Author: jnelson

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Alas, Poor Memory, by Gillian

No, I haven’t really lost
my memory in the true sense, and I have enough friends who have that I know
it’s nothing to joke about. But in another sense, I have, because I don’t know
where it’s coming from these days. It makes little sense to me. Why does it
feed me endless meaningless trivia and deny me access to the things that really
matter?
Which is it you need most
in everyday conversation, nouns or verbs? And which is it that my memory blocks
my path to over and again? And I know it’s not just my memory but that of many
older people. Our conversations are scattered with whatnots and thingamajigs.
But who is ever at a loss for those verbs?
“Shall we walk or
drive to Whatsit’s after the thingy,” I say.
Have you ever heard
anyone say, “Shall we whatever or thingamy to Susan’s after the
reception”?
No! It’s always the nouns
that go.
Whenever in my life I was
to visit a country where I didn’t speak the language, which I’m sad to say is
most, I made it a point to learn 50 words in that language. It’s simply amazing
how far you can get on fifty basic common words. Did I learn a whole lot of
verbs? No. Maybe to be and to go. And of course please and thank you, yes and
no. Other than that it was nouns; the real essentials. Needless to say my mean
little memory will no longer turn loose most of them in any language, though I
can still sometimes conjugate a few verbs. It’s as if the path to nouns has
been overused to the point of challenging travel. The road to verbs, though,
less travelled as it is, offers easy access.
My memory lets me quote
my mother’s endless proverbs and sayings without a hitch; don’t run before you
can walk, pride comes before a fall, every cloud has a silver lining, we’ll
cross that bridge when we come to it, many a true word is spoken in jest. I
don’t remember ever asking myself, after all these years,
“What was it my
mother used to say about …. ?”
No, they all spring
uninvited to my consciousness and even to my lips. But can I remember what
someone earlier today asked me to tell Betsy? Highly unlikely! Why does my
memory so insist on locking away anything which actually matters, while
releasing this endless stream of the inconsequential?
I can quote endless
poetry I learned in school. Many people know the lines from Tennyson about
loving and losing but I am one of probably very few who know the two lines
before it, so the whole verse reads –
I
hold it true what e’er befall,
I
feel it when I suffer most,
Tis
better to have loved and lost
Than
never to have loved at all.
And of course he wrote
the entire In Memoriam poem, over a seventeen-year period, to another
man, but that’s another story, and another useless one my brain lets me use any
time I want – which I must say is infrequently.
Worse yet, my memory is a
fountain of the totally ridiculous. For example, with apologies to it’s
originator, Virginia Hamilton, the following –
What
a wonderful bird the frog are.
When
he sit he stand almost
When
he stand he sit almost.
He
ain’t got no tail hardly.
When
he sit he sit on what he ain’t got almost.
I can remember that with
no effort, yet when I chance upon an old friend in the grocery store I cannot
work enough magic to come up with her name. Go figure! Ah well, I guess we all
have to work with what we have. So if you come over to chat to me and, rather
than acknowledging you by name, I greet you with,
“What a wonderful
bird the frog are,” you’ll know I’m just making the best of what I’ve got.
© 15 Jun 2016 
About the Author  

 I
was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to
the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the
Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised
four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting
myself as a lesbian. I have been with
my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

