Month: July 2016

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Where Do We Go from Here? by Ricky

In the beginning was The Center. Within The Center lived The SAGE. The SAGE was troubled for there were many senior citizens who wanted to speak out and share their wisdom with anyone who would listen, but their efforts to speak were thwarted due to sheer randomness of contacts and little opportunity to share their wisdom. So there was much listlessness, lack of purpose, and frustration in the senior community. The SAGE was not happy with the situation, but knew not what to do. One day, Jackie Foglio, a young female college student, came to visit The SAGE and presented a plan to help the senior community organize to share their wisdom. The SAGE recognized value in the proposal and sanctioned the formation of a group-program to get the senior community to share their wisdom and history with others – and so it began.

It started in another place and later continued in a small room near this room six years ago. The first seniors to gather were very few in number and all male. In fact, there were more words in the room than people doing the speaking. The spoken words described personal memories of each senior’s life related to a topic used to trigger the memories of each senior.

At first, spoken words were all that was necessary but all such group efforts evolve with time. Eventually one person after another chose to prepare their spoken words in advance, writing them down on paper to ensure clarity and to maintain focus on the memory inspired by the topic.

After a relatively short time, women began to join the group. What a positive impact that had!

As time progressed, the quality of the writing improved for most seniors attending the group. It was also decided that the group was neither to become a “writers group”, teaching seniors how to write better, nor to be critical of another’s writing. Once again evolution happens and now many words are straying from personal life memories and occasionally delving into topics which have nothing to do with one’s own life.

In 2011 I joined the small group of seniors in the small room near this one. I discovered that writing my story was to be preferred as I am prone to either ramble or forget parts. I also found that either telling or writing my memories to be very therapeutic, especially since I’ve been in the “coming out” process since October 2010. I believe some others in this group are experiencing the same.

Soon after joining, I began agitating for an idea that had previously been discussed but nothing had come of it – publishing our stories. I suggested a small paperback book for The Center to use as a “thank you” gift to financial donors. A lack of funding cancelled out that option. Eventually, The SAGE and The Center, decided to host our stories on their website and our group’s blog began.

As the size of our group grew, so did the number of submitted stories to the point that every author would have at least one story each month. Sadly, as some seniors have left the group and other seniors joined, the volume of submitted stories to the blog has greatly diminished. There are a few legitimate reasons for this that I will not list here, but the net result is that the blog now represents basically five group members. This is not sustainable in the long term as we do not have all the wisdom and experience that this group of seniors collectively has.

Group dynamics and evolution are still operating. Since the beginning, our group has added a strong social component to the story telling purpose. So I ask, “Where do we go from here?” or perhaps I should ask, “Where are we heading? Where should we go from here? Do we want to keep the blog? Will you all support the blog by submitting stories?” In my opinion, the answers to these questions will determine not only the future of the blog but also of the group itself. Please give it some thought.

© 11 January 2016

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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Raindrops, by Ray S

Splat, splat, splat—

The sky is almost black, the wind is howling, and that is the sound of the rain drops hitting my window panes like raindrops morphed into water-born missiles. 
Splat, splat, splat—
And as I gaze out on the almost blank glass immersed in an angry sheet of water, a ghostly vision emerges from my deepest memories.
Splat, splat, splat—
A radiant bride dressed in a white lace wedding gown comes down the stairway to meet her father waiting to escort her to her betrothed. That day it rained too.
Splat, splat, splat—
The vision fades into an aspen grove golden in the September sun. There’s a rushing mountain creek, there is a gathering of family and friends. The ashes are silently scattered. That bride has found her way home.
Splat, splat, splat—
Another vision momentarily fades into view. The raindrops scream as they pound the windows’ glass. There is a bed now with only one grieving man restlessly tossing and turning. Aloneness is the only bed partner.
Splat, splat, splat—
The torrential tide begins to recede and in the faint new light a wonderful phantom moves out of the ether, and I can sense the warmth of strong arms embracing me. I am no longer alone; there is a new love next to me in OUR bed.
Splat, splat, splat has transformed into a symphony of raindrops.
© 4 April 2016

