Tag: Nicholas

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Public Places — Do It In Public, by Nicholas

I like doing it in public. I’ve always liked doing it in
public. There’s something about being out there that adds an extra pleasure.
I get tired of staying home and when I get antsy, I love to
go out into the city. I like city spaces. I like being with people even if it’s
a lot of people I don’t really want to be with. I’m talking about that
superficial, but still meaningful, social contact that city streets and spaces
provide. Cities like New York and San Francisco are full of such spots from
crowded subway trains to busy streets to popular parks with great views. People
like being around other people even if there is nothing close to relationship
material present. Look at any Starbucks or any coffeeshop. No sooner does one
open than every seat is taken with people chatting, working online, and just
reading The New Yorker. That would be me reading The New Yorker.
Coming from Eastern cities and San Francisco, Denver and
Denverites have never struck me as very socially inclined. Coloradans are much
more taken up with maintaining their own personal space and they think they
need lots of it. One person on an eight-foot long park bench is considered
crowded here. I have unintentionally jumped many ques when I didn’t realize
that the guy standing 15 feet back from a counter was actually next in line.
To my delight, Denver is coming to have some urban spaces,
places where you can wander and dawdle and people-watch among the crowds on a
sunny day.
First among them, of course, is Union Station which is not
just a building but an entire complex of buildings and streets and pedestrian
passageways. The station itself is impressive as an urban interior. It amazes
me how it is always busy with folks eating and drinking, lingering and passing
through to catch their buses and trains.
Our concept of space seems to be changing. Suddenly,
Denverites want to be around each other. The plaza in front of Union Station is
always streaming with pedestrians. Some eating ice cream. Some kids playing in the
open fountain. Some on their way to or from work. Some disappear around corners
and down alleyways to the train platforms behind the station or to the new
condos just built on what used to be empty, rusting railyards. One day I found
a place that makes Saigon coffee (now called Vietnamese coffee) tucked away in
a passage on the side of the station.
To the west of Union Station is a series of bridges and parks
that provide views of the city. Cross the first bridge and you come to Commons
Park with walkways along the Platte River. Nestled at the south end of the park
is the refurbished AIDS Grove, a peaceful spot tucked away amidst the busy
city. The next bridge takes you over the river to Platte Street with its
interesting shops like the Savory Spice Shoppe (my favorite) and the English
Tea Room. A third bridge crosses Interstate 25 and leads to what may be
Denver’s most charming neighborhood, Highlands, which is hilly and down right
quaint and lined with great eateries with great views. If you lived there, you
could walk to work in downtown and lots of people do.
Other spaces intrigue me as well. Like the plaza around the
main library and the art museum. Another pedestrian entrance into downtown from
the south through Civic Center, which, when it isn’t packed with crowds for
special events (like Pride Fest coming up), is generally empty. Except when the
lunchtime food trucks pull up and lunchers pour out of nearby offices.
Of course, I have to mention Denver’s first public space, the
16th Street Mall, sometimes called the city’s front porch. It’s way
too urban to be anybody’s front porch. By that I mean there is plenty to
dislike there from loud teenagers to haranguing preachers. That’s what makes it
urban—this is no small town square where everybody knows everybody else. It’s a
raw mix and you never can control what’s in the mix that day or evening. But
it’s still a pleasure to stroll down the always busy mall.
So, there you have a brief tour of public places I like. It
seems that Denver is getting to be more like a city every day. And I’m glad.
More people should do it in public.
© 3 Jun 2016 
About the Author 

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland,
then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from
work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga,
writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.
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When We First Knew, by Nicholas

At first, we laughed. That was how the years of fears and tears began.

It was a cool, breezy but sunny day in San Francisco as we took our lunches out to Union Square. Scattered high clouds and wisps of fog flew across the sky but not enough to dim the sun or block its warmth. Lloyd, Bill and I worked together at Macy’s and loved to spend our lunch breaks on a grassy patch in the busy park, the center of SF’s retail district. The elegantly turned out ladies who shop swirled around us. From Macy’s to Saks to Magnin’s to Neiman Marcus, they pursued their perfect ensembles. Meanwhile, tourists hurried about trying to catch a cable car ride up Powell Street over Nob Hill to Fisherman’s Wharf.

