Month: June 2017

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Eavesdropping, by Gillian

I say the days of
eavesdropping are over. Like so many other things, it is obsolete; extinct.
Voices yell intimacies into smartphones, while people’s every thought, word,
and deed, flood from Facebook and Twitter. We have entered an era more of anti-eavesdropping;
of trying not to hear the intimate details of everyone’s life; their
every opinion. Not long after the last Superbowl a friend and I met for lunch.
The business- men at the next table were so raucous in their analysis of the
game that we had to move to another table. Next to that one, two women talked
incessantly, almost as loud as those men, not to each other but into their
phones. Eavesdropping, if you can even use the term, has become obligatory.
As a kid, especially
being an only child, I loved to eavesdrop. I recall clearly one conversation on
a bus. The young couple in the seat in front of me had a very emotional, if
whispered, argument over whose fault it was that the girl was pregnant. I got
quite an education. The last time I rode a bus, which actually was to get to
Cheesman Park for the start of this year’s Pride Parade, a young guy yelled
abuse into his iPhone the entire trip. Apparently, his girlfriend was pregnant,
and, very apparently, he was displeased. He repeatedly called her a ‘fucking
stupid bitch’, occasionally switching to ‘stupid fucking bitch’, which seemed
to exhaust his vocabulary. I really didn’t want to hear it. I hurriedly shoved
in my earbuds and turned on my iPod. Definitely we are in the
anti-eavesdropping era.
I was first taught to
eavesdrop by my parents. They listened constantly to Mother Nature, who never
stops talking. Through them, I learned to relish birdsong, which of course is
eavesdropping. They aren’t singing to me – they sing to each other, or perhaps to
themselves simply for the glory of the welcome light of morning. Mum and Dad
taught me to listen to the whispers of the wind in the trees, or the howling of
it against the window panes, and to know what it meant for tomorrow’s weather.
From my aunt, and later from a wonderful teacher in high school, I learned to
listen to the whispers of the rocks. They also never stop talking, but oh so
quietly. If you can manage to hear them, they tell the amazing history of our
planet, and they tattle-tale on Mother Nature herself. They give away her age.
As far as our planet is concerned, at least, she is middle-aged; half way
between birth and her life-expectancy of nine billion years. The rocks tell us
that dinosaurs once roamed right here, where we sit this Monday afternoon. (Not
exactly here, on the second floor, but you get my drift!)
But there’s something up
with old Ma Nature. She’s not as quiet as she used to be. Her whispers became
louder. Over the more recent decades she has begun not only to talk out loud but
even to shout. She knows something. She wants us to know. But we don’t listen.
We are well into the
anti-eavesdropping era.
We really don’t want to
hear it.
We put on our headphones
and turn up the music.
Mother Nature is
desperate. We must hear her. She will be OK, as will the planet, at
least for another five billion or so years, but we must save ourselves.
She tosses tumultuous tornado swarms at us to wake us up, and hurls humongous
hurricanes to get our attention. We ignore her. In 2003 as many as 70,000
deaths in Europe were attributed to record heat. In June last year London hit
it’s highest temperature on record, at 103. TV shots showed train tracks
buckling in the heat. But this July as I tried to watch the tennis at
Wimbledon, (I say ‘tried’ because it was rained out day after day) London was
treated to the wettest month on record. Last year’s heat waves in India,
Pakistan, and parts of South America broke all records. Australia has had to
add new colors to weather maps to accommodate temperatures never experienced
before. Climate craziness.
2015 also brought heat
records to Alaska and parts of the American southwest. Meanwhile we recently
had record rainfall in China, and across this country from Texas to Washington
D.C.
And still we hear nothing.
Mother Nature might as
well be silent for all the attention we pay.
Flames roar from the
forests on every continent. Even as I write this, sitting on the patio, I smell
in the air the smoke from the Boulder County fire. Another fire blazes on
Hayden Pass, Colorado, which they do not expect to contain before October.
Mother nature absolutely
screams.
Still we do nothing.
A few years ago,
residents of several Polynesian nations banded together in a desperate attempt
to get the world to care about their islands, which were, and of course still
are, disappearing into the Pacific. In their traditional hand-hewn wooden
boats, they temporarily were able to block the mouth of the Australian harbor
from which a huge coal-ship was ready to leave. The coal was destined for the
huge hungry mouths of the Chinese coal-fired energy plants, whose energy goes
to fill the huge hungry mouths of the endless factories producing goods for the
endless huge hungry mouths  of the world’s
insatiable consumer appetites. Don’t blame Australia. Don’t blame China.
There’s plenty of guilt to go round. We are all guilty. I still drive my car,
and occasionally I fly on a plane which is exponentially worse for the
environment. Those south-sea islanders get it. It’s in your face down there;
quite literally. When that beautiful blue ocean which once lapped at your feet,
starts to slap you in the face, you get it.
Hopeful-sounding treaties
are signed every now and then, after endless wrangling, but always making
agreements for future goals, not demanding big decisive action now. It
all smacks, to me, of the alcoholic who intends to quit drinking once he’s
finished this last bottle of whisky. No! He has to quit now. Poor out
the rest. We are all addicts, hooked on our lifestyles and standards of living.
We need to quit now, not when we’ve smoked that last carton of
cigarettes. If we don’t start hearing Mother Nature’s cries right now,
it will be too late.
What if that man on the
bus was not shouting abuse at his girlfriend, but yelling to me; to all the
passengers? ‘Fire! Fire! The bus is on fire. Get out now. Fire! Fire!’
I ignore him. I do
nothing. All the people on the bus do nothing.
I don my noise-canceling
headphones, turn up the music and go into anti-eavesdropping mode, breathing in
the billowing smoke.
We would all say, that is
just insane, suicidal, behavior.
Wouldn’t we?
© July 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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Connections, by Gail Klock

