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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A Picture to Remember, by Ricky

While researching my mind and previous stories, I found one where I described how I would ponder many unusual concepts, ideas, or things in general and then ask “off the wall” questions about those subjects. Last week or so, I had another episode of that behavior and will share it will you.

Can you picture this?

What would a pipe organ sound like if it were tuned to the Oriental music scale?

Try and picture this.

Why are butterflies not called flutter-byes which would be more descriptive?

Last Wednesday, Donald and I went to the Butterfly Museum as neither of us had been there before. We both found it very interesting. At one point, a butterfly landed on Donald’s head and rested for awhile. 

Not long after, one landed on the front of my right thigh and stayed for a respectful amount time before flying off.

We stayed to see the release of newly hatched butterflies into the habitat. A young boy carefully and slowly walked by into the release area while we waited. What was remarkable about the boy was the large butterfly perched on his shoulder. I was getting my camera ready to take a photo and when the boy noticed, he turned and posed for the picture.  

When it was time for the release, a docent described each butterfly as she released one of each of the different types. When she released a swallow-tail butterfly, it flew in a beeline straight for me and landed on the front of my left thigh. This one was in no hurry to leave and actually overstayed its welcome.

For about 10 minutes, I alternated between standing and walking about the habitat providing free transportation to my getting to be unwelcome guest. Donald and I finally arrived at a small gazebo with two benches. We sat down to rest and the butterfly still clung to my leg showing no intention of leaving. At last I tried to get it to leave my leg by offering my finger and the creature moved to my finger.

After a short passage of time, we transferred it to one of Donald’s fingers

and then to a nearby leaf where it stayed while Donald and I left.

The photos I took will help me remember this event well into the future.

Photos by the author

© 13 April 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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Exercising, by Ray S

What is fun about exercise? For me the word is synonymous with work. There is a sense of accomplishment, if not survival when you might have completed a certain number of circuits around the high school track—but then there is the end result—exhaustion.

Jumping Jacks, etc. were okay when you are all lined up doing the same movements, but then there is the really hard work of push-ups.

As a developing pubescent wimp, if anyone had told had told me how the weight room would have given me that classic Greek Apollo physic when I was old enough to be intrigued with other Greek gods’ bodies, I probably would have been so narcissistic I would beat the gym doors down to get started on that evasive body beautiful. Alas, I never met a barbell that I liked.

Team sports were my 6th grade downfall and ultimate lifetime avoidance of participating or watching. How validating it was to be one of the boys on the team, until my total lack of eye-hand-arms and -legs coordination disqualified me, especially after consistently striking out. Forget football; basketball—dribbling impossible. Wrestling and boxing meant you could get hurt and besides they were not only competitive, they were too aggressive for the timid soul.

It seemed I was destined to be like Ferdinand the Bull, all he could do was lie around and smell the roses. Without rigorous exercising how was I to become a man so that when the time became evident I might lie with a woman or better yet in the Biblical sense “lie with a man”?

Looking back on so many physical education failures I wonder that I have managed, in spite of myself, to live this long, loved so much, slept with wonderful people, and can still get up out of bed each day and put one foot in front of the other. Perhaps that might qualify as heavy duty passive exercising.

© 24 August 2015

About the Author

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From Bell to Cell, by Phillip Hoyle

A personal history of the telephone

In 1876, some years before my birth, Alexander Graham Bell changed the world of human communications when he received the patent for the acoustic telegraph now called the telephone. Soon after my father was born, someone improved it with the rotary dialing system. That was in 1919, although rotaries didn’t make it out to our part of Kansas until sometime in the 1950s.

My first memory of the phone was a black rectangle affair with a combined ear and mouth piece on a cloth-covered cord. It hung in the breakfast room and had a very small number printed on it, our number that I no longer recall. The phone seemed magical but not so much as the older model at the farm. Watching Grandma Pink on that phone excited me so much I wanted to join in the fun, waiting for the neighbors on the party line to quit gossiping, then cranking away on the handle on the side of the old wooden box, and finally yelling into the mouth horn, “Central, Central.”