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Forgiveness, by Gail Klock

I have at times been hurt by people I loved or complete
strangers and I hated the feelings it left inside of me; sadness, anger, desperation.
These feelings prohibited me from enjoying life and made the pain last longer.
I know from past experiences once I’m am able to forgive the offend or I no longer
feel like the victim and he/she no longer has control of my life, or so it
feels at the time, even though this is an allusion, they never really did.
In order to move on I try to understand the other person’s
motives and once I do I generally realize these motives are based on
experiences I was not even a part of.  For example, when my mom abandoned me as a
child it hurt me a great deal and had a lasting impact on my life. But after
many years of counseling and maturing I realized the pain I felt was real, but
not directed at me for anything I had done or for who I was- good or bad. My
mom was not trying to hurt me; in fact, she was just trying to make it through
each day living with her own unbearable pain of losing a child.
I really don’t believe people want to hurt others, it would
be a lousy motivator. I don’t think anyone enters a relationship thinking, “I
really want my lover to think the world of me, to cherish me, and put me before
all others, then I can lower the boom and hurt them. In fact, I’m already
thinking of the lyrics to Paul Simon’s “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover”, I
think I’ll use number 23 this time!  However,
at the onset of a painful experience it is really hard for me to lift myself
out of the victim role. Of course it’s all about me. I wasn’t perfect. What
could I have done differently? Why didn’t I see the red flags? Or what does it
mean, “People change, it’s not about you, I just need to make changes for
myself,” The tape in my head plays on and on in the moment and it’s hard to
step back and away from the pain.
The ease of letting go of this pain and bitterness seems to
be related to the relationship and the intention of the offensive action. In
one situation I was very angry and hurt when a thief stole all my camping gear
which I was airing out in my back yard. 
I felt violated by the senselessness of this act. I think in this
instance my ability to forgive was in reality the passing of time. It’s hard to
forgive someone when you don’t know who they are. I was angry too because I had
very little money and I had worked hard for these items which had provided me
with an inexpensive form of entertainment.
Of course as a lesbian I have felt the hurt of those who
think of me as an evil and vile person. I don’t know that I need to forgive
them anymore, I’ve moved on to not believing a word they utter. I’d be willing
to match my positive attributes with theirs any day and I already have a head
start because I don’t try to run their life’s just because of their sexual
preference. I doubt they even know when they made their choices to be straight.
I really think it sucks to be so full of hatred towards others. When does it
leave time to enjoy this wonderful world, to see all the beauty around us. It
would be so draining.
There is one other aspect of forgiveness which I ponder. I
think when a person hurts you and apologizes for their action it takes most of
the sting out of the situation and it is much easier to forgive.
For now, I just hope if I get hurt in the future, I can
remember I’m not the center of the universe. I need to let go of the hurt
feelings to allow myself to move on. I don’t hurt others on purpose and I really
don’t think others do either.
© 9 Mar
2015
 
About the Author 

I grew up in Pueblo, CO with my two brothers and parents.
Upon completion of high school I attended Colorado State University majoring in
Physical Education. My first teaching job was at a high school in Madison,
Wisconsin. After three years of teaching I moved to North Carolina to attend
graduate school at UNC-Greensboro. After obtaining my MSPE I coached
basketball, volleyball, and softball at the college level starting with Wake
Forest University and moving on to Springfield College, Brown University, and
Colorado School of Mines.
While coaching at Mines my long term partner and I had two
daughters through artificial insemination. Due to the time away from home
required by coaching I resigned from this position and got my elementary education
certification. I taught in the gifted/talented program in Jefferson County
Schools for ten years. As a retiree I enjoy helping take care of my
granddaughter, playing senior basketball, writing/listening to stories in the
storytelling group, gardening, reading, and attending OLOC and other GLBT
organizations.
As a retiree I enjoy helping take care of my granddaughter,
playing senior basketball, writing/listening to stories in the storytelling
group, gardening, reading, and attending OLOC and other GLBT organizations.
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Moving, by Carol White

While thinking about the word “Moving” I find myself drawn to
emotionally moving experiences more than physically moving from city to
city.  One of the most moving experiences
of my life came about in 1986.  Here are
some of the events leading up to it:
In 1980 I was living in Denver, Colorado.  February of that year was the initial meeting
of PFLAG Denver that I attended and the first meeting of several parents who
were soon thereafter to become dear friends. 
I have already written a story for this group about the beginnings of
PFLAG and the events in 1984 that led to the formation of the 140-voice PFLAG
Festival Chorus that sang for the national convention in Denver, which was the
first time that I had conducted in 16 years since being fired from the church.
Today’s story is about the women singing in that chorus who
wanted to continue to sing together, and became the Denver Women’s Chorus.  Immediately following the PFLAG Festival
Chorus, the 70 women decided to continue rehearsing at St. Paul’s UMC in
Capitol Hill.  Naturally, the very first
performance of this new DWC was at a PFLAG meeting in December with Christmas
songs.
Then came the big night — our very first concert as a women’s
chorus, which we held at North High School auditorium.  This was exciting stuff!
We got Jane Vennard to be our MC.  Jane is the sister of Dottie Lamm, who was
married to the Governor of Colorado, Dick Lamm. 
Jane had been married to a gay man at one time, so she was a member of
PFLAG, and we had an “in” at the governor’s mansion, which was very neat.
Leading up to this concert, one of the things that we talked
about in rehearsals was that when you sing, you are not to pronounce the letter
“R” in a song.  For instance, the word
“mother” would be “mothuh” and “father” would be “fathuh”, etc, etc.
Well, Judith and I went to Laguna Beach, California, to visit
Bishop Mel Wheatley and his wife Lucile for a few days.  We stayed at a hotel right on the ocean and
watched the seagulls flying by.  When we
got back to rehearsal, I told the chorus that one of the seagulls flying by was
singing, “I enjoy being a gull.”  Would
you believe that we actually sang that song at that North High concert, and one
of the chorus members dressed up all frilly and danced while we were singing
it.  It was actually tongue in cheek.

