Tag: Life Stories

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Blue Skies, by Gillian

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first said,

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

However, when one experiences the Bad

That which was not quite so Good becomes Good

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

The other said,

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

Points to ponder.

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

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

© June 2016

About the Author

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

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Believing, by Betsy

For the first two decades
of my life I religiously recited a creed almost once a week affirming a
belief.  Later in my 30’s I stopped doing
this because I realized I really didn’t believe the things I was saying I believed.
I had no hard feelings about the church, I just stopped believing. I’m
referring to the liturgy of the Episcopal Church where I was baptized and
confirmed.  The creeds recited in the
church liturgy—the Nicene and Apostle’s—were so familiar to me that I could
recite both from memory at an early age.
Why are children taught
to claim beliefs which they are too young to understand, accept, or
reject?  Could it be that IF it is etched
deeply enough into your psyche, you will hold on to it for life, never
questioning it. It becomes “yours.”  It
feels good and it keeps us “safe.”
I recited as I’m sure
most of us did, the Pledge of Allegiance every day in school hundreds of times
before I ever pondered to what it was that I was pledging allegiance. Around
third  grade I thought it odd to pledge
to a flag, a piece of cloth hanging on a pole or a wall even while
understanding that it is a symbol of our country.  But still why the rote recitation? I think we
all know the answer to that question.  By
recitation it becomes part of us, we own it and hopefully, later in life, we
understand and embrace its meaning. 
Never once did an adult explain to me what I was reciting and what it
meant.  Just that the recitation was not
only important, but also part of one’s life—part of one’s day—like brushing your
teeth.
 The next question that comes to mind is why do
some examine their beliefs and others go through life never doubting?  I cannot answer that for others, only for
myself. I don’t remember my parents teaching me to think critically about
anything. They were good parents and I loved them, but they did not question
the standard cultural beliefs—at least not out loud. They were not ardent about
spreading the teachings of the church, but they accepted those tenants more as
a matter of being good Christians and good citizens. I pretty much went along
with them, I guess. I really don’t remember. Believing was not “big” in our day
to day life. At the same time doubting and challenging was not big either.
I think my mind became
“ripe” for critical thinking when I was in college. Or maybe I simply was not
mature enough before then. A light came on when I realized I could not will
myself to have faith that something was true simply because I was told to do so
or because I was told the consequences would be painful for me if I chose not
to. One teacher, Professor Jaffe, taught me to question everything. I suppose
that’s because that’s what one does in Philosophy class.  But I learned from Professor Jaffe that what
is important about learning is thinking for oneself, as well as being exposed
to the information. What one does with the information is the whole point.
Thinking back, it seems
that it was my husband who put me up to applying critical thinking to   my religious beliefs.  They may have been faintly held beliefs;
nevertheless, they had been a part of me for a long time. He simply raised the
question one day, “maybe Jesus was just a good man and not divine. How do we
know for sure?”  That’s when I made a
conscious decision not to take that leap. 
We started discussing the power of the church historically. How most of
the wars fought throughout history were fought over religious beliefs.  From then on, I questioned everything, my
feelings as well as my beliefs.  It was
years later, however, that I took any action regarding the feelings I had been
questioning in regard to my sexuality.
I am not trying to say
that critical thinking is good and faith is bad. They each have a place in my
life. But what I do say is that when believing gets in the way of accepting
facts and blocks applying information to form one’s opinions, there is a
problem. Believing versus gathering information and forming a point of view
seems to be the conflict going on today in some political situations. When I
see Trump supporters interviewed on the evening news, what I see is people full of fear holding a belief because
of that fear, and holding it in disregard of the facts. For example, the belief
that ISIS is the greatest threat to life in the U.S. today. ISIS is coming and
therefore we all must have guns to protect ourselves and our families. One look
at the numbers would make anyone question that belief: in 2013 deaths from
ISIS-16; deaths from gun violence-33,000. The numbers speak for themselves if
one is willing to take a look at them.
For me it is hard to put
my faith in something a book says, even a book considered sacred, or something
a person or institution tells me to believe. Yet until I grew up this is what I
did and what I was taught to do. This is what most people are taught to do. If
it works for them, more power to them. 
But it does not work for me and I cannot imagine it ever doing so.
© 12 Jan 2016 
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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Leaving / Rejoice, by Will Stanton