We, too, had a party line in town but one with fewer phones connected. We never had to wait so long as Grandma. Of course, young people today would be scandalized to learn that people, namely your neighbors, could listen in on your calls. Where is the right to privacy?

Then we got a rotary phone and a private line. The new wall phone looked much the same as its predecessor, except the black box now had a dialing apparatus with numbers and letters and in the middle was posted CE (for Cedar) 8-2533. I can remember Mom going to that phone to call Santa Clause when we had misbehaved. My favorite memory though, is of my sister Holly who at mealtimes sat with the phone immediately behind her. She was used to answering it during meals. But that day she was just ready to say grace when the thing rang. Picking up the receiver, she began her prayer: “Our Father in heaven….” When she realized what she had just done, she turned red, nervously laughed, and said, “Who is this?”

We still had to dial “0” for the operator to make a long-distance call, but before too many years automatic dialing of long distance became a possibility and with it the introduction of Area Codes. The prefixes tell the rest of this story for AREA CODES began to indentify the important places and phone events in my life.

913 Junction City where I grew up, Clay Center where I went to high school, and eventually Manhattan, KS where I went to college all had the same Area Code. The college dorm had a pay phone in the hallway downstairs. When Myrna and I married our apartment had no phone. If we needed to contact anyone, we walked one block to a convenience mart where we could use a pay phone if we had a quarter.

316 Three years later, we moved to Wichita, KS where I had my first full-time job. There we owned our first phone and began paying Ma Bell for the convenience. From its 316 number we made such announcements to the family as: “It’s a boy.” “It’s a girl.”

817 Some years later we moved to Ft. Worth, TX where I attended seminary. From that area code I eventually asked: “Ed, could you come to my ordination?” I wanted Ed, the minister who had influenced me to attend seminary, to deliver the ordination prayer.

314 One afternoon I received a call, my first one from Area Code 314. Jack in Jefferson City, MO asked many questions about my work in religious education. The congregation where he was senior minister extended a call, and we moved there to join him in ministry. Some seven years later I received another 314 from Jack’s wife. “Phillip,” she said at 4:00 that summer Sunday morning, “Jack’s had a seizure that knocked him out of the bed. The ambulance is here. I don’t think he is going to make it.”

505 A couple of years later there were many 505 calls to and from Albuquerque, NM. We moved there to a good job in an excellent church. But one day my good friend Ted called with news related to his AIDS illness. He told me, “Dr. Gold says it’s now a matter of months or weeks.”

970 Before too many months passed I began making calls from Area Code 970, Montrose, CO where we lived briefly to help out my aging in-laws. There I talked with editors, friends from many places, and eventually with the minister of another church where I would work.

918 Tulsa, OK. Months later, when we moved to Tulsa, we got an answering machine to go with our push button phone because I needed to know if people were going to miss choir rehearsals.

303 I brought that answering machine with me to Denver, Area Code 303, where it was useful as a tool for fielding massage appointment queries. I’d call my machine from the phone at the spa to see if I needed to get right home or if I could dawdle, shop, or visit the Public Library or Denver Art Museum. Some five years later, when I moved in with Jim, I quit using that answering machine. He and his mother were so private; I didn’t want to have the phone ringing with appointment requests. I bought a cell phone. That was almost ten years ago.

These days I’m beginning to feel somewhat like my partner Jim who long fantasized retiring to his home behind a high fence that would keep out the encroaching world. In my retirement I, too, am cutting off my accessibility related to a group of fine people. It’s not to block them out completely but, rather, to limit what I am available for. At the end of the year, 2013, I’m retiring from my massage practice but not at all from my life. I will be happily social but not available for either instant communications or for massage giving. I won’t have texting but will have a home number and will be on line with Email, Facebook, and Blogs. Surely the loss of the cell phone will spell a quieter, less bothered retirement. I am looking forward to that. Even though I won’t be available for giving massages, I’ll still be up for coffee, tea, or meals with lots of laughs. And I hope never again to change my Area Code unless to 720.

(Note: I never have got rid of my cell phone.)

