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Memorials by Gillian

In the UK there is an expression, the Fortunate Fifty, referring to only fifty villages in the country, which did not lose even one man to the horrors of the First World War. Every other village has a war memorial, portraying a long list of those from the village killed in World War One, with a sad addendum below of those killed in World War Two. The second list is, thankfully, usually much shorter than the first.

The First World War was one of the deadliest in the history of mankind, with estimates of total deaths ranging from ten to fifteen million. In small villages it was so devastating because at that time all the men from the village served together, and frequently died together, so in many cases a village’s husbands, sons, brothers, sweethearts and neighbors all died on the same day, leaving the village essentially bereft of an entire generation of young men.

I was walking past one of these ubiquitous memorials one day, in some village in the north of England, I don’t even remember where I was or why.

Tudhoe Village War Memorial, United Kingdom
Photo by Peter Robinson used with permission.

I glanced at the tall granite pillar with the usual almost unbelievably long list of names, and an old farmer shuffled up to me. The tip of his gnarled old stick bumped down the names engraved in the stone.
“Aye, but we showed the buggers!”

He stabbed his cane at the more recent list below,
“And then we showed the buggers again!”
He stomped off with evident satisfaction.

My mind turned to those old, grainy, jerky, black and white films taken in the trenches.
Did that young man, so fresh from his father’s farm, now lying in agony over the barbed wire of no-man’s-land, gasp with his dying breath,

“Aye, but we showed the buggers!”

I doubt it.
Nor, I imagine, was it the last thought of the pilot of that Spitfire, plummeting to the ground in flames; he too injured to bail out.

In the nineteen-fifties I was on a train crossing northern France. We passed rows of identical white crosses. For miles and miles, they flowed up the hillsides and into the valleys. I had never seen such a sight. Nor have I since, come to that; just some of the countless dead of the First War. A French couple in the seat across from me waved their hands and jabbered animatedly. My French wasn’t good enough to get it all but I got the gist; a French version of,
“Aye, but we showed the buggers!”

When I spent some time at a volunteer job in St. Petersburg a few years ago, my young interpreter took me to the Siege of Leningrad Piskariovskoye Memorial Cemetery. Half a million of the estimated 650,000 people who died during the 900-day blockade, are buried here. From 1941 to 1944 the population, cut off from supplies and constantly bombarded by planes and ground guns, starved to death.

There are heartbreaking photographs from that time, and stories which my escort, visibly puffed up with patriotic pride, translated for me. Of course she had not even been born then, neither come to that had her parents, but that fervor burned from her eyes.
“Mother Russia will never give in!”

I pictured the starving mother, huddling in the corner of the cellar in the bitter cold of a Russian winter, cuddling her starving children. Did she feel that? She, and the other 650,000, were given no choice.
Katya was waving a dramatic arm and saying something in emphatic Russian.
Clearly some approximation of, “Aye, but we showed the buggers!”

It never fails to sadden me, this surge of patriotism that seems to overtake so many people, of any generation and gender, when contemplating memorials. How will we ever see an end to the need for memorials for the war dead, when, instead of shedding sufficient tears to make Niagara look like a trickle, we continue our attitude, in any language, of,
“Aye, but we showed the buggers!”

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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Music and Memory by Nicholas

Some songs I associate with specific times and places. One note from the Swedish disco group ABBA takes me right back to my disco dancing days when we were all dancing queens.

The most evocative collection of singing that I have and rely on to recall a favorite era in my life, a time of enormous growth, is all the albums I’ve saved, and sometimes even replaced, from the 1960s. The rock music of that time captures my sense of those days with all their turbulence and delights.

The plaintive ballads of the Grateful Dead are still sweet to listen to. The harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young invoke American folk music and country western tunes. And those British bad boys, the Rolling Stones, take off in another direction with their raucous and violent lyrics and guitars and drums. Their song Gimme Shelter with its wild thumping beat has practically become my anthem over the years. “Oh, the storm is threatening my very life today.”

