Tag: Personal essay

Posted on

Ghosts, by Lewis Thompson

Ghosts are not the spirits of the dead hanging around to haunt us. They are creations of our own feelings of guilt. Regret is the only ghost we have to fear.

© 24 April 2017

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.

Posted on

Hysteria, by Gillian

The old black-and-white movie flickers and jumps. A woman screams. And laughs. And cries.

‘You’re hysterical,’ booms a strong male voice.

A strong male hand slaps the woman’s cheek. Silence; followed by a quiet sobbing.

That is hysteria in the movies.

I actually don’t think I have ever experienced that kind of hysteria; my own or anyone else’s. Perhaps it has never actually existed, outside of old movies. Or perhaps I have simply been extremely fortunate, having lived a life free of horrifying experiences which might create hysteria in myself or others.

No, I have not had to live such nightmares; but certainly I have seen them unfold on the TV. I have watched everything from terrorist attacks to mass shootings, from earthquakes and mudslides to tsunamis, hurricanes, and tornadoes. I have seen people’s response to such things. But, you know, I honestly cannot recall hysteria. People run, sometimes screaming, but that is a simple reaction to danger – the good old fight or flight response. I have seen tears: strangers enfolding each other in comforting arms, injured individuals sitting on the ground, alone and confused. That is shock and grief. It is not hysteria. Desperate people wave to helicopters from rooftops barely protruding from floodwaters. They shout for help from beneath heaps of rubble. These are people trying to save themselves. They are not hysterics. It makes little sense to me that hysteria should be encouraged by Mother Nature, anyway. She has given us an overwhelming survival instinct. We will do whatever it takes to live. Hysteria is counterproductive; it interferes with our ability to save ourselves. I’m sure it’s not listed on Mother Nature’s list of approved survival tactics.

On the other hand, a much more dangerous form of hysteria is alive and well and ever expanding, especially in recent years with the phenomenal growth of social media; mass hysteria. Until recently, this kind of group emotion was of necessity engendered in a group – a physical group of people close together, shoulder to shoulder, acting in ways none of them would have alone. The New Year’s Eve festivities downtown are great fun until a few idiots begin to egg each other on to break some windows. Before anyone realizes what is happening, dozens or even hundreds of people are heaving anything handy through windows, and the looting starts. Mass hysteria tends to lead to mass arrests. The soccer game is over and the crowds wending their way towards the stadium exits. A gang of lager-louts, till now only a little obnoxious as they react to the home team’s win or loss, begin an argument with opposing supporters. Voices get louder. Voices get angry. One man swings a fist. In seconds dozens of fists are swinging. Innocent bystanders rush for the streets. Hundreds are trampled in the panic; dozens killed and injured. And even without physical violence, hysteria is ugly. Just watch our political conventions.

Lately an even more frightening, more pervasive, form of mass hysteria has appeared, fomented by social media. An angry young man no longer needs to fly to Syria and attend a mosque frequented by violent extremists to become what we now chose to call ‘radicalized’. He can work himself into a frenzy of hatred and bigotry simply by reading what is offered in great abundance on his iPhone or laptop. He barely needs to get up off the couch. Perhaps he will never appear on any no-fly- or watch-list, but he is every bit as dangerous as those who do.

Mass hysteria is almost as scary even when involving no actual violence. These days all it takes is sound bites; Obama was not born in this country, Hillary is a crook. Repeat it often enough via all forms of social media, but particularly TV, and some of those listening will repeat it. Some of those hearing it will then repeat it, and in twenty-four hours there is this ground-swell of mass hysteria all based on a lie.

But strangely, I have observed recently, social media can create something which seems to me even stranger; almost the antithesis of hysteria. But if the opposite of hysterical is calm, this is behavior surpassing anything the word suggests to me. It is a level of denial for which I think we have no word. It seems to have appeared along with the universal inclusion of cameras in cellphones.

On the TV screen I see a man almost up to his armpits in swirling water. He holds one arm above his head, gripping his phone in his hand. Debris of all kinds swirls around him in the rising waters of Tropical Storm Sandy. He shouts breathlessly into his phone, capturing the image of himself struggling to remain upright. His commentary, as played on the television, consists mainly of beeps.

‘I’m here in bleeping New Jersey, in my own bleeping house. I’m standing in my bleeping kitchen, man. I don’t see how the bleep I’m gonna bleeping get out of here.’

He turns the camera off himself to show a jerky unfocused view from a window.

