Author: jnelson

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What’s Your Sign? by Phillip Hoyle

What’s your sign? I’ve been asked, but probably missed what was happening either because I don’t interpret questions as come-ons or more probably because I feel aversion to any archaic system of interpreting human behavior. I readily admit to being prejudiced in this matter. I’m wary due to my inattention to emotional signs; I just don’t read people well. I’m also wary due to Christian teaching and scientific methodology, both of which in the forms I got them rejected the reading of stars as omens. Were I asked, “What’s your sign?” I’d either want to explore these ideas intellectually or judge the person asking me as someone I’d not want to become intimate with—but those are my problems. In admitting these things I really wonder if my prejudice serves simply as one more defense to protect me from predators.

Oh I can answer: for instance, if you are interested, I’m a Cancer, but it seems such a lame sign as if I’m the victim of a diagnosis. Then to add on to that there’s the image of being a crustaceous crab or someone who walks backwards or sideways when what I really am interested in from life is that it be enjoyable. I certainly don’t want to become someone’s dinner. The Zodiac sign just doesn’t stick with me at a superficial level. This moniker Cancer, this superficial analytical device approached superficially for superficial reasons doesn’t attract me in any way.

In general, I find the Zodiac about as interesting as I find the medieval meditations on the temperaments. For me they have their place in history. I recall my good friend Gerry McMillin being put off by a book on the Zodiac and the Gospels, a volume that a student and friend lent her. When she told me she probably would return it unread, I reminded her that astrology was the astronomy of the biblical eras. I elaborated that according to the Jewish historian Josephus, a contemporary of the earliest Christian period, the Zodiac had a major architectural presence in Herod’s temple. Furthermore I added that I do think it strange that if this phenomenon was no good as in evil, Satanic, or against God, why didn’t Jesus the prophet and subject of the Gospels rail against it? He did preach against the money exchanges in the same temple. My friend was then able to read the book and somewhat see its logic. Still, like her, I’m not much interested in the Zodiac or in casual discussions of its details.

Super-rationalist me doesn’t want the imposition of magical formulae for analysis of personality type or prediction of future or fate, or… whatever. I have always been more interested in modern analytical categories, but eventually I came to see that norms established in psychotherapeutic practice, in sociological inquiry, and even in education-related developmental schemes often are used against people rather than for them. They are thought to describe the perfect person against which one must be judged rather than simply averages of assessment. Such norms are conscripted for court use in civil and criminal proceedings by both prosecutors and defenders. They are used to demean cultures different than those based on Euro-American values. And the modern behavioral norms really haven’t changed all that much from their ancient counterparts—which means they are imbued or endowed or stink of the fear of the beyond, powers over which humans have no control, and so forth. So I laugh at being asked “What’s your sign?”

Oh, I’m polite, because really I don’t know what the asker is wanting: for example, does the interlocutor simply want conversation? Not bad in itself. Does the person want an answer to easily fit me into some convenient category? I will only disappoint. Does he or she want to know me for what I am? That’s going to take more than a conversation. Is the asker on some drug that makes the esoteric knowledge afforded by the Zodiac real? I’m not at all interested. Is my inquirerer a lay pop psychologist? Still not interested. Is this person a deep thinker trying to assess me in my approach to life? This will take a long time; we’ll need many meetings and carafes of coffee and probably some wine. You see, many possibilities make me both interested and wary.

What to answer? I could say:
“I’m a Cancer but probably not in the way you mean.” or
“I’m a Cancer but not all that moody.” or
“I’m a Cancer but an unpredictable cusper.” or
“I’m a Cancer but probably not what you’re looking for.”

Now, if with dark browns enhanced by natural eye shadow and a slight downturn shape at the lateral edges that crinkle when laughing, and should those eyes look longingly into my hazels and ask: “What’s your sign?” I’ll probably not have anything to say but may really get confused and confounded by the question and not worry over why it was asked. I’ll simply say, “Sure,” and pay the bar bill and say, “Let’s go.”