As we munched our sandwiches, Lloyd, I think, read a little item in the San Francisco Chronicle recapping a report in the Los Angeles Times about “gay cancer.” We chuckled at this latest concoction of the flourishing gay lib movement. We had our own newspapers, book stores, bars, choruses, churches, and clubs, so, of course, wanting nothing of the straight world, we would have our own cancer. We laughed.

That LA Times report told of the strange coincidence of young and otherwise healthy men who happened to be gay contracting a rare form of cancer called Kaposi’s sarcoma which usually appeared only in elderly Jewish men. A cluster of these cases had shown up in Los Angeles. Nobody had a clue as to why.

We threw away the newspaper and went back to work.

Lloyd, Bill and I had by chance one day walked into a temp agency, not knowing each other. A staffer there said there were three openings in the back office at Macy’s receiving, sorting and distributing expensive fine jewelry and watches for 19 Northern California stores. We all said yes.

We got to know each other a little on the walk from the agency to Macy’s. Lloyd was a former theater major and loved disco. He and his lover Steven were regulars at Trocadero, San Francisco’s top disco in the 1980s. Bill had just moved to SF from Boston to get away from his family and to take part in the punk rock scene. He loved the B-52’s. And there was me. Recently arrived from Ohio, returning to the city I loved from a decade earlier, and hoping to start of new life, a real life, in this dynamic community with its combination of dramatic flash, earnest politics and organizations of every kind.

The three of us—me in my early 30s, Lloyd in his mid-20s, and Bill in his early 20s—hit it off from the start. We were all sassy then and made up for the routine job with a running repartee. Every morning we re-hashed that day’s episode of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, a serial in the Chronicle whose characters parodied prominent city figures. Guessing what was true to fact and what was made up kept many a conversation going for days. After work many times we went out together to a cabaret. And we went dancing at the glitzy, all-night disco parties at the Galleria. I remember one Halloween when Lloyd used his theater skills to deck us all out as Renaissance princes. I danced all that night in tights and a velvet doublet with puffed shoulders, a flouncy beret and feathered mask. I found out what fabulous really meant that night.

Through 1981 and ‘82, reports of “gay cancer” continued to grow and generated deep fear in the community. Suddenly, cases popped up in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City and other places. It seemed to be a contagion that rapidly turned young men into withering, festering old men but nobody knew what or why or how it happened. Or who would be next. Then gay cancer grew into other diseases and came to be called Gay Related Immune Deficiency—GRID. Sexual transmission was believed to be involved somehow. Or maybe those disco queens just did too many drugs. Or too much alcohol and too much sex. Or a poor diet. Or not the right vitamins. Or not enough exercise, as if flinging yourself around a dance floor to a frantic beat isn’t exercise.

Bill, the youngest of us, was the first to get sick. He kept complaining of just not feeling well though his ill feeling didn’t match anything he knew, like flu or tummy ache. I told him that these weren’t days you didn’t want to be feeling well and urged him to see a doctor. He didn’t know any doctors, he said. So, one day I took him to see my doctor. I don’t know what the doctor said or did, but Bill seemed to get better. We even went dancing sometimes.

But then he didn’t feel like dancing. And some days he didn’t show up for work. And then stopped working. Soon he felt too weak to do much of anything. A few months later, he went back to his family in Boston. I lost touch with him but heard he died not long after that. He died before they could even name the disease that killed him.

Then Steven, Lloyd’s partner, got sick. Then two other guys in our little dancing circle. And then even Lloyd, whom I was closest to. It was like a stalker picking us off one by one. Pretty soon I was dancing alone. Suddenly, those corny, wrenching, kitschy disco ballads became desperate pleas longing for love and life.

I think back to that breezy day when we laughed and went on laughing until it was impossible to laugh and then some of us wondered if we would ever laugh again. I think back to the days of not knowing and then getting a phone call that let me know that I did know, did know another one sick and that I had come that much closer to it and maybe I’d be making the next phone call.

Wayne, a former boyfriend whom I’d dated for a few months, called one night. We exchanged the normal chat about how we were each doing but he hardly had to say anything to explain to me why, after months of not seeing each other, this call on this night.

“I have to tell you,” he said, “I was diagnosed with…,” something or other, the exact name of the obscure ailment escapes me or maybe I never even heard it. The word “diagnosed” told me enough. I had now, if I hadn’t already, definitely come into direct contact with whatever it was that caused this illness or combination of strange illnesses—nobody ever seemed to have just one thing going on.

