Month: March 2018

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Setting Up House, by Ray S

I am reminded of an old saying by today’s topic: “A Home Is Where Your Heart Is.”

When I take stock of the stuff I’ve gathered over the years it seems like just so much acquired materialism. Then after closer reflection every bit of the “stuff” sparks a memory. A memory of a friend, a memory of a particular time of your life, time place, or something that says “Hello, you’re home again and this is your place to be.”

Yes, it’s just stuff, some even qualifies as junk, but no matter if it is an accumulation of a lifetime or not more than a few surviving photos, it is what makes a house a home—no matter where or whose house you finally land in. Hang on to some sort of stuff, even if it is only in your heart and mind.

© 12 September 2016

About the Author

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Utopia, by Phillip Hoyle

I find strange that crossword puzzles, including the New York Times, use Paradise as a clue for Eden. I hate to argue with cultural assumptions widely held, even if they come from a great poet like John Milton. But Paradise connects with a mythological afterlife in Christian terms, Eden uses a mythological origins story from the Hebrew tradition. To call Eden Paradise seems way too simple. The old garden was no utopia. The story makes that clear. Besides it’s an origin story for agriculture. The first humans tended the garden.
     The view of Paradise is a poet’s elaboration on a myth of afterlife. Utopia seems another matter altogether. A dreamer’s world of relationship. But both Eden and Paradise caution such perfectionist dreamers that problems will always be present. The need for change continues whatever the vision. 
     The main thing I like in utopian fantasies is the assumption that things in the world could be better. Well, you see, I’m schooled in the liberal tradition of democracies and the like. Yet I have a practical bent (Kansan perhaps) that cautions utopians not to suppose their ability to dream accomplishes what they are dreaming of.
     So this utopian-considering middle aged man left the trials and tribulations of straight life to live in gay life. He did not believe in salvation by gaydom, and it was a good thing he didn’t. He moved into the gayest part of the city, and started living in this new way in a gay environment only to discover gay was no less complicated than being straight. Oh, he and his ex-wife did agree living single was easier than being paired, but finding a perfect companion didn’t occur. There were none in this imagined utopia. And besides, gay men were people with traditions, inequities, and thousands of dreams—many unfounded—of what the gay utopia should be. Living there was as difficult as a career in marriage and church work. The only utopia he found was to get a job, continue to make friends, help neighbors, and laugh a lot. He’d already been doing that.
     Now this is not an essay to down anyone or any community. It is just about the non-existence of utopia except as a literary device of social critique, the theme of which is “things are going to get better” or let’s hope so anyway. 

© 4 February 2108

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 law men and cavalry by noting whether the horses had been shod or not. Native horses had no shoes where as 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 fire while shaping the shoes and then nailing them onto the horses’ 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 world view these days there are many things that seem too late to do much about whether we want to admit that reality of 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 Trump’s 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.

© October 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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Utopia, by Louis Brown

(1) Who was Rosemary Gianuzzi?

(a) She was my close friend who lived in Whitestone, NY, with husband Frank Mershon.

(b)Rosemary is quadriplegic.

(c) She died last Tuesday of sepsis, blood-poisoning.

(d)She was an effective advocate for the rights of the physically disabled. That was her search for Utopia.

(2) The Paramahanda Yogananda Self-Realization Center is located on Garrison Street in Lakewood. These yoga people are searching for Nirvana, their spiritual utopia.

(3) Communists are Utopians. What was the psychology of Ho Chi Minh? Politically and in the area of ideology, he was a French communist. Did he achieve his version of Utopia? No. He died 9-2-1969 of congestive heart failure before the Tet Offensive was completed though that began Jan. 30- 1968.

(4) I heard that the Italian communists are helping and advising the communist rebels in Colombia, South America, that 1/3 of Colombia is run by the Communists, another 1/3 is run by the drug lords and the other 1/3 is run by the right-wing, so-called “pro-American” government.

(5) I also heard that southern Mexico is run by a communist insurgent force called the Chiapas. Is that still true?

(6) Venezuela. Nicolas Maduro claims to be a socialist, a sort of Utopian. He is still in business. Will he be able to maintain what he perceives as his utopia, a socialist Venezuela?

(7) My personal search for Utopia included trips to the Dominican Republic, Charleston, S. C., Nancy, France and more recently Wheat Ridge, CO. A lot of war protesters went to Canada in the 1970’s.

