Author: jnelson

Posted on

What I Didn’t Do for Love & You Can’t Make Me, by Terry Dart

Seems I was a sucker for love.
Husband with a zipper problem. You feel conned, like a
sucker; or the friend walks off with your husband. How do you translate love
into something one earns by doing?
The error seems to be the ‘doing’ part. Doing really
does not create love for one. It can be a bond for the fortunate between Mother
and child or couples while they work it out.
Settling. One can choose to settle for love of less
than complete satisfaction but if it’s not there, no amount of doing will
create it.
How many, I wonder, have what varying degrees of Love?
Who gets three-quarters? Who gets ten percent off the sale price? No you can’t
generally sell love. Through the work of advertising though many have tried to
sell cars, floor wax, Xanex, lemons, lemonade, and that stuff that makes stiff old
guys who really aren’t stiff. Trips to someplace fun and safe, say your
neighborhood football stadium. Lovely ads of two people running slow motion at
each other in a bucolic-looking field, like you’d only see in real life somewhere
like North Dakota or Winnipeg before it snows all over the place. Most people
when they chose those locales are actually lost, like those two idiots in
Fargo, though they were wonderfully funny stupid idiots. Should we talk about Fargo?
Such a lovely, dark North Dakota/Minnesota movie, where Francis McDormand, a
pregnant North Dakota State Trooper has love with her stamp collector husband.
And with that accent? Well true, they both have that accent, so they have that
in common.
While I am running on about Love and Movies (which is
where most of that artful fluff belongs), I recommend Casa Blanca with Bogey
and Bacall (or Bergman?). I’m going Wednesday 2 p.m. at the Chez Artiste. There
you have the best movie love: (Except for Desert Hearts, of course). But it is an
ancient war-torn love story full of hurt feelings and hard knocks. (Well. Bogey
being Bogey and Bacall, ah yes, Bacall … or Bergman?)
Suffragettes? Now there are some doers. Arrested by
the thousands in Britain. Hunger striking, blowing up, demonstrating, begging,
suffering through police attacks (the beloved bobbies? Hardly.) Fighting for
rights not to work as girl children who too often meet their deaths in
laundries, standing up to rapists and bullies and to the ignorant men in power.
They were not loved, but they did persevere for fierce determination. Meryl
Streep played Pankhurst, a small part. Lots of women play “small parts,” but it
takes Big women to take on the small parts and pieces of a social movement.
Gay men and lesbians fought for rights and were often
not loved. They did not do it for love. They did it for their rights and their
freedom.
Love and Doing for Love. Let’s see: Fighting dragons,
men riding white horses with crowns on their heads, ladies trying to squeeze
into tiny glass slippers, girls riding inside pumpkins pulled by mice to go to
a dance with a prince who doesn’t even pick them up.
Whoa!! Once there was a Lesbian King name Jane who
enjoyed dancing with anyone who wanted to dance and she loved dancing so very
much that she completely wore out one day and turned into a gay bar where she
nearly passed away dancing the ‘Orange Blossom Special’ and then tripped in the
midst of a line dance and landed directly in K. D. Laing’s lap.
So, I admit a very small part of this is autobiographical
in origin however confusing it may be. It’s as though a five year old juggler
got together with a hand held movie camera, and Presto!! There’s K. D. Laing.
© 9 November 2015 
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.
Posted on