[This is the last posting submitted by Will Stanton. — Editor] 

Leaving
He
was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1991. 
We knew the inevitable end; we just did not know when.  Each passing day, each passing year, was, in
its own way, leaving.  We both understood
that.  Some acquaintances told me, “Why don’t
you leave him?”  I would not, not that
way.  I stayed.
I
did not cry as a child.  My mother told
me that, and we both pondered my difference from other children.  Of course, I felt emotion, but nothing seemed
to drive me to tears.  That changed later.  A special someone came into my life who truly
mattered – – – and then left.  It was the
leaving that changed me.  As the famous
19th-century, authoress George Eliot stated,  “Only in the agony of parting do we look into
the depths of love.”
I
always have been sensitive to others, perhaps unusually empathetic and
caring.  That increased significantly
after his leaving, both with people whom I knew, and also even fictional
characters in movies.  If, in viewing
well presented stories,  I become
particularly attached to characters who have deep bonds with each other, I
apparently identify with them, at least subconsciously; for, if they part from
each other, either in having to leave or, perhaps, in dying, emotion wells up
within me.  Such deep emotion comes
suddenly and unbidden.  When a good
person dies, leaving the loved-ones behind, the emotion catches within my
gut.  When loving, deeply bonded people
part ways, never to see each other again, that, too, deeply moves me.  Again, quoting George Eliot: “In every
parting, there is an image of death.”
I
admit it: I never have come fully to terms with reality, with mortality.  And, I’m not like so many who choose to hold
deep-seated beliefs that this world is merely a stepping-stone to a so-called
“better world,” beliefs based upon common indoctrination and, perhaps, upon
fear and hope,  Oh, I don’t mind so much
the afflictions and death of inhuman humans, those whose cruelty and dire deeds
harm others.  But, it is the good people,
the loving people, people who have contributed so much to the betterment of
humankind, whose leaving distresses me. 
I would be so much more content if they (dare I say, “we”?) did not have
to leave.
I
understand and feel the passionate, poetic lines of Dylan Thomas:
“Do not go gentle into that good
night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

