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Nostalgia Regained, Gillian

I
have always thought myself blessed; I can live the time and place where my
nostalgia takes me any time I want. There are countless books, and especially
movies, about Britain during World War Two – the time and place of my early
years. There are not as many of the later 1940’s, or the ’50’s and ’60’s, but
there are enough. If I want to return to my childhood amongst remote farms, I
can watch and re-watch the old PBS/BBC series, All Creatures Great and Small,
which feels to me to be an almost exact replica of my childhood environment.
If
I want to feel that stirring patriotism of the war years, emotions which I
think I recall but in fact was probably too young, I can watch the old
black-and-white movies of the time, many of which are cloyingly sentimental, such
as, In Which We Serve, The First of the Few, or the unabashed
propaganda of Mrs. Miniver.
In the ’50’s and ’60’s
came an era of more realistic movies dealing with the many issues remaining
after the war: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Billy Liar, and
Georgy Girl.

 
Or
those films whose only purpose was to make us laugh, like the wonderful
selection starring Alec Guinness.  
And
then, along came The Beatles with It’s a Hard Day’s Night, which
appeared in 1964, a year after I graduated from college. A nostalgic ride if
ever there was one. 
In the year of my birth
alone, 1942, Britain produced over 50 movies set in Britain. Yes, it is easy
for me to take that trip down memory lane any time I feel so inclined; which I
did quite frequently over the  years. Opportunities
for nostalgic trips via the movies are even more plentiful, of course for
Americans. But most other first-generation immigrants like me are not offered
this escape; at least it is not immediately available from the local library,
and probably not even these days from Netflix and the like. How many movies are
there that would have you jump aboard and be immediately transported back in
time to 1940’s Latvia or 1950’s Guatemala?
But in later years
something seemed to go wrong. I no longer delighted in this armchair
time-travel the way I used to. In fact, rather the opposite. Movies, either
fiction or documentaries, depicting my time and place of nostalgia, whether
made back then or current depictions of it, tended rather to depress and anger
me. They make me cry. They are sexist, classist, xenophobic, homophobic; all
the ists and ics you can think of. They are bigoted, 100% white and 100%
heterosexual. They are all about the unthinking, unquestioning, superiority of
men and equally unquestioningly subservient women. They made me question not
only my memory but my very sanity. This is the piece of history upon which I
gaze with such affection? It has been said that nostalgia is a longing for a
time and place which never existed. I fear that must be what I suffered from
for much of my life. Sadly, I began to see it more clearly for what really did
exist, and did not particularly like it.
I rather blamed my
efforts, over the last few years, to become a more spiritual person. This has,
as indeed it is part of it’s purpose, raised my consciousness; allowed me to
see things more clearly, as they are, rather than as a blurred concoction of my
own designing. But I hated that I was robbed of my nostalgia; my place of
escape on a bad day.
More recently I have
turned yet another corner. I can still take that magic carpet ride. I can still
enjoy depictions of my past. It is simply that I have lost those tinted lenses
through which I once gazed with love and longing.
I wouldn’t go back there
if you paid me!
In 1952, when Alan Turin
was arrested for his homosexuality, I was an English schoolgirl of 12. What
hope was there for me to deal with, or even acknowledge, my own homosexuality?
Not that anyone knew anything of Turin at the time, all he had done for the Allied
war effort was kept under the secure wraps of the Official Secrets Act for
decades, but his terrible story is emblematic of the attitudes of the times.
So now I again enjoy
movies and books portraying that life I once lived. They no longer make me angry.
They simply offer pictures of a past which, thankfully, no longer exists. They
remind me of the many ways in which we have moved forward, for all that at
times it seems that we have not. I can recognize that past of which I was a
part, with at least a modicum of objectivity. I neither hate it nor love it. It
once was, and now it’s gone. Those spiritual teachers/guides would be proud of
me. I am truly, at least in this one instance, living in THE NOW!
© May 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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Covered Wagon, by Cecil Bethea