‘And over there it bleeping looks like every bleeping thing is on fire, man. How the bleeping bleeping bleep do you get bleeping fire on bleeping floods? Bleep. Bleep.

I gotta bleeping get up to the bleeping roof. Bleep … bleep ……’

After a few seconds of wildly gyrating film of ceiling and walls and water, everything goes blank and silent.

You see more and more of these death-defying shots, movies, and commentaries. People seem increasingly more interested in capturing their own images for posterity than in saving their own lives. Mother Nature must be very confused and frustrated!

Or perhaps she’s happy to see them go, cleansing the gene pool.

My very favorite so far, and I say so far because I reluctantly doubt that this new phenomenon is going away, is a still shot of a young woman in a bikini who obviously waited for the perfect moment to get a selfie as the tsunami waves broke through the windows behind her.

What is wrong with these people? I have no training as a psychologist, but I’m not too sure that your average shrink understands why people act this way, though there is, doubtless, at this very moment, at least one Ph.D student studying the topic.

Apparently the two people I have just described must somehow have survived. We have the content of their presumably intact phones. But how many, I have to wonder, have died in the grip of this strange ‘anti-hysteria’? I am starting to think that a good old-movie style face-slapping bout of hysterics might look downright healthy.

© August 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.

Posted on

Assumptions, by Phillip Hoyle

The professor said to her students, “I don’t so much care about what you conclude as I do about what you assume.” She went on to explain that two people cannot actually discuss any issue until they discover what assumptions they share. If they do not have enough assumptions in common, they actually have nothing to talk about. For her, assumptions were at the heart of any matter.

Early in my church-related career I learned a process called Strategic Planning. It began with defining your goal. That would be the picture of what you hope to accomplish. The second step was to write out your assumptions about the project. Such assumptions might have to do with your own ideas that lay behind the goal and objectives, those of others who might be involved in the project, the available resources, and so forth. In group planning this look into assumptions might be brainstormed. That part would give the group a look at whether there was any hope for the goal to be pursued to its end. Sometimes the assumptions are not in accord enough to keep the group together. I used that process regularly in my work, and as a result amassed quite a number of files describing the assumptions that I held or assumed participants might hold. Those files went to the trash bin outside the church building when after thirty years I left that work.

My most recent use of this process me occurred a number of years ago when I was recruited to lead “Telling Your Story” at the GLBT Center of Colorado. I had been in the group for a few months and thought I had better clarify my own assumptions about my participation, what I had observed about other participants, what I had picked up from the originating leader, about how the setting would affect the group, about the meeting time, about the Center’s interest in the project, about the elder aspects. I wanted the program that I had found to be significant to keep working well for me and for others, and I wanted to clarify for the SAGE program director what to expect from me. I asked the director to review my assumptions about Participants, the relationship of the group to the Center, and the process of storytelling.

One past SAGE director suggested one important assumption, saying it was better to come to a group on Monday afternoon than to stay alone in one’s apartment drinking. I suppose that would come under the category Assumptions about Participants.

Not long after that assumption was shared, another one surfaced from a “Telling Your Story” participant. He assumed that we would want to publish our stories. I’m still chewing on that idea and doing a lot of work.

There was another assumption, one I thought better and truer. When I told my artist friend Sue that we weren’t an activist group, she said, “Phillip, anytime you get a group of Senior Citizens to tell the stories of their lives; that’s activism.” Her perspective came from working several years in a Senior’s living and care center. I suspect we haven’t yet covered all the assumptions possible. Perhaps these last few assumptions are more points of view related to what we have accomplished together as a group.

© 27 March 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

Assumptions, by Louis

Phase out Football and Boxing 

About thirty-two years ago, I am in a sports bar, and the conversation of several beer-drinkers inevitably turns to football. The four or five other guys at the bar look at me, see a 40-year old man, and assume:

(a) I am obsessed with football games;

(b) I am knowledgeable about the biographies and careers of the top 20 most famous football players.

(c) And I have a fervent belief that these 20 most famous football players are excellent rôle models for American youth.

I said as little as possible during these conversations. What I really believe is:

(a) Excessive interest in football games is gradually turning into a mental illness, something like mass hysteria;

(b) I know next to nothing about the biographies of the 20 most famous football players, and I see no reason in particular to show any interest in their biographies;

(c) If you ask me, “successful” football players are not wholesome rôle models. Why is it admirable for a man to engage in a violent sport in which his bones will be broken and repetitive violent blows to his head will result in his suffering various types of dementia and motor impairment?

