The Gayest Person I Ever Met by Ray S

Of all the personalities in the history of mankind and womankind such as the arts, science, politics, athletics, and some miscellaneous criminal miscreants that qualify for membership in our GLBTQ community – the one I find “most gayest” is my intimate acquaintance with a very classic “closet case”.

It is a story of a gay man and actually nothing out of the ordinary. As he relates the story it all started at the age of three or four when a little girl from next door got them naked and compared minute genitalia, 5 & 6 years old found the usual little boys discovering each others equipment. It wasn’t until he and a close boyhood family friend discovered the fun of mutual sexual gratification – the manual method.

As he remembers about the advent of puberty did he learn that these little pleasures were socially unacceptable in the yes of the straight and narrow. And so sin arrives on the scene to raise its ugly head – no pun intended.

The reality of learning how to reconcile little pleasures and fitting in with mainstream conventional middle class America, i.e. what boys do with girls, getting married – boys and girls style, making the future generation, educating the little buggers, paying for the weddings and maybe a divorce or two. Countless birthday cards to all of the family and extended families. Making a living which includes figuring out what he thought would possibly be lucrative, socially acceptable – never mind not doing something he really wanted to do – if he ever figured that one out.

Does all of this sound familiar and routine – “been there done that”. I began to really get weary as this story droned on and on.

He discovered at some point in this drama that sometimes the closet door slammed back and hit him square in the ass. Such were the perils of tripping on the tight rope of life in the gay light way.

Eventually, various resolutions over which he tells me he had no control blew the closet door off its hinges (again no pun intended).

I am happy to report to all of you who are still listening – those who excused themselves I sympathize and understand – if I hadn’t had to feel compelled to tell this story I’d be gone too.

Suffice it to say like so many other late bloomers, he’s wrapped himself in a rainbow flag and is attempting to live a most gay life – but of course in good taste, quietly, and only as wild as his advanced years will tolerate.

Moral: like the salmon swimming upstream on its way to spawn – life goes on and then you die with a smile on your face.

© 14 July 2014  

About the Author

How Did I Get Here by Phillip Hoyle

I never wanted to be a truck driver, but that’s how I got to Denver. I rented the moving van in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where I was ending my conventional life characterized by many years with work and family. I packed up what was left of my belongings and set out on an adventure, one that continues to this day.

Denver, the destination and site of my adventure, was the large city of my childhood. Yearly trips usually brought our family to Loveland and Estes Park, and sometimes Dad would take us through Denver where he almost always got lost. The diagonal streets made navigating too tricky. (I sometimes have the same problem when I’m downtown.)  Here in Denver I saw my first dinosaur bones, my first skyscrapers, my first art museum, and the then-new Cinerama movies. I was impressed. The town seemed pretty clean, full of possibilities, and a place where unusual people could gather and thrive. I had made quick visits to Kansas City, Missouri, and Wichita, Kansas, but neither place made a lasting good impression or affected me where it mattered: issues of art, archaeology, education, and scenery. I liked Denver.

I had other visits to my favorite big city: an overnight stay on my honeymoon, annual commutes from Kansas and Missouri to western Colorado, and, in my forties, short sorties from Montrose into the city where I stayed with a friend I had met in seminary. Then I often went to the Denver Art Museum and the Denver Public Library. Both impressed me greatly. I even chose my two favorite neighborhoods in which I might live should I ever move here.

I spent a short time in Tulsa. There my life really changed. Things kind of caught up with me resulting in the ends of my marriage and of my long career. I quit. I thought about where to go, what to do. I decided to move to a western city and considered Denver, San Diego, and Seattle. My Denver friend suggested I get out of Tulsa before I got in trouble; I could crash at his place. His offer solved a few things for me, but mainly promised a place to live while I found a job. Besides, I knew Denver had adequate public transportation. So I packed up what things I had after my separation from my wife and hit the road.

Now driving a truck was a new experience for me, especially across four states. I knew I’d need a rather large van but didn’t want one so large I’d be scared on the road. So I started giving away my belongings—most of my library, music, records, cassette tapes, and even some CDs. I culled my files and finally threw away almost all of them. I filled several boxes with books for my kids and grandkids. I rented a big yellow truck, packed it with what was left, and drove it to Missouri where I unpacked most of the furniture at my daughter’s apartment.

Matthew, my six-year-old grandson, accompanied me on the trip. We stopped near Booneville, Missouri, for gas and snacks. Before we reached Kansas City my young companion was fast asleep. I gassed up at a 7-11 in Topeka, the city where my long-time friend-lover lived. Being so late, I didn’t call him as I had promised I would always do in the letter I sent at the end of our affair. I hated breaking this promise, but I had to keep going on down the roads I’d begun traveling. We stopped at a rest area west of Salina—the end of the Flint Hills where I was born and the beginning of the high plains. It seemed a point of demarcation for me. There I realized I was driving a little truck, so it then seemed, parked alongside several huge rigs. The contrast helped me realize the challenges I faced were not as large as I had been thinking. My grandson awakened briefly. Then we slept several hours before cleaning up as well as one can in such a place. The day dawned bright and beautiful. We drove west stopping at high noon in Goodland where we picnicked at a city park. My grandson ran through sprinklers of icy cold water on that hot summer afternoon while I sat and then lay on a picnic table under a shelter. I watched his cavorting, yelled out my encouragement, and enjoyed his display of enthusiasm. I thought I’d need to be like that kid in Denver, in my new life, playful and in the moment. At Burlington, Colorado, we stopped at the outdoors museum, a reconstruction of old buildings. We went to the saloon and ordered root beers. A young dancehall girl thought my grandson was so cute; he was embarrassed and wouldn’t answer her questions or even look at her. I wondered what I could learn from that, perhaps to be true to myself but not without confidence. We drove a few miles beyond to another roadside park. I had to sleep so got a pad out of the back of the van and rested on another picnic table. Finally we pulled into Denver—worn out (I’d slept little in three days) but elated.

