Author: phoyle

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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Capricorn to Sagittarius, by Pat Gourley

My birthday is January 12th and I was born in 1949 in LaPorte Indiana. So for my first 67.5 years of life on earth I was per popular astrology a Capricorn. I did have my astronomical chart drawn and calculated for me once many years ago. I always responded when asked my sign that I was a Capricorn. Then those with whom I had just shared this vital information would respond with a nod and often saying with authority ‘of course you are’. Strange how very rarely these days I am ever asked my sign when it was often the next thing out your mouth after stating one’s name in the 1970’s, at least in the circles I traveled in.

Needless to say I was surprised, though not particularly dismayed, to learn that I was no longer a Capricorn but thanks to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) I was now a Sagittarius. NASA went an added a 13th zodiac sign to possibly be born under: Ophiuchus (I think phonetically pronounced: ‘oh,fuck-us’)! I have linked below to a couple articles that I used in researching this new and to many a very disturbing development. That would be the crowd that has for years planned their day at least in part after reading their horoscope in the daily paper or blaming all sorts of bad stuff on Mercury in retrograde.

Maybe that’s why you hear less about people’s zodiac signs since who reads the print media anymore. I am sure though that an app must exist for those not willing to venture outside without first checking what’s up for them that day per 3000 year old Babylonian mythology.

So what’s up with this additional zodiac sign? Well in a rather snarky quote from Laurie Cantillo of the Planetary Exploration, Heliophysics Department she explained why they added a 13th zodiac sign called Ophiuchus: “We didn’t change any zodiac signs, we did the math. NASA reported that because the Earth’s axis has changed, the constellations are no longer in the same place they were thousands of years ago”. This shift in axis is due its theorized to lost ice related to global warming causing the Earth to sort of tip to one side. Oops! Try telling folks born under the new sign of Ophiuchus that man-made climate change is a hoax.

Apparently this update in the zodiac signs by NASA, perhaps the first such adjustment since the Babylonians first go at it 3000 years ago, has resulted in 86% of us now having a different sign. This of course radically alters the daily advice we need to be following if we still use these bromides to plan our life. Actually, if you are still relying on this advice I find that more disturbing than whether or not you are consulting the correct sign.

I am reminded of the apparently true stories of Nancy Reagan frequently consulting her personal astrologer, the late Joan Quigley, for advice during their years in the White House on how or when she and Ronnie should proceed in conducting personal, national and world affairs. That explains a few things doesn’t it! Reagan was born on February 6th, which made him a Sagittarius in the old 12-sign model, but now we know he should have been a Capricorn. We are left to ponder how different the world might be today if Nancy’s astrologer had been feeding them the correct celestial information!

One small caveat on how this change has been for me personally sheds a bit of light on my sexual escapades of the past 50 years. You can find all sorts of attributes attributable to your sign on-line though many have not caught up with the addition of Ophiuchus. There is even sexual stimulation advice available. For Capricorns you can supposedly drive them to a frenzy of sexual madness by tickling them behind the kneecaps. Since I am no longer a Capricorn but was really a Sagittarius oh these many years that explains why nobody ever got me off tickling me behind my knees! As a Sagittarius I can apparently be brought to the brink of orgasm by stroking my inner thighs. Though I think this is getting closer to pay dirt, a stimulating move farther north involving a sustained reach-around will still be required for a happy ending.

Capricorn: Jan 20-Feb 16

Aquarius: Feb 16-March 11

Pisces: March 11-April 18

Aries: April 18-May 13

Taurus: May 13-June 21

Gemini: June 21-July 20

Cancer: July 20-Aug 10

Leo: Aug 10-Sept 16

Virgo: Sept 16-Oct 30

Libra: Oct 30-Nov 23

Scorpio: Nov 23-Nov 29

Ophiuchus: Nov 29-Dec 17

Sagittarius: Dec 17-Jan 20

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/09/26/chaos-in-the-zodiac-some-virgos-are-leos-now-but-nasa-couldnt-care-less/ http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/entertainment/news/a45943/star-sign-horoscope-change-2016/

November 2016

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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New Year Hopes for the Community, by Nicholas

According to my records, with this piece, I am starting my seventh year of coming to tell and listen to stories on Monday afternoon.