I asked him how he was doing and feeling and he said he was doing pretty good. He was getting his support network together. Count me in on that, I said. Anything you need, I’m here. He said he was determined to beat this thing, an obligatory statement that everybody made back then not knowing if it had even the slightest chance of coming true. I said I hoped I could help.

“Maybe we should get together and go out for dinner or a movie,” I suggested. About the most anyone could offer then was hugs and hand holding. He liked that idea so we made a date. We got together a few times and I cooked a dinner for him sometimes. Wayne was lucky. He had lots of friends and we all made sure that he almost never had to be left alone. But each time I saw him, he was thinner and weaker and then he started getting seriously sick with high fevers, no ability to eat, and wasting away. His own body was killing him. He died six months later.

It would be a few years before science figured out anything. Eventually, a name was given this strange syndrome that turned healthy young men into withering, festering old men overnight. That name was Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS. And AIDS was about to dominate my social, romantic, political and professional life for some years to come.

© 2016

About the Author

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.

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Let’s Eat! by Nicholas

There is nothing like the aroma sent up when the garlic hits the hot oil in the pan. That is one of my favorite moments in cooking. Sauteeing a mire pois—onions, carrots and celery—in preparation for a stew, I’ll toss in the chopped garlic and a wonderful scent fills the kitchen.

I like to cook. But, first, let me back up and say, I like food. I like planting and growing vegetables, watching the plants mature into delicious edibles. I like picking them just before cooking dinner. I like picking out my food at markets and bringing home bags full of fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, breads. And, I like to eat. And I like to enjoy a glass of wine while cooking. And, of course, to complete the cycle, I like a good nap.

Every spring I look forward to planting the garden in my backyard with three kinds of tomatoes, three summer squashes, green and yellow beans, long and globe-size eggplant and a host of herbs—oregano, thyme, sage, tarragon, rosemary and basil. For me, summer starts when I taste the first fresh basil in a salad.

Cooking is but one aspect in my relationship with food. I do consider my eating habits as a complex relationship from start to finish. I don’t understand how some people can just eat what comes out of pizza box or a fast food bag or a take-out carton. I want a connection to my food. I want meals to involve multiple steps from purchase or picking to preparation to cooking to the table. If I couldn’t do all that, I would miss it. It’s a whole sensual experience. One that starts at the Saturday morning Cherry Creek market, picking out the fresh fruits—last Saturday, sweet cherries from the Western Slope began to show up. The season will last maybe a month and then no more cherries until next summer. But then there will be peaches and pears.

When I recently spent two weeks visiting San Francisco, I planned part of my trip around food. I rented a small apartment with a full kitchen so I could cook in it. I always felt in previous visits there that I was missing something when I would see all this wonderful food in stores and street markets and not be able to do anything with it. This time, I went to a local farmers market and bought the freshest, most delicious strawberries and lettuces and assembled fabulous salads. It was as much fun as going to dinner at a great restaurant. We did that too.

I’m not a fussy or elaborate cook. I prefer minimal ingredients. I do not see myself cooking as if I were some fancy chef at home. That’s what restaurants are for—the food I would never try at home. In San Francisco, a friend took me to a Nepalese restaurant. The food there was flavored with complicated combinations of spices in rich sauces that probably took hours to make.

I prefer less complicated approaches. Yesterday, I made pork chops using rosemary picked fresh outside my back door and garlic and, of course, salad with a touch of basil and arugula also from the backyard.

Many times, I check what’s in the frig and what’s in the garden and make up a recipe. I’ve found that paprika and dry mustard powder are a nice combination to flavor a stir fry. A spoonful of yellow curry can make a lamb stew sparkle with flavor.

One of the food books I use most frequently in cooking is not really a cookbook with recipes. Instead it lists elements of food that go together like turnips, apples and tarragon or kale, bacon and lemon instead of complete detailed recipes. It suggests spices and herbs that are good seasoning matches. Then I make up my own concoctions letting my appetite and taste buds tell me what to put in the pot.

Of course, I like cooking with wine. As the joke goes, sometimes I even put it in the stew. What’s even better is having a grateful husband to wash the dishes.

© June 2016

About the Author

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.