Dear Sirs,
You all should know that Mary’s Bar
actually did exist here in Denver, but years ago it was urban renewed into a
parking lot.  About five years past the
parking lot became the site of the building housing the offices of the two newspapers.  An actual takeover of the bar took place
during World War II, but I know none of the details.  The result is that my account is fiction in
all details except for the name of the establishment.
Having had nothing published, I have
been told to include something about my life. 
A biography would be slight, I’m from Alabama but have lived in Denver
for over fifty years.  My life was
certainly not exciting and no doubt of little interest to almost any one.
Then on August 25th of
last year during the Democratic Convention, everything changed.  While coming home after doing some research
on the Battle of Lepanto at the public library, I became enmeshed in a
demonstration by the anarchists that bloomed into a full-fledged conflict with
the police.  Because the eldest of the protestors
could not have been thirty, my white hair made me stand out like the Statue of
Liberty.  The police in their contorted
wisdom decided to take me into custody. During their manhandling of me, a
photographer for the Rocky Mountain NEWS took a splendid photograph of me being
wrestled by two 225 pound policemen.
After the publication of the photograph and an explanatory
article in the NEWS, fame came suddenly and fleetingly.  However, I do understand that my name is
embedded somewhere on the Internet.
Since then I have testified in seven
trials of the protestors.  Also the
A.C.L.U. is working toward a lawsuit for me. 
Not the sort of suit that stirs up visions of orgies in Las Vegas with
the payoff.  The lawyer has warned me not
to splurge at MacDonald’s.
The best!
© 23 Feb 2009 
About the Author 
Although
I have done other things, my fame now rests upon the durability of my
partnership with Carl Shepherd; we have been together for forty-two years and
nine months as of today, August 18th, 2012.
Although
I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the
Great Depression.  No doubt I still carry
invisible scars caused by that era.  No
matter we survived.  I am talking about
my sister, brother, and I.  There are two
things that set me apart from people. 
From about the third-grade I was a voracious reader of books on almost
any subject.  Had I concentrated, I would
have been an authority by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.
After
the University of Alabama and the Air Force, I came to Denver.  Here I met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s
Bar.  Through our early life, we traveled
extensively in the mountain West.  Carl
is from Helena, Montana, and is a Blackfoot Indian.  Our being from nearly opposite ends of the
country made “going to see the folks” a broadening experience.  We went so many times that we finally had
“must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky and
the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming.  Now
those happy travels are only memories.
I was
amongst the first members of the memory writing class.  While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does
offer feedback.  Also, just trying to
improve your writing helps no end.
Carl
is now in a nursing home; I don’t drive any more.  We totter on.
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Clubs, by Betsy

In 1950 when I was 15 years old our family moved from New
Jersey to Louisiana.
I have often said a comparable change would be moving from
Earth to the moon.
In this case, however, the moon would have been populated
with humanoids who had their own culture and language–very much different from
anything I had ever encountered in my young life. However, I was young and I
had much to learn and experience. 
The first difference that I noticed in my new home was the
blatant discrimination and racist practices carried out against people of
color. I’m not so sure the same thing was not going on in New Jersey. I suspect
I just didn’t see it. It was hidden. In the deep South, it couldn’t be hidden
because of the large population of African Americans.  Almost every household in my new hometown had
at least one black person working for them. These family servants had to have
their own toilet facilities usually outside or in the garage, their own private
glass from which to get a drink of water (never would a white person want to
drink from the same glass!) We all know about the public drinking fountains.
Of course, the schools were segregated as was everything
else. I left the South to attend college in New York State in 1953 never to
return except for visits with my parents.
After federal legislation made segregation illegal in the
1960’s nothing changed much in Louisiana. These southern people are slow moving
indeed.  It was not until the late 1970’s
that they finally were forced to allow black people to use public facilities
such as restaurants. On one occasion when I returned to Hammond for a visit, my
high school friend suggested we go out to dinner. She assured me they had
solved the problem of integration by making the city restaurants into private
clubs. Most whites belonged to all the clubs and there were many of them. We
would have to take our own liquor since it was no longer a public place. The
private clubs could or would not get licenses to sell liquor. 
White folks continued for decades to claim that the culture
of segregation is justified because everyone is happy with the status quo
including blacks. That’s how we want it and that’s how they want it, was the
claim.  People want to stay in their
place and keep to themselves. Keep to themselves, maybe, but stay in their
current place–please!
The last time I visited Hammond, Louisiana was in 2003 when I
attended my fiftieth high school reunion. I had no family there except in the
cemetery in the church yard.
I was happy to see that the public places that had had a
brief existence as private clubs–they had all become public places again,
businesses now open to all people. The college in Hammond–a branch of
Louisiana State University–included many black students, and many higher
paying positions previously unavailable to people of color were now occupied by
African Americans. Change comes slowly but change for the better had indeed
come to Hammond Louisiana albeit at the expense of the lives of many good
people and many hard-fought battles lasting for decades.
It saddens me more than I can say to watch the evening news
and see that racism is alive and well today in the United States of
America–land of the free and home of the brave—and not just in the South.  At the same time, I am happy to see that
public places are not changing into private clubs in order to avoid the law of
the land. The law of the land has made segregation in public places illegal as
it should be. In spite of this institutional racism is prevalent. A young law
abiding African American or Latino male in some locations is suspect simply
because of who he is. Racial profiling is common practice in some areas. Our
prisons are filled with men and women of color in numbers disproportionate to
the population. In recent years, we have witnessed the passage of laws in some
states designed to make it almost impossible for certain people to vote. Those
laws, in my opinion, target low income people of color. 
While being white, I have not had to experience the horrors
of decades of discrimination I have described here. I have, however,
experienced on a very few brief occasions the hatred felt toward a person who
is perceived as being different and a threat to the power structure. We have
seen that progress against discrimination and hatred can come quickly when our
leaders pass laws making discrimination illegal.
I want to believe there is a basic innate goodness in all
human beings on this planet–our leaders, law enforcement officials, even the
wrong-doers and criminals.
Let us step back and consider our place in the universe–so
small, so isolated, so seemingly vulnerable. 
At the same time, we must consider that we are creatures who have the
capacity to love each other and to love this tiny speck of rock we live
on.  Love is the means to peace on Earth,
I believe.  Let us look beyond our egos
and other constructs of the mind. It is our egos that drive us to create clubs
so we can segregate ourselves from each other. Let us all look inside beyond
our egos and awaken to our very core, our being, which is love. I do believe
love is the answer for us humans.