Then there are the romantic and psychedelic imaginations of the Moody Blues and Steve Miller and the Doors. The Moody Blues are just dreamy like many of the idle, dreamy days I spent back then (and now) conjuring up another world. Steve Miller and his band sang goofy songs about the Last Wombat in Mecca with his Texas twang. But it was Jim
Morrison of the Doors who was the most remarkable poet of ‘60s rock after Bob Dylan. “Strange days have found us; Strange days have tracked us down,” he wrote. “We shall go on playing or find a new town.” All powered by magical drugs and a bit of genius.

A lot of the music of that era came out of the politics of the time—the movement against the war in Viet Nam, civil rights struggles, early environmentalism, and the once and future youth revolution. We were going to remake the world and in many ways did and the starting point was the music. I don’t know how many anti-war rallies I took part in that began with Country Joe and The Fish singing I Feel like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag that told mothers and fathers that they could be the first on their block to bring their son home in a box and other sarcastic lyrics protesting the war.

I was a great fan of Quicksilver Messenger Service, one of those San Francisco bands that combined blues and country and lots of politics with a catchy rock beat. There’s a song of theirs popular in 1968 that I find myself humming more and more now. It was youthful protest then but poses the question of what are you going to do about me. We have to do something, the refrain goes, about pollution, media lies, war, lousy jobs, violence, injustice. “I feel like a stranger in the land where I was born,” they sang, and I still feel that 40 years later.

Jefferson Airplane sang a mix of ballads about protest and the revolution that never happened. But we thought it would. In 1970, a lot of people hoped or feared that revolution was exactly what we were about to face. So the Airplane (their name is of course a reference to drug use) called for revolution in its Volunteers of America rant right after they sang that we could all be together. We didn’t worry about contradictions back then. Unfortunately, their call to revolution came closer to the end of the movement than at the beginning of it.

I’m not waiting for the revolution any more. But I do still listen to this music. I listen to remember those times and the urgency of our calls for peace and justice. I also listen because the music is just plain good. The musicians and singers were top notch and they pulled together so many musical styles like jazz, rock, blues, country and sheer poetry. These songs are part of my history and I do not walk away from my history.

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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Singing by Michael King

As with any group they are both unique and still have similar dynamics as other groups. Once in awhile there is that peculiar charm that you want to see what will come up next.

If nothing else the particular combination of this group is unusual. The leader, Crow, seems unlikely to be the one filling that spot. He is brash and not very musical and it seems strange that the others even put up with him. They don’t especially seem to mind his almost unpleasant guidance. Canary does most of the solos. He is somewhat conceited, but as far as talent goes he is considerably the best singer in the group. Bantam is not especially musical, quite cocky and if not a friend of Duck he probably wouldn’t be interested in the group. Of course Duck isn’t especially musical either but likes the friends he’s made there and since Bantam and He are a couple, Bantam tags along. They never do solos and usually contribute little to the music but their strutting and showmanship does contribute to the total feel of musical presentation. Pigeon has a hypnotizing coo. Meadow Lark, Quail, Robin and Finch round are the other singers and each has their own individual style.

When performing they put on quite a show and are very popular. They do a few concerts but mostly are invited to be the entertainment at conventions, special events and in church services. Crow gets most of the gigs. He seems somewhat in the background during performances and snoozes with the various leaders and Ministers and is able to keep the group fairly active.

In rehearsals, a very different situation exists. Of course Bantam and Duck are a group all by themselves. Meadow Lark, Robin, Pigeon and Quail are a clique. Finch and Canary are close and in performing often do a duet. The effect of the various combinations can be especially moving at times. In between the songs the squawking, shrieks, caws, crowing, honks and chirps are anything but musical.

Fortunately that only occurs at rehearsals. The performances are well presented and have both style and class as well as the surprising tonal and variations in the musical style that exists nowhere else.

It has been over 60 years since I heard The Musicians. They were a part of my childhood and I became very close to several of the members. My experience seems to me to be somewhat unusual. My older sister is five years older than me and my younger sister is four years younger. Alone on the farm with almost no contact with either or my brother that was seven years younger or the neighbors who were too far away, I spent my time with the farm animals, the wild birds and various wild animals from time to time. I don’t recall much music from the radio or records. I preferred to be outside when my health permitted and I learned to be with my own thoughts without language or culture. I was in awe of other kids when I went to school and didn’t learn to make friends until I went to College. The sights and sounds of the farm was my world and my friends and the visitors from the bird and animal kingdom were the entertainment. I enjoyed their performances and assume that they put on shows when I wasn’t around. Surly they had many audiences. They were The Musicians that influenced my life. After all who else would go to a bird concert and hear the songs and arias of the farm. It’s just something that the city folks missed out on.

