Month: June 2018

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The Truth Is, by Phillip Hoyle

Sometimes we actually search for the truth. Sometimes we think we have found it. Sometimes we are sure it is eluding us. Sometimes we may confess we know nothing of the truth.

I’m sure I went to college to find out the truth. After working a few years, I went on to graduate school because I needed a change in my career. I went on to graduate seminary because in graduate school I discovered I’d rather work in churches than teach in a college. Churches provided greater opportunity for variety. That’s the truth; I valued variety over depth. Still, I got to teach, to study, to use professional time for research, to write, to make music, to encourage people. I was not interested to present any capital T Truth in sermons that people would try hard to believe. Rather, I sought to challenge people in their own best interest to think, to consider, and to commit themselves to a way of life guided by the wisdom of the ages as understood through a modern take on the worlds of reality and belief. To me that seemed close enough to the truth.

My take on ethics and morality was somehow personal and took into view the wisdom of my teachers beginning with the Bible, a positive view of the human body, an appreciation of diversity in human experience and values, a commitment to democracy, and a fascination with new ideas and consequences. The truth is that my commitments suited my ministry but did not make me an especially successful minister. Luckily, I got to work in larger congregations where I could pursue my greater interests.

So now some non-truth sermonic thoughts:

The Bible has no word for “The Truth.” It does like when people are “true”, but that has to do with how they act toward other people, not their adherence to some kind of doctrine. There are two important concepts, though, that have to be accounted for. First is a metaphor, “the word of God”, second an expression, “the apostolic tradition”. The word of God is the common religious territory of Jewish and Christian concern. It was spoken and eventually written. The writings were in Hebrew (gathered over several hundred years), Koine Greek (telling stories and advice that originated in Aramaic of the first century Common Era) and hopefully all retranslated into many newer languages by reliable witnesses. Christianity, in response to the demands of the non-Christian Emperor Constantine had to agree on their beliefs so they could be certified by the Roman Empire. Writing a creed had some benefit; it stopped some of the persecution from the outside. Sadly it also created the ability for Christians to begin persecuting one another over doctrinal matters, a practice that has not subsided since the third century Common Era. In all, orthodoxy has become a sad song for the church to sing. All the beautiful chants and motets, cantatas and oratorios, organs in chapels, churches, and cathedrals, all the sacred classical and popular instruments of Christians across the world over cannot create enough beauty to atone for the evil Christians have wreaked upon themselves and too often upon the rest of the world. And that’s the truth, but not the only truth.

Of course religions also create a lot of love, benevolence, and community as their members emulate the loving acts of the divine, when they live into the spirit rather than the law of their order. That also is the truth in the view of this sometime preacher. I choose to operate these days as a Christian, no matter what any other Christian may think of my life, behaviors, and beliefs. I chose to follow the simple-to-say although difficult-to-live ethic of Jesus, my religious teacher, who said: “Act toward others as you would have them act toward you. Love your enemies. Do good to those who would despitefully use you. Turn the other cheek. Forgive as you would like to be forgiven. As you have acted towards the simplest, neediest, helpless, unimportant, or despicable people, you have done it to me.” This kind of dynamism could change the world, but so far it has not done so. Few enough have even tried to follow such wisdom. And that’s the truth.

And this is the end of my little preach. Amen.

© 23 April 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.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Escape, by Gillian

The thing is, you can’t. Not completely. You can perhaps escape your current location and situation, your lack of money, to some extent your social status; even your family. But you can never escape who you are. You can perhaps escape some of your character traits, your paranoias and phobias. But you can never escape the basic YOU. You cannot escape being male or female, straight or gay. You cannot escape the color of your skin, or your ethnicity.

I have read that the average male thinks about sex every seven seconds. Whether or not that is true, I wonder if there have ever been studies of how many times a day I think of being a woman, or of being a lesbian. How often does Carlos register that he is Latino, in all circumstances.

