birds – Sage Telling Your Story

May 9, 2018February 26, 2019

Birds, by Gillian

What wild creature is more accessible to our eyes and ears, as close to us and everyone in the world, as universal as a bird?

David Attenborough

I have always loved birds. I love their colors: their grace: their amusing antics: and , in many but not all cases, their melodious voices. I love the effortless way they ride the airwaves. I love the way they cock their heads to look at me through curious little black eyes.

I first learned to appreciate them, and many other things in our natural world, through my aunt and my mother. Then in elementary school I learned to identify a dozen or so of the most common local birds from pictures. From there we progressed to coloring in outline shapes of these same birds, and thence to drawing them ourselves freehand and then adding crayon or paint. I am happy to say that none of my efforts have survived, as I’m sure my attempts were pretty dismal. But never mind – I learned so much from trying.

I don’t know the details of the current British Elementary School System, but I seriously doubt that bird identification looms large. In my day, before the advent of TV and expensive trips to distant places, with little more than the occasional radio program or book to divert us, I think we paid, and were expected to pay, much closer attention to the world immediately around us.

Anyway, between family and school, I formed an early fascination with birds. Somewhere along the lines my parents gave me a bird book for Xmas, and I began trying to identify some of the rarer birds I was not so familiar with. I kept this up for most of my life, always taking a bird book with me on vacations and even on business trips. The birds don’t care why I’m there, after all. I was never quite sufficiently serious to succumb to the tyranny of that ‘Life List’ which all ‘real’ birders carry. Some of them become utterly obsessive to the extent of making special trips to likely places at likely times to see the birds without a triumphant X beside their names on ‘The List’. They go out at four in the morning in the pouring rain, accompanied by cloud of excited mosquitoes, in the hope of glimpsing the Crested Weewee so they can legitimately add that definitive X. No! I’m never going to be one of them. If I had a Life List I’d most likely cheat, anyway. I’d open one eye at the crack of dawn, see rain streaming down the window and imagine all those mosquito bites and snuggle back under the blankets. ‘Let’s not and say we did,’ I would shrug to myself, and probably put down a big firm X regardless. Or, on the search for the rare Lesser Spotted Peterpecker I would claim the sighting while knowing full well that in fact I had seen the much commoner Greater Spotted Pussygrabber.

I did go as far as trying to photograph an unfamiliar bird and check it out in the bird book when I eventually got the photos developed, but really! Can you even remember what it was like before zoom lenses? To snap a tiny bird with an old Box Brownie you’d have to be about two feet away and glue its feet to the branch! With a zoom lens chances were better, but still I wasted a fortune on blurry shots and/or too many versions of the same bird because I wouldn’t know until days or weeks later whether the previous dozen shots were any good.

Then along came the true gift to all photography, digital cameras. At first I admit I was a bit obsessive, snapping away at every bird I saw. But, you know, it was almost too easy! So I took to photographing birds in flight; much more challenging but still relatively easy with a good camera. After all, it only takes one good shot. The other fifty cost nothing and just go in the trash. And that’s the digital trash, of course, so I no longer even end up with a plastic bag full of 4 x 6 visions of blurry flapping wings or, more often, an empty sky.

My next obsession was with online printing. I found discounts for wall-size prints, prints on metal, on glass, on wood, and made to look like paintings. I gave gifts of them until everyone cringed and no-one chose mine in any gift exchange. I covered the walls of our house with them until my poor Beautiful Betsy howled enough!

Then I turned to digital photo books, which I devoted not entirely to birds but they usually featured prominently. These books greatly thrilled me at first but now languish under dust in the bookcase, rarely opened.

Finally, I am free! Free to enjoy birds as I once did. I still look up the occasional one in the bird book, but mostly I don’t bother because I shall immediately forget what it was, anyway. I simply enjoy the sight and sound of them. I watch in delight as the magpies play their silly games with the squirrels, as the chickadees flit so effortlessly from branch to branch, as the seabirds soar. I listen with joy to the trill of the robins and finches as they greet the spring. I am no longer driven to do anything more. Sometimes, growing older can be such a blessing!

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.

March 9, 2018February 26, 2019

Birds, by Pat Gourley

I attended the local Women’s March on Saturday (1/20/2018) here in Denver. It was an extremely exhilarating event. I have not felt the same empowering and invigorating feeling since some of the earlier Gay Pride demonstrations back when we called them marches and not parades. Yesterday’s Women’s March, estimated by the Denver Post to be 50,000+ strong, most probably had more openly queer folk in attendance than the Pride Marches of the late 1970’s. As discouraging as things seem to be at times today we really are winning the revolution though considerable work and diligence on our part remains so as not to lose any ground.

In keeping with the spirit of powerful women so openly on display yesterday I’d like to acknowledge the work of the great pioneering environmentalist and semi-closeted lesbian Rachel Carson. Her 1962 book Silent Spring is often credited with kick-starting the modern environmental movement. In thinking about today’s topic of Birds it was her book that first came to mind. A significant part of her silent spring would involve the die-off of songbirds, dead and gone due to exposure to chemical pesticides and herbicides.