It seems odd to think about hope in this grim start to what may be a long and grim year of frustration, setbacks and bad news. This is not a very hopeful time we live in. But maybe this is when we most need to remind ourselves that hope is possible, hope is what keeps us going, hope is what gets us out of bed each morning. And hope, no matter how irrational, is good to have.

So, my hope for the lesbian, gay and trans community is that we learn to turn to each other more for joy and less out of necessity. I know that fearsome problems still haunt our world and community. Violence and bullying is a daily fact for many of our youth. Discrimination still runs rampant in many areas. Determined gay-haters, like the soon to be vice-president of the United States, persist in their work to undo the dignity and security of LGBT lives and generate hostility toward us. There is still plenty of inequality and prejudice out there.

But in many ways, our world is getting less frightening and our grasp on basic rights is growing more secure. It is no longer acceptable to openly degrade gay people—which is why our enemies have to resort to ever greater subterfuges to try to harass us. They’ve lost the sanctity of marriage so now they are reduced to fighting for the sanctity of toilets and who shall be allowed to do their business in which ones.

We still have battles to fight, but my hope is that we will seek out each other’s company less out of a sense of a need for protection, less out of desperation, and more because we just want to be around other L, G, B and T people. We come together not so much because we need to seek shelter in a hostile world but more because we can best express ourselves with each other.

I have many non-gay friends and love them dearly. It’s not that I sense any barriers between us. Yet, there is still more I sense in sharing with queer folk. We share experiences that we’ve all known and don’t have to explain. We share a humor derived from being outsiders. We share spiritualities, arts and a sharp sense of just what community is—or is not. We have been forced to make up our own culture and so we have. We are different and we should relish opportunities to engage those differences.

Most of us come out of a time when lesbians and gays could never take anything for granted. And we shouldn’t. Above all, we shouldn’t take each other for granted. You can find very fulfilling relationships with non-gay people but I do believe that there is one thing we can find only with our own kind—happiness. I do hope that organizations such as the community center we are in continue to thrive—not out of fear and self-defense but from joy. We still need to find each other. I hope that we continue to come here because we want to, not because we have to.

Even in a world more tolerant and open, there is still that special depth of connection that we get to see only in each other. Call it love or desire or a magical ability to coordinate colors and a flare for decorating, you won’t find it outside. You may be welcome to watch football games with legions of Broncos fans, but you won’t get much of a response by commenting that Eli Manning is so much better looking than his brother Peyton. They just don’t get it.

© January 2017

About the Author

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

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Obama and Gay Centurions and Death, by Louis Brown

I have three interpretations of “Leaving”: (a) Evaluation of Barak Obama’s presidency; Barack Obama will soon be leaving office; (b) Louis Brown leaves New York City from which he recalls another fond memory; (c) Leaving as dying: death of brother, Charles Brown.

(a) President Barack Obama: I voted for him twice. He talks like an enlightened liberal person, but, when the chips are down, he reacts like a hostile right-wing Republican. He went to Flint, Michigan, and spoke to a roomful of black students and told them, “I have your backs.” The facts do not really bear this out. His EPA knew all along that the governor of Michigan was poisoning the people of Flint but did nothing to interfere. His administration did nothing to get the governor of Michigan impeached and removed from office. Mr. Obama, like a bellicose right-wing Republican, continues to wage a perpetual war in Afghanistan, despite the widespread opposition of the American public. When Scott Walker was stripping union workers in Wisconsin of their labor rights, Mr. Obama was silent, breaking with the long history of the Democratic Party advocating for the rights of working people. Au contraire, Mr. Obama promotes TPP which is very hostile to the interests of American working people. So, despite some of his good qualities, Mr. Obama is just another failure in a long line of failed presidents.