© Denver, 2013

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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Dreams by Pat Gourley

I have always had a very active “dream-life”. It is hard to
actually measure this for sure but it seems that at least half of my sleep is
dreaming. These would be the dreams that I am aware of or can remember in the
morning. The dream recollection process is not something I often bother to do
and I do not keep dream journals and probably never will. I take the same stance
toward my dreams that the Grateful Dead took with their music. The reason they
allowed even encouraged people to tape their shows was the attitude “we are
done with it and you can do whatever you want with it”. An attitude greatly
facilitated by a huge repertoire of tunes often performed with unique
improvisation with each rendition. I view my dreams the same way – well that
was interesting but it is over and I need to get on with the day and besides I
have to really pee.
Though I have always spent a good part of my night from back
to early childhood dreaming a lot these nocturnal adventures seem to be in
sharper focus than ever these days. Perhaps that is due to the recurrent
interruption of my REM sleep with the need to get up and urinate mid-dream.
Usually I am able to go back to sleep easily and it seems I swear that the
dream picks up where it left off. I often think, usually in a dense fog or semi-dream-state,
how exhausting is this to revisit the same idiotic situation, aren’t we done
yet?
 My personal bias is
that most pharmaceutical sleep aides are bad for you certainly if used
frequently and particularly those that actually create an amnesiac state are
not good for a healthy and vibrant dream life and may, at least in a transient
fashion, contribute to waking memory loss issues. I try to live by the old
Buddhist axiom that if you wake up and can’t get back to sleep it is actually a
call to the cushion. Nothing like trying to meditate late at night in the dark
to make you start to nod off in a hurry and for me it can be as effective as
Ambien. The only time I have taken Ambien was on a transatlantic flight to
Paris, which essentially resulted in me waking up in Paris feeling dopey,
anything but rested, wondering at first how the hell I got here and second why
no one was speaking English.
In poking around the ether a bit before writing this I was
looking for a current theory on dreaming and I happened on an article from
Scientific American from a few years back. A few sentences from that piece
seemed at least somewhat applicable to my own dream life:
Dreams seem to help us process emotions by
encoding and constructing memories of them. What we see and experience in our
dreams might not necessarily be real, but the emotions attached to these
experiences certainly are. Our dream stories essentially try to strip the
emotion out of a certain experience by creating a memory of it. This way, the
emotion itself is no longer active.  This mechanism fulfills an important
role because when we don’t process our emotions, especially negative ones, this
increases personal worry and anxiety. In fact, severe REM sleep-deprivation is
increasingly correlated to the development of mental disorders. In short,
dreams help regulate traffic on that fragile bridge which connects our
experiences with our emotions and memories.
Scientific American:
July 26, 2011. Sander van der Linden
It seems to me that there is some heavy-duty
Zen implications implied in this explanation that I will not ruminate too much
on but just say we can’t always control the shit that happens to us but we can
usually choose how we react emotionally to it. Apparently dreaming may be a
great and safe way to address all sorts of unfinished waking business.
Let me relate a few of the general
dream themes I have personally and you are all free to psychoanalyze them or
not. I most often tend to pay them little heed. The closest I come to a nightmare
these days is a recurrent dream I will have about getting to the airport on
time, needless to say I am frustrated at every turn and never do make the
flight.
A dream I had repeatedly, now several
decades in the past, was that I was going to be called on to fill in and play rhythm
guitar for the Rolling Stones because Keith Richards was not able to make the
show or perhaps was passed out back stage with a needle in his arm. I would
awake from this in quite an agitated state just as Mick looked at me to bring
the opening cords of Sympathy for the Devil or Tumbling Dice. Why this always
involved the Rolling Stones and not the Grateful Dead is a bit of a mystery to
me. Oh and by the way I can’t play a single cord on any type of guitar.
The only nasty type of childhood dream
I really remember having involved being chased down a long hallway by some
demon or the other and getting to a door that was always very big and
inaccessible to me. The door of course required a key I did not have. This
would seem to go on forever and never ended well.
The most vivid and intense dreams of
my life followed the death of my partner David in 1995. These dreams reoccurred
periodically for more than a year after his death and always had to do with my giving
away his stuff and that dear old queen left me with a lot of stuff.  I actually was slowly giving his things away
to friends or charity so I suppose I had those dreams coming. He was never
happy with the choices I was making in dispersing his estate.
I would say that overall my dreams these
days are extremely mundane and boring and rarely ever a source of consternation
while occurring or upon awaking. Often they involve very mundane things about
work, like did I give the right drug to the right patient or did I wind up
killing someone. Something that has apparently never happened since I still
have a job. I suppose I should examine for a minute a why my dreams about filling
in for Keith Richards were more disconcerting to me when they were occurring
than making a medication error at work and killing someone.
The closest dreams ever come these
days to exciting are the rare sexual ones. Ironically these always end in a
very frustrating manner with the much anticipated happy ending always just
outside of my reach.  And the age-old
phenomenon of a nocturnal emission never happens. But I guess a guy can dream
can’t he?
© November 2014 
 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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In Praise of Drifting by Gillian