Sadly, these frequent acknowledgements of who we are are most often, at least in my case, brought about by negatives; not directed at me, but at a woman, or women, a lesbian or members of the LGBT community. My tribe. You attack members of my tribe, you attack me. Or as Jesus said it, (depending on which translation you choose), ‘whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do also unto me.”

It took me a long time to get over the Orlando nightclub mass shooting; if indeed I have. 49 people died and another 58 were wounded for no other reason than that they were members of, or friends of, the LGBT community. It was ME that man was shooting at; ME that he hated enough to kill.

I saw a news video of blood-lusting ISIS men tossing a man from the rooftop simply because he was gay. I fell with him. It was MY body bursting as it hit the ground like a watermelon fallen from a truck.

The #metoo [Twitter] movement has brought much recent attention to the emotional and physical pain suffered by an appalling number of women in this country. But world-wide the treatment of, and attitude towards, women is frequently so much worse. I feel the pain of every woman forced to marry a man against her wishes, or forced to hide her shameful body in clothes she hates. Crimes against women, rape in particular, are rarely prosecuted or even illegal in so much of the world. In Hungary I met a young woman whose grandmother had been raped many times in World War Two, first by the Germans going East and the by the Russians battling West. Rape has always been a weapon of war; indeed of brutal men everywhere, in all circumstances. I feel for, in every possible sense of the words, those tragic Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boca Haram and forced to live as nothing less than sex slaves to big, angry, violent men.

In February of this year, Rodrigo Duterte, the mass-murdering president of The Philippines, issued a new order. He reportedly told his soldiers to specifically target women rebel fighters, and not to bother killing them but to shoot them in the vagina because then they will be useless as women anyway.* You could write a book, a whole series of books, about that statement. Except that I am way too angry, and it hurts too much even to address those terrible words. What you do to them, you do to me.

Just last month I read about the neo-Nazis in Australia. (Maybe I would sleep better if I went back to my old favorite Winnie the Pooh books!) They sing a delightful ditty, those modern-day Nazis, the refrain of which is, we will get the seventh million yet. Those words sickened me. But I am not Jewish. Yet I know how very much black lives matter, as I hide here in my white skin. And I am forced then to realize that my tribe is not women; not gays and lesbians. I am stuck with feeling the pain of the whole damn world: the entire bloody human race, all the freakin’ people everywhere. And, given the pattern of man’s inhumanity to man, I don’t see the pain going away any time soon.

But I know, somewhere very deep down, that I welcome the pain; the anguish I feel for every hurting member of my huge tribe. It assures me that I am capable, indeed all too capable, of feeling empathy. And for

that I am indeed grateful. Without it I would be some kind of sociopath; pain free perhaps, but we all know that it’s the old story of the yin and the yang, the ups and the downs, and no joy without pain. We see that lack of empathy every day in the Orange Ogre’s behavior. We hear it in his words. And being like him is somewhere I never want to go; someone I never want to be.

* https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/feb/13/philippines-rodrigo-duterte-orders-soldiers-to-shoot-female-rebels-in-the-vagina

© April 2018

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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The Truth Is, by Phillip Hoyle

Sometimes we actually search for the truth. Sometimes we think we have found it. Sometimes we are sure it is eluding us. Sometimes we may confess we know nothing of the truth.

I’m sure I went to college to find out the truth. After working a few years, I went on to graduate school because I needed a change in my career. I went on to graduate seminary because in graduate school I discovered I’d rather work in churches than teach in a college. Churches provided greater opportunity for variety. That’s the truth; I valued variety over depth. Still, I got to teach, to study, to use professional time for research, to write, to make music, to encourage people. I was not interested to present any capital T Truth in sermons that people would try hard to believe. Rather, I sought to challenge people in their own best interest to think, to consider, and to commit themselves to a way of life guided by the wisdom of the ages as understood through a modern take on the worlds of reality and belief. To me that seemed close enough to the truth.