(b) Louis Brown leaves New York City: one of my fondest memories of New York City was viewing for the past 3 years in June at the Gay Pride March the Alcazar Night Club float. This consisted of a large truck with a large dance floor platform on which around 15 very tall brawny beautiful Hispanic men, dressed up as Roman Centurions; they performed a rather wild and frenetic and yet very well-rehearsed, disco-style dance routine, accompanied by very loud disco music. The spectacular performance was not pornographic but was very suggestive and very erotic. Imagine, a loud boisterous display of male on male eroticism in public on a sundrenched day in June. I later thought that I should have videotaped the event so that, when asked why I recommend putting Classical Studies in gay and Lesbian studies curriculums, I would show these Hispanic gays evoking ancient Rome. They did a good job in expressing gay pride and making a naughty historical reference. Remember, if you want your minority group to promote a sense of community, and to empower itself, you have to learn its history – so taught Alex Haley, author of Roots. Amen.

(c) Leaving meaning dying: My brother Charles Brown died in 1999 at the age of 52. One of my friends told me he observed that my brother would stay a little too long at night at a local Irish bar in the nearby town of Flushing, New York, and would imbibe too many Martini’s, Manhattans and Bloody Mary’s. That is what killed him. Charlie Brown was thin, and soft-spoken and gay. He worked at a good job at the 42nd Street Library. He had several different boyfriends, but one long-term boyfriend, Pat Marra, was unusually good-looking. He was quite tall, had beautifully formed hands and dark wavy brown hair. He looked like a DaVinci painting. He was so beautiful he reminded me of my Italian teacher, il signor Guido, another unusually gorgeous Italian. I remember even the heterosexual male students in that Italian class were flabbergasted when they looked at him. To accentuate his good looks, he wore very expensive Italian silk suits and stylishly elegant Italian shoes. That was Italian 101. Everyone in the class was looking forward to Italian 102, but, at the end of the semester, Mr. Guido returned to Italy. Boohoo.

Two points to make, my brother Charlie died of alcohol abuse, and his boyfriend, Pat Marra, died of an illegal narcotic overdose, either heroin or cocaine, I forget which. Question, how could the gay community have intervened in their lives to prevent substance abuse? What was missing in their lives?

© 2 November 2016

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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My Fault, by Jude Gassaway

You can see my fault from outer space.

Of the two big islands in the Gulf of California, Tiburon is the one closest to the Mexican mainland. Seen from above, the northeastern lobe shows a sharp line heading northwest, delineating lighter ground to the north. That straight line is my fault.

Air photo, Tiburon Island (Google Maps)

     In the winter of 1972, just as the subject of plate tectonics was getting started, another student and I were assigned to map the northeast end of Tiburon Island for our Graduate Field Geology class at San Diego State University.
     
     The week before, while mapping on the mainland, we met a pair of Wycliffe Bible translators, whose mission was to bring the word of God to native people. The Religious’ approach was to identify, define, and transcribe the local vernacular, and then translate the Bible into the new language. Here, they focused on the Seri Tribe.

     In Punta Chueca, I met a Seri man who wanted to demonstrate his new reading skills. He had a lesson pamphlet with everyday words in English, Spanish, and Seri. I remember two of the words because of their similarity.
     

A few Seri place names on our base map included oddities like Sierra “Kunkaak” and the multi-hyphenated Punta “Ast-Ho-Ben-O-Glap”.

Our professor, in the course of drafting the geologic map and interpreting the history, had to name and describe the geologic observations. The fault in my field area was just a bit off-kilter to the then-known regional picture. It needed a name so that its geologic significance could be discussed in the text. There were no place names in the fault valley.