This is an extremely
difficult topic for me to write about because it reaches into the deepest
places of pain within my psyche. There have been many times in my life when I
have felt extremely isolated, lacking a connection to anyone. I was the little
child in kindergarten who chose to work on jigsaw puzzles during chose time
because it was the only activity which involved no interaction with others, all
the time hearing the other kids laughing and playing and wanting to be with
them. In college, when on a camping trip with a class, I laid awake all night
feeling totally isolated with others all around me, I felt like I was losing my
mind. It was one of the longest nights in my life. The terror I was feeling was
due to the fact I felt isolated, but I was too afraid to admit it. In both
instances, and others like them, if I had only been able to reach out and say
help me, I would have been okay. But I had learned to lock my fears away, I
knew they were not to be hung out like dirty laundry. I came from a very stoic
German family which mistakenly didn’t ask for help, even when it was needed.
There was instead a false sense of pride in handling, or appearing to handle,
all life’s trauma’s by ourselves. The reality was we all needed help,
especially when Karl died at the age of two. Of course back in the fifties this
type of help was not advocated or available. My dad’s yelling at my mom not to
cry on the way to Karl’s funeral was not because he was a heartless bastard, it
was because he was such a sensitive man, who loved this little child so much
and his wife and his other children and he couldn’t deal with his own pain,
much less take on and help the rest of us deal with ours, which he felt was his
responsibility because he was the man of the house. These feelings never left
him, they choked him until the day he died. When he was in hospice, a few weeks
after my mother had unexpectedly died, he lamented to me he felt so guilty and
helpless because he wasn’t there for her when she passed away. He was referring
to the evening of the night when she died in her sleep. She had collapsed in
the bathroom and he didn’t have the physical strength to help her up so he had
to call the neighbors to help him get her up and to bed. He didn’t realize he
had been there for her; he had nearly died the day after Christmas, just a
month before, but after a week stay in the hospital he unexpectedly made it
home. She had told all of us that she was not going to let my dad die first,
she couldn’t handle the death of another person she loved so much. She prayed
nightly, and I think quit taking her heart meds, for this to be the case. She
died precisely as she prayed for, in her own bed, in her own home, next to her
husband. My dad was there for her, by making the call for help to the
neighbors, he provided the means to her prayers.
It was as this four year
old child that I began to surmise that when in pain you don’t cry and you don’t
ask for help. This was solidified further by my mother’s inability to provide
emotional support to me or my brother due to her own debilitating grief. This
was the point in my life when I began to experience a lack of connection with
others. This was triggered once again when I was in college and became aware of
my homosexuality. I instinctively knew, as did my girlfriend, not to reveal our
relationship to anyone else. And in the hiding of who I was I was once again
isolated from society, I could sense the darkness beginning to overtake me but
I didn’t want to ask for help and I doubted there was any to be found. After
all I had learned in my psychology class that homosexuality was a mental
illness and I couldn’t face the label of being mentally ill. This was further
exacerbated by the fact my grandmother had been in the state mental hospital in
Pueblo and no one in the family understood why. None of us ever knew the
diagnoses – but I did know from my visits to the hospital with my mom that I
didn’t want to be sent there. It was very frightening to me as a child to
realize my grandmother was locked up. So to avoid a similar fate, I ironically
locked myself up, tighter and tighter. The longer I stayed in the closet the
more I felt disconnected from mainstream society.
When I experience this
feeling of disconnect I am unable to feel, it is as though I am locked away
from everything, including myself. It is sometimes difficult to access the key
which frees me from my emotional shackles and allows me to deal with the
feelings which I am blocking. I have learned through years of therapy that I
need to let myself feel the underlying feelings, which are either sadness or
fear. It has taken me years to learn this and also to learn these negative
feelings are not permanent and that it is normal to experience them.  I know this and most of the time I can do it,
but I wish I could do it all the time and more quickly.
I have also learned that
life presents us with lots of self-fulfilling moments, that is to say if I go
into a situation expecting it to be enjoyable and thinking people will like me
and want to connect with me, they do. And likewise if I anticipate the opposite
I generally leave thinking I had been right, I was going to have an unenjoyable
time, I wasn’t going to connect with others, and I didn’t. It’s that old bit of
seeing a group of people laughing and looking at you. You might think, “They’re
all looking at me and think I look fat in my outfit”, or you might think “They
look like a fun group of people who like to laugh, I think I’ll join them.”
Sunday mornings for the
past twelve years, minus a few months here and there, and Monday afternoons for
the past two and a half years, have been an immensely important source of
connection for me. I know when I walk into the Golden Recreation Center on Sundays
and the Center on Monday afternoons I will feel connected with whomever I
encounter there, be it a woman with a basketball or a fellow storyteller with a
story. Feeling a sense of connection and the inherent sense of acceptance by my
friends is what makes life worth living.
© 17 April 2017 
About
the Author 
I grew up in Pueblo, CO with my two brothers and parents.
Upon completion of high school, I attended Colorado State University majoring
in Physical Education. My first teaching job was at a high school in Madison,
Wisconsin. After three years of teaching I moved to North Carolina to attend
graduate school at UNC-Greensboro. After obtaining my MSPE I coached
basketball, volleyball, and softball at the college level starting with Wake
Forest University and moving on to Springfield College, Brown University, and
Colorado School of Mines.
While coaching at Mines my long-term partner and I had two daughters
through artificial insemination. Due to the time away from home required by
coaching, I resigned from this position and got my elementary education
certification. I taught in the gifted/talented program in Jefferson County
Schools for ten years. As a retiree, I enjoy helping take care of my
granddaughter, playing senior basketball, writing/listening to stories in the
storytelling group, gardening, reading, and attending OLOC and other GLBT
organizations.
As a retiree, I enjoy helping take care of my granddaughter,
playing senior basketball, writing/listening to stories in the storytelling
group, gardening, reading, and attending OLOC and other GLBT organizations.
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A Caveat Should Not Precede an Essay, by Cecil Bethea