Pretty much the same can be said of boxing. Broken bones, dementia from brain concussions, paraplegia, quadriplegia and even death. Two guys punching each other in the face, I do not find admirable. In a word these two violent sports, football and boxing should be discontinued. Make love, not war.

The polls indicate that public interest in football is declining. Thank God. I think fervent promotion of football and boxing and other sports is part of a deliberate campaign or process of dumbing-down the public or, in a word, “a conspiracy.”

We should be led by intelligent people with a good sense of moral and ethical sensitivity. Like the authors of Telling Your Story. As opposed to punch drunk boxers, as likeable as Muhamed Ali was.

Years ago the hippies promoted the idea of non-violent, non-competitive sports. I think that idea should be developed further. The game should promote the idea of cooperation. Team A should not try to defeat Team B but join up with Team B and collectively say cure cancer.

In itself, football is a clever game. Make it into a parlor game like Monopoly or Parcheesi. Nothing wrong with that.

A lot of reasonable people agree with me, I know.

When I was 25 years old, a bosomy woman, looking for a boyfriend, intentionally pushed her bosoms on my back and side, assuming I would get excited or something. She was looking for a boyfriend in a direct sort of way. Nowadays most people have stopped assuming that a guy is necessarily heterosexual, and that one can guess what his deep personal motivations are. That’s progress.

© 3 March 2017

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

Doors, by Lewis Thompson

There have likely been a few million types of doors throughout history and many purposes for which doors have been employed, privacy and security chief among them. The most important thing to know about any door, however, is not what it’s made of or how large or small or how old or intricate its design. No, the only thing that really counts when it comes to doors is whether they are open or closed.

You can tell a lot about a person from knowing how cautious they are about keeping their doors locked. One person on my floor locks her door even when she leaves her apartment to do her laundry at the other end of the hallway.

Some commercial enterprises advertise that their doors are always open. This past weekend was the occasion of the annual Doors Open Denver–a chance to see parts of the city that may not normally be accessible to the unwashed.

In the history of Western Civilization, the most famous door was probably the stone that covered the entrance to the tomb where Jesus’ body was placed following his crucifixion. Had it never (as legend has it) been mysteriously opened, one of the world’s great religions may well have never taken root.

When I was a boy, we had a small ranch house with a single-car, attached garage. The roll-up door was not powered. I used to catch grasshoppers, pull off their hind legs and put them in the track of the open garage door and then close it so that the roller would pass over them. Did you know that grasshopper guts look like long orange grains of rice?

It seems to me that some people are like closets full of treasures behind locked doors. It’s as if they believe that exposing themselves would tempt others to do them harm. Or perhaps they think that others would be disappointed in what was revealed. I used to be one of these people, shut up behind a closed door. I thought if others could see me in the light, they would think I was ugly. But, at long last, one person gently knocked on my door and invited me to come out. I found out that opening the door let the light in and the fear out. Now, I always try to leave the door unlocked with a welcome sign on it.

© 27 April 2015

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.

Posted on

To Be Held, by Betsy

When I was an infant, the scientists–physicians and psychologists–who knew everything there was to know about mothering, all proclaimed that holding your baby too much was not a good thing. The consequences of this seemingly natural human behavior was, in fact, risky. Babies could grow up expecting to be held all the time. They would become dependent on being held, they would become “spoiled.” Also at the time cow’s milk or cow-milk-based formula created by humans and promoted by the forces of capitalism, was better for a human baby than human milk which was, after all, only poor mother nature’s formula for what is best for a newborn.

Years later when I became a mother the same thinking was prevalent–except for the milk ideas. There had sprung up in recent years a group of rebel mothers called Le Leche League. The group promoted breast feeding among new moms. They had a book which described the benefits of not only the milk, but also the process of delivering the milk, not the least of which was to hold your baby close while feeding him. They held the notion that there is a reason the female human body is configured as it is. That properly and naturally feeding your baby required holding him close.

I actually heard many mothers at the time say “The problem is that if you breast feed your baby, you will become completely tied down to him/her.” When I told my doctor husband this, he had the perfect answer. “Well, a mother SHOULD be tied down to her baby. That is how a baby survives and thrives.”

