Month: December 2017

Posted on

I Don’t Know, by Phillip Hoyle

“I don’t know.” What a topic, so open. It reminds me of doubt, the inability to choose, even loss of memory. Not knowing was a common experience for me as a kid. I recall looking at souvenirs in an Estes Park shop one summer afternoon. I had money and wanted to buy something with it. I looked at animal figurines wondering which one to select. I didn’t know. Finally, I bought a bear. As an adult, I reasoned I did so because of its connection to Native American life and lore. I never regretted that choice and the bear turned out to be an interesting animal and somewhat a symbol for me.
I am quite aware of the problem of choice for late teens who may have vocational interests, talents, and potential. I certainly was one of those. Having been recruited for ministry, I watched that world carefully. I had many other interests as well but finally went with the church work. That choice was much more important than deciding between kinds of candy or cookies or figurines. I didn’t regret my ministerial choice or career even though I eventually left it. At age 50 I chose to get out of it having tired of the incessant meetings. I knew when to leave.
In other ways, I said, “I don’t know,” but when I did, I believe saying so might have been a dodge, a frustration, or sometimes the truth. Still, I think about it; I have to make decisions. When I choose, I try to stick with the program, and I am a pretty good sticker: witness 29 years with my wife, 32 years in church work, many years directing vocal ensembles, 20 years developing curriculum resources, years of work on several manuscripts, 15 years with Jim and Ruth, quite a few years with SAGE’s Telling Your Story, almost as many years the SAGE blog, on and on. I feel I just don’t know so often, yet I do know. My doing is related to a belief fostered by Mother who led Girl Scout troops, reared five children, presided over the PTA, taught leadership skills to adults and youth, and organized in the community. She said, “You set your mind to the task and do it. You can do it.” So that’s what I have done. I may know that I don’t know. I certainly didn’t know anything about blogs, but now I have two of them. Too often when I turn on my computer I can’t get into the program. I don’t know, but I think it through overcoming my frustration and eventually complete the task at hand.
Ninety-five-year-old Ruth often says to me, “I don’t know.” While we are working on our jigsaw puzzles—we’re in our fifteenth year—I ask about her past, her ideas, her kids. In answer to many questions, she simply says, “I don’t know.” I envy her. If at age seventy I said “I don’t know” as often as she does, they’d hurry me off for a brain scan and some therapy. But at 95 you can say what you want. Nobody will argue. I told Ruth our topic for today and said I wanted to tell a story about her. She scrunched up her face in distaste. “But, Ruth,” I said, “the group loves when I include you in my stories.” I made no promises to her. You see, for me “I don’t know” is the best line from a 95-year-old who looking me straight in the face said, “You’d better not.” Apparently, I didn‘t know how to be scared of her.
© 10 July 2017  
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