The Grim Reaper, by Ricky

It was a bright and
sunny day, until sundown when it became a dark and stormy night.  The Arch Chancellor of The Invisible
University was asleep in his study and all was peaceful except for the flashes
of lightening which illuminated The Invisible University and the resulting
thunder which rattled the massive stone walls.
The Invisible
University was, of course, completely visible at all times.  No one still living knew how the university
got its name.  Speculation among the more
recent students favored the myth that a preeminent and powerful wizard, who
also happened to be arch chancellor of the university a few centuries past,
cast an invisibility spell to conceal its location.  (This theory was actually correct as far as
it went.)  The ancient arch chancellor’s goal
was to include “the finding” of the university as part of the entrance exams
for would be wizards.  Thus, it was
necessary to make it hard to find as none of the wizards in residence wanted to
be bothered with teaching wizard classes and if the university was invisible,
very few people could find it and the wizards in residence could be about the
business of wizardry and eating without interruptions.
Unfortunately, like
all the wizards in residence, the arch chancellor was only a powerful and
skilled wizard in his own mind and the spell did not work.  However, the arch chancellor did not realize
the spell failed and believed that the university and its grounds were now
invisible along with everyone inside, and therefore officially changed the
name.  All the resident wizards knew (in
their minds at least) that the arch chancellor was a bright, powerful, and
highly skilled wizard, so they did not for a moment suspect the spell had
failed.  (It is a well-known fact that
wizards can see right through working invisibility spells, so not one wizard
suspected the truth.)  So, The Invisible
University remained “invisible” in plain sight over the following centuries.
Believing the
university to be invisible, none of the wizards could understand why were there
so many rats in the pantries and larders. 
How could the rats even find the invisible university when it can’t be
seen?  (Apparently, wizards are so
self-centered they never suspected that other living things could smell food as
well or better than wizards.)  They correctly
deduced that the rats were eating much of the food destined for the wizard’s
table four times a day, and also many of the snacks for between meals.  Consequently, when a bolt of lightning struck
the arch chancellor’s room and powered up a light globe, he awoke with an idea
to solve the problem.  The arch
chancellor immediately called a meeting to announce his plan to summon Death,
also known as The Grim Reaper, to complain about the rats and demanding to know
why He did not “reap” them.  As usual, no
one wanted to get out of bed OR to
gain say the arch chancellor, so several of the wizards prepared the library
and joined together in forming and casting the spell, and getting a mid-night snack. 
This may seem strange
to non-wizards, but Death and wizards have a professional relationship.  For example, wizards can see Death and Death
will appear before their time is up and let them know how much time they have
left so they can prepare for the transition.  For some unknown reason, children and cats can
also see Death.
The spell was cast
and a very annoyed Death arrived having been summoned from a very pleasant
afternoon on the beaches of Y-Key-Key and into the midst of a leaky and
rattling building on a dark and stormy night.

The
arch chancellor put the question to Death, but then had to resurrect it so he
could ask it to Death (who was not amused by the arch chancellor repeating the
question over and over thus beating it to death.)  Death told the arch chancellor to invent a
better rat trap so there would be rats whose spirits needed reaping.  Death also explained that reaping rats was
not his job.  At this point, Death reached
into his robe and introduced his newest assistant, The Death of Rodents, also
known as The Grim Squeaker.
Death then departed,
returning to his chaise-lounge and piña colada at Y-Key-Key, leaving the
squeaker behind.
Try as they might
(actually the wizards never tried, because one of the cooks brought in a
pregnant cat). The cat along with her eventual brood, kept the Death of Rodents
very busy.
And that is the true
story of how the wizards of The Invisible University saved their food.
Believe it or not!

[Death and the Grim Squeeker are patterned after Death and the Death of Rats in Terry Pratchett’s Disc World books.]