I was unaware of the professor’s solution until the map was published several years later. The professor told me that he had noticed that I thought differently and that I often veered off to a little bit away from the others, just as this fault wandered. (As the only woman in the class, sometimes I moved away just to relieve myself.) Then, he thought, “yawassag” –that sounded kind of like a Seri word. And thus, Yawassag Fault was named. Jude Gassaway.

Gastil. R.G., and Krummenacher, Daniel, 1975, Reconnaissance geologic map of coastal of coastal Sonora between Puerto Lobos and Bahia Kino, Geological Society of America, map and Chart Series, MC-16.

  © 2017

About the Author

Retired USGS Field Geologist.
Founding member, Denver Womens Chorus. 
Jude Gassaway is the figure on the left.
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Blue Skies, by Gillian

Blue skies smiling at me; nothing but blue skies do I see.

Well for God’s sake, how boring is that? Sure, we welcome blue skies because they signal a clear sunny day ahead. We use them metaphorically in the same way. But the fact is that clear blue skies are not interesting. They do not fascinate us the way cloudy skies do. We don’t have different names for different parts of a blue sky, the way we talk of cirrus and cumulonimbus clouds.

I belong …. wait for it, you’re going to love this …. to The Cloud Appreciation Society. Weird cloud photographers from all around the world post cloud photos and videos to the website, and so many of them are breathtakingly beautiful. I myself have, in my computer, something over 500 photos of nothing but clouds, or those taken primarily because of the cloud formations they capture. In only one of the whole collection is there a clear blue sky.

A while ago, I put together a small booklet of my own sky photos, accompanied by appropriate quotations, because the sky, to me, is too beautiful not to be accompanied by poetic appreciation. As the Cloud Appreciation Society says it –

‘ … (clouds) are Nature’s poetry, and the most egalitarian of her displays, since everyone can have a fantastic view of them.’

And, I would add, you don’t have to risk life and limb to watch them, unlike so many of nature’s more dramatic displays.

The same website also reminds us, in its somewhat tongue-in-cheek ‘manifesto’, that we should fight what it calls ‘blue-sky thinking’ wherever we find it. Life, they say, would indeed be dull if we had to look up at a cloudless monotony day after day. It is, of course, a whole lot easier to espouse that philosophy living in a place like Colorado than in the many cities in this country which receive over 60″ of rain per year, and have little opportunity to grow bored with clear blue skies.

And there are endless quotes exhorting us to appreciate those metaphorical clouds in our lives, in order that we might fully appreciate the blue skies when they return. Quite honestly, I’m not totally convinced. I suspect this may be a tactical encouragement towards positive thinking of, and response to, the inevitable. Did I really need to break my wrist in order to appreciate my fully-functioning joints? Must I suffer from that miserable Xmas cold to value my usual good health? I don’t think so. But I couldn’t help myself; I had to see what that WWW had to offer.

There are, need I say, many comments on the topic. Two I really liked.

The first said,

‘One can appreciate the Good in Life without experiencing the Bad

However, when one experiences the Bad

That which was not quite so Good becomes Good

and the Good we experience radiates a stronger energy than before…’

The other said,

‘…. experiencing bad would definitely allow you to appreciate the good more then you previously have. But if you were raised with the right values to already do all that then you wouldn’t necessarily need the bad in your life.’

Points to ponder.

But I return to that ‘manifesto’ of the Cloud Society, which ends with the final, simpler, injunction,

‘…. always remember to live life with your head in the clouds!’

© June 2016

About the Author

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

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The Solar System, by Gillian

I don’t think we had a Solar System back in the day. We had the sun, the moon, and the stars, with a few planets thrown in. We had galaxies, I think, and we had The Universe, which we believed to be infinite and now we think not, which is OK with me because I never could completely get my head around that concept anyway. Then we were sure it was ever expanding; now we’re not so sure.

Courtesy of The Bible we had The Heavens and, better still, The Firmament; a word, one among many, that my mother loved. She would roll it lovingly around her tongue and tuck it, for later use, in her cheek. The word occurs several times in the King James Version of The Bible, and my mother, not generally given to biblical quotations, would trot out her favorites while gazing skyward in wonder.