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas
Frequently, drifting,
as applied to people, is used negatively. There are those scruffy old bums or drifters
in Depression-era movies; not anyone you want to grow up to be.
“Come
on,”  parents admonish
their adolescent offspring.
“You
need some direction in your life. You can’t
just drift!“
In the old days,
and I mean even before my time, maybe people simply drifted much more than
today. Sons drifted into continuing whatever trade their father had, or farming
the same family acres, and marrying some vaguely distant cousin from the next
valley. Many people did not contemplate these moves, they simply drifted into
the next phase of their lives without considering too deeply what in fact they
actually wanted. They did not have the options we have now; perhaps in fact
just drifting has become a negative because, being privileged to have so many
options, we are committing some act of betrayal by not taking complete
advantage of them.
I didn’t
see myself as drifting, in my younger days, but looking back I see clearly that
I was. I drifted my way through life letting others design major life changes
for me, until I came out to myself.  Then
decision-making on behalf of the real me versus that character acting my part,
became meaningful. But I’ve written about
all that several times before and I won’t
go into that again.
So, in praise of
drifting.
I think most clearly,
most productively, when I’m drifting in that
warm pool of unconsciousness just below the waking level. I am unaware that I’m
thinking, but I must be because I so often wake up with the puzzle solved, the
solution at hand, the decision made, the story written. No, I haven’t
taken to sleep-walking, let alone sleep-writing, but usually I decide, as I
drift just below the surface, what I want to write for Story Time, or on that
difficult Sympathy card, or in that note of apology.
I also love
physical drifting. I lie on my back in the swimming pool, letting every muscle
go limp, and just drift. I empty my brain of all thought, my body of all power,
and just drift. Usually I’m bumped out of my
reverie by an irritated hand or foot pushing me away, or the cold hard edge of
the pool impeding my slow, aimless, motion. Drifting is not as easy as it
sounds!

The first time I
was married, my husband and I, and his children, lived in Jamestown, an old
gold-mining town in the Foothills above Boulder. We had a horse, and the town
is surrounded by National Forest. I loved to spend any free time I managed to
grab, which was not much, riding along the endless trails. But this wan’t
really riding, it was nothing more than sitting on the back of a horse. I
rarely touched the reins, the old mare wandered wherever she wanted; we
drifted. At least I did. She had very definite ideas on where she was heading.
She had been trained as a cutting horse, and, having spent most of her life
among them, I don’t think it had ever
occurred to her that she was not, in fact, a cow. In the summer months herds
summer-pastured in the forests around town, and instinct always told her where
they were on any particular day. She wandered lazily in their direction. I
drifted idly in the saddle. Idyllic moments. Until, reaching a certain
closeness to the herd, she would, without warning, break into an excited gallop
which, inevitably, tore me from my drifting state and propelled me into an
equally excited grab for the reins. After cutting out a couple of resentful
cows from the herd, to keep her hand in so to speak, she settled in to graze
with them for the rest of her life, each time resulting in a battle of wills
when I decided it was time head for the barn. But once her reluctant head was
turned in that direction, she usually being the only one who knew the way home,
we returned to our peaceful pattern, she wandering, me drifting.

We love to drift
when Betsy and I go off on trips in our camper-van. Of course we usually have
some vague plan of when and where, but we have no reservations, no deadlines.
We change decisions frequently; staying longer here, less time there, ending up
in a campground we had no intention of using, or didn’t
even know existed. I have no desire to live like that every day of my life, but
it’s
wonderfully free and relaxing for a while. Just drifting.
I find, as I age,
that actually I do live more like that, more of the time. It’s
so much easier to do a little more delicious drifting in the latter part of
life. Drifting doesn’t go down well with
teachers and bosses. When you have successfully escaped their strictures, it
becomes much easier to decide not to do that today, or to go there next week,
or to stay a few days longer. Betsy and I both find ourselves shrugging a
casual “whatever,”
in
answer to questions to which we would have had very definite responses not so
long ago.
And of course we
are all carried along, inevitably, in the Big Drift, which will deposit us,
sooner or later, in the Big Sleep. We have always known this, but it hangs
around the front of my mind rather more as later becomes less likely
with each passing day, and sooner approaches with indecent haste. I don’t
know what awaits me where the Big Drift pours over the cliffs, but I do know I
will not burn in some eternal fire any more than I shall play the harp upon a
cloud.
I have no fears,
and find myself at odds with my adored Dylan Thomas. Perhaps, for some psyches,
it is healthier to rage against the dying of the light, but I think not for
mine. When that time comes I hope to drift, peacefully, towards the light.