About the Author

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Moonlight, by Phillip Hoyle

The approach of the full moon makes my partner cranky, occasionally not very pleasant at all. We just went through that phase. Now the moonlight is still intense but the mood is changing. I’ve never quite understood these lunar changes, but they’ve been a part of human behavior for millennia. In fact lunacy has its root in Luna, the moon goddess of Rome. And Monday is the ancient day of the moon. At some point I read of a folk tradition that warned not to sleep in the light of the moon, especially on Monday; one might go crazy in doing so. The idea seemed quaint and unlikely to me.

Still I really like those nights when the moon is in its full stage and its reflected light even makes shadows. That light changes the perception of what it illuminates, sometimes sharpening, sometimes soften what I see. The eerie beauty of it has inspired in me some moonlight art with white Prismacolor® pencil and black ink on black paper, white moon and wispy clouds setting off black trees and housetops. I really do like at least some imaginative aspects of moonlight.

As a teenager I began to pick up hints of the moon’s part in romance. Perhaps it was a moonlit autumn night when I drove my new college girlfriend Myrna up to the hilltop parking lot of the Manhattan, Kansas, City Zoo to talk. The night sky was beautiful—bright shining stars and planets overhead, a few clouds on the western horizon, occasional orange lights flashing beneath those clouds from war games being practiced by US Army Units at neighboring Fort Riley, a full moon overseeing it all. I leaned over and kissed Myrna. I don’t know if she meant to (she later claimed she was just nervous), but she bit my earlobe in response to that first kiss. I don’t know if right then a fake bomb went off at the Fort or if the full moon winked, but electricity shot through my body, and I was sure I was in love.

Oh that moonlight!

Now I realize that a culture of romance can convince one of many things. I guess it did that to me, a boy who had seldom felt much deep emotion except when singing classical music, seeing children baptized, or kissing with his boyfriend when he was fifteen lying with him naked in bed. I kissed Myrna that electric night and a few weeks later in public and felt sure we were on our way into a wonderful relationship with marriage, sex, children, and a shared life of meaning and romance. We did enjoy a wonderful marriage, but eventually I did have to pay attention to a sense of love and life beyond what my central Kansas culture had taught, one that seriously altered my perception of moonlit romance. Myrna and I are still friends, even while I have lived with three different men in the past sixteen years. I still like the moonlight even with its unpredictable and confusing glow.

© 6 July 2015

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.com

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Purple by Pat Gourley

The first chapter of Judy Grahn’s wonderful tome Another Mother Tongue from 1984 deals extensively with the color purple and its historical meaning and connections to gay people. She posits both current and ancient connections to the color for us as a people.

Whether or not there are legitimate historical connections to the color purple and queer folk it certainly has appeared repeatedly throughout the ages in association with those of us often seen as “other”. For example we have continued to own and quite liberally use the word lavender, with lavender of course being a pale shade of purple.

I was involved with a project of the LGBT Center of Colorado called Lavender University in the late 1970’s. Interestingly one of the more successful gay male hook-up Internet sites is called the Lavender App first appearing recently in 2015. There are many other examples of the use of the word lavender in describing our organizations and us.

The color purple can be created mixing shades of red or magenta that have a more feminine association with blue and its male connotations. Though I prefer to view us as a distinct phenomenon rather than a hybrid of the straight male and female I can live with purple being attached to us as an expression of the ambiguity and mystery we present to the larger hetero society. It is to our advantage to keep them guessing as to who we really are. It is of course also a color historically associated with power and royalty. For years I had a wonderful flouncy silk purple shirt I would wear for special occasions that required that I appear as royalty.

Sadly it was the color purple in the form of skin lesions that began to strike fear in many gay men at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. The rather sudden and mysterious appearance of purple skin lesions on gay men over 35 years ago quickly became a dreaded hallmark of the disease. I am referring of course to the lesions of Kaposi Sarcoma (K.S.) which we now know is caused by a herpes virus, the acronym for it being HHV-8, human herpes virus 8.