A caveat should not precede an essay,
but I should like the gentle reader to know my memory is not only fragile but
also forgetful.  Too these events too
between fifty and sixty years ago. 
During that length of time a man could easily be conceived, born, reach
adulthood, marry, become a father and even a grandfather.  Also you are dealing a fairly normal and
average human being not the third law of thermodynamics which always acts as
expected.
My first adventure unfolded when I
was not even a practicing much less an adept homosexual.  I had gotten out of the Air Force and went
down to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa to see my long time friend Van
who was working on his Master’s in history.
At that time Tuscaloosa had not been wet very long.  True the city had never been dry more like
very damp what with the Northport Fruit Stand being open to all hours and quite
willing to supply a list of potables. 
Nothing too fancy.  I didn’t know
anybody who drank Scotch, never heard of tequila, couldn’t afford Piper Heidsieck.  My needs had also been
supplied by rum runs to Birmingham. 
There were few bars in Tuscaloosa,
but Van knew one out on the outskirts.  I
remember little about the place because it had little to remember.  We sat a table, drank beer, reminisced, told
unshared experiences.  The clientele was
college students being college students. 
Talking sincerely the problems of the world.  Proving that all their profs were
dullards.  Showing off their knowledge of
German, French, or Spanish/ No Russian or Chinese in those distant days.  Of course every one who disagreed with them
was an idiot.  I know this because I’ve
heard college students talk since then. 
The tables were small about 18 inches across with just enough room to
hold an ashtray and several beer bottles. 
The circumstances meant that you could easily hear or partake in your
neighbors’ conversation.
Having not seen each other for two
years, Van and I had much to discuss, so we ignored our neighbors.  Somehow or another two unknown men younger
than we started talking with us.  One
look at the two told me that they were probably from the football team.  Why they wanted to talk with us was beyond me
because we had such dissimilar interests. 
In fact, I wondered why ever did he want to talk to me. 
He didn’t.  Van saw some people he knew and went over to
their table leaving me alone with the two football players.  This was to be my one and only conversation
with football players.  Somewhere in that
night, I learned their sport and that one was the quarterback.  Hereinafter, he’ll be known as the QB.  Also, he was a mediocre QB at least by
Alabama’s standards.  They were much
weightier than I, who was about the same size then as now which meant that I
was heavily outmatched by one much less two. 
Of course, I can chatter away like crazy to anybody; whether they can
understand me is another matter. 
Finally, the QB said he wanted to
have sex with me.  I did not answer with
shouts of “What kind of man do you think I am?” 
It wasn’t necessary; I knew exactly what sort of man he thought I was.  Of course, I demurred to no avail.  Without my acquiesce, he said he’d knock me
to the floor and tell everybody that I’d propositioned him.  Had the case gone to court, the QB could have
pled rage induced by a homosexual.  Fifty
years ago, it probably would have stood up in court especially when used by the
quarter back of the Crimson Tide. 
Pleadings did no good; possibly he enjoyed them. 
He said to go to the men’s room and
followed me across the floor outside.  I
cannot remember why, but you had to go outside to reach the comfort station.  The QB had locked the door but had yet to unzip.
 Before anything could happen, Van came
running out.  He yelled through the door
that he had to leave immediately.  The
quarterback said to tell him to go away, I did, Van said he couldn’t leave me
out there in the middle of nowhere and started beating on the door and
yelling.  I was freed.  Van and I ran to the car, sped off with
squealing tires, and returned to his place by a tortuous route.
My next experience took place years
[later] in Denver out at Vivian’s Den out at 17th and Federal.  Although it fronted onto Federal, nobody
entered that way, we all came through the back door from the parking lot.  Just inside the door was a level about twenty-five
feet long with a jagged bar to the right. 
Beyond that was a step down to the area that contained a pool
table.  Next was a step up which led to
the front door with the two rest rooms on either side.
One night, probably a Tuesday because
only four or five of us were sitting at the bar with Leo as bartender.  He was the best gay bartender I’ve ever known:
very outgoing, always talking with the customers, knew when your drink needed
replenishing, never ignoring the paying customers while chatting up a possible
trick.  We were sitting strung out along
the bar talking about all sorts of things about the way we do at the Tuesday
concave.  Four young men entered the bar,
bought drinks, and went to playing pool. 
Never have seen the quartet before, I ignored them.  Besides I was enjoying the conversation.
Eventually I had to go.  I went to the pool area where I waited for
the shooter to shoot and for his ball to stop rolling as good manners
dictated.  Then with no acknowledgment of
the players, I went to the restroom and without locking the door, probably
didn’t even close it.  There I stood with
the seat down and me unzipped and doing my business before the commode.  Suddenly somebody came into the room.  Without stopping I turned to see one of the
pool players.  He immediately said either
“You God damned queer!” or “You fucking Queer!” but he certainly used the noun
queer.  All this time he was pounding on
my face with his fists.  Meanwhile I got
through the door unzipped, wetting myself, bleeding from what was a split lip
and what would be a blackened eye, pass the other three pool players to the
safety of my own kind.  Leo made motions
of calling the police but didn’t.
The young people today might wonder
why we like Socrates stoically accepted our fate.  That was another time, another clime.  That was the way life was for Gays.  Knowing this, we made adjustments to our
lives knowing that we never called the police, knowing that if our names were
in a newspaper article our jobs were forfeit, knowing that we could be kicked
out of the military in a full-dress parade. 
Our leases could be abrogated for our felonious conduct.  Picking up a man could result in jail
time.  But being young was very heaven
and salved our souls.
© 31 Oct
2010 
About the Author  
 Although
I have done other things, my fame now rests upon the durability of my
partnership with Carl Shepherd; we have been together for forty-two years and
nine months as of today, August 18th, 2012.
Although
I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the
Great Depression.  No doubt I still carry
invisible scars caused by that era.  No
matter we survived.  I am talking about
my sister, brother, and I.  There are two
things that set me apart from people. 
From about the third-grade I was a voracious reader of books on almost
any subject.  Had I concentrated, I would
have been an authority by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.
After
the University of Alabama and the Air Force, I came to Denver.  Here I met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s
Bar.  Through our early life, we traveled
extensively in the mountain West.  Carl
is from Helena, Montana, and is a Blackfoot Indian.  Our being from nearly opposite ends of the
country made “going to see the folks” a broadening experience.  We went so many times that we finally had
“must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky and
the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming.  Now
those happy travels are only memories.
I was
amongst the first members of the memory writing class.  While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does
offer feedback.  Also, just trying to
improve your writing helps no end.
Carl
is now in a nursing home; I don’t drive any more.  We totter on.
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Birthdays, by Betsy