(8) Gay Utopias:

(a) Cherry Grove: a real estate venture that was started in the 1920’s. Although it is basically a summer resort, there turned out to be broader implications. It is or was a true gay and Lesbian Utopia. It consists of a long boardwalk, and grocery deliveries are made with a motorized wagon; but otherwise there are no automobiles or motorcycles. Just Nature and geographical isolation.

(b)Nearby Isle of Pines: an even grander seaside resort which is a utopia of bisexual homeowners.

(c) New Hope, PA, and Provincetown, Massachusetts. Like San Francisco the heterosexual majority is very tolerant of gay people and support our civil rights. The gay businesses are integrated into the whole community. 

Is this Utopia?

© 29 February 2018

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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Tears, by Gillian

I saw my father cry three times.

When I was four or five we had a tiny 6-weeks-old kitten. He was all black, and sadly found a shaggy black rug a cozy place to sleep. My mother, no idea he was there, stepped right on him. We heard the terrible sound of crunching tiny bones. Tears were running down my dad’s face as he scooped up the screaming little body to take it outside and put an end to its suffering.

Neither my mother nor I cried.

When our old dog, for years Dad’s constant companion, died, my dad cried.

Neither my mother nor I cried.

For very different reasons neither of us cried. I, even as a child, somehow was playing a part; not being the real me. So, until the time I came out to myself in my early forties, when I did finally become the real me and no longer was simply an actor on life’s stage, I felt very little real emotion. I do not remember ever crying as a child.

My mother never got over losing two children, ages two and four, before I was born. She shut down. She refused to let herself feel any more personal sorrow. She did cry, quite frequently, but never over anything personal; anything really in her life. The first time I remember her doing this was when horrific newspaper photographs accompanied the stories of Allied troops liberating Hitler’s death camps; and why not, that was plenty to cry about. But she also cried at sad plays on the radio, or newspaper tales of abused animals or injured children – anything not actually personal to her. The few times I hurt myself pretty badly, as children do, neither of us cried.

But my dad had tears in his eyes when he carried a toddler me home from a pretty bad fall.

The third time I saw my dad actually cry was after I had come out. I was the authentic me. I had been back to England for a visit and when the day to leave arrived, Dad drove me to the train. As it pulled out of the station and I leaned out of the window to wave, I saw that he was crying. One of several things over my lifetime that I would rather not have seen, but you cannot unsee things.

I sobbed all the way to London. How much easier my former life spent playing a part had been, feeling emotions at best superficially.

Now, I cry at so many things, tears of sorrow or tears of joy; though tears do not necessarily flow. I find the feelings to be much the same whether in fact I literally cry, or cry just on the inside. I cried at the sight of The White House lit up in rainbow colors after The Supreme Court ruled on behalf of Marriage Equality.

I cried for the loss of Stephen and Randy, of this group, as I cry for every loss of yet another friend. I even cry when friends’ pets die.

I cry for our country which currently feels like one more loss, as I cry for the planet as we know it, which is another.

But I have no regrets for my tears. Having lived for so long without them, I welcome them. I almost revel in them; celebrate them. They serve to remind me, I am really me!

© October 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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Fairy Tales, by Ricky

I know I’m not the only one who noticed how fairy tales are used to teach safety, appreciation, and “standards” of conduct. The brothers Grimm and Aesop are perhaps the best known to my youth. The Grimm’s tales were often rather grim (pun intended) and Aesop is known for the “moral” aspect of his tales.

While the overall stories seem adventurous enough for small children, the overt warnings are clear–all step-mothers are wicked (Cinderella, Hansel & Gretel, Snow White), witches are evil (Snow White, Hansel & Gretel), never take candy (or gingerbread) from strangers (Hansel & Gretel), the woods are dangerous places (Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel & Gretel, Wizard of Oz—which is just a very long fairy tale).

Then just when a child has it all internalized, the contradictions become apparent. Not everyone in the woods is evil or bad (Snow White’s dwarfs, Little Red Riding Hood’s woodsman, Wizard of Oz’s Tin Woodsman). All princes are handsome and heroic (Snow White & Cinderella, but not the singer Prinz). Mothers believe their sons are not very intelligent (Jack and the Beanstalk) nor do they believe in magic. Adults (who trade beans for cows) don’t believe in magic even when they say they do (Jack and the Beanstalk). Children do believe in magic, that’s why the beans did grow.

