Tag: Mayan Pottery

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Mayan Pottery by Lewis

I haven’t much to say on the subject of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican art for the simple reason that this is all made up and I know nothing about the subject. However, were that not the case, I would probably write something like the following–

Sadly, my only exposure to Mayan pottery was a very brief time of possession of a single artifact, purchased by a great uncle at a Pottery Barn in La Paz and given to me as a gift three Christmases ago. I say “brief” because over a year ago, I was visited by a brace of scientists from the Smithsonian Museum of Columbian antiquities. I say “sadly” because of what happened soon after. The scientists were interested in the piece because of the hubbub over the legend that the Mayan calendar prognosticates that the world will end in the year 2012, exactly on the day of the winter solstice. One of the frescos on the piece that I had interpreted as the second coming of Christ with souls being lifted into heaven was, according to them, actually what happens when Earth’s gravity suddenly stops gravitating.

They offered a tidy sum to “borrow” my vase for a few months, which I readily accepted, as I was in dire need of replenishing my hash stash. To my horror, who should show up a few weeks later than the Drug Enforcement Administration, armed with a warrant for my arrest for pot possession. It seems that when the Smithsonian technicians upended the vase to get to the bottom of the apocalyptic mystery, three cannabis seeds fell out. So, actually, you see, for me this whole farce is more about the end of my world as I knew it than anything else. By the way, if you’re interested, the vase was returned to me and I have put it up for sale in the classified section of The Onion under “antiquities.”

December 17,2012

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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Mayan Pottery by Will Stanton

Dear Son,

I hope this email gets to you right away.  We don’t know much about the jungles of South America and what kind of communication set-up you might have at this moment.

Your father and I are so proud of you and your recent success.  We’ve read all about it in the newspapers, and it even has been on the TV news this week.  

I have to admit that, when you graduated from high school and told us that you wanted to study anthropology and specialize in Mayan culture, we had our doubts about your earning a living.  I guess your years of study have paid off, now that you have discovered a Mayan temple that has alluded explorers for so long.  They were showing on TV some of the Mayan pottery that you found.

I can’t say that we know much about Mayan pottery; but when we heard the news story, I searched on Google and found some pictures of it.  It’s pretty, but I am not sure what all those designs mean.  The newscast said that you have found a lot of it in very good condition and are having it transported back to the museum for study.

We truly admire how you have grown up and become so determined and hard-working.  I have to say that, ever since you were a little boy, your father and I worried about you.  You didn’t seem to be like other boys.  You didn’t play sports with the other boys, and you avoided the rough-housing and wrestling we saw with the neighborhood boys.  And, you never seemed interested in going to school dances or dating.  So, we are impressed that you have been able to put up with all the physical hardship hiking through those deep jungles and how you have kept up your spirits in your long search.

I guess our taking you to church every Sunday, having you enroll in Sunday school, and our reading the Bible together every evening did what we hoped and prayed for, making you a strong, God-fearing man.  Your father and I were so thrilled that you said that you owe it all to Jesus, that you have put your complete trust in Him, that He is with you at all times, day and night.  We have told all our friends, and your father stood up in church and told all the congregation about it.  We are so proud of you.  We eagerly are looking forward to your return next month.  I would like to have a party and invite all of your friends.  I’m sure they all would love to talk with you.

Sincerely,
Your adoring parents.

Dear Mom and Dad,

Yes, I did receive your email.  Everything has gone well, and I am planning to return next month.  I’ll be glad to see you again, but you don’t need to go to all the trouble of organizing any parties.  By the way, his name is pronounced “Hay-soos,” and he has been my guide all these months.  Yes, I owe him a lot.  He has been with me constantly, day and night, and we are deeply in love.  When we return to the States, we plan to get married; and you, of course, are invited to the wedding.

Best wishes,
Your loving son, Tim.

© 15 December 2012




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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Mayan Pottery by Colin Dale

What can you tell us about Mayan pottery?

Well . . . as a politician might say . . . I’m glad you asked me that question. Before I answer it, though . . . as a politician might say . . . let me say a few words about the question.

The question is a ruse. A feint. A curveball. If I thought for a moment I had to tackle it verbatim–to actually say something about Mayan pottery–I’d be at a total loss. A question like What can you tell me about Mayan pottery? is not meant to send us running to the library. Or to Google. It doesn’t expect we know much at all about the Mayans, let alone about their pottery. I’m reasonably sure the Mayans had pottery, but to come up with a story for today, I didn’t check. For that matter, they may have had Tupperware, but I didn’t check that either.