 © 23 Mar 2015 
About the Author 
Betsy has been active in
the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old
Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been
retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major
activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a
volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading,
writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage.
She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren.
Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her
life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.
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Culture Shock, by Will Stanton

The day was sunny and fairly warm for
November, so I took a stroll through the park, occasionally having a seat on
one of the many benches to soak up the sunshine and to watch the hundreds of
geese on the lake.  The benches came in
handy, considering that it has been a very long time since I was able to take
twenty-mile, mountain hikes.  My hips
were speaking to me, so I sought out another bench to rest.
The only bench close by me at that
moment already was occupied by one older woman. 
I correctly guessed that she was babushka,
a grandmother from Russia.  She appeared
to be friendly, so I asked if could join her. 
She seemed glad to have the company and someone to talk to.  With her heavy Russian accent, the
conversation was more “talk to” than “talk with,” for she did the majority of
the talking.  That was OK with me because
everything she had to say was quite interesting.
It turns out that she is seventy-six,
although she could pass for fifty.  She
lived most of her life in Yekaterinburg, the fourth largest city in Russia with
quite a history.   Situated in the Urals
on the border of Europe and Asia, it perhaps is best known as the location
where, tragically, Czar Nicolas II, his wife, and all his children were
murdered and then buried in the forests nearby.
Yekaterinburg also is known to be a
highly cultural city with ample opportunities to engage in the arts.  In addition to all of its educational
facilities, it has more than thirty museums, plus several theaters, concert
halls, and opera houses.  Several
world-famous operas singers got their start in Yekaterinburg. 
This loquacious babushka explained that society there just assumes that good
culture should be part of everyone’s life. 
Consequently, children are brought up to appreciate and to participate
in music and the arts and to be familiar with great literature.  As it turns out, these pursuits are not just
simple hobbies; the families take them seriously.  Before she acquired a degree in architectural
engineering, she first acquired a degree in classical piano performance.  Now that is dedication! 
She went on to talk about her family:
her husband, her daughters, and her grown granddaughters.  Yes, her daughters also acquired degrees in
music before pursuing degrees in their chosen professions.  Now her granddaughters just have completed
their music degrees in Boulder.
Babushka says
that she very much misses her home and all the cultural opportunities left
behind, but she came to America because of her family.  Her husband was offered a good
job-opportunity as an environmental planner here in America.  He accepted it and moved here by
himself.  His wife chose to remain behind
at home.  Eventually, their daughters
joined their father in America, and Babushka
was left alone.  Family is most important
to her, so finally she joined the family here.
There are many things that she likes
about America; however, she has noticed a major difference in culture
here.  There are some of the same
cultural advantages here as in her homeland, but at a very reduced scale and
with fewer and fewer people who truly are interested.  There appears not to be the same society-wide
appreciation of the arts among the population or understanding that incorporating
arts and music into one’s life not only enriches human life but also, as proved
by several psychological / educational research-studies, enhances the ability
to learn other disciplines, a concept apparently lost upon school districts
that eliminate the arts first from their school programs as “non-essential.”
I understood what she was talking
about.  Since my childhood, the vast
majority of classical music radio stations in America have been disbanded
because of rapidly dwindling listenership and advertising income.  Throughout America over the last generation,
the country has lost dozens of symphonies, theaters, opera companies, ballets
companies, and school arts and music programs.
A few years ago, the Denver Symphony
could not afford to keep going and was disbanded.  Apparently, Denverites will pay hundreds or
even thousands of dollars to go to football games and rock concerts, but many
far-less pricey symphony tickets were left half-unsold.  World-famous musicians would arrive on stage
to the embarrassing view of oceans of empty seats.  The failed symphony finally was replaced with
the Colorado Symphony.  Then just last
year, most of the board left out of frustration, and the symphony again came
close to closing.  It is keeping barely
alive by cutting the number of concerts, minimizing salaries, and traveling to