The following is an imaginary voice from the Universe heard
inside a woman’s uterus by a viable life preparing for its day of birth.
“Now is the time for you to make your choice.  You may choose from these two options: gay or
straight.  In other terms—homosexual or
heterosexual.  Before you decide, let me
explain the consequences of your choice.
“If you select the gay option you will have many obstacles
in your life that you otherwise would not have. You will be considered abnormal
by many people from the start, you could very easily find yourself being
discriminated against by employers, landlords, merchants, and service
providers. The law may possibly not offer any recourse for you if and when you
are discovered depending on how the movement goes and the state of civil
rights.  You could actually be put in
jail if you are found out.
“You may feel constrained to stay in the closet for a long,
long time, maybe forever. That means denying your truth to yourself and to
others. This could have a serious impact on your emotional and mental health—possibly
on your physical health as well.
“If you try to express your sexuality and live as the
person you are; i.e. live as an openly gay person, you risk your safety,
security, and wellbeing. You will keep your self-esteem and self-respect
however. But there may be a price to pay for that.
“If you select the straight option life should be easier
for you.  You will derive benefits from
marrying a person of the opposite sex. As a woman, you will be safe if you serve
him well.  You will be secure if you do
his bidding.  You will have no difficult
choices to make because they will all be made for you and to your advantage if
you stay in line.  The only risk for you
is that you might screw up because you don’t realize that you have all the
advantages. 
“As I said, it’s your choice.”
The above scenario is, of course, absurd. None of this would
happen because this choice is not available to us. This choice is never given
to any of us before birth. We are born LGBTQ or heterosexual or gender fluid or
whatever else yet to be defined—whatever else exists on the sexuality
spectrum. 
The choice is made when we become aware, conscious, of
ourselves—our feelings, what drives us, with whom we fall in love. We make the choices
later in life when we understand that there IS a choice— and that choice, as we
all know, is not who we ARE by birth, but whether or not we choose to LIVE as
an expression of who we are.
Personally, I understand very well the consequences of
denying who I am and living as someone I am not. Once I became aware of my
sexual orientation I was able to make that choice, respect myself, and be happy
and fulfilled. 
Those who wish to change us LGBTQ’s, punish us, put us
away, or whatever, seem to imagine that we all experience the above in-utero
scenario and we should be punished or, at least, forced to change because we
made the wrong choice.  We made the
choice in-utero and were born gay yes on our first birthday, because we chose
to. REALLY!  Or, if they do not accept
that absurdity, they want to punish us for expressing our real selves—for
living as gay people.
I choose to live in a world which accepts every newborn
baby for exactly what it is—everything that it is.  I choose to welcome every life into this
world as perfect as I did one week ago my first great grandchild.
You know, I’m convinced he’s gay because of the way he
waved when he was born. Then when he started primping his bald head his mother
and grandmother and Auntie Gill were convinced too.  He’s lucky. He knows he is loved by us all—gay
or straight.
© 14 Nov 2016 
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 partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.
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A Defining Word, by Ricky