My oldest child did not have the benefits of breast milk for very long. The pediatrician instructed me, a very insecure novice mom, to begin supplementing the breast milk with formula after two months or so. Why? Well, baby needs more milk and it was believed baby could not get enough milk from its mother alone. I soon learned that once you start the process of bottle feeding, baby learns really fast. It’s much easier for her to suck milk from a bottle than from a breast. It flows much, much faster out of a bottle and, well, they don’t have to work so hard to get it. Then, of course, they don’t want the breast milk, demand for the rich liquid plummets, and the milk-making machine quickly becomes non-productive.

I later learned that breast milk is the best, there is plenty of it as supply usually meets with demand, and it works perfectly for about one year, longer if one wishes, and if the feeding is supplemented with a source of iron.

Actually, in a society driven by corporate profits the truth is the main problem with breast feeding is that the milk is free, so long as the mother is properly nourished and hydrated. No one is buying anything. No one benefits monetarily from that method of feeding, no one except baby and mother. No corporate profit is to be made. Baby and mother alone benefit.

It seems that to be held IS important–not just for babies but for children and adults as well. Being held promotes healing, comfort, security, well being of all kinds. It is hard to imagine how it ever came to be regarded as detrimental. Yet the notion continues in some minds.

One of the first complete sentences my oldest child ever uttered was, “I want to behold.”

Of course when we first heard this we asked, “Behold–behold what? A star in the East?

“What do you mean, ‘I want to behold?’ Oohh! You need comforting and reassurance. You want to be held,” we said realizing that our brilliant three year old was not familiar with the passive form of the verb to hold.

Holding in a loving way and being held is loving behavior. What adult does not want to hold a kitten or puppy immediately when he or she see it. I think holding each other as an expression of love is something we learn or at least become comfortable with early in life. I think we could use more of it in this troubled world of ours. I’m all for it.

© 8 October 2012

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

The Drain, by Gillian

Searching Google, as I so often do, for inspiration on this topic, I was surprised to see one of the first things to come up was a pop music group of some unknown (to me, at least) variety called The Drain. This has happened amazingly often with our topics. There are apparently, for example, groups called Magic, Guilty Pleasures, Culture Shock and Did It My Way, all topics on which we have written. There is also one called Horseshoes and Hand Grenades. We have only written on the first part of that, so maybe we should tackle Hand Grenades one of these days.

Tricky things, drains. In the northern hemisphere liquid rotates clockwise as it disappears down a drain; in the southern hemisphere it circles in a counterclockwise motion. We all know that this is simply a function of the rotation of the earth, and yet everyone seems to be fascinated by this one fact of life. Anyone, going for the first time to the other hemisphere, just can’t wait to gaze raptly into the bathroom sink to see the water draining in that unaccustomed direction. Yes, it suckered me too, though at the moment of truth, all I could come up with was ‘huh!’

So; tricky things, drains. Like many things, we only recognize the true value of them when they cease to do their job. They are designed to consume material, but on occasion they refuse , or even regurgitate, instead. We’ve all seen times in Denver when the storm drains, blocked by fallen autumn leaves or overwhelmed by the occasional gully-washer downpour, simply refuse to digest the requisite amount of water and leave it to flood intersections and underpasses, and many people say much more than, ‘huh!’

There is little more nauseating then the indescribably disgusting gray goo which has to be extricated from the bend in the pipe when the sink drain refuses to absorb anything further.

Did that stuff really come from me? Huh! The horrors from which our drains habitually save us!

At the time that I left the U.K. in the early ’60’s, the whole country was suffering from what was termed a ‘brain drain’ – so many with higher education left for other countries as Britain offered so few opportunities. One arm of that drain, however, has always run the other way. In the Britain of my youth it seemed as if almost every doctor was from India, and on once again checking with Google, I find that the situation has not much changed. Those from India still provide the largest number of non-British-born doctors and health professionals in Britain, and, in fact, the National Health Service is currently actively recruiting doctors from India. The current fear, however, is that since the Brexit vote with it’s associated real or imagined rise in xenophobia, doctors from India and indeed any other country will be unwilling to commit themselves to a move to the U.K. With a mere 37% of all doctors in Britain currently being British-born white, this does not bode well. Tricky things, drains.