© 13 October 2014 
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

Mud, by Ray S

Today we are gathered here, my
friends, for the singular reason to address another seemingly obtuse subject,
Mud. I propose to tell you my thoughts relative to the subject as clearly as
possible. The why and how you all have gotten to this tumescent and turgid
matter is the goal.
So, here is a story:
It is a sunny autumn day; the
chartered motor coach was waiting for its cargo of special LGBT
travelers—special because of specific age requirements for membership in the
group—75 and older. See, there’s even stratification in SAGE.
Once the walkers and wheelchairs
were stowed away and the passengers secured, we were off on our gay merry way
to a very secretive and exclusive geriatric resort and playground. Upon arrival
the once subdued disposition of the passengers had been dispatched by the means
of a well-stocked happy-hour drinks cart.
When settled into their respective
wigwams, couples accommodated separately from singles (“never the twain shall
meet, maybe) it was time now. There was a rigid schedule for the compulsory Spa
Programs, and to begin, a check in with the medical staff. Then off to the
steam rooms, saunas, and massage tables, and then a relaxing rest period in the
main lodge’s social room, appropriately named the “Big Tepee in the Sky.” By
this time a rollicking atmosphere pervaded.
With the sound of rather heavenly
chimes playing the old melody “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby” signaling
everyone, now clothed only in their 100% Egyptian cotton designer spa sheets,
to assemble at the entry to the Sylvan Piney Pathway for the climax of this
wonderful day.
By this time, due to the strenuous
spa program, healthful cuisine and libations, the walkers and wheelchairs were
forgotten. There had been much merriment amongst the campers as they became
better acquainted. Everyone had found it necessary to shelve their
inhabitations. (That is not hard even for 75er GLBTs.)
So tripping off on the Sylvan Piney
Pathway, aforementioned, some Egyptian cotton “wagging their tails behind them”
as the old nursery rhyme goes, the gathering was verging on a love fest. My,
such energy! There were even several lesbian ladies seen to be in the clutches
of bear hugs with gay boys all expressing their oneness with the spirit of the
day and GLBTness.
Straight, I should say directly,
ahead everyone stopped in their tracks by the view of the lovely, smooth
surface of the aspen and pine tree surrounded lake.
“We are here,” everyone shouted.
“Drop your sheets and wade in—ladies first, then queens or whatever.” It began
to look like a group baptism, but John didn’t come to this party. And like
little lemmings headed over the cliff, some hand in hand, they all immersed
themselves. The lake being only about four feet deep it took little time for
the 75ers to emerge on the other shore where the spa attendants awaited with a
battery of warm showers and soft bath towels. Then they were gently hosed down
revealing a countenance of 75 years or more, less 50 years each.
A miracle if you wish, or figment
of the imagination, but for the Happy Campers it was their annual pilgrimage to
the Little Piney Mud Lake. Take a friend to a mud bath and think young or happy
or why not both?
© 5 October 2015 
About the Author 