People use words to communicate.  In spite of a few of my acquaintances whom
never refer to me as a person, person of interest or disinterest, I use words
to communicate.  It behooves all people
to communicate accurately by using words whose meaning everyone
understands.  Those of us who have (or
still have at our senior age) a large vocabulary and can actually remember the
words when we need them, hold a big advantage over those persons with a limited
vocabulary – this category does not include young children whose minds are
trans sponge and cis blackholes.  Any
parent can testify to the reality of that fact. 
Perhaps you can remember a time when you were small or when your young
child accurately used or asked for the meaning of a “colorful” word while your mother was standing nearby – words
like: shit, cock, fuck, bitch, son-of-a-bitch, gay, lesbian, homo, or
pervert.  A child’s vocabulary expands
very rapidly indeed.  Especially when
following a child’s inquiry, the adult blurts out “Where the hell did you hear that word?”  The answer is nearly always, “From you
Daddy.”  At this point, you get a very
very stern look from your mother who
is still standing nearby.  (Add “hell” to
the previous word list.)  By the way,
does anyone know why little children seem to delight in saying those words at
the most embarrassing time, place, and circumstance?
While growing up from age 10 forward, I spent many hours of
my summer vacation from school reading for recreation to pass the time I consumed
babysitting my twin brother and sister.  I
had many opportunities to interrogate a dictionary to obtain the meaning of a
word, if I could not deduce its meaning from the context of the usage.
If I didn’t know how to spell a word in elementary school, my
teachers would always tell me to look it up in the dictionary.  I always retorted, “How can I look it up if I
don’t know how to spell it?”  I finally
quit asking and just tried to figure out a way to write my assignment without
using that particular word.
At one time I was a good speller.  I never won the class spelling bee but I was
often 2nd.  When I graduated
high school, my ability to spell began to fade away.  Now I depend on my computer’s ability to know
what I am trying to communicate and to spell all the words correctly and place
them into proper grammatical position. 
I’ve discovered that usually the computer and I are both week in the
grammar area.
Communicating by pronouncing words correctly (making allowances
for regional dialects and not writing a homonym for the correct word) is
equally important for presenting a positive image to others along with having
your message correctly understood. 
Perhaps you can remember President George W. Bush’s mangling of English
(some may call it misspeaking or misquoting). 
“Dubya” attended some prestigious schools:  Harvard Business School, Yale University, The
Kinkaid School, Phillips Academy, and Yale College.  Yet his mangling (there I said it again) of
the language does not reflect well on those institutions or upon the Texas
education system, which already has major problems of its own.  It goes without saying (but I’ll say it
anyway) it does not reflect well upon him either.
Words are used to label things and people.  However, labels do not define a thing.  Poorly paraphrasing Shakespeare, labeling a
rose a skunk, does not accurately call to mind its sweet smell.  Placing a label on a person does not
accurately define who or what that person is like and the danger of mislabeling
someone is all too great.  People are too
complex to be categorized by a label. 
Humans are more than just words.
I am tired of writing on this topic so here is the defining
word of the day, “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”.  If you don’t know what it means, look it up
in a dictionary or just watch Disney’s “Mary Poppins”.
© 22 Feb 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 was sent to live 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 9-11-2001
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 
Posted on