My take on ethics and morality was somehow personal and took into view the wisdom of my teachers beginning with the Bible, a positive view of the human body, an appreciation of diversity in human experience and values, a commitment to democracy, and a fascination with new ideas and consequences. The truth is that my commitments suited my ministry but did not make me an especially successful minister. Luckily, I got to work in larger congregations where I could pursue my greater interests.

So now some non-truth sermonic thoughts:

The Bible has no word for “The Truth.” It does like when people are “true”, but that has to do with how they act toward other people, not their adherence to some kind of doctrine. There are two important concepts, though, that have to be accounted for. First is a metaphor, “the word of God”, second an expression, “the apostolic tradition”. The word of God is the common religious territory of Jewish and Christian concern. It was spoken and eventually written. The writings were in Hebrew (gathered over several hundred years), Koine Greek (telling stories and advice that originated in Aramaic of the first century Common Era) and hopefully all retranslated into many newer languages by reliable witnesses. Christianity, in response to the demands of the non-Christian Emperor Constantine had to agree on their beliefs so they could be certified by the Roman Empire. Writing a creed had some benefit; it stopped some of the persecution from the outside. Sadly it also created the ability for Christians to begin persecuting one another over doctrinal matters, a practice that has not subsided since the third century Common Era. In all, orthodoxy has become a sad song for the church to sing. All the beautiful chants and motets, cantatas and oratorios, organs in chapels, churches, and cathedrals, all the sacred classical and popular instruments of Christians across the world over cannot create enough beauty to atone for the evil Christians have wreaked upon themselves and too often upon the rest of the world. And that’s the truth, but not the only truth.

Of course religions also create a lot of love, benevolence, and community as their members emulate the loving acts of the divine, when they live into the spirit rather than the law of their order. That also is the truth in the view of this sometime preacher. I choose to operate these days as a Christian, no matter what any other Christian may think of my life, behaviors, and beliefs. I chose to follow the simple-to-say although difficult-to-live ethic of Jesus, my religious teacher, who said: “Act toward others as you would have them act toward you. Love your enemies. Do good to those who would despitefully use you. Turn the other cheek. Forgive as you would like to be forgiven. As you have acted towards the simplest, neediest, helpless, unimportant, or despicable people, you have done it to me.” This kind of dynamism could change the world, but so far it has not done so. Few enough have even tried to follow such wisdom. And that’s the truth.

And this is the end of my little preach. Amen.

© 23 April 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.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Bumper Stickers, by Betsy

So, why do people put stickers on their bumpers? The reasons probably vary from person to person. In my opinion most do it for identity reasons. They want the rest of the world to know who they are. Rather than putting a sticker on their chest or bum they put it on their bumper. After all, signs are specifically made for car bumpers and are readily available for purchase or for making a donation or showing support.

Another reason I think some people sport bumper stickers is that they think it will help to bring about that which they are promoting For example, the election of a particular candidate, or a more peaceful society (War is Not the Answer, Life is Short, Pray Hard, Close Guantanamo, better gun control, etc. ) You name it, there is a bumper sticker for just about any cause. But again, I think a cause soon becomes a part of one’s identity. And if you have a bumper sticker promoting your cause, you better stick with it because it ain’t comin’ off any time soon

Traveling in the northwest many years ago I saw this one: an image of an erupting volcano inside a circle with a line through it. I wondered who put this out. Could there be a movement starting dedicated to stopping volcanoes from erupting? Another one I saw in our travels also on the west coast somewhere. This one is even better than the one that addresses the volcano problem: STOP PLATE TECTONICS. That one was hysterical. I assume the people driving those vehicles want to be funny. I don’t suppose they actually think they can stop……..hmmm, I wonder. No, surely they don’t think they can…………….?? Now wouldn’t that be the ultimate in arrogance. I think they just have a good sense of humor.