©
July 2014  
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 25
years.
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Horseshoes by Deborah MacNair

When told the subject of this piece
Was horseshoes, I remember thinking, “Oh jeesh.”
“Horseshoes” it said, about them you’ll write,
But what can I say,
That won’t come out trite?
For my story you see
Is pathetic but true,
That I know almost nothing
About the horseshoe.
But one thing I know,
One claim to fame,
Folks throw them at a post,
And call it a game.
When a ringer is thrown,
You can tell at a glance,
This game requires skill,
And not random chance.
If you can’t make a ringer,
Please don’t sing the blues,
For “close enough” counts,
In the game of horseshoes.
Still one question I have,
One question it’s true,
Does the horse ever wonder,
What became of his shoes?!

© 3 March 2015
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First Encounters of a Pornographic Kind by Betsy

As with any subject in
the world, the internet has everything and nothing to say about pornography, I
discovered as I was searching for some statistical information.   I can say “nothing” because of constantly
encountering the statement that statistics on porn change daily and are
basically meaningless because the numbers are impossible to gather.
 However, while reading through a particular
page of information a few statements  got
my attention; notably, every second that ticks by over $3,000 is spent on
pornography.  Mind boggling!  And this: the porn industry as a whole in one
year takes in larger revenues than Microsoft, Google, Amazon, e-bay, Yahoo,
Apple and Netflix combined.  Even more
mind-boggling!
Consumption of
pornography as an addiction is very prevalent, I learned. But, then, that keeps
the industry flourishing–even in hard times.  After reading on a bit further, I still really
had next to nothing to write about pornography.
“I know, I’ll look up
information on porn history,” I said to myself.
Upon turning to a page on that subject, my eyes
could not help but be drawn to  an
ancient picture depicting a “Priapus figure from Pompeii.”  The poor guy was shown standing there with a
frontal encumbrance which would be enough to weigh down the strongest of
men.  What “jumped out at me” so to speak
is the caption below the picture: In ancient Rome large phali were considered
undesirable for men to possess, it said, and often were depicted as such for
comic effect.  Really!!  Undesirable! 
I don’t believe it for a minute.  
But then, what do I know? 
And then there is our
Puritan culture.  Which reminds me of my
loving Great Aunt Anne.   She was an
adorable woman.  As I watched her age she
became smaller and smaller until in her 80’s she definitely qualified as a
“little old lady.”  This of course made
her even more adorable.  She and my Uncle
occasionally took road trips to visit various family members.  They would stay in small motels when their
journey required an overnight stay.  They
were tight-fisted and they always looked for the small town, family owned motel
off the beaten path. This was in the 1960’s when such places existed.
On one of her visits to
my house she seemed slightly off center, not really upset, but not quite
herself.  Something was on her mind.  So I asked her about herself.  Was she sure she was all right?  With a very embarrassed look about her and
turning her head to check who else might hear what she was about to say, she
revealed that the night before in their motel room, she had had her first
encounter with pornography.  She
inadvertently had discovered under their bed piles of magazines–probably 50
magazines.  Being curious to read one of
them, she described herself picking one up, opening it, and immediately
releasing it to the floor and kicking it back to its place under the bed.  Inside, whispered Aunt Anne, were pictures
depicting “oh the worst pornography you can imagine.  Pictures leaving nothing to the imagination,
scenes–well, I could not even look at the pictures!” 
 Although this story took place a very long
time ago, my vision of this little old lady and her first encounter with
pornography will stick in my mind forever. 
And truly to this day when the subject of pornography comes up my Aunt
Anne is the first thing that comes to mind.

© October 2011 

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.
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Revelation by Will Stanton