Yesterday afternoon (right after the Broncos beat the Ravens) I sat down at my laptop but was completely idea-less. All I felt reasonably sure of was . . .

Ruse. Feint. Curveball. That’s what this topic Mayan pottery is. It’s a prompt, that’s all, Mayan pottery, a prompt to get me thinking–to get me thinking creatively. I’m not a Mesoamerican anthropologist, not even an armchair one, so I might as well, I figured, go off on some fun romp with this topic Mayan pottery.

So, after supper last night, Sunday, I started playing around with anagrams. Pretty quickly I discovered that the two words Mayan pottery do not lend themselves to a mother lode of good anagrams. Twelve letters. Six consonants: m, n, p, t (twice), and r. Four vowels: a (twice), o, and e. And y (twice)–a sometimes vowel trapped inside the body of consonant.

Using the twelve letters that make up Mayan pottery, I started recombining them this way and that, hoping I’d find at least one good anagram–and, in doing so, find an idea for today’s story. Before too long I came up with A Petty Romany, so, I thought, I could make up a story about the lack of generosity among gypsies, about how small-minded gypsies can be. But, without being able to do a lot of research–something, at 9 pm last night, I didn’t have time for–I couldn’t possibly today tell you today much about gypsies, about how stingy or small-minded they are.

So, I looked for another anagram. Trying more rearrangements of the twelve letters of Mayan pottery, I came up with Many Are Potty. I thought, well, rather than saying something politically incorrect about gypsies, I could write something about to how addlebrained most of humanity is. If you’re going to be politically incorrect, you might as well spread the insult around.

Now, you might be thinking–as I was last night–finding the word potty inside of Mayan pottery, couldn’t I come up with an anagram that suggests the other definition of the word potty? Believe me, I tried, for a good half hour, but I came up empty handed. It did cross my mind–even though it wasn’t going to help me with a story–that back in the days before flush toilets, Mayan pottery and Mayan potty may have been synonymous. I could imagine a Mayan guest getting up from the dinner table and saying, “Excuse me, but I need to use your pottery.”

By then it was after 10 o’clock and still I had nothing. I was ready to give up on anagrams, but just as I was about to close my laptop and go off to read a good book, I spotted one last anagram–one that seemed almost too perfect for us: a pretty man. My first thought was: a pretty man, this is too good not to use. But Mayan pottery: twelve letters. A Pretty Man: ten letters. I had two unused letters: a vowel: o, and that questioning letter (sometimes a consonant, sometimes a vowel): y. Only two possible arrangements: y-o: yo. A pretty man, yo. Or o-y: oy. Oy, A Pretty Man. No good. I went to bed.

This morning–only a few hours ago–as I was again sitting at my laptop, I got a phone call from a friend who happens to be a poet and she suggested I look at rhymes for inspiration. I said thanks, but as soon as I was back at my laptop I tried thinking of a rhyme for Mayan pottery. Nothing good popped to mind yelling, Me! Use me! But I had told my friend I’d give rhyme a try and so I went to my rhyming dictionary. There were some close rhymes to pottery, but nothing was perfect. Of course, it was now nearing 9 a.m. and I knew if I had any hope of having a story by 1:30, I had to give up on perfection.

Strawberry? Mayan strawberry? Did I want to write about Mayan strawberries? But as I turned the pages of the rhyming dictionary, I quickly discovered that strawberry, along with a few other three syllable berries, was about it for close rhymes. I began to look at some not close or slant rhymes, but to be honest, nothing said Here’s the makings of a story. The best I’d been able to squeeze from the rhyming dictionary were Mayan capillary, Mayan stationery, Mayan dromedary.

So, I junked rhymes. Knowing the morning was wasting, I went back to my first thought: the topic Mayan pottery is just a prompt. I had license to go nuts with it. I didn’t need to find something inside of the prompt, like an anagram or a rhyme. Or tougher still: real Mayan pottery. I could go outside of it. In one online group I’m in, we give each other daily prompts–just as we do with our weekly topics–writing warm-up prompts, often off-the-wall suggestions, weird phrases, nonsense words, journaling caffeine–mind-candy to tempt us out of the comfort zone. A few of these recently have been:

Last Tuesday: The history of whispers.

Last Wednesday: We kept it in the basement.

And just this past Saturday: Peeling an orange.

Coming up tomorrow: What washed up on shore.