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

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Scarves, by Lewis

It was a night much like any other for the watchman at Glasgow’s Dock Number Three, Lewis James MacScarvey, as he made his rounds. The only sounds were that of the water sloshing against the piles and an occasion distant fog horn or well-sotted human being noisily making his way home after closing time.

It was his habit to pace to-and-fro in front of a streetlamp and park bench where said humans were prone to sleep and dispose of their spent bottles in the nearby trash receptacle in hopes of averting a disturbance. When he turned to the north he could see about 100 meters away another bench with trash receptacle and lamplight nearly identical to his. Only there was no one patrolling that space so he liked to occasionally cast his eye in that direction to make sure there was no mischief-making going on.

On this particular night, at about 1:30 in the morning, he thought he saw a figure standing near the water. It appeared to be a woman, perhaps wearing a red full-length coat and something on her head. He had made several turnings on his well-worn loop and each time checked to see if the person was still there.

After about 15 minutes or so, he turned and noticed that the figure had vanished. Curious, he rushed down to see if there was a problem. When he arrived at the spot where the woman had been standing, he saw only a pair of earrings carefully placed on the seat of the bench and, when he looked into the water, a red scarf floating on the surface. Not even a ripple disturbed the water’s calm. Using his nightstick, he was able, with some effort, to retrieve the scarf. Embroidered on one corner were initials. He could barely make them out in the dim light–“LJM”. They were his initials. He backed away from the edge of the water until his legs collided with the bench, whereupon he sat down hard.

Although he never learned the identity of the mysterious lonely woman he saw that night–no body was ever found–he could not bring himself to reveal to the police even the existence of the scarf. He kept it for himself and every night before he went on-duty, he would tie the scarf around his neck, hoping against hope that the rightful owner would some night come looking for it.

© March 23, 2015

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.

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A Magic Carpet Ride, by Gillian

Humankind does not, for the most part, create in order to promote and honor spirituality. We make killing machines and WMD’s. We compete to see who can build the tallest sky-scraper, the biggest and fastest anything and everything, and the securest vault to store our precious gold bars.

So, it was with great surprise that I received a serious spiritual kickstart from a creation weighing an estimated 54 tons; the largest piece of community folk art in the world, honoring almost 100,000 people.

Yes, of course, the AIDS Memorial Quilt.

I first saw it, or part of it, in Denver. I don’t recall where exactly it was displayed, Betsy thinks somewhere at DU, or when this would have been. Probably around 1990. What I do remember vividly is the effect it had on me.

Each quilt is 3 feet by 6, roughly the size of a human grave. At the time it was started, in 1987, many people who died of AIDS-related causes did not receive funerals, due to both the social stigma of AIDS felt by surviving family members and the outright refusal by many funeral homes and cemeteries to handle the deceased’s remains. Lacking a memorial service or grave site, The Quilt was often the only opportunity survivors had to remember and celebrate their loved ones’ lives. Each quilt is completely unique. They vary from no more than a name written in marker pen, to an embroidered name with a photograph, or many photographs. Some are covered in messages to the deceased. Many have belongings carefully attached, sometimes covered with carefully hoarded childhood toys and clothes; baby booties wailing out a mother’s heartbreak.

I couldn’t stand it. These young men – yes, others died, and are still dying in that terrible epidemic, but it was primarily stalking young gay men – these young men, so frequently reviled and feared by society, dying horrible and very premature deaths; and what do they and those who love them do? They sew a quilt, those terrible, frightening men! The pain of each individual represented there, and my anger at an ignorant bigoted society were too much. I didn’t think I could bear it. I couldn’t contemplate one more lost life. I was about to tell Betsy I would have to wait for her outside, when something strange, something wonderful, happened.

I felt the overwhelming love that had gone into those quilts flowing back out and engulfing me. It enveloped me in it’s warmth, like that of a cozy fire on a cold night, and with it came a sense of great peace, culminating in a flash of what I can only call pure joy, such as I have felt rarely in my life. It was strange, that jolt of joy in a time and place surrounded by death. But there it was. It came and it went so fast I felt almost dizzy. But the strong sense of love and peace remained, to banish the previous pain and sorrow and rage. You understand that I am looking back at it now from a place at least slightly further along the path of spirituality than at the time, so this is how I see it from a current perspective. I doubt I would have described it in quite the same way at the time. But then, with every memory we rewrite history. But it is my history, so I guess I’m allowed.