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True Colors – Take a Walk in the Grove, by Nicholas

          I want to tell a story today that involves one of our own,
a member of this group. It’s about a group of people who showed their true
colors in their loyalty to one friend and created a unique space for our entire
community. Along the South Platte River on the edge of downtown Denver, is an
area of Commons Park designated as a spot to remember those who have died of
HIV/AIDS and their caregivers. It’s called The Grove and it is one of only two
AIDS memorial gardens in this country—the other is in San Francisco. Our own
Randy Wren was part of that group that labored for seven years to make it
happen.
          The Grove started with one man’s vision. Doug McNeil knew
of the memorial grove in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and asked, literally
as his dying wish, why can’t Denver create such a spot. Doug died of AIDS in
1993, a time when the LGBT community was focused more on the battle to undo the
infamous Amendment 2 than on the AIDS epidemic. Amendment 2, passed by Colorado
voters in 1992, prohibited any government or government agency in this state
from enacting any provisions to ban discrimination against lesbian and gay
people. (There’s an excellent exhibition on that history outside this door in
The Center’s lobby.) And it was a time of still rampant AIDS phobia.
          A small group of Doug’s friends vowed to carry out his dream
for The Grove. They weren’t the usual gaggle of community activists and
politicos. They included socialites, arts community supporters, an attorney,
and an Episcopal priest. Most were not gay. They organized a non-profit group
called The Grove Project, got 501c3 IRS status so they could collect funds, and
began the long process of taking on the bureaucracy of the city’s Parks
Department.
          The Parks Department never openly rejected the idea but
negotiations dragged on for years. At first, the area in front of the
performing arts complex on Speer Blvd was proposed. The city objected that
theatre and concert goers wouldn’t want to be reminded of the awfulness of AIDS
on their nights out on the town. Another location in a park in southeast Denver
was suggested but that would have left the memorial far from the Capitol Hill
neighborhood that was most affected by AIDS.
          At some point, the riverfront came into the discussion. At
that time, the area was just beginning to be developed. There was a quiet,
somewhat out of the way spot in a new park—Commons Park—that the city was
planning. That fit the criteria of being visible, centrally located and quiet
enough to promote the atmosphere desired.
          The Grove was envisioned to be a natural area for
contemplation. It was landscaped very simply with trees, natural grasses and
shrubs, and some rocks. A simple inscription reads: “Dedicated to the
remembrance of those who have lost their lives to AIDS and to their loving
caregivers who helped them live out those lives with dignity.”
          The Grove was dedicated in a simple ceremony in August
2000. Doug McNeil’s loyal and persistent friends accomplished his dream after
seven years of work.
          Now, The Grove sits largely ignored and sort of neglected
in a recessed corner of Commons Park, near 15th Street and Little
Raven Street. It is surrounded by high priced condos and apartments but it is
still a quiet and attractive area.
          Recently, a movement got underway to renew the spot, clean
it up, refresh the landscaping and, most importantly, make the community aware
that this historical and spiritual resource exists. In recalling all the
individuals who battled, and continue to battle AIDS, we remember how our community
grew from that experience. We remember those we’ve lost. We remember when being
gay changed from just giving the most fabulous parties to a truly mature
community of caregivers and advocates. We remember our past and that we have a
history. A history that is the root of our present and future.
          I encourage everyone to seek out The Grove and spend a few
quiet moments there remembering. And maybe you can help in its renewal. You too
can show your true colors.
© 2016 

About
the Author 
Nicholas grew up in Cleveland,
then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from
work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga,
writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.
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We’re Not Done Yet, by Nicholas

I’m terrible at giving directions. I love maps but I don’t carry one in my head, so I have to pause and really think through how to get somewhere when asked. I also have set routine routes which, if departed from, leave me momentarily confused. I sometimes have to remind myself where I’m headed so I don’t automatically go somewhere else more familiar. And, of course, it’s hard to figure out where you should be going when, really, you’re not going anywhere at all.

New Year’s Day is always a time to reflect on where we’ve been and where we might want to go. A new year always provides the illusion of hope for a new start, a change from old bad habits before we sink back to those comfortable old bad habits.