Personally, I don’t like bumper stickers because they are impossible to take off the bumper once you put it on. There are solvents that will take off the residual adhesive. The down side is they also remove the paint. So I think twice before sticking the thing on there. One day you feel strongly about a cause. The next day you change your mind about whatever you are promoting. Or let’s say you want to change your image. It’s very hard to get rid of the old labels be they in people’s minds and perceptions or on your bumper. I would like some of the adhesive that is used to stick on bumper stickers; that is, I would like to have a supply of it at home. It’s stronger and longer lasting than super glue.

I guess the lesson of the bumper sticker is: be sure who you want to be or at least who you want to appear to be before you take on a label.

© 5 Jan 2015

About the Author

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

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Pride, by Terry Dart

I don’t consider myself a proud person. “Pride goeth before a fall”, at least that was something I absorbed growing up. As a young person I was proud of being part of a championship women’s softball team. That feeling has lasted through to the present.

Pride in being gay? Just being gay was not enough, is not enough. I am proud of how people in the gay community came together when the horrific AIDS troubles began. I worked in the Colorado AIDS Project office a couple days a week, a few hours, answering calls from New Yorkers who’d seen our posters in the subway.

(For a short time Denver CAP was one of a few sources for information.) So much went on: a man called whose house had been burned down because he had AIDS.

I do not know whether the AIDS quilt is being expanded. It occurs to me that maybe it should be part of our parade, or maybe there could be a modern event celebrating GLBTQ history.

When I was a little girl in the late fifties there was a film at the movie theater in Minot, North Dakota, the town where I grew up. The police came and shut it down. I saw this as Mom and I were driving by. When I asked her what “The Killing of Sister George” was about, she did not answer. Out of fear and self protection Gay people most often tried to make themselves invisible, or at least inconspicuous.

There were a few, like writer Truman Capote later on who managed to be out during hostile times when pride in gayness could not be shared or demonstrated in public.

Gay people endured physical attack and endangerment at the hands of bullies, police, and homophobes. I remember Matthew Shepherd. He was often in the CAP office.

I was attending a Rainbow Camp for Gay people at Medicine Bow, near Laramie, Wyoming. My girlfriend and I encountered Matthew’s killers at the Taco Bell or Taco John’s. We had no idea what they would do. They worked there. I recall hearing them discuss “When he gets out of class.” Later my friend recognized the picture of the prisoner in the Denver post. I recalled the coldness in the eyes of the person who waited on us. The murder took place—a pistol whipping with Matthew tied to a fence post. They left him there to die of his wounds. I would like to think this part is over and that we are safe now. But we are not. Proud we may be, but “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

© 25 June 2018

About the Author

I am an artist and writer after having spent the greater part of my career serving variously as a child care counselor, a special needs teacher, a mental health worker with teens and young adults, and a home health care giver for elderly and Alzheimer patients. Now that I am in my senior years I have returned to writing and art, which I have enjoyed throughout my life.

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You Don’t Want to Go There, by Phillip Hoyle

Believe me. I’m wary of “You don’t want to go there,” something that always sounds like unsought advice. It doesn’t take me seriously enough. But there are situations when the warning should be taken seriously. Just what kind of adventure do you think you successfully can confront? What kind invites you? What danger stimulates your imagination?

Some years ago I read a book that intrigued me, The Brothers Bishop, by Bart Yates (Kensington Press, 2005). I was interested to read about the lives of brothers since I had four sisters and no brothers. Here’s something that got my attention, a kind of “You don’t want to go there” incident. Tommy and Nathan the brothers had a rough upbringing. Tommy was the golden child, Nathan the control freak. Some years later Tommy returns for a summer break at the family cabin. I wondered why did Tommy dove into the ocean at a dangerous spot without his brother Nathan trying to stop him. There had been an argument, a warning, and a “no.” But no fight, no restraint. I reasoned perhaps Tommy had never been restrained. Perhaps his brother would have done the same thing and so wouldn’t interfere. Perhaps he believed Tommy, like usual, would luck out. In the scene, both brothers were deeply upset. Neither was thinking sanely. But should someone have said, “You don’t want to go there”? So much of the strength of the story comes from not having everything explained. The writer asked the reader to think.