“You cannot judge a book by
its cover.”  This phrase itself is a
hackneyed expression, yet its truth can be applied to many experiences in my
life.  There certainly have been instances
where, based upon surface appearances, I arbitrarily have assumed the quality
or interpretation of a person or situation which, subsequently, proved to have
been wrong or misleading.  Throughout my
life, I also have tended to give people the benefit of the doubt unless
subsequently proved otherwise.  I have
assumed that people are more honest or reliable than they turn out to be, or
more intelligent and better informed than they are.  Too often, I have been mislead by those
people’s own inflated egos, their self-assured behavior, or supposed credentials
or positions of authority.  I end up
being disappointed when they prove otherwise. 
Those repeated revelations should have resulted in early learned
lessons. 
Good looks can be very
misleading, too.  Psychological studies
have shown that tall, good looking people are assumed to be more intelligent,
more capable, more successful, and generally happier.  I admit to having made that mistaken
assumption, too.  We all are aware of any
number of young, good-looking actors, for example, who became very popular and
rich early on, only later to fall prey to some personal calamity such as a
failed adult life of misery, an overdose on drugs or alcohol, dying in terrible
car-crashes, or even committing suicide.
The most dramatic case that
I’m personally familiar with is the tragic case of Ross Carlson whom I met on
the Auraria campus.  Ross was especially
handsome nineteen-year-old, very intelligent, and charismatic enough to have
become a teacher’s pet.  It was easy to
wish to be  as fortunate as Ross.  It turned out, however, that Ross was
suffering from multiple personality disorder. 
He later shot both his parents and later died suddenly of acute
leukemia.  I’m certainly glad that I was
not Ross, despite his exceptionally good looks.   
I recall that, from a very
early age, I was extraordinarily sensitive to beauty, and this certainly
pertained to the human face and form.  I
clearly recall the spring evening when I was only five years old when my
brother and I joined a couple of young neighbor kids sitting on their
lawn.  One boy, only a year older than I,
was physically extraordinary in every way, with his finely formed face, his
sensuous posture, and his graceful movements. 
Looking at him, I was fascinated. 
I actually felt an electric-like tingle in my stomach.  I never really got to know the boy as a
person.  The family soon moved away, and
I never saw him again.  So, all that I
knew of him was his physical self, only the “cover of the book,” not the real
“contents.”  Who knows what he really was
like as a human being or what he may have turned out to be when he grew
up.  His outer appearance may have not at
all have reflected who he was or would be.
This hyper-sensitivity of
mine to beauty most likely had some innate factor, yet I also recall a
potential contributing learning-factor as well. 
For some reason, I never quite felt accepted or loved as a young
child.  This feeling was exacerbated by
my hearing my mother saying, upon seeing one of my neighbor friends or
classmates, “My, he’s a good-looking boy.” 
So, I suppose that I learned that, to be accepted, I had to be (quote)
“a good-looking boy.”
Such a conviction and
preoccupation crept even into some of my dreams.  Throughout the years starting in my late
twenties and thirties, I sometimes dreamed of having the appearance I would
like to have, of being years younger, sometimes perhaps back in college.  If I felt that, at a dream-age of
twenty-four, I was out of place with the younger students, I’d wake up reminded
of the fact that I was not even twenty four; I actually was was in my
thirties.  Perhaps more interestingly, I
often dreamed of being someone else entirely, younger, healthy, athletic, and
good looking, sometimes even of a different nationality.  Youth, health, and beautiful outer appearance
always have caught my attention.
But, outer appearances never
tell the whole story.  In one
extraordinarily curious dream, I saw myself as around sixteen to eighteen, not
particularly tall but lean and compact, very good looking, and with dark-brown
hair.  The peculiar aspect of the dream,
considering that I was in rural Ohio, was that I was trying to appear to be
attractive by dressing as a mock-cowboy. 
In addition to  bluejeans, cowboy
boots, and black cowboy hat, I also was wearing a linen shirt with an
embroidered cowboy design.  In the dream,
I had the distinct emotional feeling that I had dressed in this manner in an
attempt to appear attractive in a young-masculine way.  That dream was so vivid and so peculiar that
I remembered every moment of it.
Some years later when I was
around forty, I traveled back to my hometown to visit my family.  They decided to take a long drive out into
the countryside to a state park where there was a scenic hollow with a path leading
to a waterfall.  The highway ran through
an economically depressed area with a few tiny, neglected villages and miles of
scrub forest and abandoned coal mines. 
The people around there were very poor. 
We arrived at the small, empty parking lot by the entrance to the hollow
and gathered ourselves together to begin our nature-walk.
About this time, a worn,
older-model car pulled in.  As the lone
driver got out of his car, I cast a glance at him and was very startled by what
I saw.  The image presented to me was so
uncanny that I immediately developed a powerful feeling of déja vue.  I had seen him before, but only in my dream
some years before.  The lone figure was a
youth, at most around eighteen, good looking, and with brown hair.  But, what truly stunned me was what he was
wearing.  He had attempted, here in the
middle of nowhere in rural Ohio, to make himself look attractive by dressing as
a cowboy with bluejeans, cowboy boots, black cowboy hat, and, most especially,
a linen shirt with an embroidered cowboy design.  What were the chances of encountering a
perfect match to what I had dreamed years before?   I was amazed.


Then, I felt something
rather disturbing.  Everything about this
youth and his old car with the local license plate spoke of rural poverty.  Even more poignantly, I sensed in this lone
boy a life most likely of isolation in these poverty-stricken hills, quite
possibly with a dismal future of educational and economic disadvantage.  Because of this strange, unexplained
coincidence with my dream, I would have liked to have spoken to him, to find
out who he really was as a person, to discover why he was dressed like
that.  Of course, I felt that I could not
do so.  I was with my family, and they
would not understand or approve of my talking to this stranger.