I would add that the lesions appear most purple on white skin. When K.S. lesions are an issue for darker pigmented folks the lesions can still appear purple but also often have a reddish or brown hue.

K.S can cause problems other than just skin lesions with the sarcoma able to involve internal organs as well. It was the facial lesions though that I personally feared the most. If one wanted to be on the down low with your HIV infection it was often hard to mask the facial lesions. I was never one to be shy about my HIV but I was certainly vain enough to fear a lesion on the tip of my nose. There are limits after all to ones love of the color purple.

HHV-8 is most commonly transmitted through saliva. There was apparently a fair amount of this virus among sexually active gay men in the 1970’s and as HIV began to spread, and severely compromise immune systems resulted, HHV-8 was able to take advantage and in many the result was Kaposi Sarcoma. Fortunately with the advent of effective AIDS drugs that restore pretty good immune function this virus, though certainly still around, causes dramatically less K.S.

HHV-8 can now I suppose be viewed as just one more little virus that uses us humans as transport media but kept in check if our immune systems are in good working order.

I’ll end with an interesting antidote I heard Sunday at the gym watching television coverage of Nancy Reagan’s death. She was a close friend of Rock Hudson. It was apparently a photo taken of the first couple that also caught the back of Rock’s head while he was visiting the Reagans in the White House that showed a suspicious lesion on his neck.

As incredulous as it might sound the photo catching this lesion supposedly alerted Hudson to the fact that perhaps he was also at risk for this new and devastating illness. Being quite familiar with how AIDS would present and progress I suspect there must have been some major denial in old Rock’s life to not notice any other symptoms before a K.S. lesion showed up on the back of his neck. Or perhaps it is just one more validation of the strength of the color purple, a hue capable of often grabbing one’s attention.

© March 2016 

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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Let’s Eat! by Nicholas

There is nothing like the aroma sent up when the garlic hits the hot oil in the pan. That is one of my favorite moments in cooking. Sauteeing a mire pois—onions, carrots and celery—in preparation for a stew, I’ll toss in the chopped garlic and a wonderful scent fills the kitchen.

I like to cook. But, first, let me back up and say, I like food. I like planting and growing vegetables, watching the plants mature into delicious edibles. I like picking them just before cooking dinner. I like picking out my food at markets and bringing home bags full of fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, breads. And, I like to eat. And I like to enjoy a glass of wine while cooking. And, of course, to complete the cycle, I like a good nap.

Every spring I look forward to planting the garden in my backyard with three kinds of tomatoes, three summer squashes, green and yellow beans, long and globe-size eggplant and a host of herbs—oregano, thyme, sage, tarragon, rosemary and basil. For me, summer starts when I taste the first fresh basil in a salad.

Cooking is but one aspect in my relationship with food. I do consider my eating habits as a complex relationship from start to finish. I don’t understand how some people can just eat what comes out of pizza box or a fast food bag or a take-out carton. I want a connection to my food. I want meals to involve multiple steps from purchase or picking to preparation to cooking to the table. If I couldn’t do all that, I would miss it. It’s a whole sensual experience. One that starts at the Saturday morning Cherry Creek market, picking out the fresh fruits—last Saturday, sweet cherries from the Western Slope began to show up. The season will last maybe a month and then no more cherries until next summer. But then there will be peaches and pears.

When I recently spent two weeks visiting San Francisco, I planned part of my trip around food. I rented a small apartment with a full kitchen so I could cook in it. I always felt in previous visits there that I was missing something when I would see all this wonderful food in stores and street markets and not be able to do anything with it. This time, I went to a local farmers market and bought the freshest, most delicious strawberries and lettuces and assembled fabulous salads. It was as much fun as going to dinner at a great restaurant. We did that too.

I’m not a fussy or elaborate cook. I prefer minimal ingredients. I do not see myself cooking as if I were some fancy chef at home. That’s what restaurants are for—the food I would never try at home. In San Francisco, a friend took me to a Nepalese restaurant. The food there was flavored with complicated combinations of spices in rich sauces that probably took hours to make.