Posted on

The City I Left My Heart In, by Phillip Hoyle

I
don’t want to croon this, but “I left my heart in Albuquerque.” At least I feel
that way from time to time. The place was my home for several years, the scene
of important work and changes, and the romantic geographical focus of my
dreams.
In
1990 I left woeful central Missouri with its extreme weather, stressful job,
and joyless culture and headed west on the train to my destination in the high
mountain steppes of New Mexico. The train pulled in five hours late, but my
family was waiting and took me to our new home in the Northeast Heights at the
beautiful Mesa del Oso townhome community. The furniture was already in place set
up by my family who had arrived several days earlier. Folk from the church had
supplied food for the first few days. Their hospitality marked the beginning of
a rich relationship with a congregation and community.
The
church was fine, the first congregation I had ever loved as so many clergy
claim about their churches. Its buildings were Mission and Pueblo Revival styles,
its program diverse, its music-making an important focus, its involvement in
the larger community significant, and its theology and attitude more liberal
than any congregation with which I had worked. I liked the folk who at a
welcoming reception greeted me and my family with Southwestern fare and stood
around talking to us and each other with such intensity and animation as to
seem like the gathering was a cocktail party. These people liked one another. I
liked them, a gathering of professionals from diverse fields. I easily fit in
since, like most of them, I too came from the middle part of the country. Their
liberality seemed to spring from the fact that they had left the Midwest and
set roots far away from the small towns of their origins. They were affable,
tolerant, generous, and inventive. And I liked them and was pleased for years to
work with them in various capacities.
The
city had a different look when contrasted with Kansas, Texas, or Missouri where
I had lived. The look, arising largely from the preponderance of flat-roofed
adobe-style houses, appealed to me. This unusual city sat in the morning shadow
of the Sandia Mountains, sprawling from the edge of the alpine wilderness across
the flats of the Rio Grande River. One of America’s oldest cities, the place enjoyed
a rich history, the diversity of which was reflected in the names of city
streets, last names in the phone directory, and lots of Hispanic and Native
American people living there. My Indian fantasies were constantly fed by
western clothing, Native American jewelry, and tribal pottery. The Arts figure
large in Albuquerque, and I loved living in such an atmosphere. Working just a
couple of blocks from the University of New Mexico, I was surrounded with
creative and bright people in a multi-cultural atmosphere with overtones of
being progressive.
There
weren’t any little cable cars but a huge tram scaled the side of the tallest Sandia
peak. At the top, over 10,000 feet above sea level, I certainly felt halfway to
the stars. From there the city views impressed and the far stretch of mountains
and desert thrilled me. I especially loved the fact that even down below in the
town when one drove the major thoroughfares always there were mountains. To the
west one saw in the mid-ground five cinder cones of ancient volcanoes and in
the distance the snowcapped Mt. Taylor. Driving south one viewed desert
mountains that defined the flow of the Rio Grande. To the north lay high mesas
and distant peaks, including the Sangre de Christos and the northwestern end of
the Sandias. The eastern view featured the massive barrier of the Sandia and
Manzano Mountain ranges.
Old
Town always called to me, especially when I felt frustrated with work or just
plain lazy. I enjoyed walking its unusual streets, looking at its architectural
mix that included the 17th century San Felipe de Neri church, and
strolling through its shops full of curios and artwork, clothing and furniture.
I liked sitting on its plaza and patios sipping a Coke or coffee while watching
the crowds, hearing the variety of languages, and wondering what curiosities
brought people there. In some ways, going to Old Town was like leaving the
country.
My
five years in Albuquerque were rich with relationships. My children enjoyed the
place for several months before they went on their ways into adulthood. Eventually
one returned with his new family! More distant family members visited along
with friends from several states. We kept a very busy house almost like hosts
in a bed and breakfast. We made new friends there among co-workers,
congregational members, and neighbors. Among our closest were white, black,
brown, and red folk (if you will excuse this racial shorthand) who each brought
special gifts of culture and love into our home. We entertained rich and poor,
single and married, troubled and calm, funny and dour. We lived it up with an
array of writers, musicians, dancers, artists, actors, engineers, lawyers,
professors, athletes, teachers, doctors, clergy, plumbers, opera fans, office
managers, and food service providers. We ate a mixed cuisine and danced to a
variety of music. Albuquerque had a lot to offer and we took advantage of its
special blend of entertainments.
In
addition to these qualities and folk, I had my own personal adventures with
friendships, a couple of which became sexualized. They transformed me and
taught me more about myself than I had up to that time realized. They also put a
strain on my marriage. My activities and loves were not overlooked by my wife. We
both learned a lot about me in Albuquerque, and we both have abiding
friendships from there to add to our own continuing post-divorce friendship.
Eventually
we moved, my wife and I, to her family farm to help out with her folks. Then I
applied for another church job, my final one, in another state. I hated leaving
Albuquerque and strongly considered returning there after my marital
separation. Eventually though I realized while the city was wonderful and had
been in some ways the location of my great changes, I needed another even larger
place. So I followed my heart to Denver, Colorado, the place I plan to live out
my years and eventually leave my ashes. 
I don’t know if Albuquerque could ever again be my home, but some winter
days when my knees ache I think I might be more comfortable down there where
the winters are even milder than here.
© 5 January 2012 
About
the Author 
Phillip Hoyle
lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In
general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two
years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now
focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE
program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com 
Posted on

Friends, by Pat Gourley

Looking back on my 66
years I have I guess been involved with what could be called many different
“cults”.  Starting with the Catholic Church and progressing onto
the Democratic Socialist Party, Wiccan Covens, the gay community & Radical
Fairies and Buddhist Practice etc. etc. The most enduring though has been my
attachment to this little band:
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2015/11/05/grateful-dead-china-cat-sunflower-and-i-know-you-rider-fare-thee-well/
The twirling paradox
here if any is that this was posted on a Wall Street Journal blog. Oh well,
still a great version of these two old songs performed with love and gusto for
many thousands of devoted followers this past summer in Chicago.
© 8 Nov 2015  
About the Author  

I was born in La Porte Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled
by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in
Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an
extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.
Posted on

Exploring, by Lewis

Lately, I’ve been going
through my late husband’s copious writings–journals, love letters, poems, or,
simply, musings.  For me, it feels much
like returning home after a long, long absence and walking through old neighborhoods.  There are places and features of the
landscape that are fresh in my memory, some that were dusty but are now bright
with color, and others that I perhaps never noticed or had long-faded from
memory.  There are faces and names that
have been obscured by time that his handwriting has brought to new life, as if
I were meeting them for the first time.
His love letters are
truly amazing—full of exultation for the joy of our early, fumbling trysts and
his excitement at our impending life together as a couple.  He was Romeo, Don Quixote, and Don Knotts all
putting pen to paper on the same page. 
When I read them, it is like looking down a tunnel of love from the
wrong end, a 14-year-long journey of discovery that ends, not upon emerging at
last into the light of day, but–as all enduring love stories do—when, at long
last, death does us part.  It is not an
experience that thrills so much as sobers, more like lime sorbet than orange
sherbet.  Yet, I spend every spare moment
in the doing of it.  It is an exploration
that, unlike that for a lost gold mine, keeps yielding the bittersweet nuggets
of treasured memory.
© 29 April 2013 