I had used this go-nuts license to go outside of the actual words only last Monday with our topic details. Last Monday morning I had been just as lost for an idea, when I found the single word details in a poem by a largely unknown Greek poet–who just happened to be gay–and built a story on that.

But this was today. And it was now mid-morning. I had two, maybe three hours to get something on paper. Yet I was still stuck. Anagrams weren’t going to work. There wasn’t time to research gypsy small-mindedness. Rhyme was no good. Did Mayans even have dromedaries? I began to write just how lost I was feeling–which is what I’ve got here in front of me, what I’m reading. When I typed Did Mayans even have dromedaries? it was, by my stove clock, 9:51. I did a word-count: 1,151 words. That’s a normal length story for me. I realized, at 9:53, that in writing about not being able to come up with an idea for a story, I’d come with one–not only come up with one, I’d written it!
I’d succeeded in talking about something–by not talking about it.

Just like a politician.

And that’s where I began, with the politician and the question: What can you tell us about Mayan pottery? Well . . . as the politician would say . . . I see the red light is flashing, which means I’ve no time to answer. But if you’ll go to my website, you’ll find my 54-point plan on how we need to deal with Mayan pottery.

About the Author

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

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Mayan Pottery and How It Came To Be by Merlyn and Michael

     As we go back beyond the time of what most people think of as the era of recorded history, the archaeologists, anthropologists, and sociologists have the bits and pieces that form a different pre-history every few years.


     Our story starts about 32,000 years ago in a village on the Tigris River. There was at that time a famous soothsayer whose reputation had spread for thousands of miles. This was unusual since most travel was within 40 or 50 miles from any given location. One day a young man by the name of Yahoo (not to be confused with a search engine) came to the soothsayer to find out about his future. The soothsayer was shocked beyond comprehension as Yahoo was to be the ancestor of most of the movers and shakers of history; Abraham, Lao Tse, Gautama Sid Hartha, Moses, Confucius, Jesus, and Mother Theresa. All this the soothsayer saw. He also told Yahoo that his descendants would populate a very large land to the west that wouldn’t be discovered by the majority of humanity for another 25,000 years.

     And as predicted a number of groups of the descendants of Yahoo crossed the frozen ice from present day Russia to the Alaskan frontier about 20,000 years ago. One group sought shelter where Sara Palin’s house overlooks the shores of Russia. The state of Alaska must have been paying the electric bill as the porch light may have guided them there. This group was starving when, as if by some miracle, a herd of reindeer passed by and several were slaughtered which saved their DNA for the later Tabasco, Olmec, and Mayan peoples. One of the reindeer was curious and smelled his bleeding relativities and ended up getting his nose covered with blood, all the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names, but he ended up becoming famous 20,000 years later. He became the most famous reindeer of them all.

     Those descendants of Yahoo coming from the north eventually migrated as far south as present day Peru while as late as 5,000 years ago some of the descendant of Abraham (also Yahoo) traveled by boat across the Atlantic following the winds and ocean currents and arriving just south of where Columbus landed just 508 years ago, more DNA proof of the descendants of Yahoo.

     What is now considered to be the first true civilization of the Americas is the Olmec, 500 BC-150 AD, who were the primary cultivators of the early ancestor of Corn which may have originally come from south western South America. Other contributions to future civilizations were pottery and sacrifice. The Mayans perfected the role of a leader god through using the famous golden poison arrow frog’s venom, the most potent venom known at the time, to slowly take very, very small doses until eventually developing both immunity and an addiction to the poison. The royal family could then hold a tiny gold frog that if touched by anyone else could kill as many as a hundred grown men. A room about 12X12X12 was discovered a few years back that was full of skeletons of these tiny creatures.

     Another of the annual sacrificial pageant performances performed by the god king was the piercing of the penis with a flint blade so the blood would bring about a good harvest. We can’t imagine what his appendage would look like after a few decades of such ceremonial sacrifices.

     One of the interesting things about the Mayans was their passion with astronomy. They built on the Olmec calendar which was already at least 1500 years old. They continued revising until today we have a calendar whose origin is about 3500 years in the making. Contemporary voodooists and nut cases predict that even Nostradamus knew of this time, the end of or the starting of some Time Rock, the Mayan calendar.