This topic also seems to be buzzing around the blogosphere with online commentators—of whom there are about ten million—pondering where the LGBT movement is headed now that so much of the agenda that we always denied having has been accomplished. Some advocacy organizations, like Freedom to Marry, are actually closing up shop since they have accomplished their mission. Of course, we will still get funding solicitations from them. Other groups have begun to scale back their operations now that LGB, but maybe not T, issues have gone mainstream.

There needs to be a new agenda, say the blog masters. We’re at a point of having seen many—though not all—statutory barriers to living life gay or lesbian, and sometimes even trans, removed. Now what do we do?

Well, as the line goes, it ain’t over till it’s over. And, guess what, it ain’t over. I get suspicious or maybe even just paranoid when someone declares a movement over. Here it seems to mean that straight-acting, white men have gotten what they want, so everybody else should just quiet down and get on with things, like making money now that Big Money has found that the gay community is very easy to get along with.

So, we still have kids living on the street with practically no chance of a decent future without an education and a home. Bullying is still rampant in schools and school administrators are still reluctant to do anything about it.

If you’re in any way an effeminate male, a drag queen, a fairy, don’t expect the corporate law firms to welcome you. If you’re too strong a woman, your chances for success are probably reduced as well. And trans still makes most people squirm in their executive suites. Remember, in the TV show Will and Grace, Will operated in the corporate office while his flamboyant friend Jack was always scheming for ways to make it.

And, then, there’s us. The aging lesbian and gay and trans segment of the population that the still youth-obsessed society still doesn’t want to face. Many of us live in fearful isolation. Many, if not most, of us still fear being trapped and vulnerable in hostile situations such as nursing homes that are clueless if not simply hateful to LGBT elders. I don’t see myself as shy about who I am and who I live with, but I dread being consigned to some miserable and hostile facility. If school principals are reluctant to deal with bullying, nursing home administrators are about two centuries behind them.

Plenty of LGBT people are still marginalized and there is something we can do about it. Gay marriage was never the whole agenda and now that we have that we can get back to the original idea. We still need to build communities. We still need to figure out in a positive light who we are, how we are different, what we have to offer. In a way, the assimilation phase is over with marriage. Now we can go back to being ourselves. Not just dealing with needs and demands and issues, but with supporting one another and valuing one another in all our crazy diversity. We still need to find each other and join together.

Till death do us part, you might say.

© 4 January 2016

About the Author

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.

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Save Me from the Believers, by Nicholas

I do not believe in believing. I don’t know what I believe in and I don’t care what you believe in. I do believe, however, that believing leads to an addling of the brain. We are not supposed to believe. We are supposed to learn, as in, look at evidence and make conclusions. I prefer to be reality based. Belief can be and is usually manufactured from thin air. And like thin air, belief is prone to flimsy shifts in the wind.

Belief is, to me, but one step away from superstition and prejudice, two of its most common components. Belief motivates people—usually to do something awful. People of Salem, Massachusetts believed in witches and a dozen women died for it. The newest attack on LGBT rights is that our freedom violates somebody’s religious beliefs which they believe should be forced on everybody else.

We’ve all heard it on the nightly news. You get a one-minute story on some horrific event like a man is suspected of abusing his children and right away, the TV anchors want to know what you believe. Let us know what you think, they say. Is he guilty?

My belief however flimsily arrived at or sincerely held is irrelevant and not really even worth considering. If I am ever to judge this man, I will be on a jury that has been presented with the full facts of the case for our consideration. Otherwise, I am not really entitled to an opinion and any opinion I give is worthless. I can believe all I want, but, so what?

Believing is manipulated and it is so very manipulable. Belief easily descends into hysteria. Muslims in New York want to open a religious center near the World Trade Center site and suddenly we are talking about the global radical Islamist conspiracy to desecrate sacred sites in the homeland. I didn’t know we had sacred sites and if we do, isn’t it WalMart.

© 11 January 2016

About the Author

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.