The Tragic Myth of Niobe, by Louis Brown

(a)The tragic tale of Niobe is one of
the most memorable Greek myths, for Niobe’s story features a striking example
of the consequences of hubris, a Greek term defined as arrogance or excessive
pride. This myth was popular in ancient literature, poetry and art. Therefore,
it is not a surprise that the legend of Niobe appears in one of our oldest and
best sources for Greek myths, the Iliad of Homer.
Her father
was Tantalus, king of a town above Mount Sipylus in Anatolia, but we do not
know exactly who her mother was. Niobe had two brothers, Broteas and Pelops,
who would later be a legendary hero and would give his name to Peloponnese.
When Niobe grew up, she got married to Amphion, king of Thebes. This was a
turning point in her life and a series of tragic events followed, to give her a
distinct place in one of the most tragic dramas in Greek mythology. Niobe and
Amphion gave birth to fourteen children, seven sons and seven daughters.
The fatal mistake and the horrible
crime at a ceremony held in honor of Leto, the mother of the divine twins,
Apollo and Artemis, who was also living in Thebes, Niobe, in a fit of
arrogance, bragged about her fourteen children. In fact, Niobe said that she
was superior to Leto, as she had fourteen children and not only two. When the
twins knew this insult, they got enraged and at once, came down to Earth to
kill the children of Niobe. Apollo, the god of light and music, killed all
seven of Niobe’s sons with his powerful arrows in front of their mother’s eyes.
Although Niobe was pleading Apollo to feel mercy for her last surviving son,
Apollo’s lethal arrow had already left his bow to find its mark with deadly
accuracy, thus wiping out all the male descendants of Niobe.
Artemis, the virgin goddess of
nature and hunting, killed Niobe’s seven daughters with her lethal arrows and
their dead bodies were lying unburied for nine days. Turning into a rock, devastated by the slaughter of his children, Amphion committed suicide. Some
versions say that he too was killed by Apollo when he tried to avenge his
children’s deaths. And so it was that Niobe’s entire family had been wiped out
by the gods in a matter of moments, and in deep anguish, she ran to Mount
Sipylus.
There she pleaded [with the] Gods to
[put] … an end to … her pain. Zeus felt sorry for her and transformed her into a
rock, to make her feelings [express themselves from the] … stone. However, even
as a rock, Niobe continued to cry. Her endless tears poured forth as a stream
from the rock and it [her statue] seems to stand as a moving reminder of a
mother’s eternal mourning. To this day, Niobe is mourning for her children and
people believe that her faint image can still be seen carved on a limestone
rock cliff on Mount Sipylus, with the water that seeps out of the porous rocks
bearing a strong allusion to her ceaseless tears.
The meaning of the Myth the tragic
tale of Niobe centered on the consequences of hybris, a strange concept in the
Greek antiquity, which said that, if you act with arrogance towards the Gods,
then you will be punished. Actually Niobe’s story is a classic example of the
wrath of gods against human weaknesses and has been beautifully narrated in
Homer’s Iliad. The tale of Niobe also finds mention in Metamorphoses, a
narrative poem, written by the renowned Roman poet Ovid, who, however, has
inverted the traditionally accepted order and portrayed the desires and
conquests of the gods with aversion, while elevating human passions to a higher
Source:
(b)O Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn! Version of
Bruce Springsteen
“O Mary Don’t You Weep”
Well if I
could, I surely would,
Stand on the rock where Moses stood, Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Well Mary wore three links of chain,
On every link was Jesus name,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Well one of these nights about 12 o’clock,
This old world is gonna rock,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Well Moses stood on the Red Sea shore,
Smote the water with a two by four,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Well old Mister Satan he got mad,
Missed that soul that he thought he had,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Brothers and sisters, don’t you cry,
There’ll be good times by and by,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
No more water, but fire next time,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep,
Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Oh Mary don’t you weep no more.

Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

The phrase vale
of tears (Latin vallis lacrimarum) is a Christian phrase referring to the
tribulations of life that Christian doctrine says are left behind only when one
leaves the world and enters Heaven. The term “valley of tears”
is also used sometimes. (Wikepedia).
  
Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart. His Lacrimosa (weeping) is part of his Requiem Mass 1792. Was
completed by Sysmayr.
Cry
Me a River
Diana
Krall
Now
you say you’re lonely
You cry the whole night through
Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river
I
cried a river over you.
Now
you say you’re sorry
For being so untrue
Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river
I
cried a river over you
You
drove me, nearly drove me out of my head
While you never shed a tear
Remember, I remember all that you said
Told me love was too plebeian
Told
me you were through with me
And now you say you love me
Well, just to prove you do
Come on and cry me a river, cry me a river
I
cried a river over you
You drove me, nearly drove me out of my head
While you never shed a tear
Remember, I…
© 16 Oct 2017  
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.
Posted on