Anyway, after the concert we were so high and so excited that
we had a big cast party over at the home of one of the singers whose name was
Susan.  Jane Vennard was dancing on the
piano bench.  We were all dancing so much
that the old North Denver house was actually shaking, and I remember forming a
long line and dancing out into the yard singing “I Heard It Through the
Grapevine.”
Later came the Paramount Theater concert with Barbra Higbie
as the special guest.  One of Judith’s
friends brought a straight male friend with him, and of course, this was the
first gay concert he had ever been to, and he asked John, “Why do they sing?”
We tried to answer that question first by saying that it’s
the title of a Holly Near song, “We are singing for our lives.”  Then Judith reminded me of this saying:  “A bird does not sing because it has an
answer.  It sings because it has a
song.”  And I said that gay and lesbian
people have always had a song, but the tragedy of it is we have never been able
to sing it before, and the beauty of it is that now we can!
At the end of that Paramount concert Judith and I got to ride
to the cast party at the Hilton Hotel downtown in one of those horse-drawn
carriages with Barbara Higbie and her partner. 
That was a blast.
Then came our first GALA Choruses Festival in
Minneapolis!  The Gay and Lesbian
Association of Choruses had formed a few years earlier from its beginnings in
San Francisco to several gay men’s choruses around the country, and they had
had their first choral festival in New York City.  This was their second time to get together to
sing.  We were the only women’s chorus
there, along with 16 gay men’s choruses. 
We boarded the plane in Denver, and as we attained cruising
altitude at about 30,000 feet, Judith and I went up and down the aisle passing
out a quote for each member to keep.  It
read like this:  “Years from now, when
you are old and grey, you will be able to look back and say that ONCE in your
life you gave EVERYTHING you had for justice.”
Soon we were on the stage at Orchestra Hall in downtown
Minneapolis performing to a sold-out crowd, when Suzanne Pierson was singing a
solo on a song that she had written, “No Child of Mine,” and she forgot the
words.  The chorus came in with her and
saved her.  So while our performance as a
chorus may not have been perfect, still, afterwards when we walked into a
restaurant on the downtown mall in Minneapolis, we would get a standing ovation
from the men singers who were sitting at tables in that restaurant, and they
would say, “Oh, the Brahms, Oh, the Brahms.” 
They evidently loved the Brahms numbers that we sang.  And they really appreciated our being there.
But the final night in Minneapolis was the piece de
resistance.  We were on stage with all of
the men’s choruses, about 1,000 singers as I remember, and there was an
orchestra on the floor in front of the stage and they had hired Philip Brunelle
to conduct and we were singing a commissioned work by John David Earnest called
“Jubilation.”  Woah!  Unbelievable highlight!
After the concert, some of the members were so excited that
they actually JUMPED off the risers rather than stepping down.  And then we ALL went out into the plaza
outside the hall and, as one member later said, we “sang to the heavens what
the hall would not contain.”  Close to
1,000 of us standing there singing and singing and singing, every song we could
think of. 
That was moving!  That was the highlight
of my life to that time.  And most of us
returned to work in Denver and could not even tell people where we had been
because we were still not out, for fear of losing our jobs and the support of
our families and friends. 
Times have changed in the last 30 years.  Judith and I are retired and out to everyone
now.  The Denver Women’s Chorus is still
singing.  The Gay and Lesbian Association
of Choruses has produced a Festival every three or four years since then, from
Seattle to Denver to Tampa to San Jose to Montreal and others, and finally back
to Denver in 2012.  In fact, they were so
impressed with the facilities here at the DCPA 
that they are coming back in 2016 so that they can use Boetcher, Temple
Buell, and Ellie Caulkins Opera House all at the same time for simultaneous concerts
all day and all evening for four days in a row over the July 4 holiday in our
great city. 
The number of choruses participating actually doubled at each
festival from 16 to 32 to 67 to 120, and has finally leveled out at over 190
choruses around the world with over 10,000 singers. 
I am registered as a single delegate for the July 2016
festival, and if you like choral music, you can go to their website and
register too.  IT WILL BE A MOVING
EXPERIENCE! 
©
2 Nov 2015 
About the Author 
I was born in Louisiana in
1939, went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas from 1957 through 1963,
with majors in sacred music and choral conducting, was a minister of music for
a large Methodist church in Houston for four years, and was fired for being gay
in 1967.  After five years of searching,
I settled in Denver and spent 30 years here as a freelance court reporter.  From 1980 forward I have been involved with
PFLAG Denver, and started and conducted four GLBT choruses:  the PFLAG Festival Chorus, the Denver Women’s
Chorus, the Celebration ’90 Festival Chorus for the Gay Games in Vancouver, and
Harmony.  I am enjoying my 11-year
retirement with my life partner of 32 years, Judith Nelson, riding our bikes, going
to concerts, and writing stories for the great SAGE group.
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We Shall Never Know, by Carlos

