Month: February 2018

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Maps, by Gillian

I have so many maps that I had thought I would not write anything and just do a show and tell. But once I started going through the collection I found myself transported immediately away on endless waves of memory. Map-memory. Rather like muscle memory in the way it seemed to operate quite outside of any conscious thought. Why had I not anticipated this? I’m not sure
.
Much as I have always loved maps, I guess I never saw them as anything to inspire emotion. But why ever not? Now I find they wrap me in memories in a way that even old photographs do not; perhaps simply because I look at the old photos from time to time, whereas the maps have just languished in a box, untouched for years other than once in a while when I open the box and toss in a couple more maps for the collection.
There are old ‘Tourists & Cyclists’ maps of various parts of Britain dating from somewhere early in the twentieth century, once used by my parents riding around on Dad’s motorbike in the 1920’s. One is of Shropshire, my home county. It is one of the linen-backed, more expensive variety, obviously bought to last. (I stuck an arrow on it, pointing at our house!)
Then there are the common but most popular British maps, those on the one inch to one-mile scale. They were produced between 1952 and 1961 and covered every inch of the British Isles. I bought many of them for school-day, and later college, hikes. They were produced in great detail and made it almost impossible to get lost.
Even more detailed was the series, published around the same time as the one inch to the mile, was the one mile to 2 1/2 inches; maps so detailed they showed every single building. I also bought a lot of these, largely because by this time I was getting into geology in high school and they made fossil sites easier to find. Detailed geologic maps were not common then as they are today, but I had one very generalized map of Shropshire geology which I greatly valued. Fossil finds were mainly communicated by word of mouth, so a detailed map was almost essential. Our house was, as always seems inevitable, right on the joint of two maps, but I put an arrow again. It’s right on the edge of the map above where it says ROMAN GRAVELS. There are endless old Roman sites around there. Just to the left is marked a stone circle. It is small in size, as are the stones, but nevertheless an unmistakable prehistoric stone circle. My parents and I used to picnic there quite often, it’s a beautiful, very silent, remote, spot. At least it was then. Now many tourists apparently go there in the summer. On another one is the tiny town of Bishop’s Castle, where I went to the high school marked at the crossroads. Also, clearly marked is Stone House, the old workhouse now converted to the nursing home where my mum and dad both died. At the south end of the town is the church where they are buried.
Then we come to stacks of maps that I, and then Betsy and I, have bought on our travels. They take me back with great joy to the many places we have been, but they tend to be more of the highway route variety of map and less emotive in detail than the old ones.
I love all maps, and these are a small percentage of my collection, but the old maps are special. There is somehow something surreal about seeing all these places that have loomed so large in my early life depicted so clearly before me on a long-forgotten map. I am grateful to whoever chose this topic for giving me the incentive to explore the contents of that dusty old box.
And, not for the first time, I find myself grieving for the current and future high-tech generations.  I fear they will never know the magic of an old map, tattered from overuse, with pencil arrows flowing from a scribbled teenage note, trilobite fossils here. Who, with the very best of intentions, can find magic in the memories of Siri scolding, ‘you are going in the wrong direction! Complete a U-turn immediately it is safe to do so and return to the intersection.’  Seriously lacking in any sense of history!
I have decided against naming my next baby Siri.

© 31 Mar 2017 
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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Why Me?, by EyM

Feeling weak like a small brittle twig,
commonly bombards in the face of horribly distressing news about a loved one.  
 “Why Me”?
 Why this devastation?  
Timidly cries out of lips once speaking vibrant life
 so bright, so beautiful.
We humans all gathered about the suffering person may feel powerless unable to stop the agony. 
Then we, fragile human twigs surround
this hurting person, one by one, side by side,
all around and all under.
In numbers, twigs become a sturdy sustaining nest. 
Securely held our loved one rests
in comfort strong. 
No longer alone, together, solidly held
in endless power, even eternally united.
Why me? 
How amazing to be a human twig in a caring nest of divine providence.
© 21 Jan 2018 
About the Author 
A native of Colorado, she followed her Dad to the workbench to develop a love of using tools, building things and solving problems. Her Mother supported her talents in the arts. She sang her first solo at age 8. Childhood memories include playing cowboy with a real horse in the great outdoors. Professional involvements have included music, teaching, human services, and being a helper and handywoman. Her writing reflects her sixties identity and a noted fascination with nature, people and human causes. For Eydie, life is deep and joyous, ever challenging and so much fun.
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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 wildlife, 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 backpacking 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 backpacking 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 every day 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, traveled 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, Canyonlands, 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.
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Hobbies Past & Present, by Ricky

