Author: jnelson

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Finding Your Voice, by Louis Brown

I find my voice most clearly at the Monday afternoon sessions of “Telling your Story”. In fact, in an ideal world, we would have generous sponsors who would give us a radio station so that, when we come in, each one of us sits in front of a microphone. Once we have told our stories, Phillip will take calls from the radio audience.
One caller calls and asks what our mission is exactly. Phillip says he has his opinion, and Tell your Story’s corporate papers have a mission statement, but Phillip says he would like us participants to answer that question, that is those of us who are so inclined. After an hour or so of discussing our mission, the general consensus emerges that our mission is to liberate gay and Lesbian people from oppression by developing a new mass media that different gay communities can use to communicate with one another. Another important goal is to record how gay and Lesbian people perceive the society in which they are obliged to live. Thirdly, we must develop a political liberation strategy that includes keeping close tabs on the activities of our opponents, i.e. Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council and more recently Mike Pence who, according to Donald Trump, wants to hang all gay and Lesbian people. Jokes like these we can do without.
After a month or two on the air, we get a grant to set up a political newspaper for gay people who live in the Denver area. Maybe such a newspaper already exists. This new publication should promote our gay civic groups and print gay liberation type literature of all kinds.
Other groups also perceive irrational hostility directed toward them. For instance, in the last election, when we had a choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, we did not really have an authentic liberal alternative. Was the public really satisfied with these candidates? Hillary Clinton admires the memory of Barry Goldwater and still admires Henry Kissinger. That makes her clearly a right-winger despite her dubious claim to being a progressive. Barry Goldwater, Henry Kissinger and more recently Donald Rumsfeld all became discredited warmongers. As Gilbert & Sullivan would say, “You can put them on the list, you can put them on the list, and they’ll none of them be missed, they’ll none of them be missed.
 Politicians who accept their legitimacy should be discarded by the public. The peaceniks of the 1960’s and their numerous followers in today’s culture need to develop an alternative mass media outlet to counter the current blackout on real political information.
Our gay magazine or newspaper of the future should hook up with one these newspaper enterprises. Perhaps Rolling Stone, something of that ilk. Rolling Stone started up as a new independent alternate culture media tool.
And then, of course, the Socialists. Bernie Sanders says he is a democratic socialist but who, according to the current media, did not convince a significant number of black people that he was their candidate. I will admit I was waiting for Bernie Sanders to tell black people in a loud public way that, in addition to promoting perpetual war, capitalism promotes racism because it is very profitable. In the early nineteenth century, slavery in Dixieland was very, very profitable. Also, pitting one ethnic group against another is an easy way to break up labor unions. These are basic socialist tenets. Bernie never really developed this in his speeches.
And Bernie Sanders never really expanded on the relationship between capitalism and perpetual war. War is very profitable, and the resulting profits are more important to the war profiteers than the lives of a few million people. Of course, the war profiteers eagerly purchase senators and U. S. representatives and Supreme Court Justices. To a large number of people, this is all obvious and a truism, but many Americans do not seem to be aware of these purchases of public representatives.
Did you notice the large number of protesters in Hamburg, Germany, during the G-20 Summit? This indicates a large number of people recognize they are locked out of the current status quo, and they need another media outlet to promote their point of view.
Also, huge protests occurred when the U. S. started the unjustifiable war in Iraq. The mainstream media made sure they were not covered. Another reason for developing a new independent media.
Thus we see the necessity for developing a new more independent alternative media. In my fantasy, I am one of the   CEO’s of this alternative media. I will have found my voice. Wish me a Happy Birthday.
© 23 Oct 2017  
About the Author  
I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.
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True Colors, by Lewis Thompson

My favorite color has always been green.  Not chartreuse or pea or celery but dark metallic as in British racing green.  My second car was a 1958 Ford Fairlane 500 convertible.