I prefer less complicated approaches. Yesterday, I made pork chops using rosemary picked fresh outside my back door and garlic and, of course, salad with a touch of basil and arugula also from the backyard.

Many times, I check what’s in the frig and what’s in the garden and make up a recipe. I’ve found that paprika and dry mustard powder are a nice combination to flavor a stir fry. A spoonful of yellow curry can make a lamb stew sparkle with flavor.

One of the food books I use most frequently in cooking is not really a cookbook with recipes. Instead it lists elements of food that go together like turnips, apples and tarragon or kale, bacon and lemon instead of complete detailed recipes. It suggests spices and herbs that are good seasoning matches. Then I make up my own concoctions letting my appetite and taste buds tell me what to put in the pot.

Of course, I like cooking with wine. As the joke goes, sometimes I even put it in the stew. What’s even better is having a grateful husband to wash the dishes.

© June 2016

About the Author

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.

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Blue Skies – Socialism, by Louis

(a) The tune “Blue Skies” has an implied theme of long easy life without problems, a life of easy sailing.

(b) For me “Blue Skies” means optimism for the future.

(c) Nowadays, most Americans are wondering why our government is so hostile and backward. Also why do we have a perpetual war going on in Afghanistan and elsewhere?

(d) The answer is because we are stuck with a backward form of capitalism. Companies like Halliburton buy the government, exclude more peace-oriented political candidates. They purchase Republican governors who repress the vote and make a joke of democracy.

(e) Michael Moore’s recent movies point out that other in other western democracies the governments govern and promote the best interests of the citizens. “Where to invade next.” Universal health care is taken for granted. In France women are given a couple of months off with pay before and after child birth and after birth have a nurse, all paid for by the government. That was his movie “Sicko”. In Germany, working people have affordable housing in lavish housing complexes. That is because they have real union protections.

(f) Bernie Sanders’ campaign has opened up discussion of the merits of socialism. Under socialism, the profit motive is taken out of the business of weapons manufacturing. Without the profit motive, war-making pretty much stops, and we have world peace.

(g) I used to have discussions with my friend in New York City about what is the proper definition of socialism. As far as I last knew, it is the “Public ownership of the means of production.” This means that the public owns the public utilities such as gas and electricity, the companies that manufacture weapons for the military (which is all much smaller scale as compared with what we have now).

(h) Countries like Holland, Sweden, Denmark, France and most other countries on earth, have accepted socialism as the normal way of life.

(i) Under socialism, government officials are forbidden to accept campaign contributions from private people or corporations. Breaking this rule incurs severe penalties. In the U. S. this practice is accepted as normal practice. As a result, actual democracy is pretty much killed off.

(j) So Blue Skies reminds me of the socialist future we can all expect. It will be peaceful and devoid of financial worries, with universal health care.

(k) Socialism will come when the people face death by starvation at the all too predictable downturn of the business cycle. When that happens, 99% of jobs disappear. There will be no way to survive. When it’s death or socialism, people choose socialism.

(l) Back in 1840 in France, socialism was all the rage. The poet Victor Hugo believed the poet is also a prophet. In that spirit Victor wrote several prophetic poems, “The End of Hatred,” “The End of Hunger,” “The End of War,” and “The Triumph of Socialism”.

(m) Blue skies Smiling at me Nothing but blue skies Do I see

(n) Bluebirds Singing a song Nothing but bluebirds All day long

(o) Never saw the sun shining so bright Never saw things going so right Noticing the days hurrying by When you’re in love, my how they fly

(p) Blue days All of them gone Nothing but blue skies From now on

(q) (Scat)

(r) I never saw the sun shining so bright Never saw things going so right Noticing the days hurrying by When you’re in love, my how they fly

(s) Blue days All of them gone Nothing but blue skies From now on

(t) Songwriters (u) 13 Songs With Deeper Meaning Than You Think Hlntv.com

(v) (w) The Most Frequently Played Song in the World is One We All Hate Mentalfloss.com

© 17 May 2016

About the Author

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.