So,
with these thoughts of mine being presented close to All Souls Day (or in
German, “Allerseelen”), with the cold days of December soon upon us, I prefer
my thoughts to dwell, instead, upon our happier memories of May, our younger
days, as expressed in the final lines of Hermann von Gilm poem, “Allerseelen”, “— Spend on my
heart again those lovely hours, like once in May.”
© 23 July 2016  
Rejoice
This presentation of mine
today is very personal, and the first important comments are very blunt.  So, hang on, I appreciate your patience in my
telling.  It deals with my medical
condition over the last several years and my current frame of mind, which has
developed, and perhaps even improved over time.
Among other conditions, my
three major problems — mega-killer immune system killing off all my clotting
blood platelets down to zero, large granular-T-cell leukemia, and the great
possibility of developing blood-clots in any organ, brain, or in the
circulatory system, — could kill me at any moment.  So little is understood about these
conditions, and especially in my extreme case, that the medical staff are
writing papers about me.  I consider that
a dubious honor.
Yet, here is where I
rejoice.  My attitude to all of this has
changed markedly over the last few years. 
When I first was diagnosed with these major problems, I was, of course,
surprised, shocked, and dismayed.  Yet, a
whole team of oncology doctors and nurses went to great, extended effort to
treat me.  For a short time, it seemed to
work.
Then a couple of years ago,
I suffered a truly major event when it seemed that no treatment would ever
help.  With each episode, the efficacy seems
to diminish.  Many people might totally
despair and wish to suffer no more.  I
did not quite despair, but I was profoundly disappointed and felt resigned to
my fate.  So yes, I did think about
simply driving up to the mountains some cold night, park on some high point,
and gaze at the mountain scenery until I fell asleep.  Of course, I never did.  I still have some pleasures and satisfactions
in my life.
Well here again is where I
rejoice.  Despite my circumstances, my
whole mind-set has changed and improved. 
I do what I need to do with St. Joseph’s Hospital the various Kaiser
clinics, and all the doctors and nurses. 
But, it is what I do and think and feel outside of all of that which is
actually making me happy.
For one, just in a week of
being out of the hospital and being able to go home on October 28th
(mind you, with some misgivings of the medical staff), I accumulated as much as
fifty hours of accomplishing important tasks that, otherwise, would have been
neglected and not gotten done.  In addition
to being able to take care of bills and other daily obligations, I was here to
go through the five days of repeated efforts to repair my broken furnace (thank
God, the Denver temperature was unusually warm), the six days to deal
frustratingly with Comcast to get my email back working so that I could
communicate with family and friends, and to have one other repair done.  Now, if you understand, I felt satisfaction
and actually rejoiced that I was able to complete those tasks.
Secondly, I have spent much
of my home-time going back through some of my older, more interesting essays
and stories for Telling My Story, carefully editing, and (most fun of all)
locating and inserting delightful, augmenting images within the text.  I print them for myself, house them in
plastic sleeves, and file them in several notebooks, separated by subject.  Yes, I do find great pleasure in this.
Third, at home, I have the
pleasures of my fine piano, my TV, my computer, and all the comforts at
home.  And on Sundays, I am able to go
with my friends, whom I call “the usual suspects,” to a particularly good
Perkins restaurant, have a particularly delicious breakfast, and then play the
card-game called “Samba,” a form of canasta at my dining-room table.  That simple ritual is a welcome pleasure and
provides me with comfort more than people may realize.  I, especially, have the pleasure of sharing
that with my friends.
Good friends, kind friends,
are the most important of all these factors. 
I am truly appreciative and perhaps even ecstatic to have these
warm-hearted encounters with my friends, more than they may realize.
And, that brings me to what
finally makes me rejoice.  At this
advanced age, with this, yet another, bout of terrible affliction, I finally
have accepted my situation, doing what I need to do but not fighting the
reality of it.  I have developed over
time a more relaxed, philosophical feeling and attitude that “what will be will
be.”  I am very thankful that, despite my
condition, I feel little pain, very much unlike so many other unfortunate
people.  I rejoice in my cheerful,
positive, interactions with people, medical staff and very good friends.  My positive, uplifting connection to very
good friends is, perhaps, my most powerful treatment, my greatest joy.
Thank you, all my kind
friends.
© 15 Nov
2016 
[This is the
last story (his “Good Bye”) Will Stanton read to the Telling Your Story group
on 21 Nov 2016.  Sadly, he passed into
history and memories on 1 January 2017. 
He is sorely missed. — Editor]
About the Author 
25 Apr 1945 – 1 Jan 2017
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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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.
Posted on

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.
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

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

Bicycle Stories, by Gillian

Apart from many tales of
many many happy days being my Beautiful Betsy’s athletic supporter as she rides
hither and thither and yon around the country, most of my bike stories are not
particularly positive.
My very first ‘bike ride’
was, as with many of us, on a tricycle. It was the summer before I turned five
and started school, and being an only child I had led a pretty solitary,
sheltered, life up to that point. I never owned a tricycle myself; this was an
old one which my cousin Peter had outgrown. Peter was four years older than me,
and it was he who led me off on this adventure. 

Peter & Gillian just before starting on the adventure.