About
the Author 
I came to the
beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the
state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my
native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two
children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married
to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was
passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were
basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very
attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that
time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.
Soon after, I
retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13
blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to
fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE
Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.
Posted on

Normal, by Gillian

Well how in Hell would any of us know about normal? I was tempted to write just that and only that, but that’s taking too easy a way out. But normal, just by it’s definition of usual, typical, unexpected, is just not very exciting Oh, an occasional normal, as in temperature, or blood pressure, can be welcome, but on the whole abnormal is surely more interesting.
And maybe I’m just feeling irritable today, but I’m really getting sick of the New Normal. I found it to be an interesting and quite clarifying phrase once upon a time, but it has been, and is, so overused that it has become …. well …. normal. On the internet, of course, it abounds, usually capitalized: the New Normal of globally aging populations, of a slower-growing U.S economy or those personal New Normals we must find after the birth of a child, or a recovery from cancer, or suffering grief.
The Economist magazine recently headed a section, ‘America and Cuba – the new normal,’ and the New York Times entitled an article, ‘Puberty Before Age 10: a New Normal?’ I have to agree with Harvard professor David Laibson who said that people are “a little trigger-happy with the ‘new normal’ label.” Well, I say to myself, new things of any kind are often over-used at first.
But wait!
This phrase is apparently not new at all: rather making a resurgence. Believe it or not, and I did indeed find it rather incredible, a New York Times article in 2011* printed a graph showing the frequency of the term [new normal – ed.] in books printed over the last century. According to this documentation, it was even more commonly used in the 1920’s and ’30’s than it is now – at least in the printed word.
Then it lay pretty dormant until zooming to it’s current popularity since around 2000.
Anyway, whatever the reason and like it or not, we appear to be destined to be inundated with New Normals at least for a while, so I’ll add my own.
WE are the New Normal. And, yes, I do most sincerely believe that. No, I don’t mean that we in the GLBT community are suddenly going to find ourselves in the majority, but that we will become, if we are not already, normal. Looking at listed synonyms, that simply means we are usual, ordinary, customary, expected, even conventional. Of course NBC tried to suggest just that with the TV series The New Normal which aired in 2012 and ’13, and more power to them, but there is nothing more powerful than the personal. It doesn’t mean we will be universally loved, approved of, even accepted. But we hardly come as a surprise, let alone a shock, to many people these days. Yes, an individual coming out may still shock unsuspecting family and friends, but we, as a group, have arrived. And as more people get to know us individually we will become more usual and ordinary and, in many cases, perhaps seen as quite conventional. I believe that this will all speed up if the Supreme Court, which has finally said it will do as it should have initially, actually makes a ruling, and in our favor.
Even gazing ahead through such rose-colored glasses, there is danger. Not for any of us older folk, I think, but for the future of our community as a whole in years to come. Will we, in fact, cease to be a community if we become more integrated into society as a whole? Worse, will we find ourselves becoming boringly, numbingly, normal; adopting all the previously straight mores and strictures of society and settling for over half of our hard won marriages ending in divorce? I so hope not. My dream is that we will form relationships and love with strengths forgotten or abandoned by our hetero friends. Perhaps they will even learn from us, and together we can all find much that has been lost, or more likely never was. Or perhaps, as several psychological studies have suggested, same-sex relationships have certain integral advantages over those of opposite-sex couples. Women will always be from Venus and men from Mars and that’s an end to it. And that, I guess, would make any same-sex couple, just, inevitably, normal.
*http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/the-new-normal-is-actually-pretty-old/?_r=0
© 2 Feb 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