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Security by Gillian

Security, like living happily ever after, belongs in the never-never-land of children’s tales. It rarely exists; certainly not in modern reality, and in fact I doubt that it ever was thick on the ground. In those long ago days of our childhood, perhaps we locked the doors at night and counted ourselves pretty secure. But we had other terrors much worse than a midnight thief. Prior to Salk’s invention of a vaccine in the early 1950’s, we, or certainly our parents on our behalf, lived in constant terror of polio attacking our young limbs. Childhood diseases raged through schools and communities: measles and mumps, chickenpox and whooping cough, diptheria and meningitis. Today we are protected from most of those diseases but still left with little security as to health. We have to worry about old sicknesses returning in a new resistant form, or new ones – at least to us – suddenly appearing in the news, such as bird flu and sars, West Nile and Zika. Added to that, we have the fears of not being able to pay for the health care we need, just as our forebears feared it for themselves.

But at least our forefathers did not suffer from our insecurities of lack of privacy. Perhaps we have a physical privacy they lacked, but we live in constant trepidation of just how much personal information, down to the minutest detail, is available to anyone who cares to pluck it from the ether. Just this weekend I began filling out on-line applications for car and home insurance. I was amazed and appalled by the amount of data that was entered for me automatically the moment I put in my name and the first digits of my street address. It knew the answers to it’s own questions about me: it knew Betsy was my spouse, it knew every detail about her. It informed me that we are both retired and have no dependents. It filled in the year and model of our cars. Yes, I know none of this should surprise me, and at some level it did not. But there was something very unsettling about seeing it in action. A form meant for me to fill out was completed almost entirely, and accurately, by some unknown and invisible entity in cyberspace. I was a minimal presence in the whole process.

Not that here is much security in insurance, anyway. As our beleaguered climate swings from one extreme to another, natural disasters abound, and insurance rates soar. Before long I fear that all but the absolute minimal coverage will be unaffordable to many. Even if you can afford it, it is frequently unavailable. Live near the coast? Live in a floodplain? Well, gee, it just might flood there, so you can’t have insurance because you might need it. And these so-called floodplains are seriously iffy anyway, identified by computers in the garbage in/garbage out mode. I used to live in Lyons in a little house on top of a 100-foot cliff above the river, but the house location was identified as high risk of flooding and I could not buy flood insurance; not that I would have, anyway. In the terrible floods of 2013, most of the town of Lyons was washed away. But my old house stood firm and dry.

Our use of computers and all they offer can destroy our illusions of security in countless ways.

I have always, I believe, been a faithful friend. I value friendship highly, chose friends carefully, and feel safe and secure in those relationships. One of my longtime friends was a man I had worked with at IBM for thirty years. He had been supportive at the time of my coming out; he and his wife invited Betsy and me to their home and they visited ours. After he and I both retired we sent e-mails back and forth – jokes and cartoons and such – in the way most of us do.

We had a distribution list of old colleagues and scattered this silliness around. Suddenly, one day, I opened up one of these messages from my friend to find, to my disbelief and horror, pages of gay-bashing rantings. This was not tasteless homophobic humor, which I might, just possibly, have forgiven. This was pure vitriol. Hate-mongering gleaned and forwarded from all around the web. Tears poured down as I re-read it, fancying the first reading to be some kind of delusion. No. The hateful words remained. I just could not believe that he had kept such feelings from me for so many years, or that he had sent this garbage to me. I could only suppose, and still think, that he simply lost track of who exactly was on that particular distribution list. They can be dangerous things if you don’t pay attention. Whatever the reason, his true colors were clear to us all. After a night of sleeping on it, or, to be accurate, tossing awake on it, I replied. I acknowledged my heartbreak over such an ending to what I had always believed to be a firm and sincere friendship. I searched hopefully through my messages the following days, and then weeks, honestly expecting a reply; some kind of apology, some kind of explanation. None came.