A
poet much wiser than I recognized that journeys never undertaken and roads
never traversed, nonetheless have the power to burden. I find myself looking
back over the decades, forever ambivalent about those uncharted journeys. And
although I celebrate that I did take a less traveled road, which, in fact, made
a difference, a wonderful difference, the shadowy vignettes of a past unlived
on occasion haunt me like the dripping of a faucet on a silent night.
He
and I never danced; we never touched; we never spoke of the drives and passions
that might have lubricated our lives. It was a different time, a different
place. It was a time when to unsheathe our souls to judgmental eyes could have
thwarted careers, made futures bleak, and shattered lives like frost descending
upon tender blades of green grass. And though our connection consisted of two
twirl-a-cups gyrating around a circular orb, I have come to believe that had we
lived in a freer world, a more inclusive one, he and I might have given light
to secrets destined to remain forever occulted, held hands on blustery winter
nights, and charted voyages that alas never sailed away. In retrospect he was
my first infatuation, the first man with whom I dared to dream that somewhere,
someplace we could make our peace. We could have been oblivious to a sanctimonious
Brokeback Mountain world beset on
sacrificing us, for no other reason than our souls quested after forbidden
dreams. But we never danced; we never touched; we never found the courage to
challenge the consequences of reaching out to thwart ingrained fears. Thus, we
never transformed hope into possibilities.
We
were so different. He was passionate about Ché Guevara and César Chávez, about
the injustices of Chilean tyrants and brutish money changers. I was passionate
about my intangible world. How often I would find myself walking alone,
surrounded by the voices of poets and dreamers, philosophers and stargazers.
While immersed in my rhymes and rhythms of far-off melodies, I would focus on the
intricate cobwebbed anatomy of elm leaves, on the oceans mirrored within raindrops,
on the starry convolution of heavens above. Thus, in those early years, we trekked
in diametrically different worlds. We allowed our fears of the unknown, of
ourselves, to silence what in retrospect I now know nestled within us. We could
have, we should have, but we never did speak of our cryptic secrets, and time,
like a shape-shifting cloud flitted out of our reach.
Over
the years, I finished my studies. Over the years, I lost my innocence in foreign
lands. I thought of him often, but I allowed myself to believe that the past
was but an epitaph on crumbling sandstone. Years later, an act of serendipity
became our swan’s song when upon my return home from distant shores, I prepared
to root my life. Acknowledging my forays into the future, I celebrated among strangers
at my favorite restaurant. As fate would have it, he was there too, alone,
following a day of toiling in this world of the mundane. Instant recognition erupted
in our eyes, and although we spoke so briefly about things so trivial, we never
unshackled the chains that bound us. After all, the world still remained
dangerous for men like us. Thus, what needed to be said remained forever
fossilized within our respective hearts. Saying goodbye so long ago, I now
recognize that he wanted to say more; I can only hope he knew I too longed to
reach out, but instead with a quiet desperation I stifled my longings. Even as
I walked away and turned to look at him, I could not break the insidious spell
spun by those who had authority over us. And thus, we never danced; we never
touched, we never let the sun break through the storm. We will never know what
could have been. Suffice to say, although the road I took directed me away from
him, I remain forever grateful that this traveler did, in spite of himself, step
toward a wondrous journey. I can only hope his path was likewise emblazoned
with innumerable constellations.
© 28 Dec 2015  
About
the Author 
Cervantes
wrote, “I know who I am and who I may choose to be.”  In spite of my constant quest to live up to
this proposition, I often falter.  I am a
man who has been defined as sensitive, intuitive, and altruistic, but I have
also been defined as being too shy, too retrospective, too pragmatic.  Something I know to be true. I am a survivor,
a contradictory balance of a realist and a dreamer, and on occasions, quite
charming.  Nevertheless, I often ask
Spirit to keep His arms around my shoulder and His hand over my mouth.  My heroes range from Henry David Thoreau to
Sheldon Cooper, and I always have time to watch Big Bang Theory or Under the
Tuscan Sun.  I am a pragmatic romantic and
a consummate lover of ideas and words, nature and time.  My beloved husband and our three rambunctious
cocker spaniels are the souls that populate my heart. I could spend the rest of
my life restoring our Victorian home, planting tomatoes, and lying under
coconut palms on tropical sands.  I
believe in Spirit, and have zero tolerance for irresponsibility, victim’s
mentalities, political and religious orthodoxy, and intentional cruelty.  I am always on the look-out for friends,
people who find that life just doesn’t get any better than breaking bread
together and finding humor in the world around us.
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Baths, by Betsy