Artistic, by Betsy

As
a youngster in school or Girl Scout meetings, arts and crafts was always one of
my favorite activities.   I am very
grateful for the time spent making things because I still enjoy making things.
So when I started thinking about today’s topic, I naturally pondered the
question what is the difference between an art and a craft. 
I
decided that art is a creation of the imagination, a craft is the result of
making something by hand which is a copy or an impression or a depiction of
something else. Further investigation reveals that the word craft comes from an
old English then German word originally meaning strength then later,
skill.  Skill is the key word here when
it comes to the word origin.  However,
the meaning for me is broader inasmuch as I have crafted many an item without
the application of an ounce of skill.  At
least so it would seem.
In
my dotage I have taken up the craft of counted cross stitch.  My friend Carlos has shown some beautiful
examples of his work.  The two main
skills required for this craft are patience and good eye sight.  Also being systematic about transferring the
pattern from a paper to the cloth is essential. 
Is
this art? Technically, in my opinion it is not. 
I may be creating a piece based on a painting or an artist’s rendition of an object or a
scene.  It is imagination that produces
the image upon which my craft is based. 
That’s
the work of art.  Designing the cross
stitch pattern and then stitching it is the craft.   Does it matter to me which it is called?
No.  Call it art, call it a craft, I really
don’t care. I enjoy doing it. Another of its assets is that it’s a great filler activity very useful
when watching sports on TV, when waiting for commercials to end, or when
watching something entertaining which doesn’t require a lot of concentration
(which is most of television, by the way.) 
Other times when it is a useful activity are when waiting or when one
can’t sleep. 
A
few years ago in our travels to the National Parks, I noticed in the gift
shops, cross-stitch kits of scenes from whatever park we were visiting.  So I bought that first kit that I found, and
have been buying them and completing them since.  So far I have Monument Valley, Zion NP, Rocky
Mountain NP, and I am currently working on Arches NP.  I think it will be another year or maybe two
before I finish Arches as it is quite large; that is, if I work on it
regularly.
 My last visit to a National Park was about a
month ago when we spent a day at Denali NP in Alaska, home of Mt. McKinley now
called Mt. Denali. I found no craft kits in their gift shop, but later in
Anchorage I came upon a craft shop that had cross-stitch patterns for typical
Alaskan flowers and animals. As a result of going into that shop I have now, I
think, four or five cross-stitch projects waiting to be started.  Considering that some projects can take two,
three, or even four years to complete, I realize I better get on with it.  So many projects, so little time.
By
the way, I also knit baby blankets, so if any of you are expecting to be
expecting in the near future, let me know early on (before you are showing) so
I can get started on a baby blanket.
Ahh!
So many projects, so little time.
  

©
8 Sep 2014 

About the Author  

Betsy has been active in the
GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians
Organizing for Change).  She has been
retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years.  Since her retirement, her major activities
include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor
with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning.  Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of
marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys
spending time with her four grandchildren. 
Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing
her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.
Posted on