Pushing the Buttons, by Lewis Thompson

When I took Drivers’ Ed
back in 1960, we did our on-the-road learning in a 1957 Mercury Monterey with
push-button automatic transmission controls mounted to the left of the steering
column on the lower instrument panel.  (Most
people over 60, like me, associate push-button shifting with Chrysler
Corporation vehicles.)  Mercury went back
to column-mounted shifting a year or two later. 
I assume that a few too many of their customers were downshifting or
upshifting when they meant to change the radio station from WLS in Chicago to
KOMA in Oklahoma City.
On some very recent car
models, pushing a button is how you start the motor, either gasoline or
electric.  Many of us will remember when
you would push a button to lock the car doors. 
Later models often lock the doors for you when the vehicle reaches a
certain speed.  One operation that hasn’t
changed much is the need to push a button to release the lap/shoulder
belt.  Many telephones still require the
manual dexterity to push a button to dial or take a call but they are rapidly
being phased out by phones that require only a soft, tactile touch to a screen.
I can remember push-button
operated door bells, light switches, tape recorders, adding machines,
typewriters, office phones, air conditioners, electric mixers, car radios,
switch blade knives, and pagers.  Some
household items still use pushbuttons today. 
For example, pop machines, cell phones, elevators, pedestrian crossing
signals, car key fobs, and apartment lobby call boxes.  Almost everything else has converted to a
modus operandi that does not involve buttons. 
Soon people will be
letting their fingernails grow so long that they can no longer push a button
without breaking a nail.  Broken nails
used to be a problem for women who wore nylon stockings.  However, since woman don’t wear nylon
stockings anymore–they went out of style concurrently with buttons–broken
nails are no longer an issue unless they make it hard to make the desired
selection on a touch screen or micro-switch. 
I don’t know if this is a problem since I still have many possessions
with a button.  Therefore, pushing buttons
is a push-over for me.
© 23 Jun 2014  
About
the Author  
 I came to the
beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the
state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the
Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly
realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as
our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger.
Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my
path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.
Soon after, I
retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13
blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to
fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE
Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.
Posted on

Rejoice, by Gillian

“Rejoice,
Rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel”
In my long-ago childhood,
when I accompanied my mother to church most Sundays, I loved that hymn. It was
sung with much more gusto than most of the hymns. It felt that we truly were
offering a joyful noise unto the Lord. In my reedy little five-year-old voice I
belted out the admonition to rejoice, rejoice, along with the adults.
Of course I had not a
clue why we were rejoicing. Who was Emmanuel and why was he about to get
together with Israel, whoever he was? It didn’t matter. Singing that hymn made
me feel happy; all good inside After services in which it was the final hymn, I
always felt like skipping and laughing all the way home.
And it was surprising how
often it was sung in our little church. Our congregation was much too small to
enjoy the luxury of a choir to guide us. All hymns, if I remember correctly –
something of a big ‘if’ – came from the Church of England book of Hymns Ancient
and Modern, published in 1862. I checked on line and it apparently contained
779 hymns. Now that should have been enough to save us from too much
repetition; but that was not the reality. We seemed to have a small group of
twenty or so tried-and-true favorites, which cropped up regularly with an
occasional little-used one tossed in to keep us on our toes. My mother hated it
when these strangers appeared as it meant she had to practice. She played the
church organ and knew the old favorites by heart, so they required little
effort on her part. She also disliked’ the unfamiliar  because the congregation, fumbling with
unknown words and music, lagged behind the organ waiting for a lead, and
gradually the singing got slower and slower and lower and lower. The vicar, who
never sang along, simply shook his head sadly at the cacophony and vowed to
stick with the familiar the next Sunday. And the next.
Perhaps at least partly
because I associated the word with the hymn, ‘rejoice’ or ‘rejoicing’ always
represented to me something loud and jubilant; triumphant: the crowd on the
sidelines rejoicing when the home team scores a goal, the audience rejoicing at
the end of a particularly stirring symphony. This kind of rejoicing I rarely,
if ever, experienced. My family and friends were all rather quiet people who
might smile broadly at a win for the home team, but that was about as wild as
it might get.
Later in life I began to
understand that to rejoice, as the dictionaries state it, means to feel or show
great joy or delight. To feel or show. We can rejoice in silence, simply
to feel the joy within us, not expressing it with a sound; perhaps not even a
hint of a smile. That is my kind of rejoicing. In fact, I have rather come to
fear, or at least be uncomfortable with, the loud exuberant variety. Too
frequently no good will come of it. The raucous rejoicing at the end of the
soccer game ends up in fighting and even deaths. The screaming rah rah of
political rallies negates all rational thought, as does – sorry Emmanuel –
religious raving. Rejoicing loudly can perhaps be OK in a space, such as a
church, – OK Emmanuel, back at ya – where all there feel the same, but be very
combative when others present feel very differently.
I’ll just stick to my
silent inner rejoicing at the beauty of the sky, or a single leaf, or the touch
of a loved one or a smile from a friend.
That hurts no-one, and
brings me a joy that could never be deepened by shouting it from the rooftops.
© 25 Nov 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.
Posted on