Over the course of my lifetime there are very few public
baths I have visited; also, being a shower person there are darn few bathtubs I
have been in for that matter. 
First the public baths I have visited.
Ojo Caliente is the oldest natural mineral hot
springs health resort in the U.S. according to their web-site.  Located near Santa Fe, N.M., Ojo was regarded as a sacred place by
the native Americans who first settled in the area and utilized the healing
waters hundreds of years ago.  Ancient people
believed to be ancestors of today’s Tewa tribes built large pueblos and terraced gardens
overlooking the springs.  The site was
home to thousands of people at one time in ancient history.
In 1868 Antonio Joseph opened Ojo Caliente as the first natural health spa in the country.  Soon to follow was a sanitarium which became
well known throughout the country as a place where afflicted people could come
to be cured.
Of the many pools at the resort my favorite was the mud pool
where one is instructed to slather mud all over your body and bake in the sun
until well done. Toxins are thereby released from the pores of your skin and
you come away feeling cleansed and refreshed–that is, after rinsing the mud
off your body in the pool.  The whole
process takes up the better part of an afternoon.
Another public bath I have visited is in Alaska near
Fairbanks.  My son and his family live in
Fairbanks.  One summer when I was there
visiting them we decided to get in the car and drive the 60 miles to Chena Hot
Springs and spend the day there.  The
drive to the place was interesting but probably not unusual for Alaska.  We got on the Chena Hot Springs road and
drove N.E.the 60 miles through what seemed like wilderness.  The road ended at the resort.  That was it. 
No more road.  But then why would
there be more road.  There is basically
nothing beyond but hundreds of miles of interior Alaska.  The surrounding environment makes for a
beautiful setting to relax in the large hot springs rock lake.  Two hundred nights of the year one can watch
the northern lights while enjoying the waters. 
Chena is the most developed hot springs resort in Alaska and is famous
for its healing mineral waters and the beautiful Aurora Borealis displays.
I have been to the Hot Sulphur Springs spa 2 or 3 times.  This 140-year-old resort is located in Grand
County Colorado about a 30-minute drive from Winter Park.  The Ute Indians were the first inhabitants to
enjoy the hot springs and their healing powers. 
They were known to use the “magic waters” to bathe themselves, their dogs,
horses, children, and women in them, and in that order. 
Then came Mr. William Byers who recognized the economic
potential of the springs.  With the help
of the U.S. cavalry and the courts he acquired the land from the Utes somewhat
deviously.
The resort was renovated in 1997.  One thousand people attended the opening
ceremony including the Ute tribal spiritual leader who was forgiving in his
blessing of the waters.  The Utes are
welcome to use the springs once again, says the web site.
And finally there are the bathtubs I have known.
To my knowledge I have used only one bath tub in my lifetime
on a regular basis.  That was as a young
child.  Somewhere along the line I became
a shower person and remain so today. 
Could that possibly be because my experience with bath tubs mostly
included the cleaning of them.  I have no
memory of this, but apparently I was expected to scrub the tub after
bathing.  Showering is much easier.
©
21 Oct 2012 
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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The No-Fault Line, by Gillian