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I Hate My Hair, by Nicholas

          The famous
essayist Nora Ephron once wrote a piece in which she denounced her neck. She
said simply that she did not like her neck. It was scrawny and too long and had
to be hidden with scarves and turtleneck sweaters. That’s how I feel about
hair. I don’t like my hair and I never have. It’s fine, soft, and thin and
getting thinner. It never was a color I liked—and gray did not improve over the
former brown. It never grew out into any shape or style that was appealing. It
grew long but not curly. It grew longer still but never full. It just sort of hung
there.
          The standard
for beautiful hair, for me, is Danielle Grant, the woman who does the weather
on Channel 9. I watch the weather just to watch her hair. Her rich brown tresses
hang long over her shoulders in a lustrous waterfall of hair. Her hair shines
with a deep luster. I don’t care if it rains or snows or turns sunny, her hair
is a beauty to behold.
          Hair has many
functions, none of them really all that important. It can be a thing of natural
beauty, a fashion statement, a political statement, a symbol and, of course, it
was even a musical. In the 1960s, we let our hair grow long and shaggy to show
our disdain for an oppressive establishment and our attachment to a new culture
of freedom that did not include barbershops. We let our “freak flag” fly, as
one song put it.
          In the 1970s,
we returned to those few barbershops that survived the ‘60s, and got it cut
short—gay short—because we didn’t want to be seen as some kind of hippie longhair
redneck. Hair styles came full circle, I guess. What was once a protest of the
establishment, became the establishment. Long hair meant you were a right wing
crazy conservative. Short hair was the rebellion.
          Of course, we
didn’t just go to barbershops. We went to stylists and had our hair styled. And
paid a lot more for that styling. When I was first coming out I even had my
hair permed once. I wanted curls and decided to torture my hair into curls even
if I had to wear a toxic waste dump on my head. It didn’t work. I got curls,
alright, but I looked like I had a nice dust mop on top of my head. I looked
like Woody Allen on a bad day. I realized that my hair just was not made for
fashion.
          Now I just get
it mowed now and then, about once a month. It’s like the lawn. Doesn’t really
do anything or contribute anything but looks better if it’s kept under control.
The problem is that there is too much of it where I don’t need it, like ears
and nose, and not enough where I do want it. I go to the cheapest barber I know
and for $10 get whatever excess is there clipped to a reasonable shortness. I
like my hair best when I don’t have to think about it.
          It would be
nice to keep up with fashion, but I’ve given up. I would love to die it blue or
purple, colors I really like in other people’s hair. But on me, it would just
look silly. Beyond the basic requirement of workable hair, I don’t have that
fashion persona to pull it off. You know how some people can walk down a street
like they’re walking across a stage. I’m just trying to get a bus home before
somebody stops and says, “God, what did you do to your hair?”
© 15 Jan
2015 
About the Author 
Nicholas grew up in Cleveland,
then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from
work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga,
writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.
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My Favorite Holiday, by

Every year about this time when the
days get cold and the nights longer, I wake up one morning, stretch my arms wide
open, and say to the world: Let the eating begin!
          The Olympics
of Food is about to start. Never mind the big torch, light the ovens. Watch the
parade of dishes fill the tables. All those colorful displays of food you never
see any other time of the year—and thank god for that. I mean you could eat
cherries in brandy anytime but, for me, it’s only at Christmas that it fits.
There will be medals for best
nibbles, best entrée, best salad, best sweet potato, best cookies, best pies,
best favorite whatever, most outlandish French pastry that looks like something
you’d never consider eating, best wine before dinner, best wine with dinner,
best wine after dinner, best wine anytime, best eggnog with rum, best eggnog with brandy, best brandy never mind the nog, and the list goes on. Instead of
the 12 days of Christmas, somebody should write a song about the 75,000
calories and the 100 or so meals of Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Solstice.
Thanksgiving is really just the warm up, the first course, you might say, in a
month long binge of eating. And I love it.
Alright, I exaggerate. Not every
morsel I consume in December is an elaborate culinary production. And not
everything to do with “The Holidays” has to do with food. But the food is the
key part. You go to work this month and you eat. You go to parties and you eat.
You have friends over and you eat. You decorate the tree and you eat. You open
presents and you eat. Maybe it’s the fright of winter. It’s cold and dark, we’d
better stock up, gird our loins, put on protective layers of fat, nourish
ourselves for the coming bleak days. We could end up starving as the winds of
winter howl. This really is a time of primal urges.
For me, these holidays are the
antidote for darkness. I hate the short days, the early nights. I love the
lights and the decorations, the busy bustling about, the gift giving, the
visiting, the sharing of special traditional foods. I love the sense that for this
one month normal rules don’t apply. It’s a month of light and sharing, sharing
around the table.
I guess that all stems from the fact
that food was a central part of everything in my family as I grew up. Mom loved
to bake and made special Christmas cookies that I loved as a kid and still do.
But now instead of sneaking around searching out her hiding places for these
treats and secretly eating a cookie or two, I use her recipes to make my own.
And I get pretty close to mom’s triumphs. Of course, it’s hard to screw up any
combination of sugar, butter, nuts and chocolate. And I still hide them from
myself and still sneakily snitch one before company gets them.
Jamie and I have also established
some of our own Christmas traditions like decorating the house with lights and
garlands, filling the house with friends and—it always gets back to food—sharing
a Christmas Eve dinner of prime rib and all the trimmings, maybe even some
French pastry.
Christmas, they say, is really about
anticipation and the birth of new life. It’s about nourishment. It’s a time to be
with people and shake off the darkness while looking forward to when the days will
lengthen. The dark of December is, after all, always followed by the brightness
of January’s new year. Break out the champagne!
© 15 Dec
2011
About the Author 
Nicholas grew up in Cleveland,
then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from
work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga,
writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.
Posted on