I certainly did not read Silent Spring when it came out in 1962. I was a farm boy in northern Indiana and perhaps directly involved in spraying DDT containing pesticides on anything that moved. I do remember though reading the book and being profoundly moved by it probably though not until I reached my freshman or sophomore year in college in the late 1960’s.

Carson believed that the eggshells, particularly of large birds of prey, including the American Bald Eagle, were being softened and then collapsing unable to reach hatching maturation by exposure to ddt something so ubiquitous at the time that it was practically being sprinkled on our breakfast cereal. This onslaught from DDT continued until it was banned in 1972 with the Bald Eagle in particular at that time being in danger of extinction in the lower 48 states. The ban though resulted in a gradual increase in Bald Eagle breeding pairs per an article in Scientific American and they were removed from the endangered species list in 2007 in large part due to the pioneering work of our lesbian sister Rachel Carson.

Carson unfortunately died of complications from breast cancer in 1964 and never got to see the fruits of her dedicated labor. It was in a piece from the web site http://queerbio.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page that I learned details of her relationship with another woman. http://queerbio.com/wiki/index.php?title=Rachel_Carson

Carson started a long-term relationship with a married woman named Dorothy Freedman in 1953. The entire relationship though apparently was rather closeted and sadly resulted in Carson destroying all of her personal correspondence before her death, presumably including that with Freedman. This was of course back in the age of letter writing and decades before Facebook and Instagram

Though the two women, again according to the queerbio piece, readily acknowledged their relationship she wanted to avoid the publicity perhaps to not detract from her life’s work and therefore got rid of their correspondence. Sad but understandable, it was 1964 after all. The queerbio piece also states in describing their relationship that there was “no certainty to the extent of its sexual nature”. This observation though screams for my often-repeated Harry Hay belief that “the only thing we have in common with straight people is what we do in bed”.

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.

September 30, 2016February 26, 2019

Greens, by Will Stanton

This topic “greens” leaves itself open to a variety of interpretations, although I’m not sure that it lends itself to extensive discussion of any single one. So, I will refer to a variety of greens.

The word “greens” immediately suggests to me the common question, “Are you eating your greens?” Well, of course; I regularly eat vegetables and salads as part of a healthful diet. Also green, I am very fond of Limeade, and if you never have tasted the rarely offered lime ice-cream, you don’t know what you are missing, especially during the summertime. I try to avoid green meat; I have a very sensitive stomach. I might be able to handle green chili if it is not too spicy. The same goes with tasty guacamole. I am, after all, just a gringo.

“Greens” next brings to mind green grass and leaves, especially in springtime, a delightful time of year I often have written about. Over my lifetime, I have become so enamored with nature that I can not imagine grass and leaves in any other color. If I were transported to some other planet where grass and leaves were red or purple, I would find it rather disturbing.

Mother Nature certainly has proliferated Earth with a wide variety of green birds ranging from the common pet parakeets (or, as the Brits call them, “Budgerigars” or “Budgies”) to large parrots and tiny humming birds. When I was a kid, my family had a green parakeet named “Tippy.” I felt rather sorry for it because it was alone, but it became very fond of me instead.

Speaking of nature, I am aware that there is the political Green Party that promotes environmentalism, nonviolence, social justice, participatory grassroots-democracy, gender equality, LGBT rights, and anti-racism. These goals seem admirable to me, although many people believe that, had the Green Party and Ralph Nader not participated in the 2000 Presidential election, the Republicans may not have been able to steal the election, even with their stealing the Florida vote.

Of course, we all have heard that people, feeling ill, supposedly can look “green.” I have seen some people looking awfully peaked, but I don’t recall anyone actually looking green. I do recall that Khruschev claimed that, after Stalin died and most of the remaining Soviet cabal were terrified that State Security Administrator Lavrentiy Beria would kill his two co-leaders and take over the government, Khruschev staged a coup, invited him late to a meeting, and announced to him upon his arrival that he was being arrested for “treason.” Khruschev swears that Beria’s face turned a sickly-green, If anyone was justified in turning sickly-green it was Beria. He was shot.

Then, there is the hackneyed phrase, “Green with envy.” Envy is not regarded as an enviable trait, and I know that has been consistent throughout history. For example, envy is a major theme in the highly successful Baroque opera “L’Olimpiade,” which, perhaps, is timely to mention because of this year’s international Olympics. The “L’Olimpiade” opera, of which more than sixty versions were composed and performed, is set during the ancient, Greek Olympics. Lycidas loves Aristaea, who is promised to be betrothed to however wins the race, although she loves Megacles, a great athlete. Lycidas envies Megacles and persuades the unknowing Megacles to win the race using Lycidas’ name. But, you already know all about this. The Furies, including the Fury of Envy, attack and harass Lycidas for his transgression. If you never have been attacked by Furies, you have no idea how terrifying that can be. I also found that an artist created a bronze Greek-like bust and tinted the face an appropriate green.

Finally, one very odd place where I have seen the color green is at the swimming pool. There is a child-size, older man who somewhat resembles a small chunk of dried-out beef-jerky. He is invariably upbeat and cheerful but also noticeably eccentric. He has the habit of shaving his whole head except for a round, three-inch patch on top which he dyes green and brushes straight up. I have no inclination to do that. Everyone to his own.