          Not much of a story here to tell.  As a child, I had two electric trains and some track.  Both were made by Lionel.  One train was an Empire Line twin diesel-powered locomotive freight train; the other, a steam locomotive (with coal tender) was a modern passenger train (for the early 1940’s/mid 50’s.  For a long time, I was enamored of model trains and envious of those who had any kind of a train “layout”.   I never had a layout and I sold both trains at a flea-market in Tucson during my late 20’s.
          From age 8 through 13 my interest centered on assembling plastic model airplanes; specifically, warplanes from both world wars.  I loved to put them together and then play with them; having dog-fights with my 3-year older uncle and his planes.  While living on the farm with him, I received my most challenging model for a Christmas gift.  It was a scale model of the USS Constitution; Old Ironsides.  It took me many days to put that one together as it seemed to have some zillion little pieces including two decks of cannons, four masts, helm, rudder, anchors with chains, and miscellaneous rigging.  I was really proud of it when I finished.  I didn’t bother to paint any part of it as I learned that my painting skills were not worth the paint in the bottle from the disaster of painting a green plastic Japanese Zero silver.  It looked more like melting tin than silver aluminum.
          As a youth of 11 to 15, I was sort-of trying to collect little flags of countries, states, or places I visited.  Not much of a collection really.  I had one from Canada (their old-style flag); one from the US of course, and one from the Seattle World’s Fair.  The world fair flag was special as it reminded me of three of the things I saw there; the Space Needle; the “car of the future”; and a clear plastic cylinder containing one million US silver dollars (very impressive).
          Also, during that period, I worked as the attendant at a laundromat owned by my parents.  Because of the world fair experience, I began to collect silver dollars as soon as I began working there.  Unfortunately, that was the same time silver dollars were rapidly disappearing from usage at the casinos at Lake Tahoe, so I was not able to collect very many.
          No more hobbies existed until I discovered computers while attending Sacramento State College in 1966.  This hobby morphed into almost a compulsive-obsessive activity affecting me to this day.
          If reading can be considered a hobby, then I have that as one also, because I am an avid reader of books, magazines, and (because either I’m not perfect or bored a lot) junk-mail.
© 9 Feb 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 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.
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Evil, by Ray S

At the table and waiting for our lunches to arrive, my partner asked, “What is the subject for next week’s Telling Your Story? Seems he is always curious about what literary creations result from those Monday afternoons in the “upper room” at the LGBTQ Center.
“It’s EVIL.”
“Okay, but what is it—the subject’s title I mean?”
“Evil is the subject’s title,” was my response, and I’m not sure what to write about it. I’m guessing there will be moralizing and maybe some Judeo-Christian “prophesizing.” Perhaps some references to how well we as humankind have succeeded in messing each other up and the world in general as well. It is hard to know where to begin, so what else is new?
Our food arrived and we began to eat. After his first bite—he had been quiet up to this point—I guessed deep in thought—he looked me in the eye from across the table and said, “Good and Evil are arbitrary.” It is a matter of one’s judgment. End of the discussion.
With this in mind, what had been a daunting subject was reduced to a minimalist one word. EVIL. One can’t discount it, but as my friend said, it is arbitrary. So, “go figure”!
Webster’s dictionary:  Evil; adj. (OE, yfel) 1. Morally bad or wrong; wicked, 2. Harmful; injurious, 3. Unlucky; disastrous. Noun-wickedness; sin 2. Anything that causes harm, pain, etc. Adverb-evilly.
© 20 Jul 2017 
About the Author 
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Workout, by Phillip Hoyle