Fault,
with it’s many meanings, is not a positive word. It’s not my fault! It’s all
your fault, or The Government’s fault, or my teacher’s fault. Electrical faults
can cause plane crashes, brownouts and blackouts. The cry of fault on
the tennis court means failure; a missing of the mark. We find fault with other
people, and occasionally admit to our own. We fault others for their errors and
disclaim responsibilities by proclaiming not to be at fault. And these days we
even must have no-fault car insurance. But there are of course the biggest, baddest
faults, those gashes in the bedrock which suddenly, or sometimes not so
suddenly, jerk into violent movement causing earthquakes and occasionally
tsunamis, and the deaths of many hundreds of thousands of people.
I have a major
fault in me. Within me. Ok Ok, I’ve got lots of them, I’m full of failings and
faults, but I’m talking of a geologic type of fissure; my very being torn
asunder. At a very young age, I couldn’t say when, social pressure started to
build up stress on the fault line between a straight me and a gay me – my
Straight Shale and my Lesbian Limestone. The building stresses finally caused
the fault to give way, allowing the Straight Shale to be forced up and over
that Lesbian Limestone. It got buried. It disappeared. But of course it was
still there, as are all things invisible beneath the surface of the earth or of
our psyches.
Shale is not a good
foundation rock. It cracks and breaks and splits and crumbles. It slips and slides.
With these qualities, it tends to weather and erode away quite rapidly. And my
Straight Shale layer was pretty thin to begin with! After forty years or so –
happily it was eroding at human speed not that creep of geologic time – it was
all but gone.
The fault line was
exposed at the surface. And on the other side of it, a mere step away, lay a
vast stretch of Lesbian limestone, glittering in the sunshine. I pulled my feet
free of that cloying clinging Straight Shale mud and stepped across the fault
onto that wide open, welcoming, slab of Lesbian Limestone. Only I prefer to
think of that line as a no-fault line. It’s not my fault, it’s not my parents’
fault and it’s not a fault at all.
Crossing that line
is, to paraphrase Neil Armstrong, but a small, simple, step, for man or woman.  But perhaps, just maybe, as endless numbers
of people continue to cross it, it will become, in terms of acceptance and
understanding, a giant leap for mankind.
© 20 Apr 2015 
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 now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 28
years.
Posted on

Left and Right, by Will Stanton

When I first prepared this
piece, I read it to two acquaintances. 
One is a retired accounting teacher, the other is a successful, wealthy
oil-and-gas land-man.  Neither one understood
it.  They had absolutely no idea what I
was talking about.
What I wrote is satire.  It portrays a type of ignorant, irrational,
intolerant individuals which often is typical of extreme right-wing,
religiosity-minded people.  Many such
extremists, for example, reportedly never understood that Steven Colbert merely
portrayed an unthinking right-winger as satire; they really were happy to think
that he was a rabid conservative.  As
with all satire, my piece also expresses my dismay and mystification that so
terribly many people display mindless hate. 
In doing so, it also expresses my own wish that such intolerance did not
exist.  So, here goes.
Letter to the Editor, The
Denver Post, from Mrs. Winifred Hash.
Headline: Our Society is Going
to Hell in a Hand-basket.
I am outraged, disgusted!  I could just throw up.  While I was in church this morning, Mrs.
Hogsbreath revealed that her little girl Suzy’s teacher this year is
left-handed.  I am horrified.  How in God’s name could any school let a
left-handed person into the school to teach innocent children?
Everybody knows that
left-handed people are evil.  After all,
the word “sinister” can mean “left.” 
That’s why Godless Liberals are called “The Left.”
The principle and
superintendent should be fired.  They are
just as guilty as those left-handed perverts. 
Once they sneak into our schools, they promote their left-handed agenda,
trying to convert our little boys and girls into being left-handed.
I’ve heard those so-called
scientists spouting their claims on TV that some people are born left-handed.  I just know that’s not true.  I asked Reverend Spittle, and he said that’s
a lie – a damned lie, and only those adulterous, Hollywood actors and Commie’s
in Congress believe it.  I should have
known I’d hear only lies on Liberal-controlled media.  From now on, I’ll stick with Fox where I can
hear the truth.
Being left-handed is a
down-right choice, and these repulsive people choose to engage in left-handedness,
engaging in disgusting practices and flaunting their abnormality on TV; and, if
you actually can believe this, I’ve seen them in parades!  My good friend Mrs. Offal said that the
church runs a restorative therapy clinic to cure youngsters, who were led
astray, back to normality.  She had to
send her teenage son Billy there.  They
are praying away his sin.
After church, my husband Al
and I had dinner at our good friend’s Joe and Agnes Hollowhead.  Joe was just as outraged as Al and me.  He said that we need to stop that left-handed
plague right now, that we need to round up all those perverts and lock them all
up in some big pen in the middle of the dessert, away from good, God-fearing
Americans.
I know that a lot of people
feel the way the Hollowheads and us feel, and it is time we do something about
it.  Maybe my letter will help wake people
up and stop God’s country from going to Hell in a hand-basket.
Yours truly,
Mrs. Winifred Hash 
© 09 August 2015 
  
