had ample opportunity to avoid thinking about the right-now. Instead, I have allowed my mind to wander back several decades to my youth, dredging up old memories, even in fine detail, and spending time writing them down to share with the other members of the group. I’m afraid that I also have engaged too frequently in thinking back in time and wondering what I might have done differently, what if circumstances had been different, how could my life have been different. So, I probably have spent far too much time in the past, not in the right-now.

Also,I had the habit for many years of wondering about the future, not necessarily making pragmatic plans to carry out, but rather, less organized musings about who I wanted to be when I grew up. I probably continued doing that even through mid-life, which does not make very much sense. Time seems to have passed by quickly, and I definitely am way beyond the point where I should be wondering about what I want to be when I grow up. All that wondering was not in the right-now, either.

I always have accused myself of being a slow learner, but it’s beginning to dawn on me that concentrating upon the right-now throughout my life most likely would have been much more productive. Also, living in the moment can prove to be more enjoyable and satisfying. I’m sure that’s true with some humans, but I’ve seen that frequently with dogs.

I realize that it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks; but in my case, I suppose living in the right-now probably is a skill I need to practice. So for right-now, I’m going to enjoy listening to the other members’ stories, and I’ll put off until later debating whether or not after Story Time I want to go across the street to get a cup of coffee and a fresh-baked cookie.

© 12 December 2013

About the Author

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories. I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones. Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group. I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.

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Secrets: High School by Ricky

My guess is that many people have things that they really don’t want everyone to know that would fall into the category of “personal” rather than “secret.” Of course governments and politicians or others in authority routinely abuse the “official” system of designating some information as belonging to the class “state secrets.”

The only one of those that I am personally aware of (and involved in not keeping) occurred when I was stationed in Florida with the Air Force during the Vietnam era. One day my First Sergeant called me into his office and asked me what my security clearance level was. I told him Top Secret. He then handed me a folder and said read this. Inside was a message labeled “Secret” which said, “The Inspector General team will arrive at your base at 1300 hours [tomorrow—I don’t remember the date].” It was nice to get a heads up, but my section (Headquarters Squadron Section; Orderly Room) was already “perfect,” if I do say so myself. So, I didn’t need the warning. But it did indicate that someone at higher headquarters was circumventing the system of surprise inspections. I’ve never trusted the government since; or at least became suspicious every time some official claimed, “Sorry, that’s classified information.”

In high school I was pretty much an honest person and had nothing to hide. Naturally, I didn’t want just anyone in high school to know that I liked to suck dick, but since I remained naïve throughout the time period that 69ing was a definition of homosexuality, I still classify that item as personal and not a secret per say; you can disagree, but that was how I viewed it. Mostly because at the time, I didn’t even know what a homosexual was as I never had heard the word used or defined in my presence.

This weekend, while here at So. Lake Tahoe, I attended my 45th class reunion. I was worried that no one would remember me as I was a nerdy type who never socialized after school due to having to be home to babysit my younger siblings. I worried for nothing. Within 5 minutes one elderly dude (I can say that because the class of ’66 members are the same age and 63 is pushing “elderly” in my book; not “old”, but “senior citizens”). I didn’t not recognize him and when he began to tell me that “you lived on this street [drawing in the air with his hands] and I lived over here on Becka Street.” I knew he remembered much that I didn’t. He then “reminded” me that he had been to my house a couple of times so I could teach him how to play chess. When I asked him how we met, he looked at me and said, “Duh, high school,” and then gave me the embarrassment coup-de-gra by stating, “I was in your Explorer Scout Post.” Strangely adding to my embarrassment, just a few days earlier I had seen in the old newspapers I was researching for articles on Scouting, a large photograph of our Explorer Post and he was not in it when the photo was taken.

I met others and when the subject came up I discovered that several admitted that their parents had been alcoholics also. Most of those who shared that information (personal or secret you be the judge) with me also said that many classmates they spoke to besides me had said the same thing.

The biggest secret from high school then, turned out to be that while individually we all may have thought that all our classmates had “Father Knows Best” and “Leave It to Beaver” home lives, we actually had the darker side of family life in common. How much better high school could have been if we had only known and not had be to be so stressed out to not let others know of our personal pain and shame.

@ 2012

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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My Favorite Transportation by Phillip Hoyle

The temps climbed, the sun burned through car windows, the air conditioning in my Ford Fiesta made a noble effort to mitigate the early August blaze. We were making our way home from western Colorado, planning one more stop to see my folks in north-central Kansas, thus my choice of a route north of I-70. My wife and kids hated prolonging the return home, but I wanted to see a different road and so followed one of the trails Dad drove years before on treks to and from the Rocky Mountains. Myrna and our two kids wanted no part of the slowdown; they were ready to get back to Missouri and initiate their fall schedules. I was reluctant to return even one hour before it was necessary thinking I should recover from my vacation on work time. As a result, the side trip to Beecher Island amounted to dragging my family off to see an old landmark I’d read about when a teen. I knew its approximate location, so when I spotted the modest sign, I turned north to see what was there.