I suppose we weren’t quite prepared for the mess although two summers ago Jim and I noticed the Honey Locust tree in the backyard was producing seedpods, a few of them. Last summer there were quite a few more. This summer the tree went crazy with its genetic demand to replicate and has produced hundreds of pods. They are not small, some measuring more than a foot in length and they hang in clusters of two to six. I thought them rather decorative like holiday ornaments. Our neighborhood squirrels showed up for the seasonal party and in the last week of August gleefully began their harvest.
If you know squirrels you realize they are as messy as teenagers, never cleaning up after themselves like the adolescent son in the comic strip Zits. I know about that because my daughter was one messy kid. Still is and so are her children. Luckily, I don’t live nearby so I’m rarely irked by them. But the squirrels live here. They’re as cute as my grandkids and, like them, never give a thought about the consequences of their messes. The tree rats focus only on their preparation for the oncoming winter with its cold temperatures, snows, and otherwise harsh conditions that challenge rodent survival. I don’t blame them, but I do have to contend with what they leave behind. The squirrels live here and interest me. I watch and then grab the broom; my partner just gets mad.
A week ago Saturday, I observed one of the three or four varmints who show up every day. She or he sat on a small branch harvesting. For twenty minutes the critter ate never having to prepare or even reach very far for its meal. She picked a pod, methodically removed the seeds, and dispensed with the rest. A pod landing on the clear plastic awning sounds like a low caliber rifle shot. The first hit was why I knew the squirrel was up there. I leaned back to watch. She chose a pod, worked it like I might an ear of corn except that she’d spit out the pod bites and keep only the seeds. When done in a few minutes or when she loses her grip, the pod falls. Bam. Then she may bite the stem of one of the compound leaves for a taste of something (perhaps flavoring) or strips off a bit of bark (her favorite) and then reaches for another pod. Perhaps due to my attention, she soon jumped from that branch to another and disappeared from sight.
I began sweeping the patio a few days ago. Each day I pick up two or three hundred chewed-on pods and dump them by the shovel full into the compost container. I tend to sweep when the sun gets low and the air begins to cool. The next morning reveals quite a few more pods on the patio, in flowering plants, sticker bushes, fountains, and on the awning. I hope this workout will be done before too many more days although I do get a bit of aerobic exercise and have improved my technique with the broom. But mostly I get a kick out of spotting our furry friends still at work high overhead.
© 11 Sep 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
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Hooves, by Pat Gourley

“That horse has left the barn”
When I hear the word “hooves” in nearly any context I think of horses though many different mammals have hooves. My early days on the farm never involved horses so I may have made the association of hooves with horses after watching Gene Autry and Roy Rogers on 1950’s TV.
 I remember that the often ridiculous and blatantly racist TV westerns seemed to distinguish between native American horse-hoof prints from those of the always white settlers, American lawmen and cavalry by noting whether the horses had been shod or not. Native horses had no shoes whereas those of the white folk always did, a simplistic view since many native tribes were quite adept at acquiring horses from settlers and others who shod their horses. On these TV shows, blacksmiths were often shown dramatically forging by a fire while shaping the shoes and then nailing them onto the horse’s hooves. This really is the extent of my connection with the word “hooves”, though I do vaguely recall older male relatives on occasion playing “horseshoes”. That was a game though that never caught on for me personally.
Another memory of hooves was the apparent use of fake cows hoofs being used by moonshiners wearing them to throw off federal agents chasing them during Prohibition. Not sure exactly how this worked since cows have four feet and humans only two. However, wasting time on thinking about this application of hoof-foot-wear as a means to sneak to one’s moonshine still in the woods will do little to address any real-world problems these days I am afraid.
I can though make a tangential leap from hooves by way of horses and cows to the phrase: “That horse has already left the barn”. This implies of course to the after-the-fact reality that it is too late to do anything about whatever. If one adapts this as a worldview these days there are many things that seem too late to do much about whether we want to admit that reality or not.
Climate change sadly is one reality that it may very well be too late to do much about. That horse seems to have galloped away and kicked the door shut with both of his back hooves. Still, in my more optimistic moments I can’t help but think that if we were to embark on a Manhattan Project to save the planet that salvaging an at least livable, though probably less than desirable, planet might be doable.
Laughably perhaps I can hope that the recent hurricane evacuations for both Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and Rush Limbaugh’s beachfront properties in Florida might turn into teachable moments. That however does not seem likely.
My go-to person around all things climate change and how this is intimately tied to capitalism specifically is Naomi Klein.
I highly recommend her two most recent works: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate and “NO is Not Enough” subtitle “Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning The World We Want”. Here is a link to these works and Naomi in general:
http://www.naomiklein.org/meet-naomi
It isn’t that the Donald Trumps and Rush Limbaugh’s of the world don’t believe in climate change, I actually expect they do. It is that they realize better than many of us that the only effective possibility for addressing this catastrophe is a direct threat to their worldview and way of life. That their greedy accumulation of goods and capital will save them from the resulting hell-scape, in the end, is truly delusional thinking on their part.
I feel the only viable solution being an acceptance of the socialist ethos:  From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
© 19 Oct 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. 
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Purple Rage, by Lewis Thompson