It was 1964 and I was a senior in high school and anxious to make a good impression on my classmates.  Mine was light yellow with a black-and-white vinyl interior.  The car had been in a wreck and had been lovingly restored to “like new” condition.
I hadn’t had the car a year when another driver ran a stop sign and swiped the front end.  Since the car would have to be repainted anyway, I could choose my color.  Naturally, I chose British racing green—a color that seemed outside the experience of the fellow at the body shop.  He showed me the color chart and I found one that looked pretty close to BRG.  When the car was ready for pickup, to my horror, I saw that the color was way too dark—almost metallic black.  Well, there wasn’t much I could do about it and–with a new white convertible top–didn’t look at all bad.  Of course, I would never have allowed Graham Hill or Jimmy Clark see me in anything but true British Racing Green.
Graham Hill

Jimmy Clark
© 28 Feb 2016  
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 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 hometown. 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.
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Flowers, by Gillian

I was going to begin with the words, my mother loved flowers. But love is such an overused elasticated word that we are never sure just what it means, so I’ll simply say, flowers were among the most important things in my mother’s life. She rejoiced in the look, feel, and smell of them; the art and science of them. She caressed them with her fingers, her eyes and nose, and her mouth as she whispered their names to them. Not only could she identify any flower with its English name, but for many, she also knew the Botanical. As she read endlessly and traveled more she began eagerly to learn their names in French, German, Spanish, or alternate identities assigned to them in other English-speaking countries.
Take just one example; the simple buttercup. Being water-loving plants, these thrive in Britain. Where we lived they grew like weeds but that did nothing to diminish Mum’s appreciation both of and for them.
The morning sun shone on a cluster of the creeping variety, highlighting their soft golden glow still brightened by the dew.
‘Well, good morning my Beautiful Buttercups,’ she might greet them, whispering so as not to disturb them, very gently caressing the velvet gold petals with the tip of her little finger.
‘How are my favorite little Ranunculi this morning? My Ranunculus repens?’
Then perhaps she would slip into an attempt at a French accent.
‘My bouton d’Or.’
‘Coyote’s eyes’, she might add, in dreadfully Humphrey Bogart American.
She had read, somewhere, that in parts of the Pacific Northwest of the United States buttercups are called “Coyote’s eyes” by the native peoples. According to legend, an apparently very foolish coyote was tossing his eyes up in the air and catching them again when an eagle snatched them. Unable to see, the foolish, but evidently extremely creative coyote, made eyes from buttercups.
She would even offer up poems. In the case of the buttercups, all I remember was one by A.A. Milne, famously the author of the Winnie the Pooh stories, which Mum quoted as –
Head above the buttercups,
Walking by the stream,
Down among the buttercups,
Lost in a dream.
Having just this moment looked up the poem for the purposes of this story, I see that she was misquoting. The original begins –
Where is Anne?
Head above the buttercups,
Walking by the stream,
Down among the buttercups.
Where is Anne?
Walking with her man,
Lost in a dream.
How typical of my mother, I think now, that she should leave out the part about a man. Had there been mention of a child, she probably would have suppressed that, too. For her, I see through the magic of hindsight, love of flowers was a way to forget all humans and the pain that relationships with them can bring. She was safe with flowers. I used to witness the look in her eyes when she caressed them, and ache inside. She never looked at me like that. She didn’t caress me like that. Looking back now, I wonder if my dad ever wondered why she never treated him to such adoration either.
My father was the absolute opposite of my mother when it came to flowers, as was the case with most things. To him, they all belonged in a few very simple generic categories. A red flower was a rose, a blue one a bluebell, a white one a daisy, and a yellow one a dandelion. I think he really did have a genuine disinterest in flowers, quite typical of men of his time and place. Vegetables were a man’s plants. Flowers were women’s work. What good were they? You couldn’t eat them. They were simply a waste of valuable space. They harrumphed at their beauty and trampled their delicacy. Dad didn’t want to destroy them, he simply had no interest in them. But I do think his extreme disinterest and feigned ignorance was at least to some extent simply to tease my mother. Referring to a beautiful bed of dancing daffodils, Mum’s precious narcissus, jonquil, daffadowndilly, as dandelions, or the papery translucent lily as a daisy, was inevitable met with a very irritated, ‘Oh, Edward!’ from Mum and a broad wink from my father to me. Did he persist in this as much when I was not there? I have to wonder now.
Whatever the human dynamics, flowers were a source of much joy to my mother throughout her life. My example of the buttercup was played out with practically every flower she ever encountered, whether nurtured in the garden or wild in the woods. The last time I saw her I arrived at the nursing home with an armful of lilacs from a friend’s garden. She reached out her arms; not to embrace me but to gather the flowers to her.
‘Oh, Syringa!’ she whispered: burying her face in the blossoms, burying her nose in the delicious fragrance. A young girl just bringing in the tea looked at me in puzzlement. She was the daughter of someone I went to school with and new my name perfectly well. She scuttled out as fast as she could when Mum broke into –
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
She had a remarkable memory. I do not. I had to look this up from what little of it I could remember, eventually tracking it down in a poem by Walt Whitman.
The second verse reads –
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.
I had to laugh, even after all these years. Of course, it would be the first verse she quoted, ignoring the second where humans inserted themselves, again unwanted.
It’s OK Mum, I tell her now. We all hope to find whatever gets us through the night. And what could anyone find, in their hour of need, offering more uplift for the spirit, more peace for the soul, than flowers?
© February 2017 
About the Author 
I was born and
raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S.
and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder
area since 1965, working for 30-years at IBM. I married, raised four
stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself
as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years.
We have been married since 2013.
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Quirky Domestic Tidbits, by Ricky