Consequence, by Ray S

Since the
beginning of time for the little I know, there have always been untold numbers
of situations that resulted in serious consequence to the doer or the doee.
Doubtless you may have a few situations of your own that might need to be kept
secret, or some sort of cleansing-emotional confession. So goes the state of
consequence = GUILT.
There are
some old tired consequences such as the ones found in the King James book or
the Talmud and the warnings by Nostradamus. “Watch out or there’ll be hell to
pay.” Think about your ticket and fine for overtime parking. Can you still be
sued for breach of promise? What about divorce or wedding vows?
Look what’s
happened to good old boys and locker room parlance. Here’s the question: when is
it sexual harassment and when is it dirty conversation between consenting
parties? What constituted sexual harassment of the male gender, present company
excluded or may be included—it depends on who, what, and when, and of course,
maybe?
The devil’s
in the details-how many times have we been beseeched to “REPENT” for the end is
coming? And don’t forget the little red warning light that comes on with the
message CHECK ENGINE, or EMPTY.
Presently
we citizen’s who are registered to vote in this November’s presidential
election are faced with some truly numbing consequences. But fear not because
our shining peroxide white knight has this ‘fixed’ election all wrapped up. You
can’t go wrong with Mr. Putin’s gang working the computers and the Fox Network
and Donald’s “fact finders” grinding out more lies, lies, lies. Oh sorry, I got
the wrong candidate, but that’s alright because the new Attorney General will
take care of those consequences.
About
global warming—another lie, and if some insignificant foreign second-rate NATO
countries do have a little seacoast shrinkage, we will threaten Russia to stop
producing nuclear and start shoveling Siberia into the Pacific Ocean to cool
things down.
What are
the consequences of all these lies about a little friendly groping? It was
pretty convincing preceding the last debate with the happy maidens attesting to
it was “Just like one big happy family.”
To top that
bit of showmanship, the Donald will present to the USA a joyful, giggling group
of 426 previous contestants of Trump reality TV shows. They will bear witness
to what has been sanctimoniously labeled sexual harassment by ship-jumping
party members; they all were extremely pleased and somewhat aroused by the
candidate’s attentions. Their payoff will be front step seats at the Trumpian
Coronation.
Every day
it gets more exciting. It has become a huge game of “Truth or Dare.” Hold on to
your bikini, Sister. Or better yet, “Truth or Consequences” and guess what?
This time no one tells the truth and every one of us gets the consequences.
P.S. do you have a valid passport for Canada?
© 17 October
2016
About the Author 

Posted on

Life before Ice, by Phillip Hoyle

It’s no
wonder Mom was happy to live in town where almost everyone had electricity in
their homes. Not so on the farm where she grew up just ten miles south of
Junction City.
When Mom
moved into town to attend high school, she entered a new world of running water
in kitchen and bath, flush stools inside the house, electric lights in every
room, natural gas stoves and heating systems, and refrigerators that could even
make ice. No wonder to me that she never wanted to return to the farm except to
visit her folks. And when she was being courted by a young man who wrote for a
newspaper, was buying into his father’s grocery store (that wonderful citified
substitute for a farm garden and fields), played the piano like a dream
(classical, church, and jazz), and sang with expression and in tune, it looked
like her life could become one of relative ease, say contrasted with her
mother’s.
In town Mom
could have ice every day—winter and summer: iced coffee (which she abhorred),
iced tea (great with meals in summer), and iced cream (need one say more?). She
could quickly get ice onto a burn, bruise, or swelling should a child need it,
and make better whipped cream by beating it in a bowl surrounded with ice, on
and on. And should she see a need for a large quantity of ice for any reason,
she could simply call the local Ice House and the Ice Man would show up to
deliver the size and style of ice needed. It took me years to understand any of
this; in fact, I just figured it out this year, 2016, my 69th year,
when I started writing about my early childhood.
My great
grandparents on both sides of the family rarely had ice and certainly had no
electricity in their homes. My grandparents grew up without electricity but
fortunately got some when the Hoyle’s moved from Dwight to Junction City,
Kansas in the 1920s and when the Schmedemann’s greeted the national rural
electrification program to Clarks Creek in 1947—the year I was born. I’m sure
the same was true of my rural Colorado in-laws as well. To my amazement, my
mother-in-law used to eat crushed ice a lot, even had her own ice crusher to
make it. For her the habit may have been some kind of celebration of what she
had missed in childhood and probably kept alive the hope that she might someday
retire to life in town. Eventually she did so and kept enjoying her shredded
ice.
My family
was lucky to have a refrigerator with a freezer compartment. It was rather new,
probably purchased the same year I was born. I say this because the folks’ old
refrigerator, a small one with a very small ice maker near the top, went out to
my maternal grandparents’ farm. Their lives surely got easier. By the time I
could make sense of anything, we in town were living high with running water,
city sewage, electricity, natural gas heat, a gas range and oven, a swamp
cooler, and a refrigerator with a freezer unit. This was luxury in our town.
Ice was made in cubes at home using trays with movable grids. Pull up the
handle and out pops the ice cubes, but watch out; they might be all over the
floor. Or you might have trouble getting them out at all. That’s when we’d run
water over them to begin the melting.
I take it
all for granted and do so love my Monday bowl of Guinness Ice Cream with
chocolate chunks, but that could be for the enjoyment of the ale flavor and
that of my favorite candy.
© 5 Dec 2016  
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
Posted on