In his brilliant and encyclopedic new book, Why the Right Went Wrong:  Conservatism from Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond, E. J. Dionne, Jr., spells out in exhaustive detail how the Grand Ol’ Party evolved from the Middle American conservatism of Dwight David Eisenhower to the rabid, ranting, rage of Donald Trumps’ avid band of Storm Troopers.  In a nutshell, it happened when the bedrock conservative vision of Barry Goldwater–which had given rise to the hopes of millions of conservative, white working-class people that their superior status among the races was assured—sustained set-back after set-back politically in the decades to follow.  
Not only did Goldwater lose in a landslide resulting in the election of LBJ who ushered in the Voting Rights Act but the next Republican president, Richard M. Nixon turned out to be a stealth liberal whose term ended in utter shame and embarrassment. In his 1978 memoir, RN, Nixon wrote, “I won a majority of every key population group identified by Gallup except the blacks and the Democrats.  Four of those groups—manual workers, Catholics, members of labor union families and people with only grade school educations—had never before been in the Republican camp in all the years since Gallup had begun keeping these records.”  [Why the Right Went Wrong, p.74.]
“Now,” Nixon wrote, “I planned to give expression to the more conservative values and beliefs of the New Majority throughout the country….I intended to revitalize the Republican Party along New Majority lines.”  [ibid.]
The migration of white Southern Democrats to the GOP had been going on since LBJ’s hay-day as president.  But it was Ronald Reagan’s failed 1976 campaign, whereby he “rais[ed] a banner of no pale pastels but bold colors which make it unmistakenly clear where we stand” that launched the “Reagan Revolution” toward which the Party stills displays undying fealty.  It was a banner that Gerald Ford hastened to pick up, as has every GOP president since, though George H. W. Bush dropped it more than once.
His son, George W. Bush, who liked to call himself a “compassionate conservative”, further frustrated those who considered themselves to be “true conservatives”.  His bumbling engagement in two costly wars in southern Asia and the Middle East further alienated his conservative base and the Great Recession which closed out his term in office left many of them in a sad way economically.
In Dionne’s view, this, combined with the ascension of a black man to the Presidency, is what led to the level of vitriol we now see on the faces of the men and women who comprise a typical Donald Trump mob today.  They are the new base of the GOP.  They come from “red states” as well as “blue states”.  (Thus my title for this piece, Purple Rage.)  They see change not as something they can believe in but as something to fear.  It is not stalemate in Washington that they lament but an arc of history that for them is bending toward the Left.  For almost 50 years, they have witnessed one frustration after another coming out of Washington.  The only bright light for them is Ronald Reagan.  He made this country, in their eyes, “great”. 
Now, along comes The Donald, promising to make America great again.  He is unlike any politician they have ever known—brash, tough, taking no crap.  He is rich, he is powerful and he’s bold.  Perhaps they haven’t noticed that his posture on stage, his swagger, suggests no one–as someone on the Bill Maher Show last Friday pointed out—so much as “Il Duce” himself, Benito Mussolini.  I like to think of him as “Donito Trumponi”.
I don’t know how similar the situation in the United States today is to that of Eastern and Southern Europe in the days following World War I and the Great Depression.  But I do believe that the kind of change the world has undergone over the past 60 years can produce a great deal of fear—and the concomitant anger—in those whose core values appear to be steadily eroding.  I have seen their faces in the crowds surrounding Mr. Trump and it frightens me.  I am frightened even though I have made the attempt to understand from where they are coming.  But when I think of what lies in store for America and the rest of the world should Mr. Trump become the most powerful man in that world, my knees start to rattle.  It is not too late to interrupt this eventuality.  I still believe that there are more Americans who welcome progress toward a better life for all than resent it.  But those of us of that mind must follow through on what we know is the only peaceful means available to interrupt that darker vision and that is to vote for the side that still believes that justice for all and animosity for none is the better way.
P.S.   Here’s a quote that I just ran across.  The source is unknown:
“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
© 7 Mar 2016 
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.
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Ice, by Louis Brown

My take on “The Iceman Cometh,” a drama by Eugene O’Neill

The year is 1912 about 10 years after the Boer War. The dramatis personae are all extreme alcoholics and are clinically depressed. They also wax philosophical. The scenes all take place in a bar with a boarding house upstairs, owned by Harry Hope who is also a severe alcoholic and is a doomsday philosopher. His bar and hotel are located in western Greenwich Village (where else?)