I thought about how I didn’t have a brother story of my own, but we neighborhood boys often challenged each other to do daring, sometimes stupid feats. I did many of them but, like a real young queer in training, refused to jump off the neighbor’s garage roof. Not me. These childhood experiences did help me identify with the brothers in Yate’s book.

To some people, “You don’t want to go there,” seems an invitation to fun, even if the place will cause trouble. While I don’t like the phrase, I am not one of those adventuresome people except when “there” stands for a word choice or a concept that is under scrutiny or an argument. I’m always looking for the exception in almost every discussion and sometimes wonder if this un-recommended place will provide me the perspective I am searching for. I did that sort of thing in college and graduate school papers hoping that my writing might win the day even if the concepts did not.

I am not a daredevil but I go to places in my mind that seem quite bizarre. I have memories of intense experiences that many would have wasted their breath warning me against. Life does need daring. But just because someone says, “You don’t want to go there,” doesn’t mean you have to do it or have to pass it up.

© 30 April 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.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Epiphanies and Little Things Mean a Lot, by Ricky

Epiphanies are generally associated with religious experiences, but they can occur over nearly any subject, topic, or event. It is not an important distinction whether or not the Divine brings on that flash of insight, or our subconscious mind finally “connects-all-the-dots.” That is to say, the distinction may be important to someone’s world-view and not to someone else’s. The point here is that nearly everyone has experienced an epiphany or flash of insight at some time in their life, from whatever cause.

I once thought that epiphanies were all major events or flashes of insight which would lead a person to change their entire future life, as when Jesus appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus or when the Founding Fathers banded together to form our nation. I have had my share of major epiphanies from life changing to mundane during my time on earth. The most recent I would call a major one, but it only came to me at this point in my life when it is nearly too late to recover from neglecting the whole point, lesson, or message of the epiphany. The major flash of insight, revelation, or brain-connecting-the-dots event was how the little things mean a lot more than we generally believe – until later in life when their influence or impact becomes crystal clear.

In the past couple of weeks, I had my epiphany of the little things in my life that had major impacts over time and affect me until today and beyond. This epiphany was not possible for me to have, understand, and believe until I reached the age where it all makes sense due to hindsight.

The first one I remember is when I received that major spanking when I was 4 or 5 of which I have written about before. That was the time my father spanked me for “playing with my penis” instead of being “disobedient” for not getting dressed. A small mistake on his part, just a little thing, but the result had a tremendous impact on my future. I learned from that experience to keep secrets about anything, but especially penis and nudity related. I don’t fault my parents for this over reaction. They had no idea I was mildly ADD and easily distracted, which was why I wasn’t getting dressed in the first place. At that age, if not before, most kids explore their bodies and that spanking was an over reaction to natural and innocent curiosity and not precocious sexual lust.

The next small thing was being sent to live with my grandparents while my parents went through the divorce process totally unknown to me. Now my feelings at the time were excited when I first went, but at the end of the first summer, I was ready to go home. Somehow, my mother talked me into staying to go to school there. That did not make me happy, but I liked the Cambridge public school better than the Hawthorne Christian School I had been attending in California. The problem occurred when 1½ years later my father arrived during the last week of Christmas vacation. His mistake was to wait until the night before he left before telling me about the divorce. He should have told me immediately when he arrived, so we could grieve together. It was a little thing, but with major consequences. As a result, for the next 53 years I was emotionally incomplete as my brain shut off all negative physical sensations and feelings regarding separations and loss in order to stop my physical and mental pain.