Then reality set in.  Here was a very attractive person whom I
would like to look like, that, in fact, I even had dreamed about, a mystery
without an explanation.  Yet, that
handsome appearance was only his outer image, the “cover of the book.”  If, by some magic, I had been  transformed into that person, I might also
have ended up in a life of sadness, disappointment, and hopelessness, trapped
in those depressed hills of rural Ohio.
That experience left me with
two deeply ingrained impressions.  Ever
since that day, I have been puzzled by the unexplained memory of encountering
the same attractive person,  uncannily
dressed in cowboy clothes, as I had seen in my earlier dream.  The other was the  reminder to avoid envying those individuals
who appear to be especially attractive, for the lives of those individuals may
not be so attractive as their outside promise. 
You cannot judge a book by its cover.    

© 2
January 2014  

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

Teachers by Ricky

Tragedy brought them together,
United by a common desire to help those in need.
Their desire entwined with emotions strong and
yet tender.
They huddled around a table, while awaiting their
host,
Yet were confused why this meeting was necessary.
The host arrived and addressed each by name,
“Anne, Dawn, Lauren, Mary, Rachel, and Victoria;
I see you are all here so let us begin.
Do you all understand why you are here?”
“No!” said Dawn (the others joining in),
“We all have important work to do.  People need us right now!
Sir, you must let us all go back to work—Please.”
With eyes radiating love and compassion the host
looked at those
Seated around the table before he spoke.
“I perceive that you do not understand.
We have a great need for you to remain here with
us.” he began.
“We need your skills, talents, abilities, and
creativity.  
Your transfers are all complete,
And only your concerns need be
discussed.”
He continued, “You are no longer needed in your
other positions.
The people you wish to help are cared for by
others but,
Those who actually do need your help,
Also are here, specifically to be with you.”
“You see our schools need teachers,
administrators, staff,
And therapists too,
But only those who actually love whom they serve.
Not just anyone will do,”
The veil was lifted from their minds and
understanding,
They slowly rose from their seats, kneeled, and
Thanked their host who indicated a door,
Which they passed through into a classroom.
Vicki called roll as the students from Sandy Hook
Elementary
Arrived one-by-one.
In memory
of those innocents lost to senseless violence.
Charlotte Bacon, Daniel Barden, Rachel D’Avino
(adult), Olivia Engel, Josephine Gay, Dylan Hockley, Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung
(adult), Madeleine F. Hsu, Catherine V. Hubbard, Chase Kowalski, Nancy Lanza
(adult), Jesse Lewis, Ana Marques-Greene, James Mattioli, Grace McDonnell, Anne
Marie Murphy (adult), Emillie Parker, Jack Pinto, Noah Pozner, Caroline
Previdi, Jessica Rekos, Avielle Richman, Lauren Rousseau (adult), Mary Sherlach
(Adult), Victoria Soto (Adult), Benjamin Wheeler, Allison N. Wyatt.

© 5 January 2013

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 9-11-2001
terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be
therapeutic.
Posted on

Artistic by Lewis

[To my
audience:  Please be forewarned that what
you are about to hear may be infused with more than a soupcon (süp- sän) of “artistic
license”.]

When
I was about eleven and on the cusp of discovering that there was something
about me that was likely to relegate me to the margins of society, I began to
explore the ways in which American popular culture might open up avenues of
expression to me that would help me to wrap my arms around who I was and, more
importantly, how I might fit in. 
It
was 1957 and there were circles of American society wherein people leaving the
movie theater or concert hall might be heard to say things like, “You may
have noticed that [take your pick] Liberace/Sal
Mineo/Anthony Perkins/Montgomery Clift is a bit on the ‘artistic’ side.”
As
people who say such things often were prone to doing so in soft voices, I
mistakenly heard them to say that the actor at issue was “a bit autistic”.  I thought it appalling that a loving god
would see fit to bestow two such strikes upon a child from the moment of their
birth but I counted my blessings in that I seemed to have been passed over for
the autism part and moved on.
Knowing
little about autism and anxious to avoid drawing attention to my own proclivities
when it comes to members of the male gender, I, thenceforth, associated being “autistic”
with anyone exhibiting a combination of three or more of the characteristics of
the classical homosexual persona.  That
is–as Wikipedia describes Franklin
Pangborn, surely one of the most “artistic actors” in Hollywood
history–“fussy…, polite, elegant, and highly energetic, often
officious, fastidious, somewhat nervous, prone to becoming flustered but
essentially upbeat, and with an immediately recognizable high-speed patter-type
speech pattern.”
I
thought I had stumbled upon a fool-proof guide as to how to behave so as not to
elicit any suspicion whatsoever that I might be “queer”.  I set about to find the movie personality who
embodied every antithetical quality so I could emulate him.  He had to be stoic, insensitive, blunt,
laid-back, modest (even falsely so), unflappable but downbeat, slow-spoken and
have nerves of steel.  In a matter of seconds,
it came to me–Rock Hudson.  We all know
how that turned out.
© 8 September 2014 