other venues with small groups of musicians to perform for a handful of
listeners. 
Other societies have a far different
view from America.  For example, Germany
funds their national arts programs at a rate of dozens of times higher per
capita in contrast to America.  They give
government funding to symphonies at a rate of 25 times that of America and
opera companies at 28 times.  In
contrast, Mit Romney (when running for President) said that he would eliminate
all government support for the arts in this country, and he’s not the only one
to say that.  Like many politicians the
past thirty years, he believes in so-called “small government” – – except of
course in the cases of increasing military spending, intruding into people’s
private lives, dictating women’s health choices, pushing religious beliefs into
school science programs, gutting the workers’ unions, and suppressing the right
to vote.  Within the total military
expenditures for each year, a tiny fraction of goes to supporting military
marching bands; yet that amount of money is so huge in contrast to what is
provided currently to the National Endowment for the Arts that this sum could
resurrect and support twenty full-time symphony orchestras at $20 million apiece
plus give 80,000 musicians, artists, and sculptors an annual salary of
$50,000.  But, the “cut-the-budget”
power-brokers in Congress never would do that. 
During World War II, Britain’s
finance minister recommended to Winston Churchill that they cut arts funding to
better fund the war effort.  Churchill’s
response was, “Then what are we fighting for?” 
There are numerous sociological and psychological articles written and
available for reading about the essential need for the arts to develop and
maintain a civilized nation with civilized people.
Another example of how culture has
declined in America can be seen in what recordings the majority of Americans
choose to buy.  Just ten years ago, the
local Barnes and Noble on Colorado Boulevard carried, in a large percentage of
the media room, hundreds of classical recordings on CDs and DVDs; and their
staff were graduate students from the Denver University Graduate School of
Music.  That large display-area
continually shrank until only one small area by the back wall contained
classical music, and the only clerk was a high-school graduate who admitted
that she had no background in music at all. 
With the recent renovation of the store and the reduction of the media
area to a minor space off to the far side, the stock has been minimized to
virtually nothing. 
Then I recently stopped in Target
just to check out their DVDs.  They had
only about a half-dozen of real quality and interest to me, five of which I
already had, and absolutely no classical CD section at all among the rap,
heavy-metal, hip-hop, country-western, pop, rock, and TV soundtracks.  That is what sells in America with
recordings, live concerts, radio, and TV, and even the music chosen for
background noise even in so-called good restaurants. 
Many fine grand-piano stores,
including the two major ones in my area, have gone bankrupt and closed because
so few people now are interested in classical music and learning how to play
the piano.  An article in the New York
Times described how many pianos now are taken to the dump because they often cannot
even be given away.  The correspondent
spoke about watching as a bulldozer ran over and crushed a Knabe baby-brand
piano.
Quite obviously, our country has
developed different priorities and values from that of many other advanced
nations.  I recently finished watching
the BBC production of John Carré’s “Tinker, Taylor…”  One particular quotation caught my attention.  In questioning one of the characters in his
story as to why he was so unhappy with America, the man replied, “Do you know
what the problem is…?  Greed, and
constipation…morally, politically, aesthetically.”  If that statement seems extreme, the sad fact
is that many people hold the same feelings. 
Unfortunately, since the book was written around forty years ago, a
similar view of America has persisted among many foreign nations in
particular.  This cultural difference
between the grandmother’s home and what America has become has not been lost
upon her, either.
So, the grandmother, obviously proud
of her family and all their accomplishments, laments the culture shock that she
has experienced.  She appreciates her
chance to come to America and to be reunited with her family.  Yet at the same time, she speaks with
fondness and nostalgia of her once having lived in an environment of great
cultural opportunity. 
Bosendorfer Grand Piano
I was sure that she had much more to
talk about,  and I would have been glad to have heard more; however, the sun was
going down, and the air quickly was becoming chilly.  Even my personal, extra insulation was not
enough to stave off the growing cold. 
So, I thanked her for her conversation, bid her farewell, and headed
home, all the time weighing the possible social and personal implications of
her reported culture shock.
© 28 Sep 2016 
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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When Things Don’t Work, by Ricky