In any event, it was The Quilt which initially precipitated my journey along the spiritual path.

I wanted that jolt of joy again. And again. And again. It had been like a momentary high, and with one shot I was addicted. I wanted to live cocooned in love; to find that everlasting peace.

Easy to say! Not so easy to do. The spiritual path is a difficult one. You don’t simply decide, I’m going this way now, and go. It takes work, and, like so many things, eternal vigilance. I frequently lose my way, stumbling off the spiritual path into those nearby dark places where all the bad things lurk – those negative thoughts and emotions, always waiting to pounce. But at least I have reached a stage where, I cannot claim always, but often, I can stop myself, wherever I am at that moment. I stop. I relax. I do some deep breathing. I rest right there, lost as I may be among the good, bad, and ugly. I gather that spiritual quilt of love and peace, and wrap myself in it’s warmth. And usually it works it’s miracle and sooner or later I find myself back in the welcoming light of my spiritual being, back once again on the right path. Rescued, again, from the dark scary places, It’s a magic carpet ride. As I continue along my path, I am treated, very occasionally, to those starbursts of pure joy. But more importantly, I am, for the most part, completely at peace: with myself, with my world, and with everything in it. So I think it very appropriate that the Quilt, or technically The Names Project which began it, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, but disappointing that it did not receive the award. It seems to me the perfect candidate. If others would treat adversity in the same way, the world would be a very different place. Sadly, even trying to imagine the Nazis or those currently flocking to join ISIS, deciding instead to sew a quilt, is so impossible it’s just laughable.

Why is that? I ask myself, sadly. I hear no answering reply.

I saw a part of The Quilt once again when Betsy and I took part in the March on Washington in 1993. The last time it was displayed in it’s entirety was on the Washington Mall in 1996 – something I would love to have seen but didn’t, and I will probably never get another chance. The Quilt is now too large to be viewed all together. It is stored in twelve feet square sections, housed in Atlanta. These section, placed end to end, would run for over eight miles. If you have never seen any part of it, you might want to add it to your Bucket List; things to do before you die. I’m sure it would do just as much for your soul as gazing at the Taj Mahal in the moonlight. And the trip would be a whole lot cheaper!

© June 2015

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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Didja Hear Denver’s Pride Parade was Disrupted?

by Donaciano Martinez

The question in the above headline was posed by me to dozens of people, who were almost unanimous with the reply of a resounding “no.”

The June 2015 parade was indeed disrupted by predominantly Chicano and Chicana GLBTQ youth from Buried SEEDZ of Resistance (BSEEDZ) to honor Jessie Hernandez, the 17-year-old Mexican lesbian who was killed by Denver police when they investigated the stolen car in which Hernandez and her young lesbian friends were socializing in the early-morning hours in January 2015.

Completely stopping the parade from one side of the street to the other as BSEEDZ activists unfurled a huge multi-colored banner in big-sized words “Your Family Values Are a Lie,” the 10-minute disruption took place near Lafayette Street on the Colfax side of the nonprofit GLBT Community Center that has organized the parade and festival since 1976.

In addition to honoring the deceased Hernandez, BSEEDZ activists made the following demands to the GLBT Community Center as the parade organizer:

– End corporate sponsorship of Pride by corporations such as Coors, Walmart and Wells Fargo due to their ties to the prison industrial complex, anti-immigration legislation and predatory lending that targets queer communities of color;

– Every Pride parade should be led to honor LGBTI2S lives lost to violence; and

– End police presence at Pride because LGBTQI2S communities are at higher risk of experiencing police violence.

[The above-listed I initial refers to gender variant people who do not fit the narrow paradigm of being male or female. The above-listed initials 2S refer to Two-Spirit, the American Indian term for people who have both male and female qualities.]

Dozens of spectators were on the rooftop of the GLBT Center looking down and applauding as parade participants passed by when BSEEDZ activists and allies suddenly poured into the street to block the parade. While some

spectators on the sidewalks approvingly cheered the protesters, other spectators seemed annoyed or were curious about the protest action.