About the Author

I go by the drag name, Queen Anne Tique. My real name is Michael King. I am a gay activist who finally came out of the closet at age 70. I live with my lover, Merlyn, in downtown Denver, Colorado. I was married twice, have 3 daughters, 5 grandchildren and a great grandson. Besides volunteering at the GLBT Center and doing the SAGE activities,” Telling your Story”,” Men’s Coffee” and the “Open Art Studio”. I am active in Prime Timers and Front Rangers. I now get to do many of the activities that I had hoped to do when I retired; traveling, writing, painting, doing sculpture, cooking and drag.

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House Cleaning by Merlyn

I did a mayor house cleaning 2 years ago when I left Portland. Almost everything that I hadn’t used in the three years before I left Portland I sold or gave away.

I live in a small studio apartment that’s easy to keep clean. I have a place for everything and don’t keep things I don’t need.

I can fix a whole meal and only have two or three things dirty that I wash right after we eat so there’s never anything dirty in the kitchen sink.

I use one coffee cup for coffee, tea and water and one wine glass.

I have never cared much about fashion; I wear something until it is dirty and then put it in the dirty clothes basket. So there’s never a pile of clothes that were only worn for an hour or so on the back of a chair.

I like a clean house. When something needs to be cleaned I clean it, but I don’t get carried away house cleaning.

About the Author

I’m a retired gay man now living in Denver Colorado with my partner Michael. I grew up in the Detroit area. Through the various kinds of work I have done I have seen most of the United States. I have been involved in technical and mechanical areas my whole life, all kinds of motors and computer systems. I like travel, searching for the unusual and enjoying life each day.

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The Facts by Donny Kaye

The fact is that I am a man of a certain sexual persuasion. As a man of a certain sexual persuasion I am finding a new, more relaxed countenance in which to experience the challenges as well as joys of life’s twists and turns. In this place of honesty, I find myself in a continuing revelation of happiness as I experience all that is my life without feelings of reservation about just being me. The fact is that I’ve not always experienced my life from this perspective. There had always been a reservation about me that if anyone in my life knew that I liked men in the way that I do, I would be judged and excluded from relationships as primary as my parents, siblings and immediate family, not to mention my own children, former life partner and friends who had become part of the fabric of my life, over sixty plus years of existence on the planet. The fact is that I worked very hard to create an illusion about my identity that even had me fooled for much of my life. That expectation started for me in the earliest years of my life when I was declared “such a good little boy” by my parents and others immediately engaged with me in life. The fact is that “when striving to be the best little boy,” even in the body of a grown man, there was no spaciousness for someone who preferred men. This meant that I spent a lot of my energy loathing the very essence of me. The fact is that by creating an illusion about my very nature I have consequently created a situation where those who were close to me are still searching to define their relationship with me now. What I have realized is that there is a disconnection that has occurred with others as I have worked to connect with myself. The fact is My life belongs to me. Those close to me are fortunate that I am sharing it with them. If I love them I cannot share a lie. If they are to love me, I will let them love me. The fact is this has resulted in losing the love of a lot of people, at least temporarily. But if they loved a character that I was playing for them, if they loved someone who wasn’t me, then that love was already dead. The fact is there are people in the world who will love me for who I truly am. The experience I am realizing now, having come out, is that happiness is more complete when not holding reservation about being who I am. The fact is I had money, careers, degrees, vacations, every material thing! Nothing ever made me as deeply happy as “coming out”!