I suppose I should begin with When I Don’t
Work.  As a boy and teen, I was in a
perpetual state of work avoidance.  It
didn’t matter if it was chores at home or homework for school, I did not want
to do it.  When Mom asked me to do the
vacuuming and dishes, I would do the vacuuming but would delay doing the dishes
until it was very late and I had to go to bed before school the next day.  As for the homework, I did do that, but
procrastinated as long as possible.
The skill of procrastination did not serve me
well when I attended Sacramento State College right out of high school in
1966.  My English 101 class introduced me
to adult fantasy novels.  The professor
told us that his professional colleagues thought he was crazy to teach his
selected book of ‟trash” as English Literature. 
Our professor told us that we would be reading and discussing the story because
it was the up-and-coming genre of literature. 
He was so very correct as the book we studied is Tolkien’s Lord of
the Rings.  I got so involved in the
story that I neglected most of my studies for two weeks and got so far behind I
was demoralized and so went on academic probation at the end of the
semester.  I then did not even try the
next semester so I flunked out of my first year of college.  I was still very immature.
After losing my academic deferment, I managed to
join the Air Force to avoid being drafted into the Army or Marine Corps.  I worried about the draft for nothing.  While I was attending Air Force basic
training, I received my draft notice—for the Navy.
The Air Force was good for me.  It gave me a safe place to finish growing up
and also taught me team work, skill with administrative work, a bit of
self-discipline, kept me out of Vietnam, and even paid me to learn.  Who could have asked for more?  After three years with my assigned unit, I
was selected to set up a newly organized squadron’s administrative section for
the squadron commander and first sergeant. 
It turned out that I really must have been a good worker as I was given
two medals for the work I did throughout my enlisted time.
I continued to work until a couple of years
following my wife’s passing.  Then my
depression was so bad I reverted back to my youth and avoided work whenever
possible.  Then after ten-years of
self-pity, I began to come alive again and sought out things to do that were
not work but mostly recreation.  I do
have modest financial stability through the VA, Civil Service retirement, and
Social Security but I needed to supplement my income a little bit, so after a
two-year search, I finally landed a position as a cashier in an adult video
store where I worked from 1 August 2012 through June 2016.
Now when things other than me don’t work, I react
totally different.  My behavior divides
according to specific scenarios.  The
first is, if the not-working thing is my property and can be fixed.  If I can fix it, I will try and do so.  If I cannot fix it, I send it to or call in a
repairman.  If that is not possible, I
will replace it or do without.
Second scenario is where the not-working thing is
a large project, if it is to be fixed, such as replacing the floor and wall
tile in a bathroom.  When I was in my
20’s, Deborah and I did just that.  I
know exactly how much work it was.  At my
age now, I am totally against do-it-yourself projects.  If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.  If it is broken, call in an expert repair
person and pay the price.
The third scenario consists of not-working things
that I have no direct control over.  The
prime example of this is Republican obstructionism in Congress for the past
six-plus years, known to me as the Bonner Do Nothing Republican Congress.  The only thing I can do about that is vote
and write letters.  Another example is
potholes in city or county roads.  I can
notify the authorities where the potholes are but nothing is done.  Then there are the roads which are repaved
and repainted and 3 to 6-months later, dug up to replace water or sewer
lines.  The powers that be don’t
coordinate getting the underground work done before the repaving, so streets
are often disrupted longer than necessary.
My number one pet peeve I believe falls into the
category of things that don’t work. The movie and theater industry repeatedly
miscast actors in their productions. 
Specifically, beginning with Maude Adams, productions of Peter Pan
have featured women in the title role. 
Barrie’s manuscripts clearly indicate that Peter was small and still had
all his baby teeth.  He was not an adult
woman or a teen-age boy.  At least Walt
Disney used a 12-year old Bobby Driscoe as the model for the Disney animators;
he just used the wrong aged model.  This
past week there was another made for TV broadcast production, Peter Pan
Live, staring yet another adult female as Peter.  I am sure it was a good performance, although
I did not watch it.  Not to take anything
away from the actress and other cast members, the performance was still a
travesty.  The casting system is broken
and does not work with regards to Peter Pan and I am powerless to do
anything but complain.  Very frustrating
for me as Peter Pan is my all-time
favorite prepubescent story from childhood.
Anyone who has seen the musical Oliver,
knows there are many talented youngsters who can sing and dance.  If you search YouTube, you can find videos of
the search for and training of the actors who ended up playing Billy Elliott in
the American version stage play.  It is
nearly unbelievable the amount of talent children have.  There is absolutely no reason to keep casting
adult women as Peter.
Fortunately, someone has finally come along to
end my frustration.  While in a movie
theater this past week, I saw a preview of a new Peter Pan movie to be released
in the summer of 2015 titled, Pan. 
The role of Pan finally has been assigned to a young boy, one more
closely age appropriate and accurate to the original story.  The story itself is another prequel, but I
don’t care about that.  I just want to
see a more realistic Peter Pan.  So for
me, I can see that someone in the movie industry is actually trying to make
literary accurate movies whose cast actually resembles the characters in the
novels.
Just because some things don’t work, doesn’t mean
that someone cannot begin to fix them. 
Maybe there is hope for Congress too.
© 7 December 2014 / revised 3 Feb 2017
About the Author 
I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale
and then in Redondo Beach.  Just prior to
turning 8 years old in 1956, I was sent to live with my grandparents on their
farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents
divorced.
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later
in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California,
graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force,
I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until
her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11-2001
terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be
therapeutic.
My story blog is: TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com
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Help, by Ray S