In a way, the drinkers are actually rather close to each other – most of them have known each other for years — although they also quarrel frequently and fiercely. In their lengthy exchanges with one another, they try and convince themselves that they are not clinically depressed, that, if only they could work up enough courage, they could/would walk out through the doors of the bar and start a steady job or even develop a career.

Of course, these steady jobs and careers are actually pipe-dreams. Pete Wetjohn is the Dutchman, a veteran of the Boer War (1899-1902). Joe is the one “angry” black man.

As noted above, Harry Hope is the proprietor of the Harry Hope Bar and Hotel and is second in importance as a play character to Theodore Hickman (Hickey).

Some play characters include James Cameron as Jimmy Tomorrow, and there are three prostitutes, Pearl, Margie and Cora. Harry Hope and Hugo are their pimps. All the characters are heavy drinkers (“drunks” or “drunkards”) and party almost constantly in the barroom. Rocky is the Italian night bartender.

All the barroom imbibers, including Harry Hope, proprietor, live for their pipe-dreams. After each pipe-dream tirade, each drinker returns to hitting the bottle, hoping to have a brain-numbing blackout.

The main character, the protagonist, the “hero” of the play is Theodore Hickman (Hickey) who eventually admits he shot his wife Evelyn to death. The reader assumes this was because he had discovered that she was having an affair with the iceman (whence the play’s title).

In a rather verbose but famous soliloquy, pp. 689-702, Hickey tries to make an extremely unconvincing case that he shot his wife to death because he loved her and because he was temporarily insane. Also unconvincing was his argument that he wanted to free Evelyn of her love for him, in which, no matter what he did, including frequenting prostitutes when he was on his hardware salesman journeys, she would always forgive him.

Unforgettable quote (that I still remember from 50 years ago): Harry Hope (note ironic last name), during Hickey’s verbose soliloquy, tells Hickey: “Get it over, you long-winded bastard. You married her [Evelyn], and you caught her cheating with the iceman and you croaked her, and who the hell cares?”

P. 700, Hickey finally admits: “I killed her.” Hickman had forewarned the police, so that, when the moment came, NYC Police Officer Moran was ready and arrested Hickey right after his soliloquy.

Hickey was so guilt-ridden, he expected and welcomed the prospect of suffering capital punishment in the electric chair.

Also in his soliloquy, Hickey preached to his own real inebriated friends that, once you give up your pipe dreams, you will find inner peace and happiness. Of course, Hickey, as preacher, has a credibility problem. The “drunks” interpreted that as meaning suicide was the only answer, and Don Parritt took him up on his correctly or incorrectly interpreted recommendation.

I must say I got the impression that Evelyn and Hickey did not actually live in New York City and P. O. Moran was a NYC police officer so that there might have been an unresolved issue of jurisdiction. This was not resolved in the play.

Another sub-plot revolves around Don Parritt, another of Harry Hope’s roomers in his hotel. Don Parritt had accepted a hefty payment from the Federal government for turning in his own mother who was permanently incarcerated in Federal prison for advocating, as an anarchist, the overthrow of the U. S. government.

Don Parritt also went on and on about how guilty he felt about betraying his own mother for a few silver coins so that, on p. 710, he throws himself out of the window of his rented room.

My reaction to this play was the playwright was matching his play’s themes to the public mood. He wrote the play in 1939 when the public was getting psychologically prepared for World War II, and in 1946 when the play was actually presented to the public, matched their doomsday mood, despite their victory over the Nazi’s. The play was a smashing success.

1 December 2016

About the Author

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

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Reading, by Gillian

I was probably lonely as a child. I had good friends at school but when school was out I had no nearby children to play with, and I had no siblings. But I don’t recall ever feeling lonely as I was always accompanied by friends from books. (I originally wrote ‘from fiction’ but as The Bible was one of the few books available to me, I imagine some might take exception to including The Bible as fiction.)