          Me?  Quirky?  I don’t think so.  I’m perfectly normal in every way even for a gay guy.  Very nondescript, average looking, wonderful personality (so I’ve been told, and I choose to believe it) and nothing quirky about me.  So, I felt very secure in asking my oldest daughter if she thought there was anything quirky about me; knowing all along that she couldn’t think of anything even if she thought more than her 30-second attention span for caring about anything I say.
          Apparently, it was a case of me not seeing the forest because the trees were in the way; or (as the Bible puts it in Matthew, Chapter 7) a case of “mote” “beam” sickness.  Let’s see if I can remember accurately.  My daughter thought for all of 3 seconds and came up with “The Lord of the Rings”. 
          Apparently, every time we have guests over I always ask them at some point if they like to read books and if so what type.  (My daughter keeps track of these things somehow; I don’t keep count.)  Not long after the topic of books and movies turns up, someone, not always me, will bring up “The Lord of the Rings”; at which time a 15 to a 30-minute discussion of the book and movie will follow.  My daughter has grown very tired of hearing it over and over.
          The last time it happened was two weeks ago.  She had invited the church missionaries over for dinner.  I was on my way home from somewhere and called to let her know.  She informed me that the missionaries were there for dinner, so I asked if I was invited or should I eat before I came home.  She told me to come on home.  She told us all later, that at this point she wanted to add that I could come home to eat if I did not talk about “The Lord of the Rings” but she did not say it.  I came home.  We all sat down to eat and during the small talk, my daughter asked one of the missionaries where he lived and went to school.  He replied, “Sacramento.”  My daughter thought to herself, “Oh no.”  I said, “I went to college in Sacramento.”  When asked where I replied, “Sacramento State College” and I flunked out after two semesters.  (My daughter is now screaming in her head, “No. No. Nooooo.”.) When asked why did I flunk out, I couldn’t lie so I said because my English 101 teacher made us read “The Lord of the Rings.”  After the ensuing 20 minute discussion, my daughter told us what she did not tell me when I called and then she said, “and I ended up giving the lead-in question to the topic I hate.”  I think my daughter is the quirky one.
          I’m sure I’m not quirky, but quirky things seem to go on around me.  For example, my daughter’s mother-in-law, Maria, was raised on a collective farm in the old Soviet Union.  As a result, she has worked all her life.  When she came to live with us no one asked her to help around the house, but she doesn’t know how to be “retired”.  So, she is constantly cleaning, cooking, doing laundry (until the washer broke), and generally being every man’s ideal housewife.  When she does want a private time, she goes to our old tool and garden shed where she has made herself what I call a “nest”; goes in and hides.  It’s rather cozy actually, but she is the quirky one.
          Maria’s husband, Gari, who also lives with us, is a bit quirky or maybe just eccentric.  He walks ¾ of a mile to the grocery store and back and generally ignores the traffic signs for walk and don’t walk; at least until last month when he did it in front of Lakewood’s “finest” and received a $79 ticket for walking across the street at an intersection against the don’t walk sign.  That’s the first time I’ve ever heard of someone getting what is essentially a jay-walking type citation.  I don’t know if he is quirky or if it’s just the situation that’s quirky.
          My daughter’s husband and Maria’s son, Artur, is rather quirky.  Today when I told him that our Himalayan cat was pregnant he became his quirky self.  At first, anger stating that he would throw her out and then a few seconds later he demanded we get the cat an abortion.  When my daughter pointed out that he always had said he wanted the cat to have kittens, he responded that it was true but not by an alley cat (paraphrased).  Once it was explained that the father was ½ Persian or ½ Himalayan he calmed down a bit.  In a day or two, he will be fine with the situation—that’s his quirk.  In fact, we don’t know for sure who the father is.  The only cat we’ve seen in her company was the one we mentioned.  I also will not tell him that on the weekends when he and his mother are gone all day, I repeatedly let the cat out knowing she was in heat. I did it for two reasons.  I got tired of listening to the cat yowling and I like kittens.  Maybe that’s my quirk.
© 17 Apr 2012 
About the Author 
I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach.  Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I 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 
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Mothers Day Take Five, by Ray S