The gravel road seemed long due to that phenomenon of traveling an unfamiliar road: the way there seems longer than the return since the constant searching for signs slows one’s progress. Sometimes the dust caught up with us, engulfing the car like fog, making my impatient family sure we were wasting time. Finally a sign called for a left turn. We dropped into a shallow valley, and I saw Beecher Island for real, yet a reality that was more than a century from its original state when a troop of US Cavalry ran their horses there hoping to find shelter from bullets of a group of hostile Cheyenne and Arapaho warriors.

Dust and wind had already tired out Myrna, Mike, and Desma; I was thankful that my family humored my odd interest. I wanted to see the stream, the island, the surroundings so I could envision the true state of the story I’d read several times. I’d saved the magazine I’d purchased way back then. I’d read the account in a number of books. I’d already been there many times in my imagination.

Getting out of the car I saw that the island was just a sand bar in a nearly flat landscape. I saw the US military memorial of the historical event: names of soldiers who were killed there listed on a plaque attached to a pile of rocks held together with mortar. Old Glory topped a flagpole waving in the prevailing south-westerly Colorado summer wind. I read the plaque wondering how many other folk had taken the time to visit there that summer. From the looks of the place, I imagined few. I stifled an impulse to knock on the door of the house across the road to find out since I didn’t want to push my luck with my wife and kids.

No ruins remained there for us to see, just an unkempt and weedy park. In my imagination I removed the cluster of trees and restored the buffalo grass. I dug shallow trenches in which the soldiers hid, restored clumps of yucca, soap brush, and sage behind which warriors crouched as they kept the solders pinned. I saw the famous Cheyenne chief Roman Nose with his magical anti-bullet medicine taking the fatal shot like Achilles succumbing to the Trojan missile. I saw a hero die and the end of an era pass.

This Military memorial recalls losses that were part of a larger campaign of US conquest, a grabbing of lands, all seemingly justified even when often in direct conflict with the laws of the land. It’s an ugly story, an old human story. But this memorial is not only a history written by the victors. It’s also a place of grief that represents the traditions, victories, and losses of differing peoples. The winners of the war erected the memorial. The losers were forgotten as if winners didn’t require losers, as if the resolution of that war didn’t need to recognize the people pushed away into permanent poverty and a continuing threat of annihilation. In the skirmish at Beecher Island the Cavalry unit was besieged, eventually the Cheyenne and Arapahoe warriors scattered, repelled by the superior fire power of the newly-issued Spencer repeating rifles of the troops. One account claimed the remains of the chief were found laid out in a deserted tepee several miles from the island. I looked around for such a place even though I knew it would not have been in sight of the island.

Customs differ. I thought about the presence of the White interpretation and was not surprised by the absence of a list of native warriors who died in that conflict. The park had been built but not maintained with much care. Still the bronze plaque held witness to US Cavalry deaths. A few bushes grew near the memorial apparently planted to decorate the place. Beyond the island, on the far sides of the stream grew native cottonwoods and willows that clustered around the water. They seemed to me native mourners of the American Indians who died there, a reminder to the tourist that stories about victories and losses were kept alive in accounts still told in tribal gatherings.

Then I departed in my old car with my now eager-to-get-out-of-there wife and children who patiently had indulged my need. The trip was hardly more than an assertion of a car owner, a traveler, a reader, an Indian enthusiast, a tourist! No one else was really there. Already the trip seemed a lost dream. I realized the trips I’d taken there by reading were actually more satisfying to me, but my run in with the reality of the place served to correct my imagination. Now here I am writing about an emotional moment of my young adult life. Daily now I’m pushed back into literary travel due to my decision no longer to own a car. At least, I travel less by auto and more by imagination these days, and I’m pretty sure memory with imagination offers more. It’s become my favorite mode of transportation.

Denver, 2011

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot
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So Many Roads: A Great Performance by Pat Gourley

It was July 9th 1995 at Soldier Field in Chicago, a Grateful Dead concert. The second of two sold out shows with over 60,000 in attendance each night. It was the end of that summer’s concert run for the Dead and the whole tour had been plagued by troubles – too many kids wanting to see the band, too few tickets, tension between the oldsters and the youngsters and very often too much too fast for way too many. The whole scene was truly turning weird. The draw for these shows though for me was simply too strong and the chance to see family back in the Chicago-land area to good to pass up, so I snapped up tickets the minute the went on sale through Grateful Dead mail order, a service available to the truly faithful. They were reserved floor seats, now mind you the shows were in a football stadium so I guess “good seats” was rather relative.