I never heard from him again.

I never quite recovered from that incident. It robbed me of an innocence over friendship which I doubt I can regain. But I have tried to deal with it rationally and without allowing it to drag me down into complete cynicism and destroy other friendships, or my desire to make new ones. I have learned to say, with almost complete sincerity, that another person’s homophobia is their problem not mine. The same could be said, I suppose, of duplicity, but I find that so much harder to bear. It is not my friend’s homophobia that hurts so much, but the pretense, the subterfuge, the deceit.

Now, securely at home as a member of this storytelling group, I feel something very like my old innocence return. Perhaps lost innocence can be regained, after all. I feel safe and secure here.

I don’t fear that you are going to exhibit any duplicity; any pretense. I don’t believe that you are saying mean-spirited things about me behind my back. Oh sure, a little gossip and tattle-tale, but not real hard-core back-biting derision.

Security like that is hard to find. Reviewing it reminds me of the honor which has been bestowed on me and the pride I feel in being a member of this group.

© March 2016

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 been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

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Aw, Shucks, Good Enough Is Great, by Betsy

Until later in life I never gave a lot of thought to making choices. I had my rules of conduct and, I suppose, used that as a guide to choosing. I did make choices everyday of my life, but I never think of it as “shall I do this or shall I do that.”

It all seemed to come quite naturally and was part of a routine or structure. Back in those days we didn’t have the options that present themselves today. I do believe life was simpler. We chose a path to follow and took whatever came along on that path. We made the most of what was good enough and we made good enough work for us.

I don’t remember choosing between a man and a woman until many years later when I became aware that I had the choice. Even though I was attracted to women, marrying one or even spending my life with one was not an option for me back in 1950. So I, a homosexual woman, married a man. Nevertheless, you will never hear me saying today, “Aw sucks, darn! I spent 1/2 my adult life with a man.” No, I will never say that; those years were good enough, and good enough was great then. I still feel that good enough was and is great.

It serves no purpose to regret any of the paths I followed in my younger years. Had I felt I had more choices, my life would be different and that is hard for me to imagine right now. I love my life the way it is and the way it has been. I love my children and my grandchildren as well as my life partner and spouse. I would not have my children and grandchildren if I had chosen differently in 1950. I probably would not have my beloved Gill had I chosen differently back then. So, I’m glad I went with “good enough,”

I often hear contemporaries say, “I lived in the best of times.” Aw shucks, I’m going to go ahead and say the same thing. If I suddenly, magically became a young person, I would be mind boggled by all the choices presented to me every day. Not just among the plethora of consumer products put in front of us daily, but the choices of life style, career paths, subjects available to study, places to visit, etc.

I am aware that there are many people in this world who have no choice except to take the easiest path to survival. Mind you, I do not believe that desperate situations, inaccessibility to basic, life sustaining resources is good enough, by any means. Such inequity that exists in the world is very wrong. I am blessed that I have never been in such a situation. So I am keeping the discussion here to choices that have been made available to me throughout my life and that have affected my life.

I never spend too much time choosing the right consumable product because I honestly do not feel it’s that important. I like to think my time is better spent in other areas of life which may or may not require making choices. For example, I know I should exercise so, if it is time to do that, It is already on my agenda, I do not have to make a choice about that. The choice is merely between the gym, the bicycle ride, the walk around the neighborhood, etc.

When it comes to choosing clothes for myself at the store, I confess I am not very diligent. Often I come home with something that is not good enough. Then standing in front of my mirror it’s “Aw shucks, this just isn’t what I thought it was.” I think the stores have trick mirrors that make things look better on you than they really are. I have learned in my later years that my lovely wife can pick out clothes for me much better than I can. So I don’t go shopping for clothes unless she will come with me. Usually I get her article of choice home and realize it’s not just good enough, it’s perfect. I don’t buy too many clothes anymore ‘though. Most of the stuff I have held on to are the things that were good enough when I bought them so they are good enough now, even if they are 20-30 years old.