My LGBTQ Hopes for 2017, Pat Gourley

At first blush my most
important Queer hope for 2017, and that would stretch to 2020, is that Donald
Trump remains the president. No, I haven’t lost my mind. I am very aware of
what a terrible indictment he, and his election, is of the tattered state of
our democracy. Though he is certainly racist, xenophobic and sexist in the most
despicable of ways his attitude toward LGBTQ folk was certainly muted during
the 2016 campaign.
If we loose Trump through
impeachment, early retirement or most likely a big myocardial infarction that
leaves us with Mike Pence. In addition to the negative qualities attributed
above to Trump we get a toxic dose of homophobia. Pence truly scares me. At
least with Trump I do on rare occasions see very human expressions on his face.
He is malleable around most things except perhaps his ingrained sexism. Pence,
on the other hand, is a zealot and I see in his steely gaze a real hatred for
all things Queer, feminist and just plain other. Catholic fundamentalism is
truly something to fear.
My second hope for 2017
is that we LGBTQ people do not further abandon our strong and to date very
productive sense of queer identity. Identity politics, fueled of course by the
powerful coming out process, has been at the root of our success. This has been
success, not only through self-acceptance in the form of our own internally
vanquished homophobia, but also success in the form of an emerging place at the
table of society at large. 
The main hurdle has
always been overcoming our own internalized homophobia.  The key to this has been a realization on a soul
level that we are different in many ways and that these unique traits are gifts.
We can and do exploit and extrapolate these differences to the larger society for
a profound mutual benefit. Harry Hay had it absolutely right in asking his
three questions of the early Mattachine: who are we, where do we come from, and
what are we for. Finding the answers to these questions is not a finite task
but an ongoing process that continues to evolve to our benefit and that of all
sentient beings.
My third and last hope
for 2017 is that our Story Telling group continues to thrive. Our sincere
participation in this group really is in part the antidote and juice we need to
steal our resistance in the coming Trump years. Whether we want to openly own
it or not our participation in this group is a revolutionary act that is soul
food for our ever-evolving queer identities.
Recent proof of the power
of this Story Telling collective of LGBTQ folks was the memorial for our friend
and comrade Stephen Krauss. The event was attended by a variety of individuals
and groups all of whom had been important in Stephens’ life. The Story Telling
group may well have been the most recent group he was a part of in his 70 odd
years.
The group was very well
represented at the memorial and I thought provided a loving and a very purple
patina to the whole event. Thoughts expressed by Gillian and Betsy and the
powerful readings by Lewis and John were all heart-felt testaments to how
quickly we as a group have come together in just a matter of a few short years.
It is one of our many queer gifts, our ability to coalesce quickly when the
space to do so is available, through shared life experiences, into a vibrant
and a truly supportive community. I sincerely hope this continues to grow and
thrive in 2017.
© January 2017 

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.
Posted on

Flowers, by Nicholas

I find flowers amazing. They appear delicate but yet can be
strong and resilient. Their shapes and colors vary wildly from the palest
shades to the brightest hews. I have tulips in my yard that are pure white and
some that are so deep a purple as to appear black.
I trace the progress of the season through flowers, what’s in
bloom, what is preparing flowers stalks and buds, and what has finished. Already
I have spotted tiny leaves breaking through the ground in my yard. Within weeks
flowers will appear.
When I lived in San Francisco, I marked the beginning of
spring with appearance in late February of the plum tree blossoms in Golden
Gate Park. Any day now, their pale pink flowers will appear breaking the dreary
coastal winter with their delicate brightness.
Here in Colorado, at the lower elevations, it is the
brilliant yellow of the forsythia that dares to announce Spring. Even though we
have many more weeks of winter, maybe even the worst of winter, ahead, these
tiny flowers will soon appear. I have two forsythia bushes in my yard. The
early one will show blossoms by the first of March. The other one is later by
about a month.
Around St. Patrick’s Day, I will uncover the planter boxes on
the porch and plant pansies with their delightful array of purples, yellows,
oranges, burgundies and splashes of white to brighten those late winter days.
Pansies love the cold and are beautiful in the snow. It’s the summer heat that
will kill them off.
Then some early daffodils will appear, starting what I call
their annual “death march.” I don’t know why this variety shows up so early only
to face hard freezes and heavy snow. But they persist and eventually bloom in
time for a spring snow to crush them. The snow won’t kill them, just bury them.
Fortunately, I also have later varieties with the good sense to wait until the
weather is more favorable.
Tulips are beginning to show up but they seem more patient
and wait out the winter weather to bloom later. A little bit of snow heightens
the brilliance of the colors in bloom. But it doesn’t take much to push them
all to the ground.
When it is safe to come out in late spring, the cherry tree
will overnight burst into white blossoms. And then the iris will show up. When
I was a kid, we called them flags because they bloomed around Memorial Day.
Maybe because of climate change, my iris seem to be almost finished by the end
of May.
Soon the roses will appear and the first bloom is always the
best. My favorite is the bright red rose near the back door.
When the warmth of spring begins to turn into the heat of
summer, the hawthorn trees flower. The white flowers are pretty but they,
frankly, stink. For two weeks, my backyard will smell of rotten fruit. However,
the bees love these malodorous blooms and the yard will hum with the buzzing of
thousands of bees harvesting what must be rich nectar.
All summer, my garden will be full of bees attracted to the
flowers on the herbs I grow. I use the oregano, sage, chives and thyme from the
garden but I think the bees get more use of my herbs. The little yellow arugula
flowers seem to be especial favorites.
I think climate change has altered the flowering time for the
lilies. They used to be a late summer flower with their oranges and yellows.
But now, it seems that they bloom by early July and are finished before August.
Maybe it’s the dry heat of Colorado, but late summer sees a lull in flowers.
And then in September, some come back to life—like the hot pinks and reds of
the impatiens—and bloom again before the cold returns.
Fall brings its own colors as the plumbago produces its
cobalt blue flowers along the front walk. And I know what time of year it is by
the shade of the sedum. Early summer, its flowers are white. Gradually, the
color turns to a pale pink. And in the fall, they deepen to a dark red and then
rust. It’s amazing to watch this one flower change color over time.
So, that’s the year in flowers in my yard.
© 13 Jun 17 
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.
Posted on