My Most Meaningful Vacation, by Betsy

So what is it that makes
a vacation meaningful anyway? I can’t honestly think of any vacation that I
have ever taken that was not meaningful. Some maybe were more meaningful than
others that is definitely true. I will have to focus on vacations of the last,
say, 50 years. Choosing from all the vacations of my lifetime is too
overwhelming. My memory just isn’t that good.
I have had a few trips
abroad—the heart of Europe as well as remote places like the Orkney Islands off
the north coast of Scotland, the train trip through South Africa, plus visits
to Canada, Mexico, and Central America. All these trips were memorable and
certainly meaningful. Simply experiencing other cultures, and other ways of
life is about the best educational experience a person can have. We learn from
living among or simply observing others that our way is not the only way.  Our language is not the only language, our
humor is not  the only kind of humor, our
cuisine is not the only kind.
My idea of a great
vacation is an exploit filled with excitement, new experiences, and
adventure.  I have traveled on vacation
by plane, train, boat, car, bicycle, and on foot. One of my most memorable
“vacations” was cycling across the United States, from Pacific to Atlantic. I
have written several stories about that trip which I took in 2005.
The thing about traveling
by bicycle is that you see so much more detail along the way, including the
wild life, sometimes in the form of road kill.
Probably most of my
vacations have been of the camping variety. I love camping whether in the
wilderness or just off the highway.
When I was married to
Bill and the three children were young, we used to take back packing trips.
Bill was always looking for fishing opportunities. I hated fishing. Not enough
action. But there was plenty for all of us to do on those adventures while Bill
was fishing. I very much enjoyed the hiking, setting up camp,  and being in the mountain environment with
nature.
When Gill and I first got
together we went back packing one summer in the Wind River Range in
Wyoming.  That was the time she cut a
gash in her knee and I saved her from bleeding to death with my Girl Scout
first aid kit which happened to have some butterfly bandages in it. She still
has a scar on her knee today which I want to pass around the table for all of
you to see.
This, one of our first
vacations together, could have been meaningful in that it had the potential for
being our last vacation together.  But
Gill stuck with me in spite of the fact that it was not her idea of a vacation.
I actually think it was the butterfly bandages that saved our relationship.
After we had been
together a short time, we went to a style of camping more to her liking—car
camping. Gill had a VW camper van—a Westphalia— in which we had taken some day
trips during our courtship. It may not have been an actual vacation, rather a
weekend, when we took the Westy to Rocky Mountain National Park. This was a
meaningful trip to me, and I will never forget it. It definitely portended of a
meaningful ritual which would become a part of my life everyday for the rest of
my life. We were driving along through the park admiring the sights when Gill
pulled over off the road and came to a stop. “It’s tea time,” she wailed. She
jumped into the back, opened the galley, 
put the kettle on and brewed the tea, and served me a dainty cup of
perfect British tea—with milk, of course, not cream.  I am a person who likes structure and some
rituals. So I became hooked on four o’clock tea time for life.
I also became quite
enamored of the idea of a camper van for road trips. The Westy was very old and
worn out and had to go soon after we started living together. But we both were
enthusiastic about having a camping vehicle. So a few years after selling the
Westy we bought a used VW Eurovan—a later model of the Westphalia.  We named her Brunie, short for Brunhilda. She
was a big boned woman. The three of us —Gill, Brunie, and I—spent 13  years together, travelled over 200,000 miles
in too many trips to count. It was an awesome relationship. All of our
vacations together were meaningful because we traveled in almost every state,
except Hawaii and Alaska, always had a comfortable place to sleep, we felt
safe, and were always warm and dry. Because of Brunie we saw the country, we
learned history and geology, we experienced things and places we never dreamed
existed. I might add we met all kinds of people who would always approach us in
the campground wanting to meet us? No wanting a look at Brunie. 
Some of the more memorable
places we visited had been selected as a destination like the national parks,
state parks, oceanside settings, historical sites, desert oases.  Others we just happened upon  by chance. 
We always kept a diary on these trips because we knew as we grew older
we would forget where it was that we saw that amazing sunrise, that moose
grazing beside the road, those sheep on the cliff above, that approaching
tornado. Or all we had, learned, heard, and experienced would become blurred.  And Gill was constantly snapping photos, so
we have thousands of those to remind us. Some places were quite ordinary, some
elaborate, some filled us with awe, some sights were beautiful beyond
imagination, some curious, but not one was not worth the visit. Some of our
favorite, nearby places we have been back to several times such as
Hovenweep,  Canyon lands,  Hamburger Rock, Arches N.P., and  Yellowstone.
There has not been one
trip or sojourn that was not meaningful. 
Most meaningful? Impossible to say.
© 1 Dec 2017 
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.
Posted on