Fortunately as I approach my 80’s I have everything I need and do not find myself having to make choices about what to buy. The choice of what to do comes up occasionally, but that usually has been predetermined and I simply follow an already structured agenda. I like structure. Maybe that’s because I don’t want to be making choices all the time.

I’m afraid I have almost driven my lovely wife crazy with this characteristic or mine.

“Shall we go to Mexico or Hawaii for our vacation,” she asks. My answer is truthfully, “I don’t care, or I don’t know.” “Well, which would you rather do?” she asks. “How do I know,” I answer. “I’ve never been to either place.” Poor Gill.

On the other hand I hate being wishy-washy. If a decision has to be made, I will gather as much information as I conveniently can and just pick one. Too much deliberation just complicates it. It usually turns out that it was good enough and it was great. I can’t ever remember coming home from a pleasure trip and saying “Aw shucks, we should have gone to that other place.” This “aw shucks” situation should be avoided at all cost. But I truly belief it is totally unlikely to occur in my life, because I’m sure most any other choice would have been good enough as well, and therefore the perfect choice.

© 6 April 2015

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading, writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her wife of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.

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Security, by Will Stanton

A person’s sense of security or insecurity may be based upon realistic concerns, concerns such as feeling the need to minimize the possibility of home-break-in, avoiding dangerous locales within cities, or perhaps concerns about local terrorism. In many cases, there are some rational steps people possibly can take to provide a greater sense of security.

There is for me, however, a concern (and this is a concern that progressively has worried me over the years), about a more subtle and perhaps even more dangerous sense of insecurity that plagues certain kinds of people and, consequently, society as a whole. That chronic sense of insecurity may warp those people’s emotions and thinking, resulting in actions that are harmful to others and to the society in which they live.

As I have stated several times earlier, there are various ways that people feel, think, and behave, part of that being based upon what they may have learned from their life-experiences, plus part of that literally based upon how their brains are structured physically. For example, everyone is a mixture of rational thinking and emotions. Research shows, however, that there always has been a group of people who appear to be much more prone to emotional responses and less rational, open-minded thinking. As a potentially terrible consequence, such people are more easily manipulated by devious people with harmful intentions. Also, they become very tribal, work together, often with anger and “fire in the belly,” making them too often more politically effective than more cerebral, better informed people.

Manipulating people’s fear and sense of insecurity has been around ever since the creation of humankind, and I have seen much of that over the last several decades here in America, notably in politics. Whereas it appears to me that one of the major political parties contains a good percentage of people who are open-minded, search for facts, try to think rationally about them, and to form logical, constructive conclusions, there is another major party, with much evidence I might add, that contains a large percentage of people who are more prone to fear, hate, and anger. Consequently, some politicians have mastered the craft of manipulating these people to side with them, to support them, even to the extent that the people vote against their own best interests. These voters not only form opinions that are against what is good for them and society as a whole, but they do so with great emotion, even abject anger against other persons who have formed more rational opinions.

I always have been a student of history, which has taught me lessons about human thinking and behavior. One of the most striking lessons I have learned is from a very revealing quotation from one of the most notorious individuals of modern history, a quotation and lesson that certainly are a warning to what is occurring today here in America. What this person said, along with my comments about each part of it, should ring an alarm bell.

This monster of history was asked how he was able to so control the masses of people in his country. To start with, he maintained that most people are ignorant. Now immediately, some of us might respond that this assertion is an overstatement; yet I ask everyone to recall how ignorant people were shown to be when Jay Leno went on the street and asked simple questions of many people, including graduate students, teachers, businessmen, and even government officials. Need I also mention the recent Republican so-called debates?

Even more harshly, the political leader stated that most people are stupid. Now, I know that this term too frequently is used simply as a slur to denigrate people, yet I have noted for many years that certain people do seem to lack the ability to think rationally. I occasionally over thirty years have tested an acquaintance of mine to ascertain whether or not he can follow simple processes of logical thinking; and, truthfully, he never has. He always responds in irrational, emotional ways, so much so that his thinking is very distorted. I recall in the year 2000 during the Presidential election, this individual actually wrote a letter to the Republican National Committee stating, “If Al Gore steals this election, I volunteer to lead the first tanks into Washington.” In addition to his statement being dramatically irrational, it is quite ironic, now that there is strong evidence that the theft actually was the other way around.