It is the darkest of nights. As though the universe
were an endlessness bereft of all of its stars and planets. On a hilltop he
stands naked, nothing to hide himself with. Slowly he stands astride raising
outstretched arms, takes a deep breath, opens his mouth, and from the depths of
his lungs screams HELP!
At another time in a small square room—floor, walls,
ceiling thickly padded no discernible openings, absent of any light, the
blackness surrounding him like a smothering blanket—again the cry HELP!
A blazing sun scorches the desert plain blinding the
drop off the edge of space. Visions of the climax scene from an old movie where
the protagonist speeds the car over the cliff. Could he will this kind of an
ending? Would he be brave enough to follow through and end it all? Or would he
chicken out before he accelerated the gas pedal, or maybe go over the cliff
before he could change his confused mind? That perhaps a stroke of good
fortune—speeding away to the end screaming HELP!
He has arrived at NOW. The same hilltop but the
universe enveloping it is a deep midnight blue with stars sparkling like
diamonds scattered forever. He stands up tall and steady, still naked to his
world and yet clothed with a garment of gratitude and love for the NOW that has
brought him so very many beautiful friendships and blessings.
HELP is here NOW!
©19 Sep 2016 
About the Author 
Posted on

GLBT Hopes, by Phillip Hoyle

Growing up
I had no GLBT hopes. I had no idea what those initials represented; no idea
that the concepts and rich human experiences behind them had anything to do
with me. I didn’t feel hopeless. I was simply clueless.
In my early
twenties I came to hear and understand a little about the beginnings of the gay
liberation movement. I had taken great interest in the African American
movements, had begun to read about the feminist movement, and realized I needed
to know more about all such movements. I had very generalized hopes for all of
them, for the securing of civil rights for all Americans under law regardless
of race, gender, sex, education, and a number of other differences that left
them susceptible to many injustices. I saw how churches as well as the general
community were unjust towards minorities. I had hopes for a better America and
for better American churches.
For myself
I had believed in the idea that you grew up, got educated, got married, reared
children, and in my case served churches through your ministry. Since I was on
route to become a minister, I accepted I would have to toe the line on some
things that others in the congregation might not find necessary. Life was good.
Whatever LGBT hopes I had were for others.
At the
point when I accepted that homosexuality was right at the center of who I was,
I hoped that my wife might find herself to be lesbian. We could then work out a
special arrangement to continue living together. It didn’t happen. I assumed I
would always be married and hoped I would never to go too far in satisfying my
homosexual needs. I didn’t want to change the trajectory of my life.
Midlife
took care of that for me. I was changing emotionally. I had no doubt that I
loved my wife or that she loved me. I wanted a man to love me; I wanted to love
a man. When I realized I was going to become the bad husband and a bad
minister, I changed both roles. I was hurting my wife. I didn’t want to do so.
We talked but there was so much emotion—so many emotions—we didn’t know what to
do. Our settlement settled little. We did separate. I bore the responsibility
before our families. We said goodbye with a kiss and tears.
Within a
month I had GLBT hopes. Lots of them: to finish my job obligation; to move to
one of three western American cities; to live openly as a gay man. For twenty
years I had considered myself bisexual. Now I was going to simplify my life.
My gay hope
was to learn just what gay would mean for me. First though some other things
would take my attention: getting work for income, writing, and dedicating lots
of time to the visual arts. I began writing episodes from my life and then
writing about my new work: massage. A new gay hope emerged: to write up my gay
life experiences. Before long I was pleased to find myself loving a man who
loved me. I hoped we’d have lots of time together. He died from AIDS. Then I
grieved a true GLBT grief. During this time I was careful with myself. I stayed
busy with my work. I was still engaged as a gay man. I wrote about the loss of
my gay partner. It was a sequel to one I had written a couple of years earlier when
a gay friend had died from AIDS. (The two pieces may be my best writing to
date.)
Then I met
a gay daydream at a bus stop in my neighborhood. Our love blossomed. Then he
died. I sagged. Still I wrote and realized I would write much more about my gay
experiences. My arts kept me hopeful.
A straight
woman friend of mine told me about the SAGE of the Rockies Telling Your Story.
I attended wondering how my writing would be heard by a truly GLBT audience. It
was like a gay hope come true. From this ever-changing group of storytellers
that offers ever-changing and sometimes emotion-blowing perspectives, I have
clarified my new GLBT Hopes:
I now hope
that GLBT (etc.) folk will all someday take time to hear one another’s stories.
There is no better way to come to know oneself than to hear the stories of
others, no better way to be inspired than to hear the experiences of another
person you know more than superficially. I hope that those stories will also
become of interest to other humans—you know like those who claim to be straight
or heterosexual or some other category. I want this latter so they can see how
little different are all people.
I hope that
GLBTs will always vote mindfully in local, state, and national elections.
I hope that
LGBTs will come to appreciate and respect one another as much as we want others
to honor and respect us.
© 9 January 2017 
About the Author 
 Phillip Hoyle
lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In
general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two
years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now
focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE
program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
Posted on