I Did It My Way_How Else? by Ricky

When I was a toddler, my parents wanted me to do things their-way. While potty-training, my dad demonstrated how to pee standing up. As I did not like to wear wet diapers and the fact it was fun to “aim” at different spots in (or at least near) the toilet I adapted quickly; although my mom probably wished my “aim” was a lot more accurate. No one ever demonstrated how to go “number 2”. They only verbally explained the “procedure” and the expected “outcome”. At this time “Houston we have a problem” became my-way’s “game of choice”.

Their-way involved them standing there watching me sit on the juvenile-throne expecting me to do my business. My-way involved them leaving me alone in the room. Now, I had never had an issue with mom or dad watching me pee standing up or sitting down, but for some reason I didn’t like them watching me for “operation number 2”. It was either that, or I took some kind of sadistic pleasure waiting for them to release me and then going outside and squatting, filling my training pants with the material I’d been holding back. Besides the sadistic streak, I probably enjoyed their cleaning my private (or to them my public) parts after I’d made the mess. The warm or cold water washcloths rubbing and scrubbing those sensitive genital regions undoubtedly felt as terrific back then as it does now.

Finally arriving at the terrible part of being 2 which came with the twin concepts of “I have choices” and “the-others-keep-asking-me-if-I-want-something-and-offering-me-things-as-they-ask-the-question”, it became inevitable that my growing self-awareness finally made the connection with the fact that I could say, “NO!”. At that point their-way became, “their-way-or-else”. The “not-their-way” always had unpleasant consequences. Did I ever mention that I got lots of spankings? Apparently, I was either a slow learner, just plain willful, headstrong, or addicted to “my-way”.

Anyway, many months and spankings later, I finally arrived at age 4. By this period, I realized that their-way was less painful, but I kept to my-way when not being closely monitored. However, outright lying was not yet something available to me due to insufficient brain development and lack of an example I could recognize. Nonetheless, my developing self-awareness allowed me to understand that their-way involving eat-everything-on-your-plate did not fit into my budding comprehension of what my taste buds and throat muscles were trying to communicate to me. There was a serious mismatch between their-way (eat-everything) and my-way (eat-everything if it tastes good or doesn’t cause gagging). With lots of “prompting” on their part, I really tried to do it their-way, but ultimately, it was the “second-coming” of my dinner that finally convinced them that my-way was best.

At the age of 5, their-way still involved expectations of strict and swift obedience; as in “go to your room and change all your clothes”. I was perfectly willing to do just that, but there was another “Houston we’ve got a problem” moment. In 1953 ADD had not yet been invented, if it had I could have been a poster-child. I only have a mild case but it was combined with a well-developed sense of 5-year old scientific curiosity. So, my-way manifested as, when I was naked changing clothes the scientist part of me wanted to learn all about the hard little “spiky-thing” attached to me. Thus, changing clothes became a secondary pursuit and exploring the unknown phenomena briefly became my primary concern, just before the exploration was interrupted by yet another spanking of which I’ve written about before. My-way for several types of scientific self-exploration which followed also included the catch phrase, “explore in private” or in other words, my “don’t-get-caught-way”.

At age 10 their-way was effectively my step-father’s-way. In the summer of 1958 I was his deckhand on his tour boat. I readily agreed that his-way was the only-right-way. It was a fun time that summer and I didn’t want to screw it up. I couldn’t swim so I didn’t want to risk either falling overboard or, worse, being thrown overboard. I didn’t know him very well at that point.

He was a good man and never bothered me, nor I him. At age 12 I lied to him once and he caught me in it. I had to explain why I did it and he just told me to never lie to him again and I never did, nor did I need too.