On Mothers Day
We lock all children far away,
It’s only fair for us to say,
So all those mothers can go out to play.
Do you know what is a limerick?
It must have four linking lines,
And they all have to rhyme,
So if you take the thymes, you have a limerick.
What is hot and certainly arousing?
Many a lass
And boys with that kind of class
That’s what leads to intimate carousing.
There is a cute fellow from Pawtucket,
Who believes he can always luck it
’Til along came Ella,
Who said “No,” to our fella
Not without a raincoat and umbrella.
Until today we were limerick ignorant
To know what that is or why could it be signiforant?
So you find it’s a four line thing that rhymes on its ends
And is a county in Eire where they all talk different.
© 15 May 2017 
About the Author 
  
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I Don’t Know, by Phillip Hoyle

“I don’t know.” What a topic, so open. It reminds me of doubt, the inability to choose, even loss of memory. Not knowing was a common experience for me as a kid. I recall looking at souvenirs in an Estes Park shop one summer afternoon. I had money and wanted to buy something with it. I looked at animal figurines wondering which one to select. I didn’t know. Finally, I bought a bear. As an adult, I reasoned I did so because of its connection to Native American life and lore. I never regretted that choice and the bear turned out to be an interesting animal and somewhat a symbol for me.
I am quite aware of the problem of choice for late teens who may have vocational interests, talents, and potential. I certainly was one of those. Having been recruited for ministry, I watched that world carefully. I had many other interests as well but finally went with the church work. That choice was much more important than deciding between kinds of candy or cookies or figurines. I didn’t regret my ministerial choice or career even though I eventually left it. At age 50 I chose to get out of it having tired of the incessant meetings. I knew when to leave.
In other ways, I said, “I don’t know,” but when I did, I believe saying so might have been a dodge, a frustration, or sometimes the truth. Still, I think about it; I have to make decisions. When I choose, I try to stick with the program, and I am a pretty good sticker: witness 29 years with my wife, 32 years in church work, many years directing vocal ensembles, 20 years developing curriculum resources, years of work on several manuscripts, 15 years with Jim and Ruth, quite a few years with SAGE’s Telling Your Story, almost as many years the SAGE blog, on and on. I feel I just don’t know so often, yet I do know. My doing is related to a belief fostered by Mother who led Girl Scout troops, reared five children, presided over the PTA, taught leadership skills to adults and youth, and organized in the community. She said, “You set your mind to the task and do it. You can do it.” So that’s what I have done. I may know that I don’t know. I certainly didn’t know anything about blogs, but now I have two of them. Too often when I turn on my computer I can’t get into the program. I don’t know, but I think it through overcoming my frustration and eventually complete the task at hand.
Ninety-five-year-old Ruth often says to me, “I don’t know.” While we are working on our jigsaw puzzles—we’re in our fifteenth year—I ask about her past, her ideas, her kids. In answer to many questions, she simply says, “I don’t know.” I envy her. If at age seventy I said “I don’t know” as often as she does, they’d hurry me off for a brain scan and some therapy. But at 95 you can say what you want. Nobody will argue. I told Ruth our topic for today and said I wanted to tell a story about her. She scrunched up her face in distaste. “But, Ruth,” I said, “the group loves when I include you in my stories.” I made no promises to her. You see, for me “I don’t know” is the best line from a 95-year-old who looking me straight in the face said, “You’d better not.” Apparently, I didn‘t know how to be scared of her.
© 10 July 2017  
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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The Tragic Myth of Niobe, by Louis Brown