Bumper Stickers, by Gillian

Bumper stickers,
to me, are a kind of precursor of Facebook. I don’t partake in Facebook because
my miserably puny ego cannot begin to imagine there is one person out there in
cyberspace, let alone millions, remotely interested in what I did yesterday or what
I think of today, or what I think of anything. Similarly, I assume that the
people in the car behind me have little interest in who I voted, or plan to
vote, for. Neither do they care that I want to free Tibet or Texas, am ALREADY
AGAINST THE NEXT WAR or that my daughter is an honor student at Dingledum High.
It strikes me as a
very strange, and I think almost uniquely American, need; this urge we seem to
have to tell everyone around us such facts about ourselves. It’s only, what,
three generations ago at the most, that no-one would dream of telling anyone
how they voted – even if someone asked, which of course no one would. Now we
apparently feel compelled to scream it to all those complete strangers who
chance to glance at our car. I’m no psychologist but surely it must be all
about ego? My candidate is better than yours. My causes are greater than yours.
I am right and so, if you think differently, you are wrong. I’m a better parent
than you, see, with my honor student daughter and my son who plays football for
the Dingledum Dummies. And I proudly display a Dingledum University sticker,
managing to imply even higher levels of success. I even have a better dog than
you, as I proclaim BULLDOGS ARE THE BEST BREED.
Sadly, these
things have now gone beyond simple proclamations. They are frequently
derogatory, angry, and confrontational. That poor Honor Student particularly
seems to attract attention, as in MY KID CAN BEAT UP YOUR HONOR STUDENT, or MY
SON IS FIGHTING FOR THE FREEDOM OF YOUR HONOR STUDENT. No longer content with
advertising how we vote, or don’t, we now have to add a comment. VOTE DEMOCRAT.
IT’S EASIER THAN WORKING or VOTE REPUBLICAN FOR GOD, GUNS AND GUTS.
In our gun-crazy,
polarized, society, I am constantly surprised that those kind of bumper
stickers don’t engender more violence, and also those commanding that you HONK
YOUR HORN IF YOU’VE FOUND JESUS, HONK IF YOU HATE OBAMA or HONK YOUR HORN IF
YOU SUPPORT GUN CONTROL, the latter a clear invitation to be shot, if you ask
me. Al Capone supposedly said that an armed society is a polite society but
that doesn’t seem to hold for bumper stickers!
Some stickers, I
have to say, are creative and funny. There’s little that cheers me up faster
when I’m stuck in a traffic jam, than a good laugh at the bumper sticker in
front of me. A WOMAN NEEDS A MAN LIKE A FISH NEEDS A BICYCLE is one of my
favorites, along with TV IS GOODER THAN BOOKS and INVEST IN YOUR COUNTRY – BUY
A CONGRESSMAN, and one most of us can relate to, INSIDE EVERY OLD PERSON
IS A YOUNG PERSON WONDERING WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED.
I confess I have
not always been totally immune to bumper sticker appeal. My car sported a U.S.
NAVY sticker when my oldest stepson signed up, to be joined by U.S. MARINES
SEMPER FI when my youngest went that direction. But that was simply to show my
support to my stepsons, not to anyone else. Which of course is probably, in
large part, the justification for all those honor student stickers. I only once
succumbed to the political cause sticker, and that was in 1992 when I felt
strongly enough about it to post VOTE NO ON AMENDMENT 2 on my bumper.
As I waited at a
stop sign in Denver one day, another car pulled up close behind and a man with
a tire iron in his fist jumped out. He ran at my car, yelling queer abuse, and
brought the iron bar down just as the traffic cleared and I was able to gun the
car forward. The blow broke the rear side window and I sped into the nearby
King Soopers parking lot where I knew there would at least be a security guard.
But the crazy guy didn’t follow, and that was the end of the incident.
And, call me
coward if you like, it was also the end of my brief involvement with bumper
stickers.
© 5 Jan 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

Depravity, by Will Stanton

[Public Figures]

Herman “999” Cain
Coach Jerry Sandusky
Sheriff Pat Sullivan
Former House Majority Leader Newt Gingrich
Former House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert
Gov. Mark Sanford
Senator John Ensign
Rep. Mark Folly
Rep. John Gibbons
Rep. Don Sherwood
Congressman Anthony Weiner
Senator Larry Craig
Wisconsin State Senator Randy Hopper
CA State Senator Roy Ashburn
Mit Romney aid Matthew Elliott
Florida State Rep. Bob Allen
Prosecutor John Atchison
Judge Ronald Kline
S. Dakota Rep. Ted Klaudt
PA Congressman Joseph McDade
Christian Coalition Chairman Louis Beres
Anti-John-Kerry ad producer Carey Cramer
Christian Conservative Activist Jeff Nielson
NY Committee Chairman Jeff
Patti

FL Rep. and Chairman of John
McCain’s Presidential campaign Bob Allen.
Party Chairman Jim Stelling
Whitehouse religious adviser Ted Haggard
Mayor John Gossack
Mayor Jeff Randall
National Chairman of the Young Republicans Glenn Murphy Jr.
Focus on the Family’s Physician Resource
Council and Bush appointee — W. David Hager
And certainly NOT last or least,
Neal Horsley who (among other things, has called for the arrest and imprisonment
of all homosexuals) admitted in an interview with Alan Colmes on the Fox News
Radio to having engaged in sex with a mule. 
He said, “When you grow up on a farm in Georgia, your first girlfriend
is a mule.” He then credited Jesus with forgiving him and cleansing him of his
“sin.”  
Incidentally, one of the people
named above is a Democrat.
© 9 Sep 2012 
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.