Other little epiphanies I have experienced are not really life changing but more like signposts along the way indicating the right road or providing guidance on current situations. An example of one of these types is when visiting the hospital, the daughter of the man who was ill was talking to me and another couple in the room. Suddenly, I “knew” that she was emotionally charged and needed to vent. So, I held out my arms and she “fell” into them and cried on my shoulder while I hugged her. It was just a small thing, but I remember it as a “it-made-me-happy to comfort-another” thing.

Life is not normally made up of major epiphanies, unless one is a legitimate prophet of the Divine or otherwise visionary. Rather, life is composed of little ordinary events, which can have minor or great impact on our futures. More examples are “Look mommy, I can read this”; “The sunset is beautiful”; “Daddy likes to take me bowling”; “Mommy loves the cards I send her”; “My parents came to watch all my games”; Or “I’m not rich, but I live better than most of the world’s population.”

So, my late in life epiphany is that all the small things in my life taken as a whole from the perspective of senior status, all point to one conclusion, I am loved. Loved by many people and most importantly loved by the Divine. It is still not too late to spread some of that love around to those who really need to feel it. Who knows, maybe my small random acts of kindness will lead to someone else’s epiphany.

© August 2012

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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Utopia, by Pat Gourley

The first thing that comes to my mind with the word Utopia is the Chinese café in San Francisco’s Chinatown located at 139 Waverly Place aptly named the Utopia Café. I stumbled on this sometime in the early 1990’s I believe though I could not find a date when it was first opened as a café despite a rather extensive Google search. I am quite certain though that I was there at least once with my partner David who died in 1995 and many times since. Any trip to OZ, and there have been many, almost always entails a trip to this eatery.

David and I may have happened on Waverly Alley trying to escape the crowds on Grant Street the main tourist drag through Chinatown. We were probably cruising through Chinatown one day killing a few hours before we headed south in our rental car for a Grateful Dead show down the peninsula in Mountainview at the Shoreline amphitheater.

Several of Chinatown’s most interesting alleys are just to the west of Grant, between Stockton and Grant. Or perhaps we ended up in Waverly Alley following a tip gleaned from Amy Tan’s wonderful novel The Joy Luck Club that was published in 1989.

The Joy Luck Club is the story of four Chinese immigrant mothers and their four American born daughters and their often-complex relationships entailing the dynamic push and pull between old world China and west coast America. The mothers formed their group and called themselves the Joy Luck Club in 1949 and began meeting at the First Chinese Baptist Church located at 15 Waverly Alley. They obviously met for camaraderie and emotional support but also for conversation, to eat good food and play Mahjong. All activities relished by concerned immigrant mothers raising daughters in post WWII California.

A simplistic description of Mahjong would be to think of dominoes and that would not be the pizza. Playing for money was often involved. Many of us Sage folk may know what dominoes are all about and may have actually played. My father had a set and I think they were made of bone and not Ivory, at least I hope that was the case. Though growing up in conservative rural Indiana in the 1950’s concern for African elephants or artic walrus would never have crossed my mind.

Mahjong was also popular particularly post World War II among Jewish American women. Both Jewish and Chinese women were seen as using the game as a vehicle for bonding and community building. Similar I suppose to men playing poker but without I assume the beer and cigars and I’ll bet the food was considerably better than you would find at most card games.

When walking up from the south on Waverly Alley on one’s way to the Utopia Café you will pass the Tin How Temple. It is the oldest Taoist temple in San Francisco. It is located 3 flights up from the street. The temple provides a sensory burst of stimulation in the form of many colorful displays of tribute to Mazu the Chinese Goddess of Heaven all enveloped in shrouds of pungent incense. On the several visits I have made to the shrine it seems to most often be tended by elderly Chinese women who smile pleasantly especially when you drop a dollar or two into the donation box, with no words spoken. They do seem though to exude the three treasures of Taoism: compassion, frugality and humility.