About the Author

Donny Kaye-Is a native born Denverite. He has lived his life posing as a hetero-sexual male, while always knowing that his sexual orientation was that of a gay male. In recent years he has confronted the pressures of society that forced him into deep denial regarding his sexuality and an experience of living somewhat of a disintegrated life. “I never forgot for a minute that I was what my childhood friends mocked, what I thought my parents would reject and what my loving God supposedly condemned to limitless suffering.” StoryTime at The Center has been essential to assisting him with not only telling the stories of his childhood, adolescence and adulthood but also to merely recall the stories of his past that were covered with lies and repressed in to the deepest corners of his memory. Within the past two years he has “come out” not only to himself but to his wife of four decades, his three children, their partners and countless extended family and friends. Donny is divorced and yet remains closely connected with his family. He lives in the Capitol Hill Community of Denver, in integrity with himself and in a way that has resulted in an experience of more fully realizing integration within his life experiences. He participates in many functions of the GLBTQ community.

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Memorials by Colin Dale

Think back to a time in your life when you are up in front of a group of people, all eyes are on you, you know you have to remain up there in front of these people for a certain term — ten minutes, twenty minutes, a half an hour — you know too (and this is the painful part) you’re making an absolute fool of yourself; you know you’re making a fool of yourself, but you can’t stop — one of those times you wished to god you were anywhere else on earth other than up in front of these people. These are the sorts of times when embarrassment comes flooding in not after, but those worst-possible-of-all times when embarrassment takes hold while whatever it is you’re doing you’re still doing, and you can’t stop — when a voice inside your head — a voice that sounds a lot like your own voice — whispers, “Oh lord, I am really making an ass of myself.”

This may seem an odd introduction to memorials, but it’s doorway into a story about me and a particular memorial service and a lesson I badly needed to learn.

Do you remember my story about burying a bull? How, before the cowboy showed up, I had been reading a Patrick Kavanagh poem, the first two lines:

Me I will throw away/Me sufficient for the day

Hang on to those lines. I’ll close with them in a minute. First, though, memorial . . .

One of the advantages of reaching a certain age is most of your stories go back so far you’re safe in naming names — who’s going to care? This story goes back to the mid-’80’s when I’d been in Denver for a while. At the time I had a job working as the delivery guy for a small medical supply house, going around town delivering disposable syringes, plaster bandage, oph-THAL-moscope batteries and cotton balls.

But this story — even though I just said it was — is not really about me. Enter, now, on stage, the next actor . . .

One day after deliveries I returned to the warehouse to I find a new employee working there, Marc — Marc, not with a “k” but with a “c,” like Marc Antony. But since this story is not about Marc, either — at least not for the my purpose today — I’ll condense these surface events:

Yes, I fell in love with Marc. Marc, although affectionate — and as hard as it is for me to say it — he never really fell in love with me. As a result, we never moved in together — probably a good thing. However, for a year we were a pair. Our friends thought of us as a pair.

Condensing this part of the story even more rapidly now:

In time, Marc’s affections reattached themselves elsewhere. He and I saw less and less of each other. He established what looked like a permanent relationship with a fellow I didn’t know. Then, I heard through mutual friends, Marc was diagnosed HIV-positive. His partner left him. Marc’s father, knowing that his son and I had been friends, contacted me, told me Marc was in hospice and said if ever I would want to visit him we might go together. We did, until dementia took Marc three or four months later.

Again, this is not about me — well, of course it is, but not in a flattering way — what I mean to say is, it’s not about me the hero. The story is about a lesson learned — and only in the sense I’m the guy who had to learn that lesson — only in that sense is it about me. Otherwise, it’s more an Everyman story, a growing up story, the sort of story I’m sure a number of us have lived through.

Some months after Marc’s death, a memorial gathering was announced. His father honored me in inviting me to speak. Our driving together to and from the hospice must had given Marc’s father a fair idea of how much his son had meant to me.

Marc’s family was a broken one, mother and father divorced. A scattered family, too, family all around the country. I envisioned a small memorial. Maybe Marc’s mother, maybe one or two of his brothers, coworkers from the medical supply house, a few of Marc’s local friends, those his father had been able to contact.

Large or small, it would be a memorial requiring certain decorum. A touch of humor wouldn’t necessarily be out of place, depending upon the tenor of occasion the family might be imagining, and also the relationship of the speaker to Marc.

In the days leading up to the memorial, I’d given thought to what I might say, without putting anything down on paper. The memorial was late on a Saturday afternoon, so I resoned I could easily set aside most of that day to getting my thoughts together. If I’d decided one thing in advance, though, it was I wanted to tell people what Marc had meant to me — a hint, without being revealing.