About
the Author 
I have had a life-long fascination with
people and their life stories.  I also
realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or
fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual
ones.  Since I joined this Story Time
group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group.  I do put some thought and effort into my
stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.
Posted on

Scarves, by Ricky

        I suppose that boys and men who cross-dress, or are
drag-queens, or who are comfortable enough to wear women’s clothes in a play or
at a costume party, and most girls and women have at one time or another used
or wore a scarf as part of their attire. 
I am not in one of those categories and have never worn a scarf.
        There are several synonyms for “scarf” listed in the Windows
Thesaurus.  Cravat, tie, and handkerchief
are three of those.  Of course, I have
personally worn a tie many times so I guess one could say that a tie or cravat
is a “manly-scarf”.  I have also had a
handkerchief on my person, infrequently, when I was much younger and mother would
insist.
        According to Wikipedia at some point in history,
handkerchiefs began life being a kerchief for either a head covering or the
wiping your face or blowing your nose purposes. 
To differentiate between the two purposes, the nose type was called a
handkerchief and the head covering became the headkerchief.  The latter term I personally have never heard
used, so I suspect it is now in the realm of being an archaic word usage.

        If
handkerchief is a synonym for scarf, then scarf is a synonym for
neckerchief.  I have worn a neckerchief
from the age of 13 to 20 as a member of the Boy Scouts.  In my scouting career, my troop had three
different neckerchiefs over time: 

Yellow & Black
Blue & Yellow
Purple

  

BSA Camp Winton Staff

      I also wore a plaid neckerchief while on the staff of a BSA summer camp.  
Order of the Arrow
       As a member of the BSA’s honor society, Order
of the Arrow, I was given a solid red neckerchief with a large patch on the
back.
      I can’t speak for all scouts, but as an adolescent boy, these
neckerchiefs meant a lot to me and they still do.  I have many happy memories of that time of my
life with activities our troop engaged in as part of the scouting program.
        At that young age, the most common use of a neckerchief is to
identify members of one’s own troop from a distance while camping out with many
other troops during a scouting competition. 
The Scout Handbook also contains the more practical though not commonly
needed uses for the neckerchief.  Uses
such as a sling for a damaged arm, bandage, tourniquet, sprained or broken
ankle support, and signaling.  Wikipedia
also lists many uses one hopes scouts will never need, such as: a gag, a
blackjack, or a Molotov cocktail wick.
        The neckerchiefs I displayed in this story are a visual
stimulus to very happy memories which I have not thought of for decades.  They were located in a large box where I
placed things about my life that I want my offspring to know about me.  I hoped I could find these neckerchiefs to
show all of you but was not sure they still existed.  Fortunately, I did find them and spent much
time remembering before I began to write this story, memories I have yet to
write.
I
stored the neckerchiefs away about 41-years ago along with the memories.  Now both are back.
© 23 March 2015 
About the Author 
  

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale
and then in Redondo Beach.  Just prior to
turning 8 years old in 1956, I was sent to live with my grandparents on their
farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents
divorced.
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later
in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California,
graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force,
I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until
her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11-2001
terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be
therapeutic.
My story blog is, TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com.
Posted on