The fairy tales tell of justice served, if not always measured. Wolves get killed and grandmas rescued (Little Red Riding Hood). Bad little boys get eaten (the Boy Who Cried Wolf). Evil witches are destroyed, some in ovens and some by falling houses (Hansel & Gretel, Wizard of Oz). The ultimate “justice served” is of course the “Happily Ever After” part.

Now the third most important question concerning fairy tales follows. Except for Glenda in the Wizard of Oz, “Why are there no good witches in fairy tales?”

The second most important question is dealing with fairy tales is, “Why are there no wicked step-fathers?” Perhaps because men wrote or told the stories???

I will now answer the most important question. The answer is “Peter Pan.” Why? You ask. Because that is my favorite fairy tale, (Tinkerbelle is a fairy so it counts as a fairy tale). I don’t know why it is my favorite, it just is. Hmmmmmm. Let’s see—Peter Pan, playing with the Lost Boys and a fairy. Hey! Peter Pan is gay!!!

© 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 9-11 terrorist attack.

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

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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Figures, by Ray S

It’s 6 AM, my eyes creep open, throw back the covers, swing my legs out of bed, checking to see if I can stand surely enough to hit the head.

Ah! I made it and as I addressed the American Standard porcelain I wondered what “Figures” of mine would be interesting to my woman- and man-kind enough to avail them with. I began to list some in my mind. To me the word Figures means the visual arts, Michael Angelo’s David, Winged Victory, the Statue of Liberty in NY Harbor, the acropolis, Mona Lisa, Rodin’s sculptures, something you can see, feel, or imagine.

What about numbers? Well, look how our fearless leader spurts out the “thousands, “millions” and “trillions” at the drop of a twitter, yet stumbles on into one of his own cowpies after another. That’s some American First figure.

Numbers, numbers everywhere, if I could only translate them in my mind into something meaningful. Having limited mathematical skills from a bout of childhood dyslexia, I could visualize the measurements of a yardstick, but talk miles or heights of mountains, depths of the oceans, and those figures escaped me. I was and still am proud that I mastered my 3rd grade times tables.

Today, figures like names of places and people escape me. Is it a sign of dementia or just plain forgetfulness? You know! I just can’t figure all of this out, so I’ll simply continue to count the petals on the daisy and not figure how many there are. Life’s too short, or too large; go figure.

© 5 June 2017

About the Author

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Time and Preparation, by Phillip Hoyle

The freedoms of college life and schedule demonstrated for me I would have to learn to manage my time, but I took years to figure out how my personality and preferences affected my ability to finish projects on time. At the beginning of a semester I’d study the prospectus of each class and begin figuring out how to approach papers that would be due. I’d go to the library, my favorite space in any school, where I’d search, research, and check out books. I loved digging into books and finding topics and approaches that made sense to me. Still I was writing and typing the piece right up to the last minute. Once I stayed up all night to do so but decided never to do that again. I needed my sleep! I’d just have to start earlier. Still I’d go to class re-reading the paper and changing spelling and even grammar by hand on the typed sheets. I realized Profs would like that I knew spelling and grammar better than typing. None of them criticized my last minute corrections.

One graduate school history project really captured me. I found a short 17th century German pietist theological treatise by August Hermann Franke titled “The Spiritual Affects” (of course in translation). My related paper compared it with a long book, René Descartes’ Passions of the Soul. I hoped to show Franke was not Cartesian. I was pushed for time so hired a neighbor to type the paper for me. As the deadline approached I gave her my introduction, then my first chapter that covered Franke. I was writing the conclusion while she was typing the second chapter that presented Descartes. I started wondering: maybe the old German was Cartesian. My thesis had asserted that he was not, but now that I was done writing, I thought he probably was and at the last minute concluded he actually was Cartesian. Looking again at the introduction and the conclusion, I decided I could have my typist change just a word or two in the intro, and I hurriedly rewrote the part of the conclusion. Somehow the logic of yes or no was a bit arbitrary to my analysis. But it just made more sense (at least ultimately)—a logical sense—a challenge for me since illogic seems as powerful and as helpful to me as logic. I changed the lines. The professor was amazed at the paper and agreed with my revised thesis, and I learned more about my relationship to time and preparation.

Some years later I was introduced to the Myers Briggs preferences inventory and found that I sat right on the line (zero) between thinker and feeler and on the line between judge and perceiver. Maybe that was why I had problems with those old papers. I wanted to read another book! I took another test that measured one’s preferences under stress. Aha. Under stress I become a thinker and an effective judge. That’s how I now do my work, with plenty of time to play around and a deadline to make me finish it. In the 1990s, when writing for a publishing company, I turned in all writing projects on time or even early. I suspect that is why they kept using me. The preparation was never a problem for me, but the deadline pushed me into being enough of a thinker and judge so as to complete the work.