It took me several trips up Waverly over the years to correctly identify the clicking sound I would hear often in conjunction with animated Chinese dialects I certainly could not identify. It turns out the clicking sound, often emanating from open basement doors, was the sound of clicking Mahjong tiles.

On my most recent trip to San Francisco, the last two weeks of February, I again made my pilgrimage to the Utopia Café; sadly no clicking Mahjong tiles were heard. It seems to have changed hands and undergone a modest remodel in the last year or so but the menu changes, primarily to a variety of noodle dishes, did not disappoint. Per usual I was the only non-Chinese person in the restaurant and had to wait a bit for a table to open. Shortly after being seated at the two-person table a young handsome Asian man was seated across from me. Other than quiet nods we did not speak throughout the meal. He actually never looked up from his phone except very briefly even when scooping up steaming noodles. As he was getting ready to leave, having eaten much faster than I and being more adept at chop sticks and spoon I noticed a Bronco decal a on the back of his phone. I was left to ponder whether or not he was from Denver and maybe visiting family. However seeing him in the Utopia Café was further validation that this was a restaurant worthy of even out of town Chinese clientele.

Though it would be somewhat over the top to describe this modest café and its simple fare as ideal perfection it has on several occasions come pretty darn close. A warm bowl of noodles nestled in a tasty broth and topped with greens served with hot jasmine tea on a cold rainy San Francisco winter day sounds pretty Utopian to me.

© March 2018

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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Ah, springtime! by Nicholas

I love winter. I love putting the gardens to bed before the freeze sets in. I like the bracing cold and bundling up with scarves and gloves. I love a snowy night huddling up under a blanket to read. I love seeing the snow in the trees. I like the heightened sense of distinction of warm shelter inside and cold outside. I even like the darkness and sleeping in.

But come April, whether the winter has been heavy or light or, like this year, absent, I am ready to throw off all that and welcome the first signs of spring. Whether or not there was much of a freeze, there is always a warm thaw. It feels so good to emerge into the sunshine of a warm day. Each morning gets lighter a little earlier and each evening the light stays a little longer. Soon, I will be awakened around dawn by the birds singing to let the whole neighborhood know that they’re here looking for love in the springtime.
It’s wonderful to see the return of colors in the first blooms—the yellow forsythia always announces the coming of spring in my yard by early March. Then comes the blue of the crocus, the daffodils, the red, yellow, and orange tulips, the white crabapple and, most glorious of all, the purple/magenta of the redbud trees. Already the bees are showing up looking for food in the early blooms.

Because seasons transition gradually and at their own pace, the spring colors can find themselves wearing a topping of winter white. Spring snow has its own beauty—at least when it is not crushing the new flowers with its weight. The other morning, the yellow forsythia seemed even brighter with a white edge on the blooms.

Now it feels great to be outside without battling the elements. It is time to get outside. Time for no jacket and scarf. Of course, other elements present problems—like wind. One day I got out for a bike ride—out from my basement spinning—and was lashed with gusts of wind. Felt good to get outside but my eyes were smarting from the wind and dust.

I am amazed at how quickly the dead brown grass turned a brilliant green. Just a little moisture from snow and rain is all it took.

Jamie and I just finished aerating the little bit of lawn we have— most of our yard is planted in shrubs and perennials and not grass. Next, I will begin to turn over the garden plot to get it ready for planting.

Spring is when I rediscover my garden. Start pulling weeds— weeds always seem to get a jump start on all other plants. I start to uncover the garden from its winter mulch or just junk accumulated or blown into place by the winter wind. I see what has survived and what needs help. The rosemary bush seems to have survived another winter although it needs a good pruning of the winter kill branches. The sage is sprouting new leaves and the tarragon is starting to grow again. Best of all, the arugula and the chives can be picked for delicious spring salads. We are already eating from our backyard. And of course, I start to envision where the new garden will be planted so I will have summer tomatoes and squash and basil and eggplant.