Hunting, by Pat Gourley

I lived on a farm in Northern Indiana until the age of
sixteen. Though we were as far as you could be from the toxic reality of
today’s factory farms there certainly were plenty of animals raised that met
their demise at the hands of various family and extended family members
directly or indirectly. By indirectly I mean we sold and loaded plenty of
animals into trucks that were headed for the local slaughterhouse.
I learned to kill chickens with an axe from my mother who
emphasized not letting the headless bird flop all around and spray all the
younger siblings and cousins lined up watching the slaughter with chicken blood.
I was quite good at it. This is something I cannot for the life of me imagine
myself doing today. Any backyard chickens that I might have in the future would
live to ripe old ages dying from chicken heart attacks or falling prey to a
local fox or coyote.
For whatever reason, there were no hunters in my immediate
family. There was one Uncle nearby who did some hunting but that was mostly for
rabbits and pheasants.  I can to this day
hear my aunt complaining about trying to get all the buckshot out of the poor
rabbit before cooking it. She also made a delicious rabbit gravy as I recall
and that was worth biting down on the occasional piece of buckshot missed in
the cleaning.
The closest I can remember my dad ever came to hunting was
one winter when he had hurt his back and was told, incorrectly in those days,
that bed-rest was required to heal the sprain. The bedroom had a window that
looked out over the backyard and onto a corncrib. This crib was made of fencing
that allowed the grain to thoroughly dry out and not get moldy but still exposed
the ears of corn. From that vantage point he could see rats scurrying about and
munching away on all his hard work. So, he took to shooting the varmints out
the bedroom window with a 12-gauge shotgun missing more often that not.
I myself had a very short period of attempting to hunt
rabbits around the age of 12 or 13 with a small caliber long gun I think that
was called a 410-shotgun. Despite hours of traipsing through the snow no
rabbits lost their lives at my hand.
Once we moved from Indiana to north of Chicago there was even
less hunting by folks on our neighboring farms than there had been in Indiana.
We were really only a mile or two from being Chicago suburbanites and random
gunshots not something the neighbors would have appreciated.
There was a woman name Margaret though in the farm next to
ours who I became fast friends with due in large part to our similar political
views. We loved talking politics for long hours denigrating everything
Republican. She did though have a very efficient way of killing chickens every
spring. She would tie them up and suspend them by their feet, about a dozen at a
time, from her clothesline. She would then quickly march down the line with a
sharp butcher knife severing heads cleanly and efficiently. I know this may
sound gross to you but do remember that the burger or chicken breast you enjoy
today did not get to your plate as a result of the animal committing suicide.
As I began to get in touch with my queer nature, especially
from age 16 on, anything to do with hunting or people who engaged in it really faded
from my life. I know absolutely no other queer person I am aware of today who
hunts. There is one straight man occasionally in my life who does hunt and that
is for sport not a need for food. 99.9% of the animal killing for food these
days is done in very inhumane slaughterhouses mostly by exploited immigrant
labor far from our eyes. It then appears magically in the meat sections of
grocery stores neat, tidy and wrapped in cellophane.
Harry Hay was a very adherent vegetarian for the entire 20
plus years I knew him and long before that. He was fond of saying, when asked
about whether he ever ate meat or not, that it would only be if he personally knew
the cow. This always seemed to imply also that one really should know intimately
whom they are eating and that they had done the killing and butchering
themselves.
I think this would be a splendid plan for all meat-eaters to
do their own slaughtering. I imagine this would end much of the cruel factory
farming and vastly increase the number of vegetarians and vegans. This would
then go a long way toward saving the planet by helping to reverse global
warming. Remember there is virtually nothing we as individuals can do to impact
climate change more than to refrain from eating any animal product. Hunting
these days should really only involve looking for a good sale on kale.
© 25 Sep
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. 
Posted on