During my teen years, their-way was really mom’s-way. Her-way mostly involved getting me to “promise” to do one or two chores before she got home. My-way was to promise and then do or not do as I desired. There were no consequences for not doing and I mostly procrastinated until it was too late and I needed to go to bed before school in the morning. Those were the golden-years of my-way.

School classes, Boy Scouts, and life in general did successfully teach me that some of my-ways were not as good as other-ways. In one area, child rearing, my-way was the only-way because their-way was for me to be the 18-hour/day live-in babysitter while they stayed in the bar until closing time. Under those circumstances I had no examples of good parenting to follow. The only parenting book I knew of was by Dr. Spock, but fortunately, I didn’t even try to learn his-way, because I was sure I already knew everything I needed to know about that subject. I was wrong, but it’s too late to sue me.

My enlisted time in the Air Force was good for me. My-way was to follow their-way as exactly as I could because there were very serious consequences for failure to do so. I did well.

My time in a marriage relationship was wonderful, not perfect all the time but great nonetheless. My-way was to follow her-way as often as possible. Life was simpler that-way. Once she heard of an interview given by the wife of the leader of our church. The wife was asked what was the secret of their long, loving, and happy marriage. The wife’s reply was, “If you ask your husband to move a mattress from upstairs to downstairs and he then opens a window, throws the mattress out the window, walks downstairs and drags it in to the house—you hold your tongue.” After my wife heard that interview, the stress between us lessened quite a bit—her-way now included details on how to do things her-way. This in turn resulted in discussion of the other-possible-ways and a negotiated lets-do-it-this-way was often the result.

As an Air Force officer, I had lots of leeway with the their-way vs. my-way issue. In the management of my assigned enlisted and officer co-workers I had great latitude, but no leeway with the regulations. The greatest problem with their-way involved using training situations or exercises to punish weaknesses in performance. My-way is to use training situations and exercises as a teaching tool to strengthen performance. This issue ultimately led to our parting-of-the-ways.

After years of experiences traveling the highways, one-ways, two-ways, byways, bi-ways, and waterways of life, I’ve arrived in the senior-citizen zone. Now all but one of my-ways are open to suggestion. The only-way that is not up for alteration is the one-way where I get ice cream, my-way.

Baskin Robin’s “Baseball Nut” — Hmmmm Yummy!

© 19 December 2011

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 Sep 2011 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

Maps, by Ray S

I believe that along with counting all the fingers and toes and necessary plumbing each one of us is issued a map. This is a map that charts out the many roads we may or may not venture onto. There will be the inevitable dead ends, forks in the road leading to where? Most of we dreamers look for the legend marking the Yellow Brick Road, and occasionally it is found. Then there are a good number of us that don’t study our map or perhaps never open it. We just head for the dark woods and wander aimlessly through life gathering rosebuds where we may.

If there is a goal, it just happens as we trudge on through the expedient trail or path.

It can happen to a fortunate select group that broke the seal on their maps to plan their routes to health, wealth, and of course, happiness. We’ve all met one of those hims or hers.

All of the roads on your map will lead to great and small adventures, and ultimately end at the same destination.

© 27 March 2017

About the Author

Posted on

Empathy, by Phillip Hoyle

As a college student I learned a distinction between sympathy and empathy. The contrast arises from the two different Greek words. It also is influenced by psychoanalytic theory and practice. In most discussions empathy is considered to be more finely tuned than sympathy. As a minister I was called upon to do many tasks including hospital and care-home calls on members of the church. I did this work thoughtfully and, I believe, with sympathy, and on good days a measure of empathy! People liked my visits and humor. We laughed and prayed together.

In the church work I was motivated as much by duty as by sympathy and empathy. And I was appropriately trained to be helpful with patients and shut-ins. Apparently I provided sufficient care in my communications and mainly in the fact I showed up at all. Perhaps that is the way of it when one has too many people to serve.

The caring emotion for me occurred most clearly when I was in a hospital room with someone having a difficult time. I also noticed how my empathy was amplified when I liked the person, occasions in which other emotions and feelings added to what I was experiencing, for instance, the time an elder woman introduced me to her nephew when she and I were the only persons present made me wonder at the drugs the medics had given her for pain and the need to suppress a feeling of humor at the situation. (I was fine; she got better.)