Saturday morning I started putting thoughts down on paper. On index cards.

Also Saturday morning — about mid-morning — I had a first drink. I was determined to stay clear-headed. However, that first drink led to more. I kept scribbling on my index cards, but the more I drank, the more maudlin my intended remarks got. Before long I was adding anecdotes of some intimate stuff Marc and I shared — not carnal stuff, but meals Marc and I liked to cook for each other, our favorite places for long walks — that sort of intimate stuff. I put new batteries in my boom box and queued up a number of cassettes with some of Marc’s and my favorite songs. Time now short — and me already getting all choked up on my nickel sentimentality — I added a few lines of cheap poetry. I’d come a long way from early morning, when I had made a plan to hint, but not reveal, all the way to cassettes and cheap poetry.

On the platform in front of everybody that afternoon, I was an embarrassment. I was an embarrassment to them. I was an embarrassment to me. As I shuffled through my index cards, I could tell by the creaking folding chairs I was confusing everybody. Playing the cassettes, I found the lyrics creaking into the big, hollow room to be unintelligible. I looked out on 30, 40 stone faces each asking, What the hell is going on? Nearing the end, and the cheap poetry, I was — predictably — in tears. I was of course the only one in the room in tears. I finally finished, in a room of people all wishing they were somewhere else.

That’s when I learned my lesson — although I wouldn’t be able to put it into words for some time. I’d had tried to make Marc’s memorial into something about us. Worse yet — far, far worse yet — I had tried to make Marc’s memorial into something about me. I had tried — and failed, thank god — to contort Marc’s memorial into autobiography. And so . . .

Me I will throw away/Me sufficient for the day

Not knowing that’s what I’d been doing, I had been trying to become the centerpiece of Marc’s memorial; instead I ended up its fool. It took 20 excruciating minutes for me to learn a much needed lesson: that I needed to give up trying to be the center of other peoples’ experience — that if ever there is a time and place — perhaps one of the few times and places — a person deserves to be the center of everything, it’s his memorial.

Me I will throw away/Me sufficient for the day

About the Author      

Colin Dale couldn’t be happier to be involved again at the Center. Nearly three decades ago, Colin was both a volunteer and board member with the old Gay and Lesbian Community Center. Then and since he has been an actor and director in Colorado regional theatre. Old enough to report his many stage roles as “countless,” Colin lists among his favorite Sir Bonington in The Doctor’s Dilemma at Germinal Stage, George in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Colonel Kincaid in The Oldest Living Graduate, both at RiverTree Theatre, Ralph Nickleby in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby with Compass Theatre, and most recently, Grandfather in Ragtime at the Arvada Center. For the past 17 years, Colin worked as an actor and administrator with Boulder’s Colorado Shakespeare Festival. Largely retired from acting, Colin has shifted his creative energies to writing–plays, travel, and memoir.

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Queer, Just How Queer by Betsy

Imagine that we could measure an individual’s degree of sexual orientation by taking, say, a blood test. This would be an ugly world indeed with a rigid caste system. The most heterosexual would be on top and the most homosexual on the bottom.

Newborns would be immediately tested at birth. Here’s one scenario.

“Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Jones. You have a healthy baby boy measuring only two on the “queerometer” He will be your pride and joy.

Or the dreaded scenario:

“You have a healthy baby boy, Mr. and Mrs. Jones. He has 10 fingers and 10 toes and all his parts. I’m sorry to tell you that he tests positive on the queerometer. He’s a 9.6”

“Oh, says Mrs. Jones, gasping for breath. A 9.6 ! Does that mean, does that mean? “

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” says the attendant. At the age of eight years you will be required to turn him over to the Department of Corrections. He will be yours until then. Enjoy!”

Or the following close-call:

“Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Jones. You have a beautiful baby girl. She appears to be in perfect health and all her parts are in the right place.” However, she does measure a five on the queerometer, which, as you know, is high. The state will provide you with all the materials you need to guide her in the right direction. If you use the manual wisely and stick to it, she will turn out just fine and I’m sure she will live a normal life and give you many grandchildren.”