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

Pets by Gillian

My mother was
a great one for pets. She had pet peeves, pet grievances, pet projects, pet
phrases, and, being a school teacher, even teacher’s pets! She herself used
these expressions.
“Oh, you know
that’s one of my pet peeves,” she’d say as a hand projected from a
passing car to deposit unsightly fish-and-chip wrapping in the flowering
hedgerow. Split infinitives was another. Star Trek was after her time, but I
cannot hear that phrase, to boldly go, without imagining how she would
have given a sharp intake of breath, shaken her head sadly, and told the TV,
admonishingly, “It’s either boldly to go, or to go boldly,
NOT to boldly go!”  Split
infinitives, she always stated, set her teeth on edge. Fortunately for her,
being a teacher, fingernails on the blackboard did not!
I, also, have
pet peeves; people who, chatting on their cellphones, crash their grocery carts
into my ankles. Or almost crash their car into my car. Or shout into their
cellphones at the table next to mine in a restaurant, or in line at the
supermarket. Or those who, speaking of the supermarket line, react in
astonishment when the clerk implies that they need actually to pay (see, no
split infinitive!) for their groceries, and begin an endless hunt, in a
bottomless purse, for their checkbook.
Mom’s pet
grievances, and they were many, were all sub-titles. They related, mostly
directly, occasionally indirectly, to the the Grand Category of Grievances: my
father. What he had ever done to deserve this, I never could ascertain; but I
have written about this before so will not repeat myself. Suffice it to say
that I loved my dad, and never truly understood Mom’s animosity.
When I say I
loved him, I don’t mean that he was my dad so of course I loved him in spite of
all his faults and wrong-doings. I mean that I loved him because of who he was,
not despite it.
I have my own
grievances, but most of mine, or so I like to think, are general rather than
personal.  “A feeling of resentment
over something believed to be wrong or unfair,” says the online
dictionary.  Given that definition, yes,
I grieve every war and every youth sacrificed to it. I grieve every starving
person with no food to eat, and every thirsty person with no water to drink. I
grieve man’s inhumanity to man, but then you’ve heard all that before, too. In
the last couple of years or so I find myself forced to grieve for young black
people killed, no, let’s use the right word here, murdered, for no
reason other than the color of their skin, by angry bigoted white men.
My mother’s
pet projects, in the sense of those which go on, year after year, were writing,
both poetry and prose, and pressing flowers. I do my best with writing, and
truly love doing it, but the pressed flowers somehow passed me by. I do love to
photograph them, though, so perhaps that’s some kind of higher-tech equivalent.
My latest pet project is organizing my photos into a series of theme books.
And so to pet
phrases!
Do as you
would be done by. If the whole world lives by
those few words, what a wonderful world it would be!
If you can’t
say something nice, don’t say anything at all. We, as a society, definitely have abandoned that one!
Oh dear! What
will people think? Mom, a product of an age when
appearances greatly mattered, said that quite frequently to both me and my dad,
neither of us great respecters of neighbors’ judgments.  
This one was
somewhat at odds with another pet phrase of Mom’s.
“Just be
comfortable,” she’d respond, in any discussion of what to wear, but then
proceed to “what will people think?” when I arrived in slacks or my
dad without a tie. Mom was not without her inconsistencies, but we learned
easily enough how to deal with them and my mother was, on the whole,
considerate, sweet, and kind. As with my dad, I loved her very much, simply for
who she was.
My mother had,
quite literally, generations of teacher’s pets. She began teaching in the local
two-room school in 1928 and retired in the early 1970’s, so, except for few
years out in the 40’s, she taught in the same room for about forty years. At
the end she was teaching some whose grandparents she had taught.  
“Oh that
little Johnny Batchett!” she’d exclaim. She never denied having favorites
but she would never have treated them as the classic teachers’ pets. She would
have taken great care never to show any hint of favoritism.
“He’s got
that same little cheeky smile as his granddad! He’s got his mother’s dimples
though. The girls are going to be round him like bees around the honey! Of
course, his dad was just the same. All ‘love them and leave them’ young Tom
was, till those dimples hooked him fair and square ….. ” and off she’d
go.
” ……
but that Yvonne Atkins! What a little madam! Still, what can you expect? Her
mum and dad, both such discipline problems at that age. I’ll never forget the
time …….”  My dad would give me
his covert wink, and we’d settle down to listen, or at least pretend we were.
Recalling
Mom’s pet thises and thats reminds me, once again, how the world has changed
over the course of my life. Not too many people these days are taught by the
same person who taught their grandparents, or even their parents. Or even, come
to that, an older sibling.
Most of us
care little what anyone thinks of the way we look, or often even the way we
act.  Those old admonitions such as the
Golden Rule, once painstakingly embroidered and hung on the wall, have more or
less disappeared; I’m quite sure they aren’t about to go viral any time soon.
I’m not suggesting we abided by such things in our day, but at least we were
aware of the concept; perhaps we tried.
Yes, I am
being an old curmudgeon. My own pet peeves and grievances grow apace.  Well why not? There is much of this Brave New
World I do not like.  But there would, I
suspect, be more to dislike, knowing what I now know, if I returned to that
rose-colored past, than there is in the reality of the present. Why would I
want to return to a world where homosexuality was illegal? A woman having a
baby was forced to quit her job, and for this reason could not get a loan to
buy a house or car in her own name, no matter how well paid she was. And even
after the birth control pill gave women much better control over their own
reproductive rights, it was illegal to provide [or] prescribe them for an
unmarried woman.  No. I really want np
part of it.
As for the
future, who knows?
As Jay Asher
says, in his novel Thirteen Reasons Why –
“You can’t stop the future
You can’t rewind the past
The only way to learn the secret
… is to press play.”
So as I’m not
yet quite ready to press the stop button, and certainly not the eject, I guess
I’d better do just that!
© 18 August 2014 
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 25
years.
Posted on