My Favorite Holiday, by Nicholas

Every year about this time when the days get cold and the nights longer, I wake up one morning, stretch my arms wide open, and say to the world: Let the eating begin!

The Olympics of Food is about to start. Never mind the big torch, light the ovens. Watch the parade of dishes fill the tables. All those colorful displays of food you never see any other time of the year—and thank god for that. I mean you could eat cherries in brandy anytime but, for me, it’s only at Christmas that it fits.

There will be medals for best nibbles, best entrée, best salad, best sweet potato, best cookies, best pies, best favorite whatever, most outlandish French pastry that looks like something you’d never consider eating, best wine before dinner, best wine with dinner, best wine after dinner, best wine anytime, best egg nog with rum, best egg nog with brandy, best brandy never mind the nog, and the list goes on. Instead of the 12 days of Christmas, somebody should write a song about the 75,000 calories and the 100 or so meals of Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/Solstice. Thanksgiving is really just the warm up, the first course, you might say, in a month long binge of eating. And I love it.

Alright, I exaggerate. Not every morsel I consume in December is an elaborate culinary production. And not everything to do with “The Holidays” has to do with food. But the food is the key part. You go to work this month and you eat. You go to parties and you eat. You have friends over and you eat. You decorate the tree and you eat. You open presents and you eat. Maybe it’s the fright of winter. It’s cold and dark, we’d better stock up, gird our loins, put on protective layers of fat, nourish ourselves for the coming bleak days. We could end up starving as the winds of winter howl. This really is a time of primal urges.

For me, these holidays are the antidote for darkness. I hate the short days, the early nights. I love the lights and the decorations, the busy bustling about, the gift giving, the visiting, the sharing of special traditional foods. I love the sense that for this one month normal rules don’t apply. It’s a month of light and sharing, sharing around the table.

I guess that all stems from the fact that food was a central part of everything in my family as I grew up. Mom loved to bake and made special Christmas cookies that I loved as a kid and still do. But now instead of sneaking around searching out her hiding places for these treats and secretly eating a cookie or two, I use her recipes to make my own. And I get pretty close to mom’s triumphs. Of course, it’s hard to screw up any combination of sugar, butter, nuts and chocolate. And I still hide them from myself and still sneakily snitch one before company gets them.

Jamie and I have also established some of our own Christmas traditions like decorating the house with lights and garlands, filling the house with friends and—it always gets back to food—sharing a Christmas Eve dinner of prime rib and all the trimmings, maybe even some French pastry.

Christmas, they say, is really about anticipation and the birth of new life. It’s about nourishment. It’s a time to be with people and shake off the darkness while looking forward to when the days will lengthen. The dark of December is, after all, always followed by the brightness of January’s new year. Break out the champagne!

© 20 Nov 2011

About the Author

Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.