I visited a good looking single young man who had a stubborn bone infection. I know that a sexual attraction increased my sense of his pathos. It alerted me to how others might prize him emotionally and their sense of fear surrounding his illness. My empathy extended to his family and friends. He eventually did recover after receiving loads of highly potent antibiotics.

Several times I visited an elder woman, very worldly and professional, with a bright personality and deep determination to recover from a major stroke. One day several weeks into treatment she appeared to have made a turn for the better. I was excited on her behalf and expressed how much better she looked. She tempered my enthusiasm, though, by saying, “Phillip, I finally felt up to putting on my makeup.” We laughed together. I said, “You are getting better.”

My empathy was sincere in all these cases yet certainly amplified by other emotions. And in all these visits I was present because I was a minister from their church.

One inactive church member, a real sot, was driving home from the VFW on an icy night and being rather drunk, crashed his car into the west entry to the church building. I didn’t see the car but did see the damage to the steps and more. The Sr. Minister, Jack, wasn’t sure what to do. I volunteered, “I’ll go to the hospital and see how he is.” I’d never met the man and really didn’t know much about alcohol or alcoholism. I went in simply as a visiting minister. “So they sent you,” he said eyes twinkling.

“Yeah. It’s my day to make the rounds,” I said to underplay the situation. I asked how he was doing. He said, “Fine,” and seemed totally sober at that point, perhaps from the trauma. I realized he might even feel ill at ease and said, “You just rest and recover.” I shook his hand, smiled saying, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, and don’t worry about the church stuff.” I may have visited him later, I have no recollection. I never saw him outside the hospital, certainly not in church. His collision with the front steps was no conversion.

Was I sympathetic or empathetic? I have no real idea. As a massage therapist I felt empathy with most of my clients in their pains and diseases but not always in their gripes and in some of their expressed needs. I did smile often and sometimes cried. I mostly tried to deliver an effective massage and must have done that pretty well. Many of my clients came to me for over fourteen years. Perhaps I was sufficiently empathetic. And my real hope is that I was never just plain old pathetic in these contacts.

© 27 Nov 2017

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 First LGBT Acquaintance, by Pat Gourley

I saw that today’s topic was actually Dancing with the Stars. I am aware that this is the name of a long-standing television series of the same name that I think involves teams of contestants in competitive-dancing with often B-grade celebrities. And I must admit I have never watched a single minute of this show and I mean no offense to anyone who enjoys it. Really how can somewhat like me who is addicted to reruns of The Big Bang Theory and the Golden Girls throw shade at anyone else’s TV viewing habits?

I could I suppose make a big stretch and turn ‘dancing with the stars’ into a metaphor for one of my past particularly enjoyable LSD adventures but instead I’ll write a few lines on last week’s topic: My First GLBT Acquaintance. Let me say right out of the box I have no idea who my first real GLBT acquaintance was since like all of us of a certain age I was birthed into the stifling cauldron of a falsely presumed heterosexual universe. We were in many ways unrecognizable to one another until we demanded to be called by our real names. A nearly universal experience we all relate to was the question of whether or not we were alone asking “am I the only one who is this way”. Our first acquaintance would I hope for most of us be a glorious answer to that question.

As I was writing this and had Pandora playing in the background I was unaware of any tune until Lou Reed’s masterpiece Walk on the Wild Side just came on. Released in 1972 this opus chronicles the adventures of a cast of characters all headed to New York City and a ‘walk on the wild side’.

I would take the liberty to say that through transexuality, drug use, male prostitution and oral sex they may have all been looking for and perhaps found that first GLBT acquaintance. Holly, Candy, Little Joe, Sugar Plum Fairy and Jackie all seem to have been based on real people from Reed’s life in NYC back then. All of whom I would say were very queer people.

We were fortunate in this SAGE Story Telling Group to get a glimpse of this albeit dangerous but deliciously exciting world Reed describes in his song through the frequent writings of a dear friend who died recently. As he related to us on several occasions his walks on the wild side started in the tearooms of downtown Denver department stores but would eventually be played out most emphatically on the streets of NYC. He often honestly provided glimpses into this world, that like it or not, is an integral part of our collective and frequently personal queer history. Thank you, dear friend!