“The Heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork,” she would expound, giving The Book of Psalms it’s due.

Or, turning her mind to The Book of Daniel, she would sometimes respond to one of my know-it-all moments with a touch of Biblical sarcasm:

“And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament.”

Fortunately, Mum died before her local church replaced the magical words of the ‘old’ Bible with the soul-less heretical ones of the ‘new’. Had she still been around at that time, I fear she would have exposed her true religious colors and never attended church again.

With our exponentially-increasing knowledge of what we now choose to call the Solar System, the mysteries, the very mysticism, of it, have gone the way of the King James Bible. Oh, yes, knowledge is a wonderful thing, but is does not sit comfortably with mysticism and mystique; nor, come to that, with romance.

Much poetry has been written about the moon and the stars. Frank Sinatra, along with many others, sang romantic ballads extolling their magic.

“Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like
On Jupiter and Mars
In other words, hold my hand
In other words, baby, kiss me ..”

I fear even old blue eyes himself could not have created a classic love song out of, “Fly me to the Solar System …”

© October 2016

About the Author

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

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Here and There, by Ricky

Well, here I am. Where else would I be, over there? “Over There” reminds me of the WWI hubristic song proclaiming to the Germans and their allies that the Yanks are coming over there to finish the war. Finish it we did, not by force of arms, but by governments, over there, finally succumbing to the horrific and catastrophic amount of death – basically just agreeing to stop the killing and negotiate what turned out to be an unjust peace treaty. The same peace treaty which set the conditions making WWII inevitable to begin over there and dragging us over here into the conflict.

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, California

Well, here I am still in the here and now but wishing I could be back there in an earlier time – a time when I only had juvenile worries and few responsibilities – a time when I lived at The Emerald Bay Resort at Lake Tahoe in 1958. I can close my eyes and suddenly, there I am. I had no playmates there at the resort, but I still had the best time being the deckhand on my step-father’s tour boat, Skipalong. We would take people on an all-day cruise around the lake.

The Skipalong

I listened to the tour spiel my step-father, Paul, gave our passengers and quickly memorized it. I would spend most of my time in the bow “cockpit” talking to any children or adults who wanted to ride there. (The cockpit was the lookout’s station during the time the boat was used as a rum-runner in San Francisco.) I would give adults the tour spiel and talk to the kids about kid stuff.

While living at Emerald Bay that summer of ’58, I saw Jerry Colonna in the restaurant where my mother worked. She was able to meet several Hollywood stars there, because the resort was popular among the rich and famous.

Jerry Colonna

Other than seeing Jerry Colonna, my only other star sighting that I can recall from that period of time and place, I will relate to you. I was there so I am the proverbial eye witness in this case.

My step-father and I just had docked Skipalong along the resort’s pier at the half-way point of our tour so our passengers could have lunch at the restaurant. While securing the bow of the boat to the pier, I looked up and saw a family walking down the bank to the pier. The parents apparently had bought tickets to ride in the Chris Craft speed-boat, Effie Moon, which was also tied up at the pier. I immediately recognized the boy walking with his parents.

Back then and there, I faithfully watched the Mickey Mouse Club on TV. Being a boy, I loved the club’s serial shorts and the child actors within them, forming a wistful attachment to them. Oh be still my pounding heart, for there he was walking towards me, in the flesh, David Stollery III.

David Stollery III (left) & Tim Considine (right)

Of course at that time, I knew him as Marty Markham from Disney’s Spin and Marty famed series. The best thing was that he was telling his parents that he wanted to ride on the “big boat” (my boat). I was hoping he would get to ride. My fervent hope was dashed a moment later when his mother told him, “No” and he began to scream repeatedly, “I want to ride on the big boat!” I was only 10 and David was a short and small 17, but I had already learned by age 3 that yelling at one’s parents demanding to get something was not going to work; at least it never did for me.