By June, I will be looking forward to the dry heat and the easy living of summer. And all the fresh fruits and vegetables. And then I will look forward again to the cool relief of autumn which will lead again into the cold of winter and the return indoors. But now it is spring and time to watch the earth come back to life.

© 15 April 2018 

About the Author

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

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The Drain, by Gillian

Searching Google, as I so often do, for inspiration on this topic, I was surprised to see one of the first things to come up was a pop music group of some unknown (to me, at least) variety called The Drain. This has happened amazingly often with our topics. There are apparently, for example, groups called Magic, Guilty Pleasures, Culture Shock and I Did It My Way, all topics on which we have written. There is also one called Horseshoes and Hand Grenades. We have only written on the first part of that, so maybe we should tackle Hand Grenades one of these days.

Tricky things, drains. In the northern hemisphere liquid rotates clockwise as it disappears down a drain; in the southern hemisphere it circles in a counterclockwise motion. We all know that this is simply a function of the rotation of the earth, and yet everyone seems to be fascinated by this one fact of life. Anyone, going for the first time to the other hemisphere, just can’t wait to gaze raptly into the bathroom sink to see the water draining in that unaccustomed direction. Yes, it suckered me too, though at the moment of truth, all I could come up with was ‘huh!’

So; tricky things, drains. Like many things, we only recognize the true value of them when they cease to do their job. They are designed to consume material, but on occasion they refuse , or even regurgitate, instead. We’ve all seen times in Denver when the storm drains, blocked by fallen autumn leaves or overwhelmed by the occasional gully-washer downpour, simply refuse to digest the requisite amount of water and leave it to flood intersections and underpasses, and many people say much more than, ‘huh!’

There is little more nauseating then the indescribably disgusting gray goo which has to be extricated from the bend in the pipe when the sink drain refuses to absorb anything further.

Did that stuff really come from me? Huh! The horrors from which our drains habitually save us!

At the time that I left the U.K. in the early ’60’s, the whole country was suffering from what was termed a ‘brain drain’ – so many with higher education left for other countries as Britain offered so few opportunities. One arm of that drain, however, has always run the other way. In the Britain of my youth it seemed as if almost every doctor was from India, and on once again checking with Google, I find that the situation has not much changed. Those from India still provide the largest number of non-British-born doctors and health professionals in Britain, and, in fact, the National Health Service is currently actively recruiting doctors from India. The current fear, however, is that since the Brexit vote with it’s associated real or imagined rise in xenophobia, doctors from India and indeed any other country will be unwilling to commit themselves to a move to the U.K. With a mere 37% of all doctors in Britain currently being British-born white, this does not bode well. Tricky things, drains.

Since the recent U.S. election, many of the same concerns are being voiced here, where more than 25% of all doctors are foreign-born, again, incidentally, with an incredible 10% of all our doctors being from India. There are roughly a million foreign students in our universities, many of whom will remain to contribute greatly to the country. But with the new atmosphere of just about every kind of ism and phobia imaginable, will students from other countries still want to come? Will they feel safe? I can only suppose probably not. This would almost certainly be true of many other potential immigrants except for those sad souls driven by an even greater fear of life in their place of origin. Trump talks of limiting immigration and deporting many of those already here, but if he reverses the flow of that drain, blocking the incoming and increasing the outgoing, our country will be sadly poorer for it. Tricky things, drains.

Now our future leader talks of ‘draining’ the swamp of the Washington establishment – something many of us would not find discouraging. Cleaning up the quagmire of dark money and general corruption and lies, to replace it with clean fresh honest air, who would argue? Sadly, any vision we might have had of an outward-flowing drain was swiftly dispelled. No, the drain flows in.

And with it it brings a new level of homophobia, racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism the likes of which most of us never saw coming in our worst nightmares. But we can stop the flow. We can reverse it. With constant vigilance, not to mention a lot of hard work, we can do it. Just don’t forget, Donald – tricky things, drains.

© November 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.