“We are grabbing the mic for just a few minutes to reflect on and honor the lives that have been taken and forgotten,” yelled BSEEDZ organizer Cecelia Kluding-Rodriguez into her megaphone once the protest got underway with BSEEDZ activists locking arms and wearing red t-shirts emblazoned with the image of the face of Hernandez.

“The first Pride was a riot, Stonewall was an uprising,” shouted BSEEDZ activist Muki Najeer. “We are here today to bring back the true spirit of Pride.” Each time she spoke, she paused so that fellow protesters could loudly repeat her words. “In the last few decades white LGBTQ people gained many rights, including the right to marriage. But why do queer and trans communities of color still face higher levels of murder, police violence, unemployment, detention and homelessness?”

To reiterate the importance of restoring the origins of Pride, BSEEDZ activist Mimi Madrid elaborated: “We’re not just here to dance and have a good time. No. Pride began as a revolutionary uprising to defend our bodies, to defend our identities and to defend our spirits. We’re tired of the police just taking us out, picking us off. So this is about bringing back that sacredness, the roots of uprising back into Pride.”

After the 10-minute disruption ended and the Pride parade resumed, BSEEDZ activists walked back to the sidelines and chanted the rhyme: “How many queer kids have to die? Your family values are a lie.”

Originally founded in 2009 under the name Branching SEEDZ as a project of the nonprofit Colorado Anti Violence Program (now known as Survivors Organizing for Liberation), the youth-led group modified its name to Buried SEEDZ of Resistance (BSEEDZ) in January 2015 after finding inspiration in an old Mexican proverb that read: “Trataron de enterrarnos, pero no sabian que eramos semillas.” In English, the proverb means, “They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds.” With the proverb as their foundation, BSEEDZ envisioned a future where they can continue on the path of resistance that was planted by their ancestors.

“I immediately reflected back to the spirit of resistance that the patrons of the Stonewall Inn of New York City demonstrated in the summer of 1969,” stated longtime Chicano gay activist Lorenzo Ramirez upon learning that the predominantly Chicano/a Mexicano/a LGBTQ youth activists in BSEEDZ took a stand at this year’s Denver Pride Parade. “From my research, and also rare conversations with individuals who were actually there, I have learned that the actions taken by the Stonewall Inn patrons (who were primarily Black and Latino drag queens) were in direct response to a raid conducted by the NYPD [New York Police Department] on June 28, 1969.”

“This historical act of resistance triggered three nights of civil unrest by the gay community of New York City’s Greenwich Village and was the birth of the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement,” declared Ramirez in his praise of the bravery of the individuals who took a stand after enduring enough of the constant verbal and physical harassment by NYPD.

“As an out and proud Chicano gay man who grew up in the Chican@ Movement of the early 1970s, and as an HIV/AIDS activist of the late 1980s and 1990s, I must support this new diverse generation of young grass-roots activists in their efforts to remind the LGBTQ community about our history of struggle and sacrifice that has paved the way so that we can live our lives openly and honestly with pride and dignity,” stated Ramirez.

“May I first note that we have yet to have any direct communication from Buried SEEDZ of Resistance,” said Rex Fuller, Communications Director for the nonprofit GLBT Community Center, which has organized the Pride parade and festival since 1976. “We have only heard about the group’s demands through third parties. We welcome dialog with the group.”

“We also want to state that we are dedicated to supporting all members of our community and we are always working to listen to and address issues facing our community,” added Fuller while noting that youth from the GLBT Center’s program, Rainbow Alley, are participating in the Queer Youth Summit sponsored by BSEEDZ.

Although Fuller is firm that the GLBT Center works to listen to and address issues facing the community, not everyone agrees that Chicano/a LGBTQ youth are being listened to or that their issues are being addressed.

“I recently had the opportunity to meet with members of BSEEDZ, and I have been very impressed with their energy, commitment and organizational skills,” stated Ramirez. “I could also sense the frustration of their voices not being heard and not being recognized by organizations and many LGBTQ community leaders who are entrusted to address the issues that affect us all.”