David had to ride the Effie Moon that day, but he apparently learned the “don’t yell at your parents” lesson. He grew up to become an automobile designer with GM and Toyota. At Toyota, he designed the second generation A40 series Toyota Celica in 1978. He then continued to design 22 other models for Toyota.

But that was there and then. I am here now, but I would rather be there.

© 4 May 2015

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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Greens, by Ray S

“Greens” is the color of my green bucks. Last Friday in a fit of self indulgence I took some eight and a half of them and went to the movies.

Alright, I got around that subject matter and now with your indulgence, you get to try to survive some more of the results of my attempting to keep up with the rest of you, my storytellers. Not hardly literature, just the incidental “off the wall” stuff I usually come to this séance with.

I bet you’ve guessed already—a movie review instead of my favorite recipe for Caesar salad.

First, I will certainly understand should you wish to close your ears and eyes while I get on with this little essay. It won’t take long and not likely to enlighten you, unless you’re a Woody Allen movie freak. Yes, the local Esquire movie palace (somewhat diminished) is showing his latest effort CAFÉ SOCIETY. If you have followed Allen’s cinema career you might recognize his timeless and sometimes tired themes—but soldier on and you will discover a new and magic story-line with each of his many films.

Of course, he has continued to mine the nostalgia store with Café’s pre-WWII setting. Most of you are too young to relate to this time and will see this aspect as quaint and maybe “Was it really like that then?” Well, yes, only Hollywood always goes them one better. You know, bigger than life.

That said about the book drop, Allen has written a charmingly witty story that will catch your imagination and keep you waiting for the next curveball which he so adept at throwing or tossing in this case.

The ethnicity of the players, the reality of human nature and how it molds each of us in so many different ways is well portrayed. The voice-over, if not read by the author-director himself, could easily pass for him, as well as the actor who plays the lead. A 20-something mensch from New York turned loose in 1939 Hollywood.

Enough already! If you want some escape that isn’t mind-numbing violence or sci-fi, take the afternoon off for some off-the-wall Woody Allen time.

© 8 August 2016

About the Author

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Clubs, by Phillip Hoyle

For me clubs have always been about responsibility: treasurer, president, secretary, vice-president, committee chair, on and on. I am sure I learned this from the outset when we neighborhood boys formed the Ark Club. But that was play, kind of like Cowboys and Indians or Army but with paperwork. Then adults began to organize us in a moral effort to control kids and their activities: Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, choirs, and youth groups. These clubs attracted me for their activities but not their group pride, personal recognition, or promised advantages. I don’t say this as a matter of criticism but simply as a description of my introverted preference and deep independence. I liked having things to do if they matched my interests, I got along well with peers, and I was respectful to adult leaders. Often I became some kind of leader although I didn’t seek such leadership preferring simply to help and to enjoy. I didn’t care to beat a drum for attention. I could tolerate
responsibility for short periods of time, but mostly I wanted to learn and to experience.

Around age thirty, my career was on the line demanding of me a choice between doing church work and teaching music history. I gave myself six months to figure out which way I’d go. In so doing, I realized I needed to give the church career a better chance. So I attended some religious education events, first, an intense training program organized by the Regional and General levels of the church and second, the meeting of a professional association of religious educators. Over-all the groups did not do much for me, the former seeming too much related to the status quo of congregational life, the latter seeming just a bit too embarrassing to me to make a strong identification. Still at each of these meetings I met some nice people and at each event a couple of very impressive individuals. Furthermore I observed interactions that attracted me, not relationships I wanted but ones that revealed these leaders were as complicated as I was and as bright or brighter. Certainly some of them were living life rather largely (a term I will not address in this story).

I compared these religious educators with the professors I knew, that other professional group I was observing, and found as much or more creativity among the church educators. Plus for me, I realized, I needed the stimulation of working with people of all ages rather than the small age range of undergrads in college. Church offered more freewheeling educational leadership opportunities. I opted for a career in congregations.