Posted on

Living on the Faultline, by Nicholas

          Late that
pleasant afternoon, after I’d finished classes, I walked across campus to do
some work in the library. On the third floor I found the book I needed and was
about to sit down at a table when things began to rumble. It was Oct. 17, 1989
and San Francisco was about to get a shaking like it hadn’t felt in decades.
Floors and walls trembled in the familiar motion of a California earthquake.
Fixtures rattled a little and swayed. Then the real shaking began. Ceiling
lights knocked around and flickered and then went out. Books were flung off
their shelves. Filing cabinets toppled over. People dove under tables and I
quickly placed my brief case over my head to protect against falling debris. I
had been through many earthquakes in San Francisco—felt the building sway,
heard the rattling, been waken up in a rippling bed, felt the floor jumping
around beneath my feet—but this time, for the first time, I was afraid. “God, I
could die here,” I thought.
          Then, it
stopped. Fifteen seconds that felt like 15 years. The lights were out but being
5 o’clock in the afternoon, there was enough light for us to thread our dazed
way down three flights of stairs and out of the building. There was no panic as
hundreds of students climbed over piles of books and papers and dust to leave.
Outside, people milled about the campus. I was in probably the worst building
in the worst spot for an earthquake. The San Francisco State University campus
sits almost exactly atop the San Andreas fault and the soil is mostly sand
which tends to magnify the waves of an earthquake. The building I was in was
built of concrete slabs, the kind that respond to shock waves by simply
collapsing. It’s called “pancaking” in which the floors just slide down onto
each other, crushing anything in between. I was glad to be outside.
          Since all
power in the city was out, no traffic lights worked, cars just stopped on the
street, dazed drivers wondering what to do next. No streetcars could run
either. The city just stopped.
          The first
reaction to a major earthquake is confusion. Buildings and the ground they’re
built on aren’t supposed to move like that. Disorientation is the first shock.
          The campus is
in the southwest corner of the city and with traffic totally snarled and no
public transit operating, I figured I might as well start walking home which
was close to the city center, probably 4-5 miles away. I started walking, heading
toward clouds of billowing black smoke. I hoped it wasn’t our house burning
down.
          The streets
were crowded with walkers and some people had transistor radios to get some
news. Remember, this was way before Internet, Facebook, cell phones. No such
thing as instant communication.
          One lady stood
in front of her house and announced to passersby that “That quake ran right in
front of my house.” Had the tremor run right in front in your house, I thought,
you wouldn’t be standing here now. The actual shift in tectonic plates was
probably miles deep in the earth.
          Somebody said
the Bay Bridge collapsed—a part of it, in fact, had. A freeway in Oakland had
collapsed, killing 60 people. The Marina District, built on landfill by the
bay, took the worst damage and was burning. All highways, bridges and trains
were unusable. If you couldn’t walk to where you needed to be, people were told
to just stay where they were. I kept walking, stepping around the occasional
pile of bricks and stucco that had fallen off buildings.
          Finally, I got
home. Everything was OK. We lived on a hill overlooking Golden Gate Park, the
most solid geology you could find in San Francisco (the hill, not the park
which is sand). Walls cracked and books had wobbled to the edges of shelves,
but nothing toppled or collapsed.
          Jamie got home
soon after I did. He’d been in a highrise office building downtown and had to
walk down ten flights of stairs but managed to drive home taking a circuitous
route through neighborhoods to avoid traffic jams. Some of the office towers
had actually banged against one another at the height of the shaking—or so we
heard.
          Shortly after
we arrived home, two friends showed up. They both worked in SF but lived in
Oakland and couldn’t get home so they hiked to our place and stayed with us.
There was no power in the house, so we built a fire outside in a little hibachi
grill and heated up some leftovers. The city was dark except for the glow to
the northeast where the Marina District kept burning. We felt oddly safe on our
bedrock hillside.
          We did
actually perform one rescue that dangerous night. The woman who lived in the
flat below ours was stranded in East Bay which meant her cat Darwin needed
feeding. He sat mewling at our back door until we invited him in and gave him
some food. Next day Darwin repaid the favor by leaving us a dead bird on our
doorstep.
          In the days
that followed, the city slowly got back to a new normal. Mail delivery was
cancelled for three days and many shops remained closed. The World Series
between SF and Oakland resumed. Buildings and freeways were inspected and some
condemned. BART resumed running trains the next day but the Bay Bridge was to
stay closed for at least a month until the collapsed section could be repaired.
Ferry boats started running across the bay—actually a nicer way to commute. We walked
through the Marina District over the rippled pavement and past the leaning or
burnt out flats. Everywhere you went you calculated how safe it was or wasn’t
until you realized there was no place safe but you went on anyway. Living on
the faultline. 
©
19 April 2015 
About the Author 

Nicholas grew up in
Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He
retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks,
does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.