For the sake of this piece I am going to say that “acquaintance” implies a mutual recognition that we are both queer as three-dollar bills. When using this definition the task of identifying my first acquaintance is much easier. This first person I suppose also represents my own personal “walk on the wild side”. As I have written about on previous occasions this ‘acquaintance” was a man 20 years my senior who I had been passive-aggressively courting for a year. We took a real ‘walk on the wild side’ and had sex (my first!) in the biology lab of my Catholic High School festooned with crucifixes on the wall. It was Easter week and I was a soon to graduate Senior. I am eternally in debt to this man for launching in very loving fashion my great ongoing gay adventure.

If there has been one thing that our liberation efforts the past century have provided it is that many but certainly not all new ‘recruits’ to the queer world do not have to have that first acquaintance involve a ‘walk on the wild side’. The fruits of success I suppose though work remains to be done and for some us perhaps a sense of nostalgia for a long gone but often very exciting times.

© July 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

Wisdom Teeth and Weltschmerz, by Louis Brown

The two parts to my essay are (a) physical pain and (b) Welstschmerz.

(a) Back in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, I was having trouble with my four wisdom teeth. The wisdom tooth pressing up against its neighboring tooth caused extreme pain. The first wisdom tooth extraction (Upper right) went rather well. A dentist got it out. The second wisdom tooth (lower right) was more complicated so I had to go to Flushing Hospital.

The wisdom tooth resisted being extracted by the dental surgeon’s first attempt, and he used a reasonably sized pliers. But as the wisdom tooth resisted, the pain increased dramatically, and the dental surgeon kept choosing larger and larger pliers. The last pair of pliers was quite enormous and resembled a medieval torture instrument. For about a week after that, I just stayed drunk, and I rinsed my mouth with whisky which is not only a good antiseptic, it helped deaden the pain.

A month or two after that, my two left wisdom teeth were pressing up against their neighboring teeth. The pain was excruciating. So I chose an oral surgeon or rather an oral surgery team.

I lay down on a gurney, they gave me phenobarbital, and I went into a semi-dream state, but I was still awake, and I was aware of the surgeon and the three or four nurses assisting him who were hovering over me. They extracted both wisdom teeth with surgery rather than yanking them out with pliers. Everything went smoothly, I felt no pain, and the subsequent recuperation period had some pain but it was minimal.

So, if you need to have more than one tooth extracted at a time, choose oral surgery. Phenobarbital was wonderful. You get anesthetized, but your body does not feel threatened as with ether or other anesthesias. And you are still actually awake.

(b) The other type of pain I have experienced is Weltschmerz or “World pain,” defined in Webster’s Dictionary as “sentimental pessimism or melancholy over the state of the world”:

(1) JFK got assassinated. That trauma was painful, but we discussed that already.

(2) The twin towers came down on 9/11/2001. But of course we already discussed that trauma as well.

(3) President Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia on May 8, 1970. I remember the protests in this country were swift and enormous. I tried to go to a protest demonstration in Washington, D. C., but there were just too many protesters. Our bus had to stop somewhere in the outskirts of Washington, D. C., so we just sat there; some of the passengers had guitars so we made the best of it by singing peace songs and Beatles’ songs. It was fun. But the invasion itself was traumatic and caused a lot of people Weltschmerz.

(4) January 30, 1968 was the date of the Tet Offensive. That was when we realized that, actually the Communists whooped us. On April 30, 1975, the U. S. withdrew from Vietnam. Pictures of the “fall” of Saigon were quite traumatic. I felt more Weltschmerz.

(5) The death of our two friends, Steve and Randy.

On a less serious note, the French language has two interesting tongue twisters, that is le vire-langue (rarely used):

(a) Ton thé, t’ôte-t-il ta toux? Does your tea get rid of your cough?

(b) La reine Didon dîna, dit-on, d’un dos dodu d’un dodu dindon. The Queen of Carthage dined, they say, on the fat back of a fat turkey.

Of course, Dido (Didon) was not actually a queen, she was a princess, though she did run ancient Carthage.

©14 September 2017

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.