“PrideFest has an estimated $25 million annual impact on Denver’s economy, including benefiting LGBT businesses,” stated Fuller in response to the BSEEDZ demand that the GLBT Center end corporate sponsorship of the Pride event and refuse to take funds from corporations such as Coors, Wells Fargo and Walmart. “Denver PrideFest is also The Center’s largest annual fundraiser and money raised at Denver PrideFest goes directly back to our community in the form of direct services to LGBT youth, elders, the transgender community and providing help with legal issues. This would not be possible without corporate sponsorship.”

In his expression of gratefulness to the companies and their GLBT employees who support the GLBT Center through sponsorship of PrideFest, Fuller pointed out that the Center requires corporate sponsors of the Pride event to have non-discrimination policies in place.

“This year Denver PrideFest attracted 370,000 people over the two-day festival,” proclaimed Fuller in response to the BSEEDZ demand that the GLBT Center end police presence at the Pride event. “It would not be possible to host a public event of this size without working with Denver Police Department to ensure safety of everyone attending.”

Denver City Government’s agency, the Office of Special Events, handles the permit-application process for all events (such as PrideFest) held on public property (streets, parks, etc.) and coordinates the process that all permit applicants are required to go through with various agencies (including Denver police). Because of the strict process that all permit holders must go through to ensure public safety, it is highly unlikely that there will ever be an end to police presence at the Pride event.

Regardless of police presence or no-police presence, there are some people who no longer attend the Pride event.

“I have not attended Denver’s Pride Parade for quite some time for many of the same reasons that BSEEDZ decided to take action and voice their concerns and demands mentioned in the La Gente Unida newsletter,” noted Ramirez, a recipient of the “Year 2000 Donaciano Martinez Human Rights Award” and the 2004 founder of Denver’s first Latino gay/bi men’s community center that lasted five years before it transitioned to a program called UNO (later called LISTOS) under a different fiscal sponsor.

The recent Denver Pride Parade was not the first time for BSEEDZ involvement in a disruption of an LGBTQ event. BSEEDZ activists joined with Latino trans activists in disrupting the LGBTQ Creating Change national conference held in Denver in February 2015, at which time Denver Mayor Michael Hancock was prevented from delivering his speech to the conference. The action at the conference was to honor the Mexican lesbian teenager Jessie Hernandez who was killed by police in January 2015.

People from all sectors of the community probably will no doubt express pro and con views of BSEEDZ tactics for months to come. As freedom-loving activists ponder the issue, consider the following quote from the 1800s African American activist Frederick Douglass: “Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground.”

Denver, 2015 

[The piece was previously published by La Gente Unida Newsletter and is used here with permission.]

About the author

Since 1964 Donaciano Martinez has been an activist in peace and social justice movements in Colorado. His activism began in 1964 by knocking on doors to urge people to vote for peace and justice, but in 1965 he and other activists began marching in the streets to protest against war and injustice. His family was part of a big migration of Mexican Americans from northern New Mexico to Colorado Springs in the 1940s. He lived in Colorado Springs until 1975 and then moved to Denver, where he still resides. He was among 20 people arrested and jailed in Colorado Springs during a 1972 protest in support of the United Farm Workers union that was co-founded by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. For his many years of activism, Martinez received the 1998 Equality Award, 1999 Founders Award, 2000 Paul Hunter Award, 2001 Community Activist Award, 2005 Movement Veterans Award, 2006 Champion of Health Award, 2008 Cesar Chavez Award, 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2013 Pendleton Award. La Gente Unida, a nonprofit co-founded by Martinez, received the 2002 Civil Rights Award. The year 2014 marked the 50-year anniversary of his volunteer work in numerous nonprofit situations.

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Grief, by Will Stanton

The emotion of grief, to varying degrees, is natural for humans but potentially very toxic. The causes of grief are both external, that is, events that happen to us, and internal, one’s own nature and how prone we may be to suffering grief.

Throughout history and continuing on through today, some people have suffered extreme traumas that can affect them the whole remainder if their lives. Victims of horrendous crime, violence, war, natural cataclysms, or massive plagues, all such victims are severely tested. As a consequence, shock, loss, grief, anger and bitterness are very hard to cope with.