Some years later I was recruited to run for president elect in the professional association, a group that still slightly embarrassed me. Beyond the embarrassment I had friends in the group and annual meetings had become an important time away from work and family. I thought over the offer and realized it came with a four to five year sentence: attendance at annual meetings for running for office, serving as president-elect, serving as president, serving as immediate past president whose responsibility it was to oversee the next elections, and my requirement to show up at the following meeting unlike almost every past president I had known in the group. Did I really want to do this? I thought I saw an opportunity to help the organization become less an in-group and more open to the paraprofessional educators most congregations were hiring to organize and oversee their programs. There were fewer and fewer full-time jobs for seminary-trained educators on the horizon. Still the nomination promised mostly a bunch of work.

I did that work and stayed through my sentence. I didn’t regret it and learned so much during the five years, but I also got too close to the bared emotions of people for whom such a position was seen as a great honor that took them on a power trip. Yuck. This work was important—okay—but to take oneself so seriously in its execution seemed hopeless to me, too much like what I observed in some pastors, preachers, and evangelists. Worse than embarrassing!

Clubs: for the most part, I’m not interested. Still today I am leading a program and attend several gatherings of artists, writers, and storytellers. And I go out with a gang of guys for happy hour every Friday night. But the real attraction in these groups is the interesting people I see and the new things I learn as we write, read, tell stories, and make art together.

Denver, © 30 March 2015

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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Help, by Gillian

I, like many of us, I suspect, am not very good at asking for help – though perhaps, with me in my fourth week of putting no weight on my broken ankle, Betsy might not find that statement to ring quite true right now!

No, most of us prefer to maintain our independence; I can do it, whether in large things or small. I walk into the kitchen to find Betsy, wielding our three-foot long ‘grabber’, or standing precariously on a step-stool, reaching for an item on the top shelf.

‘Why didn’t you call me? I can reach it,’ I say from my lofty height of a slowly shrinking 5’6”.

‘I know,’ she shrugs, ‘but I can do it.’

Our general reluctance to ask for help seems strange, given the fact that we humans are apparently programmed to offer it. We have an innate need to help our fellow beings. If you don’t believe me, go and buy a five dollar pair of battered old crutches at the thrift shop, keep one knee bent double, and go hop around the store for a while. You will have more offers of assistance than you know what to do with. Frequently, faced with disasters, our urge to help is stronger, apparently, than either the fight or flight response. How often do we witness live scenes on TV where so many people ignore the risk of toppling buildings in order to help those already in trouble.

Our general reluctance to ask for help seems even stranger, given the fact that giving yourself up completely to the power of those who wish to help you, is one of the most rewarding experiences in life. Once Betsy and I had gazed at my still-swelling ankle for long enough and come to the reluctant conclusion that Urgent Care was the only option, and I had hopped on our old crutches to the car, I let go of all pretense of self-determination. I relaxed completely. I sat contentedly in the car as she parked and then went off in search of a wheelchair from the Kaiser lobby, returned with it and assisted me in. By this time I had reached an almost rag-doll stage of relaxation. Nothing complicated remained to do. Just follow orders: sign here, wait there, sit here, put you leg up here, place your foot there. Just relax, they kept saying, and effortlessly I complied. I was carried away on a comforting cloud of caring. The only decision I was called upon to make was the color of my cast.

After almost five weeks of Betsy would you just …… and Betsy can you fetch …. I suppose my faithful caregiver has had enough. More than enough. That basic human need to offer help and support to others can run pretty thin pretty fast. She denies this, however, and says she is not in any way tired of being my helper. She’d better be careful with statements like that, as I find I could happily float along on my comforting cloud of care indefinitely. But something tells me I had better be over it before the snow hits the ski slopes – and My Beautiful Betsy with it!

© September 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.