Why Donald Trump getting elected POTUS is not the Apocalypse or End of Days, as so many liberals claim, by Louis Brown

(1)                       
Most Democratic politicians and rank and
file Dems. Are “devastated” by DT’s victory. I’m not.
(2)                       
When I could not vote for Bernie Sanders,
I chose Jill Stein. But even she is overreacting in her revulsion for DT
(3)                       
DT claimed, for example, he is going to
impose tariffs on products, especially on automobiles that are imported here
from foreign countries especially when those products could/should have been
produced here. Buy American!
(4)                       
The allegedly pro-Labor Democrats claim
that protectionism is in the long run counterproductive because it impedes free
trade. Well, yes, when so-called free trade makes companies profitable, which
it does do, 99.9% of the profits, however, go to the upper 1/10 of 1% of the
population. The American working class gets unemployed and impoverished on a
massive scale.
(5)                       
Also, DT has hinted that he is going to
adopt Rand Paul’s isolationist foreign policy. I he does, that means peace for
a change. All we are saying is give peace a chance. What is the actual
difference between left-wing pacifism and rightwing isolationism anyway?
(6)                       
DT said he will do business with Bernie
Sanders when the time comes.
(7)                       
Most everyone has noticed that Hillary
Clinton goes to war at the drop of a hat while Barack Obama has fallen head
over heel in love with perpetual war in Afghanistan. The American people do not
want this war at least not forever. If HC got into office again, it would have
meant more and bigger wars and endless hostile trade deals.
(8)                       
In other words, DT is promising (at least)
important concessions to the real liberal left. We should be gratified not
“devastated.”
(9)                       
Over my life time, I have been told that
protectionism and isolationism are unworkable and extremely destructive in the
long run. Considering everything, this is exactly what we desperately need
right now.
(10)                 
Did you notice that Hillary Clinton’s campaign
attracted the approval and support of three undesirables: Meg Whitman, Michael
Bloomberg and Henry Kissinger? That should make you suspicious. “Be afraid, be
very afraid!” as Rachel Maddow puts it.
(11)                 
Bernie Sanders heroically and ultimately
unsuccessfully tried to dissuade HC from courting the favor of Wall Street and
its leaders. I think Bernie Sanders should think in terms of starting a third
political party, he should abandon the sinking ship that is and will be soon be
the “new” conservative Democratic Party, as it becomes more bellicose and
hostile to American working people, the Dem. Party will, next election,
definitely shrink dramatically in size and influence.
(12)                 
I thought the election campaign went on
too long; the word “hate” was used much too often.
(13)                 
Of course, Hillary Clinton did get more
votes than DT, yet DT is going to be President. That does seem unfair.
(14)                 
Anti-Trump Democrats repeated endlessly
that DT was a racist and hated and disrespected women. Personally, that did not
ring true at least not to my ears. DT is not a racist and he does not hate
women. In fact, in general, DT seems broad-minded and willing to negotiate.
(15)                 
My elder and elderly brother, until this
last election, voted Democratic, Democratic, Democratic in almost all
Presidential elections. In this past election, he voted for DT. DT appears to
be actually less of a rightwing reactionary than Hillary, if he follows through
with his campaign promises. If he does keep his promises, he will be reelected
easily 4 years from now.
© 12 Nov 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.