Just imagine, if you can, Russia’s Empress-Dowager Maria Fednorova, barely escaping with her life to Denmark after her son Nicholas II and his young family all were brutally shot to death by the Bolsheviks and their bodies dumped into pits in the forest. She struggled with her grief for ten years. Her coping mechanism was to hold out irrational hope that one or more of them somehow had survived. Of course, we now know that all their remains have been found and none survived. For most of us, the common loss of a loved one or friend, loss of job, home, or financial security, is hard enough. That certainly has been true with me.

Then, each of us is wired somewhat differently from others. Some people are quite sensitive and vulnerable to prolonged grief. There are several potential causes. Brain physiology and chemistry differ among people. This may be caused by genetics, PTSD, emotional or psychiatric anomalies, drugs or alcohol. Too often, people lack good support systems of family, regular friends or mentors. They feel more alone, vulnerable, and less resilient.

Turning grief into an energizer, a motivator for constructive thinking and behavior, is an important coping skill that people should learn and practice. In contrast, dwelling endlessly upon grief can cause devastating effects upon one’s mental and physical health. A dramatic example of this is the character of Miss Havisham in Dickens’ “Great Expectations.” Once defrauded of all her money by the beau who promised to marry her and then abandons her, she remains for years in her yellowed wedding dress, sitting in a dark, decaying mansion where all the clocks are stopped at the time she learned of her betrayal, and with the desiccated remains of the wedding breakfast and cake lying on the table. Such a mind-set and behavior are obviously destructive to health and happiness.

Like everyone, I have had my share of grief, and for various reasons. Sometimes a sense of grief comes and goes, triggered by remembrances of past times, good or bad. This is true with the loss of my partner more than eighteen years ago. I still have moments. I also still miss my wire-hair fox terrier, who had to be put to sleep two weeks after my partner died.

I’m afraid that I also am prone to a more generalized grief that some others may not suffer. There is much about human beings and the world that is unnecessarily evil and toxic, and I morn humankind’s apparent lack of the ability to feel empathy, to change and improve.

My means of coping apparently is for me to focus upon the positive, associating with loving people, appreciating beauty in all forms. My writing about this topic “Grief” provides me with the opportunity to remind myself to remain focused upon the good.

© 10 August 2015

About the Author

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories. I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones. Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group. I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.

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Forbidden Fruits by Ricky

Fruits I forbid myself: all fermented fruit products and any spoiled or rotten fruits. And while we are on the subject of forbidden I forbid myself from eating certain vegetables: asparagus, yellow squash, yellow wax beans, eggplant, and any other vegetable that I cannot pronounce or spell its name.

© 21 April 2014

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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Don’t Touch Me There by Phillip Hoyle

I don’t believe those words have ever come out of my mouth. I’m not kidding, but I don’t want to claim too much for I was a ticklish boy. Tickling made me laugh and squirm, caused my throat to constrict and tire, made me try to get away from my tormentor. And I especially liked it when Paul tickled me, Paul a tall, muscular man, family friend and member of our church, who worked construction or some other physical job. We knew Paul and his wife and daughter because the daughter, like my next younger sister, had contracted polio and went to regular doctor’s appointments in Topeka, Kansas, sixty miles away. Rides were shared by the two families, so we spent a lot of time together, and we kids got to know each other and each other’s parents. Paul was almost like a kid himself. He loved to play. He loved to tickle us. I loved to be tickled by him. I’d run from him; he’d pursue me, get me down on the ground or floor and tickle me until I squealed. I had no other such relationship with an adult, certainly not with an adult male and couldn’t get enough of his attention. This giant would grab me with his huge paws, lift me high, then lower me to the ground and tickle my ribs until I was laughing, screaming, kicking, and trying to escape. I loved the attention.