The notorious quotation goes on to state that all the leader had to do was to employ (first of all) fear, and we have witnessed in the U.S. how effective fear-mongering by certain political leaders has been over several decades, stirring up the citizens and priming them for manipulation. “Let us political leaders, along with the top one percent, do whatever we want, and we will make you secure.”

Secondly, he also utilized hate by demonizing certain peoples based upon race, religion, sexual orientation, political beliefs, etc.; and those persons today who are easy prey to such manipulation increasingly express opinions and beliefs that can be quite shocking and unsettling to those of us who have more empathetic, civilized beliefs. In this way, the manipulators can misdirect the public’s attention away from the real problems and constructive solutions by blaming everything on other groups unlike themselves.

And thirdly, he employed anger, and we have seen both verbal and physical violence as a result. This certainly was horrifyingly true in his time and his country. Here in the U.S. in the recent Republican debates and town-hall meetings, we have seen anger too often expressed among the candidates and audience. Several times now in Donald Trump rallies, we even saw violence against dissenters and journalists. One Trump supporter even shouted out, “Sieg heil!” Such violence can spread throughout society as a whole, rather like metastasized cancer. For example, at the beginning of the 20th century, one of the two most spoken languages in the U.S. was German, the language of a large portion of our emigres, along with it being the language of medicine and science. Yet, with the advent of the Great War, suddenly German-Americans were hated. The German language unthinkingly was banned in all schools. Shop-keepers of German heritage had their windows smashed, and others were physically beaten. During World War II, many innocent Japanese, Italian, and German families were sent to prison camps, the German families being the last to be released.

Now we see such fear, hate, and anger being directed toward Mexicans and Muslims, among others. (I suppose certain people always will fear and hate homosexuals). My belief is that the more knowledgeable one becomes, the more rational one’s thinking, the more empathetic and understanding of others, then the more secure one becomes in his own mind. A lack of a sense of security too often is within people’s minds, not necessarily within the real world.

© 02 March 2016

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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Terror, by Ricky

Not to “down-play” the feelings, but terror is nothing more than extreme fear. Fear caused by circumstances that are too horrible to even think about, like: being buried alive or being a passenger on an airliner that is falling to its doom from 40,000 feet or catching the Ebola virus or discovering too late that vampires, werewolves, and zombies are real. Since these thoughts really are too unsettling to think about, I will write about other forms of terror. (Those of you with weak hearts or stomachs may wish to skip reading this posting. Going to read on are you?? Well then, you have been warned.)

Among the less fearful terrors in the animal kingdom are the Wire Hair Fox Terror, the Boston Bull Terror, and the Scottish Terror.

Moving up the fear ladder, most of us can remember Dennis Mitchell, commonly known as Dennis the Menace. His neighbor, Mr. Wilson, considered Dennis to be a Holy Terror. Another such boy you may recall is Johnny Dorset who was made famous by O. Henry in his book, The Ransom of Red Chief. Johnny is such a Holy Terror that his kidnappers have to pay the boy’s father to take him back. Even “The Little Old Lady from Pasadena” is known as “The Terror of Colorado Boulevard”. Hmmmmm. Here’s a thought. Before their son was old enough to know right from wrong, would Joseph and Mary have described a mischievous Jesus as being a Holy Terror?

If you stop and think about it, we all have been a terror at one time or another. Most notably when we try to open a small letter or package where the instructions tell us, “To open, tear along the dotted line.” The act of doing so identifies us as a tearer. People who are very good at tearing are known as tearerists.

To paraphrase FDR, “The only thing we have to fear is…” in two years Republicans may again control Congress and the Presidency. Now that is a fear worthy of producing terror!

© 17 November 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