I had come from Denver without my partner David for the shows but did take Brian my blind bother to the second show. David was not well and stayed back home. I would have been able a few years prior to get him to two shows of a run without much cajoling, getting him to see four in a row though never happened.

These were the darkest days of the AIDS epidemic with protease inhibitors still a year or so away from general availability and use. The deaths did seem to have slowed down mostly because the most affected generation had already been decimated; many of those infected in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s were already gone.

I remember little about the first show on the 8th except that the band was not at their best for sure. Garcia in particular looked bloated, tired and at times almost listless. But you know congestive heart failure, a rather significant heroin addiction and uncontrolled diabetes tends to take the wind out of your sails.

There are several memories though about the shows I recall. One was the hassle of finding parking which for both shows was available only it seemed in public lots south of the stadium in a quite dicey neighborhood. The long walk back to the car the second night in particular was quite a trip in its own, a mugging I am sure was averted thanks in part due to having a blind guy with a cane on my arm. I have always been thankful for Brian coming to that show with me. Also there was a great fireworks display after the second show and the several big screens set up for the folks in the back made the show a bit more accessible.

The music or rather the musicianship both nights was quite forgettable. My LSD days were many years behind me so if the band didn’t come though at any particular show it could be a bust but more often than not the crowd would provide me with endless entertainment. Most of the time though the band would come through for at least one good or even great set, if not both.

That night there was in fact only one song that stuck with me and that was the version of So Many Roads in the second set. It was a relatively new song having only been in the rotation since 1992 and I had heard it only once before that I could recall. It was one of a long line of soulful ballads that were almost always Garcia tunes and played usually middle to late in the second set. The thought that this would be the last time the Grateful Dead would perform with Garcia never of course entered my mind.

Despite people’s impressions, who are unfamiliar with the Dead, they were, Garcia especially, remarkably good at a soulful ballad that at times I suppose might described by some as a dirge. And the Dead were sensitive to play these longer and slower tunes later in the second set when the drugs had perhaps peaked even though they often ended their shows with a rousing couple of numbers. The encores were again often slow tunes to take the edge off before sending the masses into the night in a mellow frame of mind and almost always a single tune. They did a very rare second encore song that night, an old gem called A Box of Rain.

At the risk of loosing my Deadhead card I must say I don’t remember that either. Sorry folks it was the gut wrenching beauty of So Many Roads that has stuck with me for nearly twenty years now. I distinctly remember turning to Brian after that song and saying “well that was worth the fucking price of admission”. I am not sure he agreed. He had quite few beers that night and taking a blind guy to the port-a-potties at a Grateful Dead show is another whole story.

I do remember leaving the show singing to myself the chorus to So Many Roads. We made it back to the car safe and sound with only one stoned Deadhead tripping on my brother’s cane. The crowd was in general very sensitive to him and his needs as I swear only Deadheads could be.

A month later Jerry was dead from a cardiac arrest in the middle of the night at a rehab center in Marin County. That I had been to the last two shows was hard to comprehend. This was of course devastating to me and I will always remember David’s loving call to me at work about Garcia’s death to make sure I was doing OK. The much bigger blow though was to come with David’s death another month later.

So many roads indeed.

April, 2014

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

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Mayan Pottery by Lewis

I haven’t much to say on the subject of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican art for the simple reason that this is all made up and I know nothing about the subject. However, were that not the case, I would probably write something like the following–

Sadly, my only exposure to Mayan pottery was a very brief time of possession of a single artifact, purchased by a great uncle at a Pottery Barn in La Paz and given to me as a gift three Christmases ago. I say “brief” because over a year ago, I was visited by a brace of scientists from the Smithsonian Museum of Columbian antiquities. I say “sadly” because of what happened soon after. The scientists were interested in the piece because of the hubbub over the legend that the Mayan calendar prognosticates that the world will end in the year 2012, exactly on the day of the winter solstice. One of the frescos on the piece that I had interpreted as the second coming of Christ with souls being lifted into heaven was, according to them, actually what happens when Earth’s gravity suddenly stops gravitating.

They offered a tidy sum to “borrow” my vase for a few months, which I readily accepted, as I was in dire need of replenishing my hash stash. To my horror, who should show up a few weeks later than the Drug Enforcement Administration, armed with a warrant for my arrest for pot possession. It seems that when the Smithsonian technicians upended the vase to get to the bottom of the apocalyptic mystery, three cannabis seeds fell out. So, actually, you see, for me this whole farce is more about the end of my world as I knew it than anything else. By the way, if you’re interested, the vase was returned to me and I have put it up for sale in the classified section of The Onion under “antiquities.”

December 17,2012

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.