     A special characteristic of Mayan pottery is known as Mayan Blue, a glaze which has stood the test of time beyond any other. So here goes on Mayan pottery. Take any piece that has survived to this day and put it up against one done today that you might find on Santa Fe’s Art District on first Fridays in Denver and the only thing about the Mayan is that it’s old and characteristic of a bygone era. Beauty and the appreciation of objects are very subjective, sometimes interesting in a museum, but not necessarily in our house. If you compare the old stuff with those on Santa Fe, the Mayan looks like it was done by amatuers and of course in many ways it was. It is nice that there are those who appreciate antiquity and will preserve it for those yet to come and be the later descendants of Yahoo. It takes a study of the Mayan culture to appreciate the utilitarian function and the significance of the figures and designs.

     The Mayan calendar is one of the things we focus on since 12-21-2012 is only a few days from now. Archaeologists have unearthed a Mayan mural of a calendar projecting some 7,000 years into the future. The 5,125 years of the present calendar is the end of an era with the new and productive era being heralded in by the god of creation and war, Bolon Yokte. So we’re safe for at least another calendar and a half. We can wonder, however, what this god will do on Friday.  We think he would at least call on President Obama to plan out our future. They’ll probably do a better job than trying to work with the House and the Senate.

     This will also introduce an era where we can all wear huge feather headdresses and little skirts. Just think of the businesses that can grow and all the unemployed will be put to work making these highly desired fashions. The world economy will become healthy and President Obama will be honored with another Nobel Peace Prize. The religions of the world will have to make adjustments and the new Mayan pottery industry will surpass anything that has ever been on the New York Stock Exchange. Because the god Bolon Yokte is the god of creation and war, through these negotiations the global warming can be reversed to provide universally perfect weather conditions. All war will be terminated and the ensuing peace will save trillions of dollars. Sara Palin will be known as the savior of the indigenous peoples. Historians will discover that this was all predicted before it came to pass by a couple of gay senior citizens at the GLBT Center in Denver.

About the Authors

Michael

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

Merlyn

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

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Mayan Pottery by Ricky

     From the time I was 10-years old through my 18th birthday, every December around Christmas time, I journeyed from South Lake Tahoe to Los Angeles via the Greyhound bus line. Each year the bus either went to Sacramento where I had to change to a different bus, or through Carson City, where I had a four or five hour layover before riding another bus to Los Angeles.

     Carson City had no lavish bus depot. It consisted of a small “office” with a small storage area for packages and unclaimed baggage. The bus driver had a key to the baggage area where he put my luggage but the office would not open until just before the scheduled arrival time for the north/south buses; in my case a four or five hour wait. I was ten when I took that first trip alone to Los Angeles via Carson City. I arrived at the still closed bus depot at 7:30 AM and had to wait until 12:30 PM to catch my bus.

     So I did what any 10-year old boy would do to stay warm and not be bored; I went street walking to find something to do. I was not hungry yet and I never ran across an open cafe. Carson City’s casinos were open but unavailable to me. Around 8:00, I arrived at an old building that resembled my schoolhouse from Minnesota. I stopped to read the sign, which informed me that the building was not an old school, but was the Nevada State Museum, formerly the U.S. Mint at Carson City.

     The museum was open and admission was free with donations accepted. Being on a very limited budget with enough funds for two snack meals to get me to my dad, I did not donate but entered anyway. I spent the next several hours in the museum wandering around and viewing all the exhibits that interested me.

     The first exhibit I saw was on the left side of the hall after entering. In a small room was a display of all the formal silverware presented to the navy’s battleship Nevada as a gift from the State of Nevada. Also on display were the ship’s bell and other items. All those items were returned or given to the state after the ship was selected to be the target ship for the hydrogen bomb test at the Bikini Atoll.

     Another item in the room was an old stamp or press machine, which actually placed the coin’s designs onto silver or gold coin “blanks.” In one side of the room was an old walk-in vault. The vault contained a permanent display of a private collection of gold and silver coins minted at the Carson City mint.

     I continued to wander through the museum for the next few hours reading all the posted display information and in general enjoying myself. I learned a lot about things not taught in school at the fifth grade level. The museum had an extensive display of Native American baskets and pottery, but no Mayan pottery or baskets. Eventually, I left through the basement exit mock up of a silver mine and caught my bus to Los Angeles. From then on, every time I ended up in Carson City to change buses, I spent my waiting time in the museum. I have been a “museumphile” ever since.

     As time passed and I visited other museums, I saw many examples of ancient pottery; ancient in this case meaning older than 500 years. The first ancient artifacts that discretely held my attention were not pottery, but wood, and came from Africa. It was a representative display of the various depictions of fertility gods, totems, or icons. These typically had either large breasts or over-sized and erect male genitals; a few actually had both.