Or imagine a world in which LGBT people took on a particular hue at puberty. Say, a shade of purple. The really dark purple ones would be the really, really, queer ones, and the light violets would be only slightly inclined to be homosexual or transgender, or bisexual, or queer. I can see the pride parade right now. A massive multi-shaded purple blob oozing down Colfax.

Parents who suspected queerness would dread the day puberty started for their child. Of course, in this world everyone starts out with lily white skin. So the outward signs of race and ethnicity would not exist. In this world their would be no race and ethnicity. Only sexual orientation has meaning.

Of course, in the real world there is no such thing as a queerometer or purple-skinned LGBT’s. The world we know is so very much more complex than that.

In our world we have a choice. Not a choice of whether or not to be queer, but rather we choose to be in or out of the closet, we can choose to accept or deny our queerness, we choose our behaviors every minute of every day. A great raising of awareness over the last few decades has given us even more choices. At least, this is true for the most part in this community that we know so well and in most cities of this country. As acceptance becomes more and more prevalent I am very thankful, indeed. I am thankful everyday, that I have been free to choose to live my queerness with honesty and integrity and pride.

About the Author

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

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Mistaken Identity by Ray S

On an October day some years ago a second son was born to Ethel and Homer. They say he was almost ten pounds which seems like quite a lot for the slight mother. She later used to tell the story about dancing at parties when she was in her 8 1/2 month and how observers wondered how such a little woman with such a huge belly could keep up the Charleston dance step. Seems as though everything came out alright, no pun intended.

The new member of the family thrived on the love and attention from Mom and Dad. The older brother adjusted to the baby’s intrusion on his one-time monopoly of fair-haired first born (seven years difference) Apple of Everyone’s Eye. The seed of sibling rivalry was beginning to germinate but then manifested into an attitude of seeming denial of the little brother’s existence. If necessary the obligatory special occasions would be observed; that is, birthdays, Christmas, and Easter, etc. This pattern persisted into old age.

Early childhood revealed the physical differences between him and the girl next door.

The father’s dutiful instruction on the care and hygiene of the foreskin. How to pee standing up to the toilet. All quite SOP for his age.

Then some matters developed interesting turns. For instance, no one, least of all the child, thought there was anything odd that he had his own Patsy-Ann doll with a doll-sized truck full of little dresses lovingly sewn and/or knitted by mother. An actual talent for painting and drawing came along with a fascination for paper dolls. As time past he couldn’t manage to catch a ball much less win at kick-the-can or sports in general. The end result being a lifelong disinterest in sports or anything competitive.

One day after an exploratory adventure with two neighbor brothers he discovered you could do lots more with certain body parts besides eliminate one’s waste. And it was good!

As he developed emotionally as well as physically way in the back of his mind he became aware of being different.

He, through self awareness, ridicule, bullying, and abuse from older peers questioned his proscribed identity, and this happened before he even knew the words describing one’s sexuality. Ultimately with a contraband copy of Dr. Kinsey’s Report the revelation of twenty some years of mistaken Identity came home to roost. And the struggle went on until the day that the door fell off the hinges of the closet where he and so many other aged fairies resided. The mistake was theirs.

About the Author

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Mother Goose by Phillip Hoyle

“Peter, Peter pumpkin eater
Had a wife but couldn’t keep her,
Put her in a pumpkin shell
And there he …”
          uh, uh, something
“… very well.”
          Two syllables, what was the word? words? Sure.
“Kept her very well.”

These days I still recall several Mother Goose rhymes because some of the names like Peter are answers for clues in one of the crossword puzzles I work each day. They’re stored deep in an obscure folder in my mind and reside in the culture although we rarely think of them as important except for children’s language development.

“There was a crooked man and he went a crooked mile,
And found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
He had a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse
And they all lived together in a crooked little house.”

I recall one of my grade school teachers explaining sixpence and stile just like my college literature professor years later explained odd words and expressions in Shakespeare and John Milton. So these rhymes were an introduction not only to poetry and vocabulary but also to literary criticism.