Compulsion, by Ray S

Let’s see, where do I start? And for that matter does
anyone care?
Answer: Well I do, or I wouldn’t spend the moment to
write about it and let you know how my roommate and I had the be-Jesus scared
out of our innocent little WASPish souls.
Late springtime in central Florida where our school
was lost on some country crossroads. As soon as dinner time was over, everyone
returned to their dormitories to do assigned homework and then lights out at
9:30.
“Hey Billy, they said at dinner announcement time that
those students who wished to could attend a tent meeting—something called a
revival. We just needed to sign up with Mr. Butler. Do you want to go? I don’t
know what they do, but they sing all those goofy church songs like Brighten the
Corner, In the Garden, and Jesus Loves Me. Stuff we never did when I was home.
It wasn’t a difficult choice to make; we could be
excused from homework. So began our big adventure into the world of being born
again. Trouble with that idea was that as two fourteen year olds we had never
known our moms didn’t already do the job once. Did they leave a part out and
these folks could fix it for you? I wondered if they could repair my Ranger
two-wheeler; make hair grow on my chest.
The tent was full of people stomping and crying and
waving their hands, and some were even dancing—which was not allowed at the
school. And it sure was awful hot in that tent.
Billy and I slipped inside, by the rows of chairs with
their swinging and swaying occupants, close to the tent wall and tried to
disappear. I had never seen people in this state except that time my big
brother took me to the movies to see “Reefer Madness.”
The singing stopped and the people sank into their
chairs. Then a big man dressed in a white suit, a little black string time with
beads of perspiration running down his forehead began shouting something about
hellfire and brimstone—whatever that was.
We both started to wonder why we were here and what
had we gotten ourselves into. And how could we escape? When several ladies all
dressed in flowing white dresses—sort of like angels I guess—passed among the
crowd holding out little baskets. Then they all sang a song and swayed a lot.
The big man cried out for all the little ones to come
forward to receive the word. We tried to shrink into the tent wall. This was
all so different and now we were being compelled to participate in an activity
totally foreign to anything we had ever learned.
They made us kneel down and mumbled something. Then we
were pushed aside to make room for more lambs being led to whatever. At this
point Billy and I found an opening in the crowd and headed for the tent
entrance.
Once into the cool evening breeze, heavy with the
scent of orange and grapefruit blossoms, our familiar world came into focus and
we had escaped from the clutches of hellfire and brimstone. The experience
being such that if that is the way Jesus loves you, we politely declined. Stick
with God is Love.
In more recent days when we are sometimes blessed with
our own reasoning, I acknowledge any number of compulsive actions—some bad and
some really great, at least at the time.
But ever since that formative religious compulsion, I
have learned to think for myself and find my own direction to “salvation,” if
that is on the timetable. All ashore who are going ashore!
© 9 November 2015 
About the Author 
Posted on

Remembering, by Phillip Hoyle

I
remember a religious educator from years ago who sometimes surprised me with
his rather creative thoughts. (Of course, I’m still trying to recall his name; perhaps
William something.) He once asserted the main resource anyone has in education
is memory. He illustrated his perspective by the example of having boxes and
boxes, files and files of resources such as books, curriculum designs, manuals,
art supplies, costumes, play scripts, musical scores, recordings, movies, and
so forth, but if you don’t recall—that is remember—what you have put away, you
won’t be able to use them.
I
learn more and more about this perspective every day. Just last week I thought
I would wear a particular sweater, but when I opened the storage box where I
thought it was, the one under the chair in the east alcove of the bedroom, the
sweater wasn’t there. I searched the stack of sweaters I’d been wearing, the
ones I’ve been stacking in the chair next to the bed but it wasn’t there, not
even at the bottom of the stack. I looked through the stack of clothes atop the
little chest of drawers in the closet, the one where I keep my sweat shirts and
a few other items, but it wasn’t there. Then I recalled another storage box
under the bed and pulled it out. There I found three sweaters—one I didn’t even
know I owned, but none of the sweaters was the one I thought I was searching
for. I chose one of them to wear, but as I write this story I can’t recall the
sweater I originally thought I was looking for. Was it brown, red, green, or
blue? Bulky knit or smooth? Solid or patterned? Cotton or acrylic? Pullover or
cardigan? Button-up or zippered? I have no idea, no memory.
So
I conclude my friend was right. Oh I found a resource, but it wasn’t the one I
remembered. The problem I face may be one complicated by old age. In sixty five
years I’ve worn so many sweaters—ones I liked and wish I still had (of course none
would fit, but I’m not talking about that)—so many that now I’m confused enough
that I go looking for resources I know but just don’t recall what decade I had
that box, or in which church I kept those particular boxes, or now even that
there is another box of resources under the bed.
Memories.
I have floods of them and at this point sometimes feel overwhelmed by them. So
last week, when I got tired of wearing to Storytime my four sweat shirts (two
of which appear exactly alike to the casual observer) and my five sweaters (I’m
sure I wanted at least to look different than usual on Monday afternoon in case
my story seemed too much the same old thing), so I remembered a sweater I guess
I don’t even own any more, like the old guy with senile dementia who thinks I’m
his childhood lover or the old gal on pain meds who when I visited her in the
hospital introduced me to her nephew although she and I were the only ones in
the room. And I’m writing this story about memories with the earnest hope I’ll
be able to find it in my computer’s word processor when I need to print it out
and put it in my backpack with the other resources I carry to our storytellers
gathering and remember to put the backpack on my back when I leave the house,
pick it up again when I leave my office, not leave it at the restaurant, and able
to find the story when the session begins.
Of
course, should all that fail—or even if just one cog in the works be forgotten)
I could simply rely on my memory to tell this story or some other one I’ve
forgotten about until this very moment. I guess my friend was right. The real
and essential key to resources is one’s memory.
© 20 November 2012 –Denver  
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