     I have always been attracted to “images” that show or represent male genitals perhaps due to my adolescent fixation on all things sexual. I began to wonder how a museum could display such “naughty” things. It was many years before I understood the concept of understanding other cultures through anthropology. In other words, these cultures did not view these artifacts as being “naughty.”

     Many of the museums I visited had these types of displays and I was attracted to them all. When I finally arrived in Denver and visited the Denver Art Museum, I saw my first pieces of Mayan pottery (or at least pottery from Central and South America during the existence {and in the trading area} of the Mayan culture). Pieces on display came in various sizes, some small enough to fit on one’s palm and other pieces large enough to carry one or two gallons of liquid. Naturally, there were sizes in between the smallest and the largest artifacts.

Denver Art Museum — 4th Floor

     The ones of particular interest to me are the pieces with male genitalia. One of the larger items is a seated male in the act of masturbation. It is displayed in such a manner that anyone can see what the “man” is doing. It is prominently displayed on the bottom shelf of the display area, where any child can easily view it. On a higher shelf to the viewer’s right, is what appears to be an engraved penis perhaps used as a pre-Colombian sex toy or maybe venerated as a power symbol as did the ancient Romans and Greeks. This object is also within easy viewing of the young.

Denver Art Museum — 4th Floor
     Is it not strange that our “enlightened” culture can define a pottery man masturbating or an “engraved” penis as art, but proclaims a photograph of a real man masturbating or of a real erect penis as pornography?
© 16 December 2012

About the Author

Emerald Bay, Lake Tahoe, CA

Ricky was born in 1948 in downtown Los Angeles. He lived first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach both suburbs of LA. Just days prior to turning 8 years old, he was sent to live with his grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years while (unknown to him) his parents obtained a divorce.

When reunited with his mother and new stepfather, he lived one summer at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, he moved to Denver, Colorado where he lived with his wife of 27 years and their four children. His wife passed away from complications of breast cancer four days after 9-11.

He came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. He says, “I find writing these memories to be very therapeutic.”  

Ricky’s story blog is “TheTahoeBoy.blogspot.com”.



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Mayan Pottery by Betsy

There’s MY an’ YOUR pottery, and MY an’ YOUR china, and MY an’ YOUR cutlery, and MY an’ YOUR household items of every variety.

When my beloved and I decided to live together, we, of course, were forced to merge many of these above mentioned items. So into the common household they went. Over the years most of the pottery, in particular, stayed in cupboards. Occasionally the need would arise to pull something out, dust off the cobwebs, and put it to use, then put it away for another few years after the guests left or after the special occasion was over.

This is how the conversation would go.

“Do you remember where we put the glazed pot–the one that’s about this size?” Indicating with hand gestures what the thing looks like. “It ‘s the one my grandmother gave me when I was married.”

Depending on who came up with the question, the other would reply, “Well, if it’s the one I think you mean, it’s not blue it’s green and it was given me by my mother.”

“Surely, we can’t be talking about the same piece. The one I’m thinking of would be perfect for this occasion because it’s blue. The one I’m thinking of I have had forever and I can remember the day my grandmother gave it to me.”

“Let’s find it and get it out and then decide if it’s the one you are thinking of or the one I’m thinking of–the green one my mother gave me.”

The piece under discussion is pulled out from the very back of a cupboard. It turns out that it is neither blue nor green but very old.

We both scratch our heads and mumble under our respective breaths, Well, I could have sworn…….and I know it’s mine.” Then out loud, “But it doesn’t matter does it.”

And so it went–many such discussions and discoveries–the origin or ownership of the item never resolved.

Then, sometime around the turn of the century, it came to us almost simultaneously. 

My honey and I were about to have another of the above discussions when we realized that we had been together a long time and furthermore planned to stay together. These household items we talk about are OURS–not mine and yours.

The business of separate ownership is a problem that comes with middle-aged marriage. Each has accumulated stuff and that stuff goes with you wherever you go.

The mystery of past ownership is now, we both agree, a moot point. For some reason it was the new millennium when this dawned on us. Perhaps because we were approaching almost 20 years together. Maybe it was that, or perhaps our respective memories were becoming less and less reliable and we were able to admit that of ourselves and of each other.

I don’t know the reason for sure but the discussions are a thing of the past. MY an’ YOURS had become OURS. And so it will continue to be, I expect, until the end of our days.

About the Author

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