Most important for me, though, was that Mother played the role of Mother Goose in our house. She introduced us kids to the large volume that had a picture of a bespectacled and bonnet-clad Mother Goose on its cover. From it she read aloud to us endlessly. She quoted even more poetry from memory, she told stories of the family, she researched and relayed her findings about Gypsies, about cooking, about Girl Scouts, about history, and sometimes about movie stars. Mother introduced us to literature: children’s literature, classic comic books, tongue twisters, and so much more. She danced with her cats as well as with us. She entertained. She played. She challenged us to look. She wanted us to engage in life. And, like those of the literary Mother Goose, some of her tales were tricky. We had to figure out just what they were about. Of course, in the meantime, there was always the rhythm, the characters, the word play, and her charm. She never let the characters wander too far away from our conversation. She’d suggest the spider walking across the kitchen floor was just like one that so frightened Miss Muffett, point out Peter Rabbit in her mother’s large garden, or identify me with the little boy Georgy Porgy who so liked eating his puddin’ and pie. She made literature live for her children.

Father Goose lived at our house too. He read to us, usually from the Eggermeier’s Bible story book. He pronounced each character and place name correctly having listened to countless sermons from educated preachers and consistently following the code of his self-pronouncing King James Version Bible. He played the piano to our delight. He sang and taught us to sing. He also entertained, occasionally doing an old high school cheer—he had been a cheerleader—or dancing to an old jazz tune he put on the record player—he’d played for years in a dance band. He employed and discussed difficult words and taught us generosity with vocabulary as well as with other resources.

And we, too, all lived together in a little Cape Cod house where the children’s world of old Britain was brought close to us in our Kansas town. So was the world of the ancient Hebrews, Egyptians, and Sumerians. It’s no wonder I started devouring book after book of historical fiction on my own beginning in the eighth grade. And thanks to the creativity of my mother and father and of the effectiveness of the education I received, Mother Goose stills reigns supreme in my world of literary fantasy.
   
Denver, 2012

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing. His massage practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups of writers and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in church work, he now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients in his practice. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Walking in the Grove by Nicholas

It’s a gentle place. It’s a quiet spot in the middle of the busy park in the middle of the noisy city. The National AIDS Memorial Grove sits in one of the few natural ravines in the eastern end of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. It is secluded but surprisingly only a few steps from busy city streets and busy sections of the park.

Before the place was consecrated as the National AIDS Memorial, it was a non-descript, out of the way quiet respite in the heavily used eastern end of Golden Gate Park. It was always one of my favorite places in the park. With only a short walk from my apartment, I could be in a completely quiet and peaceful domain. When it rained, a slow stream flowed down the center of the ravine. Tall redwoods, scrub oak trees and large shrubs shaded the area. Soft blankets of fog would float through the tall ferns in the lush ravine. A sort of path meandered through it, wandering up a slight incline toward the western end. In that crowded park, it was an area overlooked by most hikers. I loved to wander through it, stopping at times to rest on a stone or log and meditate in this little wild outpost of nature left alone in the mostly manicured park.

Begun in 1991, the AIDS Grove is actually a federally designated memorial site like the Viet Nam War Memorial in Washington and Mount Rushmore. Volunteers constructed a serene place where people can come alone or in groups to hold memorial services or just to remember among the rhododendrons and redwoods. It is a place dedicated to all lives touched by AIDS.

In the grove are six flagstone gathering areas, numerous Sierra granite boulders and 15 freestanding benches. The paved Circle of Friends, located at the Dogwood Crescent in the eastern end of the Grove, is the focal point of the area. Presently, nearly 1,700 names are inscribed in circles radiating out from a center point. When completed, the Circle of Friends will include 2,200 names of lives touched by AIDS.

Some of the names I know, many I do not and most are hard to read in those concentric circles. But whether their names are there or not, I think back to Bill and Chester and Wayne and Ari and the day I announced to a friend that I just was not going to go to anymore funerals for a while.

It’s still one of my favorite spots in Golden Gate Park though it is a busier place than it used to be and doesn’t have that wildness it used to have. At first, I didn’t like the change, this intrusion of gardening on what had been a private little unkempt respite in the city. But I have since come to love the Grove. It is good to remember. I urge you if you are ever again in San Francisco to seek it out and spend some time there, quietly.

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.