Camping by Will Stanton

I am one of those fortunate
people who grew up in an era that was not overwhelmed, as we appear to be
now-days, with digital technology.  We
found ways of entertaining ourselves and choosing enjoyable activities that
were more natural.  Camping was one of
those.
My mother and father thought
that camping was a good way to spend summer vacations.  Part of that stemmed from the fact that we
did not have much money and were not well-healed enough to take world cruises,
go to luxury resorts, or stay in fancy hotels. 
My father was able to pick up some army-surplus camping supplies, all of
it rather primitive by today’s camping standards.  He bought a heavy-canvas tent, big enough to
stand up in and to hold the five of us. 
He bought five army cots made of heavy oak supports and canvas.  We had a gas Coleman lantern that, when lit,
hissed and provided us with plenty  of
light.  We had a plywood icebox that he
made, lined with Celotex for insulation.
So for several summers, we
traveled in our station wagon to various states in central, north, and eastern
U.S., setting up camp in preselected campsites. 
Undoubtedly, these travels sparked my love of nature that has lasted all
my life.
Unlike many other boys who
found enjoyable experiences camping through joining the Cub Scouts, Boys
Scouts, or (as portrayed in the movie “Moonlight Kingdom”) the Khaki Scouts, my
brief participation in the scouts included almost no camping trips.  I don’t recall whether our local troops just
did not offer that many trips, or if my mother just did not bother to sign me
up.  As a consequence, I missed out on
some scouting experiences, enjoyable or less so, that many other boys have had.
I do recall that one of the
older boys, seventeen-year-old Bruce, apparently was very proud of his
developing masculinity, which was expressed in his being the hairiest
individual I ever had seen, to that date, outside of a zoo.  Between his questionable personality, very
chunky build, rather common features, and a mat of black hair covering almost
the entirety of his body, I did not find him to be a particularly attractive
person.
Bruce was noted for two
exceptional habits while on camping trips. 
One was that he prided himself on carrying with him a battery-pack and
electric razor to mow each morning the inevitable black stubble on his
face.  The other habit, which to this day
I have not been able to explain, was that he liked to spend the night in his
sleeping bag nude.  Boys being boys,
neither of these facts went unobserved.  And
boys being who they are, they decided to play a practical joke on Bruce.  All they had to do was hook up his electric
razor to his battery-pack, slip it down into his sleeping back, turn it on, and
then shout, “Snake!  Snake!” 
Bruce, waking up to the
warning shouts, along with the buzz and vibration down in his sleeping bag,
naturally panicked.  Terrified, and
struggling to extricate himself from the sleeping bag, Bruce quickly wiggled
out of the bag, stood up, and without stopping to further assess the situation,
took off running into the woods.  It took
a while for the boys to coax Bruce back into the camp.  He was relieved but also irritated to find
that there never was a snake in his sleeping bag.  He was even more irritated with the new
Indian name that the boys assigned to him, “Running Bare.”
© 23
January 2014    
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.