(a)The tragic tale of Niobe is one of
the most memorable Greek myths, for Niobe’s story features a striking example
of the consequences of hubris, a Greek term defined as arrogance or excessive
pride. This myth was popular in ancient literature, poetry and art. Therefore,
it is not a surprise that the legend of Niobe appears in one of our oldest and
best sources for Greek myths, the Iliad of Homer.
Her father
was Tantalus, king of a town above Mount Sipylus in Anatolia, but we do not
know exactly who her mother was. Niobe had two brothers, Broteas and Pelops,
who would later be a legendary hero and would give his name to Peloponnese.
When Niobe grew up, she got married to Amphion, king of Thebes. This was a
turning point in her life and a series of tragic events followed, to give her a
distinct place in one of the most tragic dramas in Greek mythology. Niobe and
Amphion gave birth to fourteen children, seven sons and seven daughters.
The fatal mistake and the horrible
crime at a ceremony held in honor of Leto, the mother of the divine twins,
Apollo and Artemis, who was also living in Thebes, Niobe, in a fit of
arrogance, bragged about her fourteen children. In fact, Niobe said that she
was superior to Leto, as she had fourteen children and not only two. When the
twins knew this insult, they got enraged and at once, came down to Earth to
kill the children of Niobe. Apollo, the god of light and music, killed all
seven of Niobe’s sons with his powerful arrows in front of their mother’s eyes.
Although Niobe was pleading Apollo to feel mercy for her last surviving son,
Apollo’s lethal arrow had already left his bow to find its mark with deadly
accuracy, thus wiping out all the male descendants of Niobe.
Artemis, the virgin goddess of
nature and hunting, killed Niobe’s seven daughters with her lethal arrows and
their dead bodies were lying unburied for nine days. Turning into a rock, devastated by the slaughter of his children, Amphion committed suicide. Some
versions say that he too was killed by Apollo when he tried to avenge his
children’s deaths. And so it was that Niobe’s entire family had been wiped out
by the gods in a matter of moments, and in deep anguish, she ran to Mount
Sipylus.
There she pleaded [with the] Gods to
[put] … an end to … her pain. Zeus felt sorry for her and transformed her into a
rock, to make her feelings [express themselves from the] … stone. However, even
as a rock, Niobe continued to cry. Her endless tears poured forth as a stream
from the rock and it [her statue] seems to stand as a moving reminder of a
mother’s eternal mourning. To this day, Niobe is mourning for her children and
people believe that her faint image can still be seen carved on a limestone
rock cliff on Mount Sipylus, with the water that seeps out of the porous rocks
bearing a strong allusion to her ceaseless tears.
The meaning of the Myth the tragic
tale of Niobe centered on the consequences of hybris, a strange concept in the
Greek antiquity, which said that, if you act with arrogance towards the Gods,
then you will be punished. Actually Niobe’s story is a classic example of the
wrath of gods against human weaknesses and has been beautifully narrated in
Homer’s Iliad. The tale of Niobe also finds mention in Metamorphoses, a
narrative poem, written by the renowned Roman poet Ovid, who, however, has
inverted the traditionally accepted order and portrayed the desires and
conquests of the gods with aversion, while elevating human passions to a higher
Source:
(b)O Mary, don’t you weep, don’t you mourn! Version of
Bruce Springsteen
“O Mary Don’t You Weep”
Well if I
could, I surely would,
Stand on the rock where Moses stood, Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Well Mary wore three links of chain,
On every link was Jesus name,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Well one of these nights about 12 o’clock,
This old world is gonna rock,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Well Moses stood on the Red Sea shore,
Smote the water with a two by four,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Well old Mister Satan he got mad,
Missed that soul that he thought he had,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Brothers and sisters, don’t you cry,
There’ll be good times by and by,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
No more water, but fire next time,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep,
Oh Mary don’t you weep no more,
Oh Mary don’t you weep no more.