We started off sedately enough
down a paved lane which became a muddy cattle trail which in turn became a
steep, narrow path hurtling down from the pasture to the river. Peter, also an
only child and not averse to having someone, especially a soppy little girl, to
show off to, shot off down the path on his boys’ two-wheeler, pedaling as fast
as his legs would turn, and letting out some pseudo-macho, pseudo-cowboy, yell.
I, oblivious to lurking dangers, rushed to keep up. Had I had anything beyond
zero experience on a trike, I would, of course, have known that three wheels on
a path like that were, at very best, going to get hopelessly stuck. But I
headed off in blissful ignorance, full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes! 

Well,
long before I could get stuck in the mud, the front wheel hit an exposed tree
root and I ended up, or rather, down, face first onto a lump of granite, which
seriously loosened by two front baby-teeth. Meanwhile, Peter, arriving safely
but too swiftly at the end of the path, was unable to stop his bike and ended
up in the river. There had been recent thunderstorms in the hills and the river
was an angry brown torrent. Luckily for Peter, he and his little bike tangled
up together and jammed between two rocks, where he hung on for dear life and
yelled for yelp. This story might have had an unhappy ending, but my aunt,
casting a suspicious eye on her son as do most mothers of nine-year-olds,
observed us heading off across the pasture on the bluff above the river, where
he was, I later learned, forbidden to take his bike, and gave full chase. So,
other than, later that day, my uncle pulled out both of my battered front baby
teeth, we were little the worse for wear.
I never went bicycling
with Peter again, though we both rode bikes. I rode mine for purely practical
reasons; it was a way to get around. Peter rode to get around, but also rode
just for the fun of it. Then he went on long rides as a member of a bicycle
club, and did a little competitive racing. His daughter eventually married a
serious cyclist, though she never cared for bike-riding herself. Her husband
was in France training for the Tour de France when he died, on his bike, of a heart
attack. It turned out that he had some abnormal, and relatively rare, heart
condition, about which the details were never very clear and I forget if I ever
knew the correct term. He was only in his twenties when he died.
Twenty-five years later,
my cousin Peter, in his sixties, was riding his bike home from a nearby harbor
where he had been fishing. He died, on his bike, of a heart attack. As if two
men in the family dying of heart attacks while riding bikes was not coincidence
enough, the autopsy showed him to have the exact same heart condition as his
erstwhile son-in-law. And some like to say there is no such thing as
coincidence!
It seems that the
bike-riding at the time of the heart attacks was also coincidental. Both men
could as easily have succumbed to their heart conditions anywhere, anytime; as
likely to die reading the paper on the couch as to die on a bike.
Yes, but …….. I must
admit that when I got news of Peter’s death, and the circumstances, it scared
me. Two members of my family dead on the very seat of a bicycle, and I was
deeply in love with, and committed to, an avid bicycler. You must admit, it
would give you pause! And shortly after that, Betsy decided to go on her ride
from Pacific to Atlantic, an endeavor which of course I wholeheartedly
supported even while it rather gave me chills. I just had to get over it, which
in the event was not so very difficult. My anxiety level decreased rapidly as I
tried to consider it rationally. I decided it was actually good. I was what
Robin Williams refers to in his Garp persona, as ‘pre-disastered’. To
have such a thing happen twice in one family is extraordinary; a third time is
surely out of reach of reality. I even began to be amused, thinking of Sherlock
Holmes’s musings,
‘To lose one wife may be
considered unfortunate, but to lose three?’
No. It was ridiculous. I
shook it off. Now I never think of it. We are already too old to die young, and
if, by some horrible chance, Betsy should be stricken by a lethal heart attack
while riding her bike, hey, thank you kind fate. To die suddenly and swiftly in
the midst of an activity you love. Who could ask for anything more?
………………………………………….
And, although it has
nothing to do with my story other than the topic, I have to include a simply delicious
quote I stumbled upon.
When I
was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that
the Lord doesn’t work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me.
Emo Philip
© 30 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.