These days I rely on SAGE Telling Your Story’s Monday 1:30 deadline to get my work done although I am still changing sentences, grammar, and spelling while riding the Zero bus on my way to the meetings.

© 29 January 2018

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.” 

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When I Played Santa Clause, by Pat Gourley

Full disclosure right out of the box here I have never played Santa Claus. I did get to read the “Jesus lines’ in a Catholic grade school play around Easter time my 8th grade year. We were “performing” part of one of the New Testament gospels right up to the crucifixion, which was allowed to happen only off stage in people’s imaginations. I imagine there was a sibling or cousin or classmate or two who would have liked to see me actually get nailed to a cross.

Certainly for anyone who has known me over the past 50 plus years my being selected to read the Jesus lines was irony at it’s finest. As mentioned above it was an 8th grade play and that would have made me 13 or 14 and in the throws of my budding and extremely confused feelings of being somehow profoundly different from most around me.

It seems right for a Grateful Dead reference here especially since it’s been at least a few months since I have included one in my writing. These are a couple of short verses from a 1972 song written by Robert Hunter and several members of the band titled Playin’ in the Band”:

Some folks look for answers
Others look for fights
Some folks up in treetops
Just look to see the sights

But I can tell your future Well, just look what’s in your hand But I can’t stop for nothing I’m just playing in the band

Believe me when I tell you what was in my hand a disturbing amount of the time at age 14 was not the New Testament, but rather a bodily appendage that rhymes with sock.

Christmas with my family when growing up was really a pretty big deal. There was at least tons of excitement if not always a lot of money to shovel Santa’s way for presents. Being the oldest child, not just in my immediate family but also among the many cousins living within close proximity, I was the first I think to get the news that this was all a ruse and that Santa did not exist. He bit the dust along with the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny. It was a series of crushing childhood blows but amazingly I did survive even after indulging for a few years in that sort of magical thinking which certainly was soothing.

In hindsight I wish the myth debunking had extended to most of the religious indoctrination I had received in my first 14 years. Unfortunately it did not and it would take another decade to get that monkey off my back.

The harsh reality that Santa and a whole host of other magical figures and beliefs do not exist does make me long at times for a safer and sweeter time that existed for me before age 6. Though Santa Claus is certainly a specific culturally bound source of joy and solace, and according to Megyn Kelly he is white, I would hope there are similar myths for kids of other cultures, ah the innocence and bliss of early childhood. It does make me very sad though to think how we, and by that I mean the U.S.A, are destroying the wonderful early years of myth for so many in the world today.

It is, I imagine, hard to have wonderful fanciful thoughts when you are dying of cholera in Yemen or shaking in abject terror when U.S. made barrel bombs are landing in Syrian cities destroying any semblance of safety and security to say nothing of your life many times. A bit of understanding as to why we as a country participate in such atrocities in the world at large may be provided in how willingly we all to often treat one another here at home.

The examples are legion of course but a recent one came to my attention the other day in a piece in the Huffington Post. It was the story of a 93-year-old woman in Orlando Florida who was forcibly removed from her senior housing apartment and arrested for not paying rent. Partial rent payments had been made but apparently Scrooge didn’t feel that was adequate for an old woman undoubtedly on a very fixed income. Perhaps Senator Grassley is right and she was frittering away her income on male escorts, booze and movies. After two days in jail and turning 94 she was released to a motel and a local homeless coalition is helping her find housing.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/93-year-old-woman-arrested-rent_us_5a314874e4b091ca26849ee3?ncid=inblnkushpmg00000009

Of course there are also legions of Americans doing right by one another every day in many ways. I can’t help but think though that Santa would say it is not enough.

In an attempt at least to be a bit upbeat at this time of the returning sun we could all engage for a day or two in the old Thick Nhat Hahn meditation. That would involve noting or keeping track of all the small human courtesies one encounters in going about our daily lives. The smiles, nodding acknowledgements, doors held open, the ‘excuse me’s and of course the hugs and kisses that come our way. These often inadvertent and spontaneous loving gestures of humanity almost always far outnumber the nasty ones. So there is hope and maybe we can make Santa proud.

© December 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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Tears, by Louis Brown

The tragic myth of Niobe, etc

(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 October 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.