Pharoh’s army got drownded,
Oh Mary don’t you weep.

The phrase vale
of tears (Latin vallis lacrimarum) is a Christian phrase referring to the
tribulations of life that Christian doctrine says are left behind only when one
leaves the world and enters Heaven. The term “valley of tears”
is also used sometimes. (Wikepedia).
  
Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart. His Lacrimosa (weeping) is part of his Requiem Mass 1792. Was
completed by Sysmayr.
Cry
Me a River
Diana
Krall
Now
you say you’re lonely
You cry the whole night through
Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river
I
cried a river over you.
Now
you say you’re sorry
For being so untrue
Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river
I
cried a river over you
You
drove me, nearly drove me out of my head
While you never shed a tear
Remember, I remember all that you said
Told me love was too plebeian
Told
me you were through with me
And now you say you love me
Well, just to prove you do
Come on and cry me a river, cry me a river
I
cried a river over you
You drove me, nearly drove me out of my head
While you never shed a tear
Remember, I…
© 16 Oct 2017  
About
the Author  
I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City,
Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker
for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally
impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s.
I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few
interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I
graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.
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Pushing the Buttons, by Lewis Thompson

When I took Drivers’ Ed
back in 1960, we did our on-the-road learning in a 1957 Mercury Monterey with
push-button automatic transmission controls mounted to the left of the steering
column on the lower instrument panel.  (Most
people over 60, like me, associate push-button shifting with Chrysler
Corporation vehicles.)  Mercury went back
to column-mounted shifting a year or two later. 
I assume that a few too many of their customers were downshifting or
upshifting when they meant to change the radio station from WLS in Chicago to
KOMA in Oklahoma City.
On some very recent car
models, pushing a button is how you start the motor, either gasoline or
electric.  Many of us will remember when
you would push a button to lock the car doors. 
Later models often lock the doors for you when the vehicle reaches a
certain speed.  One operation that hasn’t
changed much is the need to push a button to release the lap/shoulder
belt.  Many telephones still require the
manual dexterity to push a button to dial or take a call but they are rapidly
being phased out by phones that require only a soft, tactile touch to a screen.
I can remember push-button
operated door bells, light switches, tape recorders, adding machines,
typewriters, office phones, air conditioners, electric mixers, car radios,
switch blade knives, and pagers.  Some
household items still use pushbuttons today. 
For example, pop machines, cell phones, elevators, pedestrian crossing
signals, car key fobs, and apartment lobby call boxes.  Almost everything else has converted to a
modus operandi that does not involve buttons. 
Soon people will be
letting their fingernails grow so long that they can no longer push a button
without breaking a nail.  Broken nails
used to be a problem for women who wore nylon stockings.  However, since woman don’t wear nylon
stockings anymore–they went out of style concurrently with buttons–broken
nails are no longer an issue unless they make it hard to make the desired
selection on a touch screen or micro-switch. 
I don’t know if this is a problem since I still have many possessions
with a button.  Therefore, pushing buttons
is a push-over for me.
© 23 Jun 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 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