Three Fond Memories, by Louis

I have three categories [of
fond memories]:
(a)          My mother at Christmas time, and her
fabulous garden (herb garden included). Sour ending: she died.
(b)                       
Politics: George McGovern’s campaign. Sour
ending: Richard Nixon got elected.
(c)          My love affair with John Wheeler. Sour
ending: he dumped me after 6 weeks and 15 years later, turned into a mentally
impaired middle aged man.
(a)          On Christmas morning, my mother would
put on a red satin robe, which she put on only on Christmas Morning. She would
walk regally down from the second floor of our house to the first floor. For
her, Christmas was the day she celebrated her five young sons, of which I was
number 4. Our oldest brother Arthur would distribute the Christmas presents,
some of them were donated by a local church. We were poor, but well fed. Our
Christmas dinner table sparkled with elaborate china and fine crystal ware,
handed down to us from our well-to-do great great grandparents, Hiram and
Hester Brown of the early nineteenth century. Mother Elinor Brown really made
me feel special.
Elinor
Brown also kept an elaborate garden. She loved working in it for hours on end.
When we moved into that house in 1950, the previous owners, the Horns, had
purchased about 3 tons of topsoil. As a result, everything my mother planted
grew luxuriantly and flourished. Most of the lawn was shaded by two very tall
maple trees. And part of the garden was her herb garden which provided mint
sprigs and sweet basil, etc. My mother grew holly hocks, all kinds of roses:
tea roses, rambler roses, yellow roses, button roses, wild roses. Her irises
were yellow and yellow and purple, and dark blue and light blue. She grew lady
slippers and Jack-in-the-Pulpits. When I was around 30 years old, a friend told
me that the reason that flowers are so beautiful is that they are sex organs.
Well yes Mother Nature is somewhat lewd in many different ways.
The
sour ending was that my mother died aetatem 76 years, and she was born in 1913,
which would mean that she died in 1989. Elinor Brown was well-read and was an
inspiration for many children not just her own five sons.
(b)                       
Politics:
I was in my 20’s when the War in Vietnam was going on. Everything about that
war made me feel guilty. The establishment’s stated reasons for us being there
were not very convincing. All the appalling pictures. I felt very guilty. So,
when George McGovern came along and demanded we stop the whole disastrous war,
I was relieved. My guilt was assuaged. I volunteered in his campaign. Although
Richard Nixon beat him, I was not too dismayed. As reprehensible as Richard
Nixon was, he could have been a lot worse.
In
a report about President Obama visiting Laos, I recently heard that we dropped
2 million tons of bombs on Laos. For what reason?  I’ll never know. I also remember the reports
of large numbers of veterans returning from that war as drug addicts. It was a
bummer every which way.
(c)          About two years ago, I told you about
my short-lived love affair with John Wheeler. I wasn’t too worried about
invading his privacy given how common his name is. My love affair with him went
on for about six weeks, during which time we would walk down the street and,
you remember the song, “people stop and stare”, well people would literally
stop and stare at John Wheeler, his beauty was so spectacular. I never told him
what I really thought of him. I would say, “I think you are handsome or
good-looking”. Whereas, in reality, I thought he was a rare beauty. His elbows
were perfect, his farmer toes were beautiful. His proportions were perfect.
Well he was a model for a sports magazine. He would curl his eye-lashes.  Every night he would put a dab of Vaseline on
his eyelids. The long eyelashes made his beautiful almond-shape eyes even
dreamier. His back muscles were rippled beautifully. His posture was perfect. He
kept an enormous rifle in his closet. God knows if that was legal or not.
The
sour ending: For some reason, after six week, he said
he got a computer technician job in Connecticut and would be moving there with
his girlfriend. He never wrote to me, never gave me his address in Connecticut.
In other words, sadly, I got dumped.
About
20 years later, while I was a caseworker in Queens County in New York, I was
assigned a client, a John Wheeler. I said to myself it couldn’t be my
ex-boyfriend. I went to his apartment in Jackson Heights and saw it was the
same John Wheeler, all his good looks gone. He looked like a slightly dumpy
middle-aged man. The sad part was his memory was so defective that he could not
remember what you said at the beginning of your sentence by the time you
finished your sentence. His brain got pickled by too much vodka, to be honest.
He was clinically mentally impaired. What was the point of me asking him about
his computer technician career in Connecticut? He would not know what I was
talking about.
© 5 Oct 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.
Posted on

Ice, by Lewis Thompson

I like Ike……….ooops.  I meant to say, “I like ice”.  Ike was one of those warm-hearted
Republicans, the kind that’s hard to find these days.  Nothing ice-like about him.
I’m an ice lover.  When I have a glass of pop, I first half-fill
the glass with ice—store-bought ice, the clear kind.  That’s one reason I seldom drink coffee, beer
or wine.  Whoever heard of putting ice in
those beverages (except for iced coffee, which seems contrary to the natural
order)?
I’m not very fond,
however, of icy surfaces, especially the kind people walk on.  It seems kind of ironic that when someone
slips on ice and gets a bump on their head, the first order of treatment is to
put ice on it.  Ice has got us coming and
going.
Then, there’s the
government agency, ICE.  They’re the
folks that President-elect Donald Trump seems to believe don’t have enough to
do, so he wants to have then round up and deport millions of Mexicans who are
in the country illegally.  I wonder what
he’ll do with the families in which a parent is here illegally, albeit employed
and paying taxes, but in which the children were born here and are American
citizens.  The whole concept is enough to
give me a headache.  Ice, anyone?
©5 Dec 2016 
About
the Author 
I came to the
beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the
state where I married and 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.