I say few books were available not because of any failure on the part of my family to love books, but because paper was scarce in post-war Britain and so few books were published. There was a library in the local town but that was a long and infrequent bus ride away.

So my personal book collection contained four Winnie the Pooh books, published long before the war and once belonging to my mother, an old and very tattered family Bible, and a book called Mystery at Witchend by Malcolm Saville, a prolific author of children’s books in Britain in the 1940’s and ’50’s.

So I roamed the countryside accompanied sometimes by the roly poly Pooh and a bouncing Tigger, sometimes by all or some of the five children from Witchend who formed The Lone Pine Club and together had many harmless adventures and solved gentle crimes with never a hint of violence. Indeed the only violence I ever read about was in The Bible. But the Jesus who occasionally accompanied me was the gentle fatherly figure depicted in The Children’s Pictorial Bible which we read in Sunday School. Because of one of the pictures in this book, my friend Jesus always had a lamb draped around his neck like a fat wooly scarf. Looking back I rather suspect that my child mind had confused the picture of Jesus with one of the shepherds greeting His birth, but never mind. As Jesus and I frequently walked through fields dotted with grazing sheep my vision was appropriate enough.

Fast forward a few decades. I am in my early forties and finally coming out to myself, and very shortly after, to others. So. I was homosexual. A lesbian. What did that mean? Obviously I knew the meaning of the words, the definition, but what did it mean? To me, to my life. Where did I go from here? I felt very alone. Who could I talk to about all this? My friends might be very supportive, but what could they tell me? No-one I knew would have any answers.

So of course I turned to books and headed for the library. This was before the advent of internet so I searched through the catalog card files, in their long narrow boxes, for the pertinent categories. Although I was ‘out’ to anyone who mattered, I must confess to peeking furtively over my shoulder as I searched the LESBIAN section, the word seeming about a foot high and glaringly obvious to all who passed by.

There was amazingly little available regarding lesbians at that time, fiction or non-fiction.

What little there was, was awful. I rushed home with the few books on the library shelf, avidly read them, and wondered why I had bothered. Beyond depressing, they were just plain frightening. If this was where I was headed, I was in serious trouble. The Well of Loneliness, by Radcliffe Hall, was my introduction to lesbian fiction; one of the most depressing books I have ever read. The title alone, if you know that is the road you are now taking, is enough to to make you rush back in the closet and throw away the key. This book has become something of ‘classic’ in the lesbian world, in the sense that most of us have read it, though not a ‘classic’ in a positive sense as any mention of it is greeted by groans. I don’t recall now the titles of the other few books, but in all of them the lesbian character seemed destined for a life of abject misery, or suicide, or else they are saved by a return to heterosexuality. My reaction to this introduction to lesbian fiction was, essentially, what the hell have I done??

So, lacking new characters to jump from the pages and accompany me, I thought longingly of my childhood buddies. Somehow I didn’t think they would be much help. Pooh Bear would just sink his chubby head further into his honey pot, Tigger and Kanga are too busy bouncing and hopping to listen. Eeyore would say, as always,

‘It doesn’t matter anyway.’

But it does. It matters very much.

Those kids from the heterogeneous, clean-scrubbed families of Witchend, would look ascanse at each other and say,

‘Oh dear oh dear but this is awfully difficult,’

and probably run home to mother.

I, who do not identify as a Christian, actually did have a little chat with Jesus. And He actually helped. Asking myself the question what would Jesus do, I answered myself, with every confidence, that he would love me and accept me whoever and whatever I am.

Pretty soon, I discovered Beebo’s bookstore in Louisville and discovered that there really were positive portrayals of fictional lesbians. Claimed as the first of these is Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, in which neither of the two women has a nervous breakdown, dies tragically, faces a lonely and desolate future, commits suicide, or returns to being with a male. But by then I no longer had need for fictitious playmates. Women at Beebo’s had introduced me to the life-saving – or at least lesbian-saving – Boulder group TLC, The Lesbian Connection, which in turn introduced me to many wonderful women; real women, who in turn led me to my Beautiful Betsy.

With a real woman like that, who needs fiction?

© November 2017

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.