Rejoice, by Gillian

“Rejoice,
Rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel”
In my long-ago childhood,
when I accompanied my mother to church most Sundays, I loved that hymn. It was
sung with much more gusto than most of the hymns. It felt that we truly were
offering a joyful noise unto the Lord. In my reedy little five-year-old voice I
belted out the admonition to rejoice, rejoice, along with the adults.
Of course I had not a
clue why we were rejoicing. Who was Emmanuel and why was he about to get
together with Israel, whoever he was? It didn’t matter. Singing that hymn made
me feel happy; all good inside After services in which it was the final hymn, I
always felt like skipping and laughing all the way home.
And it was surprising how
often it was sung in our little church. Our congregation was much too small to
enjoy the luxury of a choir to guide us. All hymns, if I remember correctly –
something of a big ‘if’ – came from the Church of England book of Hymns Ancient
and Modern, published in 1862. I checked on line and it apparently contained
779 hymns. Now that should have been enough to save us from too much
repetition; but that was not the reality. We seemed to have a small group of
twenty or so tried-and-true favorites, which cropped up regularly with an
occasional little-used one tossed in to keep us on our toes. My mother hated it
when these strangers appeared as it meant she had to practice. She played the
church organ and knew the old favorites by heart, so they required little
effort on her part. She also disliked’ the unfamiliar  because the congregation, fumbling with
unknown words and music, lagged behind the organ waiting for a lead, and
gradually the singing got slower and slower and lower and lower. The vicar, who
never sang along, simply shook his head sadly at the cacophony and vowed to
stick with the familiar the next Sunday. And the next.
Perhaps at least partly
because I associated the word with the hymn, ‘rejoice’ or ‘rejoicing’ always
represented to me something loud and jubilant; triumphant: the crowd on the
sidelines rejoicing when the home team scores a goal, the audience rejoicing at
the end of a particularly stirring symphony. This kind of rejoicing I rarely,
if ever, experienced. My family and friends were all rather quiet people who
might smile broadly at a win for the home team, but that was about as wild as
it might get.
Later in life I began to
understand that to rejoice, as the dictionaries state it, means to feel or show
great joy or delight. To feel or show. We can rejoice in silence, simply
to feel the joy within us, not expressing it with a sound; perhaps not even a
hint of a smile. That is my kind of rejoicing. In fact, I have rather come to
fear, or at least be uncomfortable with, the loud exuberant variety. Too
frequently no good will come of it. The raucous rejoicing at the end of the
soccer game ends up in fighting and even deaths. The screaming rah rah of
political rallies negates all rational thought, as does – sorry Emmanuel –
religious raving. Rejoicing loudly can perhaps be OK in a space, such as a
church, – OK Emmanuel, back at ya – where all there feel the same, but be very
combative when others present feel very differently.
I’ll just stick to my
silent inner rejoicing at the beauty of the sky, or a single leaf, or the touch
of a loved one or a smile from a friend.
That hurts no-one, and
brings me a joy that could never be deepened by shouting it from the rooftops.
© 25 Nov 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.
Posted on