There were other men who paid me mind: my dad who encouraged my singing by accompanying me on the piano, my grandfather Hoyle who sat in his chair smoking his pipe but occasionally talking with me or driving me somewhere in his Pontiac, my grandpa Pink who when he drove the tractor would lift me onto his lap and kid me and tell me stories and sing me songs, Mr. Lown the preacher who talked with me about becoming a minister, Bob who took me along with other boys to powwows and taught me to dance, and Mr. Martin who encouraged my singing in high school. I had plenty of attention from men but no other adult ever played with me like Paul. Still I loved the attentions of all these men and none of them ever crossed the line, caused me to say, “Don’t touch me there.”

Of course I don’t know that I would have said it anyway. Writing this I feel a bit like my friend who complained that the priest he served with at the altar for many years never molested him. But now, really, I’m just kidding.

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

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Alas, Poor Homophobes by Lewis

An Open Letter to Universal Haters Everywhere

These are the times that try men’s souls–at the very least those souls, male or female, whose salvation depends upon making other souls miserable. It must seem to you that the very forces of human progress are aligned against you, that every cause toward which you have given the last full measure of your devotion has almost overnight become politically incorrect. You must long for the day when it was acceptable to denigrate kikes, wops, niggers, slopes and whatever minority whose presence in your consciousness caused you so much consternation in the past. Then along came Nazi Germany and Martin Luther King, Jr. and, before you could shake a faggot at it, tolerance began to creep into American society. (Strange that 300 years of Christian dogma wasn’t doing the trick.)

It must have been quite an adjustment, having to look for new subjects toward which to direct your righteous anger for all that’s unfair in this life. All the easy-to-spot suspects were becoming off limits–the odd-colored skin, the funny dress, the strange accent.

So, it must have seemed that Providence smiled on you once again when you realized that, if you looked closely enough, you could actually spot a queer by his or her manner of dress or lisp or limp wrists. Unlike your earlier victims who could barely conceal their differences, queers often were terrified of being “found out”. They thought they could mix with ordinary people and kind of blend in. That idea must have really pissed you off. I mean, if they could pass for straight, didn’t that mean that someone might mistake you for a queer? No, there was only one way that you could clearly demonstrate that you were a manly man–bash, ridicule and call out queers whenever and wherever you found them.

What a blessing it must have been for you when AIDS came along. Not only did the disease become a litmus test for being queer, it thinned their ranks so you didn’t have to bother so much. I’m sure that made you feel quite smug. I could almost hear you saying, “What goes around, comes around”.

It must have felt good to put yourself in the position of being a champion for the sacred institution of marriage against the attempts of perverts to infiltrate the institution, even as the divorce rate was skyrocketing. One of your most memorable victories was the nobly-named “Defense of Marriage Act”, which scolded those states that dared grant full legal recognition of same-sex unions.

But here it is nearly 20-years later and the U.S. Supreme Court is almost certain to rule by the end of the month that gay people are deserving of the same equal protection and due process under the Constitution as anybody else, including you. I’ll bet that really gets your goat. Who would have thought such a thing could happen so quickly?

You must have shuddered recently when Wal-Mart threatened economic reprisals against states that passed so-called Freedom of Religion laws that would sanction faith-based bigotry against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered folk. (I doubt that you can read that last sentence without gagging mentally but I thought the acronym, glbt, might be mistaken for a typo.)

“What happened to my country?” you might rightfully ask. Well, the answer is pretty simple, really. It’s the same thing that happens whenever two human beings have the inclination and the time to get to know one another before the labeling starts. It’s what happens when commonality overwhelms tribalism. It’s what happens when reality trumps preconception. The Jew, the gay, the black you know can’t always be the exception. In fact, they’re almost always never are the exception. Anne Frank may have said it best when she wrote in her remarkable diary–

“It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death.”

Freedom and dignity cannot be hoarded, like money. They are the birthright of every person. At least that’s the way it is supposed to be here in America. You cannot make yourself more free by denying anyone else their freedom. It’s not theirs to give away and it’s not yours to take. It is not yours to say whom I shall I love any more than you can deny me the same air you breathe. It’s not a sacrifice at all. In fact, you won’t even notice the difference. Once you let this sink in, however, you may notice something else is different. You may find yourself walking with a bit lighter step. And that would be good not only for your feet but for your heart as well.

© 15 June 2015

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.