Since the recent U.S. election, many of the same concerns are being voiced here, where more than 25% of all doctors are foreign-born, again, incidentally, with an incredible 10% of all our doctors being from India. There are roughly a million foreign students in our universities, many of whom will remain to contribute greatly to the country. But with the new atmosphere of just about every kind of ism and phobia imaginable, will students from other countries still want to come? Will they feel safe? I can only suppose probably not. This would almost certainly be true of many other potential immigrants except for those sad souls driven by an even greater fear of life in their place of origin. Trump talks of limiting immigration and deporting many of those already here, but if he reverses the flow of that drain, blocking the incoming and increasing the outgoing, our country will be sadly poorer for it. Tricky things, drains.

Now our future leader talks of ‘draining’ the swamp of the Washington establishment – something many of us would not find discouraging. Cleaning up the quagmire of dark money and general corruption and lies, to replace it with clean fresh honest air, who would argue? Sadly, any vision we might have had of an outward-flowing drain was swiftly dispelled. No, the drain flows in.

And with it it brings a new level of homophobia, racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism the likes of which most of us never saw coming in our worst nightmares. But we can stop the flow. We can reverse it. With constant vigilance, not to mention a lot of hard work, we can do it. Just don’t forget, Donald – tricky things, drains.

© November 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.

Posted on

Getting Old, by Betsy

After pondering this subject I have to say I believe getting old when applied to the human condition is a state of mind. Of course, we attain old age simply by living and staying alive for many years. But getting old means more than that to most people. To me it implies a downward spiral to the end of our life in its current form–the only form we now know. We do talk about our clothes, electronic devises, machines, houses cliches as “getting old.” However in this case “outdated,” worn, or over used may be a better description of what is happening.

Here I want to discuss what getting old means to me and most people I know today.

Literally it means we have lived a long time, right? But implied in the phrase is the notion that we can no longer function as well as we have in the past because we are getting worn out.

Life is a journey. Getting old means getting closer to the end of the journey we know as living. But most of us do not know where or when that journey ends. If I were on a journey around the world, and I did not know where or when the journey was to end, would I not want to continue to experience every day to its fullest? It would be impossible to rush to the end, even if I wanted to, since I know not where or when the end is.

And so, until I have arrived at my final destination or can see it clearly, I will try my best to live everyday to its fullest.

I realize this is very short, but I must stop here as I am getting tired, it is time for my nap, and my arthritic fingers are screaming at me.

© August 2, 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

Mud, by Ricky

It is 11pm as I begin typing this and I am tired and sleepy. As a result, my mind is all muddled up. My eyelids are very heavy. Apparently, the Sand Man is using mud in my eyes instead of sand. This makes me feel muddy all over. Now I know what Stephen means when he says he feels, “Fair to muddling.”

I know a man who thinks he “knows it all”. I know a man who was awarded a non-medical PhD and likes people to call him by the title “Doctor”. I know a man who when he begins to talk will monopolize the conversation. I know a man who will tell you everything he knows about a subject without giving anyone else a chance to speak about the topic. I know a man who is so careless in speech that he insults people over the phone and then gets upset when they hang-up on him. I know a man who denies facts that contradict his closely held political beliefs. I know a man who believes it is perfectly okay for the wealthy to use their political contributions to buy access to politicians in order to corrupt the democratic form of government and gain more personal wealth. I know a man who believes it is okay for the poor to be poor, because, he says, “Jesus said the poor will always be with you.” I know a man who thinks Rush Limpbrain is a soothsayer. — I know a Republican. — His name is Mud.

I also know a Republican who is very caring, sensitive, generous with his money, handsome, and intelligent. — His name is Mud-lite.

© 4 October 2015

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

Posted on

Keeping the Peace, by Lewis T

…IN EIGHT EXTREMELY DIFFICULT STEPS
(OR LEWIS’ RULES OF ORDER)

1. Don’t interrupt your adversary. Listen fully until you understand completely their position.

2. Say back to him or her what you think they said. “Did I get that right?”

3. If they say, “That’s not what I said (or meant)”, ask them to repeat. If they say, “Yes, that’s right”, continue.

4. Tell them specifically why you disagree. Ask them to repeat what you just said.

5. When the area of disagreement is clear to both parties, then: a) agree to disagree, or b) agree to break off the discussion until another day or until a mediator can be brought in or until areas of disagreement can be clarified or fact-finding takes place.

6. Never shout, threaten, or resort to ad hominem attacks.

7. Never make the argument personal or ego-centered.

8. Apologize if you step over the line. [Never be afraid to admit that you are wrong.]

9. Remember, above all, that cutting the baby in half is no substitute for lacking humility.

© 10 June 2013

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.