My Most Meaningful Vacation, by Betsy

So what is it that makes
a vacation meaningful anyway? I can’t honestly think of any vacation that I
have ever taken that was not meaningful. Some maybe were more meaningful than
others that is definitely true. I will have to focus on vacations of the last,
say, 50 years. Choosing from all the vacations of my lifetime is too
overwhelming. My memory just isn’t that good.
I have had a few trips
abroad—the heart of Europe as well as remote places like the Orkney Islands off
the north coast of Scotland, the train trip through South Africa, plus visits
to Canada, Mexico, and Central America. All these trips were memorable and
certainly meaningful. Simply experiencing other cultures, and other ways of
life is about the best educational experience a person can have. We learn from
living among or simply observing others that our way is not the only way.  Our language is not the only language, our
humor is not  the only kind of humor, our
cuisine is not the only kind.
My idea of a great
vacation is an exploit filled with excitement, new experiences, and
adventure.  I have traveled on vacation
by plane, train, boat, car, bicycle, and on foot. One of my most memorable
“vacations” was cycling across the United States, from Pacific to Atlantic. I
have written several stories about that trip which I took in 2005.
The thing about traveling
by bicycle is that you see so much more detail along the way, including the
wild life, sometimes in the form of road kill.
Probably most of my
vacations have been of the camping variety. I love camping whether in the
wilderness or just off the highway.
When I was married to
Bill and the three children were young, we used to take back packing trips.
Bill was always looking for fishing opportunities. I hated fishing. Not enough
action. But there was plenty for all of us to do on those adventures while Bill
was fishing. I very much enjoyed the hiking, setting up camp,  and being in the mountain environment with
nature.
When Gill and I first got
together we went back packing one summer in the Wind River Range in
Wyoming.  That was the time she cut a
gash in her knee and I saved her from bleeding to death with my Girl Scout
first aid kit which happened to have some butterfly bandages in it. She still
has a scar on her knee today which I want to pass around the table for all of
you to see.
This, one of our first
vacations together, could have been meaningful in that it had the potential for
being our last vacation together.  But
Gill stuck with me in spite of the fact that it was not her idea of a vacation.
I actually think it was the butterfly bandages that saved our relationship.
After we had been
together a short time, we went to a style of camping more to her liking—car
camping. Gill had a VW camper van—a Westphalia— in which we had taken some day
trips during our courtship. It may not have been an actual vacation, rather a
weekend, when we took the Westy to Rocky Mountain National Park. This was a
meaningful trip to me, and I will never forget it. It definitely portended of a
meaningful ritual which would become a part of my life everyday for the rest of
my life. We were driving along through the park admiring the sights when Gill
pulled over off the road and came to a stop. “It’s tea time,” she wailed. She
jumped into the back, opened the galley, 
put the kettle on and brewed the tea, and served me a dainty cup of
perfect British tea—with milk, of course, not cream.  I am a person who likes structure and some
rituals. So I became hooked on four o’clock tea time for life.
I also became quite
enamored of the idea of a camper van for road trips. The Westy was very old and
worn out and had to go soon after we started living together. But we both were
enthusiastic about having a camping vehicle. So a few years after selling the
Westy we bought a used VW Eurovan—a later model of the Westphalia.  We named her Brunie, short for Brunhilda. She
was a big boned woman. The three of us —Gill, Brunie, and I—spent 13  years together, travelled over 200,000 miles
in too many trips to count. It was an awesome relationship. All of our
vacations together were meaningful because we traveled in almost every state,
except Hawaii and Alaska, always had a comfortable place to sleep, we felt
safe, and were always warm and dry. Because of Brunie we saw the country, we
learned history and geology, we experienced things and places we never dreamed
existed. I might add we met all kinds of people who would always approach us in
the campground wanting to meet us? No wanting a look at Brunie. 
Some of the more memorable
places we visited had been selected as a destination like the national parks,
state parks, oceanside settings, historical sites, desert oases.  Others we just happened upon  by chance. 
We always kept a diary on these trips because we knew as we grew older
we would forget where it was that we saw that amazing sunrise, that moose
grazing beside the road, those sheep on the cliff above, that approaching
tornado. Or all we had, learned, heard, and experienced would become blurred.  And Gill was constantly snapping photos, so
we have thousands of those to remind us. Some places were quite ordinary, some
elaborate, some filled us with awe, some sights were beautiful beyond
imagination, some curious, but not one was not worth the visit. Some of our
favorite, nearby places we have been back to several times such as
Hovenweep,  Canyon lands,  Hamburger Rock, Arches N.P., and  Yellowstone.
There has not been one
trip or sojourn that was not meaningful. 
Most meaningful? Impossible to say.
© 1 Dec 2017 
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.