Someone questioned whether making so many changes so radically and in so little time constituted a mental breakdown. I realize my decisions happened a little late to be a classic mid-life crisis but as an analytical tidbit, midlife works for me. The themes had been present my whole life long: my homosexual proclivity, my being a rather parent-pleasing middle child, my personal understanding of religious realities, my commitment to music and other arts, my abilities and inabilities to communicate my feelings, and my sense of individuality (some would call selfishness). Anyway, I had to change, so I morphed into a person now true to some themes I had kept out of the center of my life. How I actually got to Denver from Tulsa seemed a symbol of a much greater change: my yearning for simplicity that resulted in throwing away many things, those accoutrements of modern life—steady job, salary, husband/wife relationship, and much more. These thoughts had swirled around my head while I drove west to my new home.

I unloaded some things into my friend’s apartment. I loaded the rest into and on top of my son’s van. I was left with clothes, art supplies, six boxes of books (I’d ridded myself of fifty-four boxes), and one piece of furniture. I had seriously lightened my load. Finally I returned the truck to the rental company. And now I’m telling my story like a truck driver, at times excitedly, milking its entertainment value, but still including its essential truths. That’s how I got to Denver to begin a new chapter of my life.

© 25 November 2011  

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

Wisdom by Pat Gourley

When looking at the definition of the word “wisdom”  -‘having or showing experience, knowledge and good judgment’ – I have to honestly say it seems not much of that applies to me at age 65. Perhaps real wisdom will come in the decades after 65 if I am lucky enough to experience them. I am though relatively content with where I am with how I move in the world and my overall view of it despite the fact that I don’t appear to be offering up much to the eventual survival of the species.

I do think though I have a bit of wisdom incorporated into my nursing work and I do believe that a level of true compassion, as opposed to the often politically correct ‘idiot compassion’, has over four decades been slowly ripened and gets expressed in perhaps actually helping the folks seeking health care I run into these days. This involves an approach I really started to only hone in the early 1990’s in the AIDS Clinic at Denver Health and supported by the philosophical writings of my favorite nursing theorist Margaret Newman. I have I think shared this quote from Newman’s work in the past but here it is again: “The responsibility of the nurse is not to make people well, or to prevent their getting sick, but to assist people to recognize the power that is within them to move to higher levels of consciousness”.

A recent example of this in practice is offering to take certain select friends to see the documentary Fed Up currently playing at the Mayan Theatre. Rather than continued harping at them about how their diet is fueling their metabolic syndromes and in certain case frank diabetes, I am simply facilitating their exposure to this wonderful film and maybe some of it will hit home and get incorporated into changes in their diets. Though an after movie stop at Gigi’s Cupcakes at 6^th and Grant makes me wonder if I didn’t just piss away a ten dollar movie ticket and in the interest of full disclosure that would be my ten dollar ticket I am talking about. Hey, when it comes to taking direction from almost any nurse it is best not to do what we do but rather do what we say. Or perhaps more in the spirit of Margaret Newman look at where we are pointing to and see what might be over there for you.

I’d like to change gears a bit here and turn my focus from cupcakes to acronyms and an application to today’s topic of wisdom. Our Story telling Group is part of the S-A-G-E activities offered by the Center. SAGE is an acronym that stands for “Service and Advocacy for GLBT Elders”. That is pretty much a big snooze as far as I am concerned. I would much rather have us referred to as “sages” all small letters and no acronym even alluded to. The acronym, SAGE, also seems to heavily imply that we are a group in need of advocacy and services. There is certainly no denying that some of us queer elders are in need of both service and advocacy at least at certain times during our golden years. However, it is much more appealing to me to be recognized as a sage with much to offer the larger queer world than a member of a group called SAGE focused on providing advocacy and service.

One definition I ‘Googled’ on for a sage is someone “having, showing or indicating great wisdom”. Well I think its time we all accepted that definition and put on the mantle of sage. Again to cop a bit to Margaret Newman I think many of us around this table are very capable of helping our LGBT brothers and sisters to recognize the power that is within them to move to higher levels of consciousness.

One form this might take is embedded in idea that Phil and I have been lightly kicking around for sometime and that might be an e-book perhaps, an anthology of stories from this group from those of you who have come to openly queer consciousness in your SAGE years.

There has been so much wisdom expressed in many stories I have heard here but I am often most moved and impressed with those coming out stories being shared by folks who have come out in the last 10-15 years and much more recently for a few. These stories would I think be a great benefit and succor to those other elders contemplating this same leap. There is an old Zen saying: ‘leap and a net shall appear”. What a great gift of a net these stories could be for someone deciding at 50 or 60 or 70 to come out as queer.

I have shared many of my own coming out experiences primarily from the late sixties but really how much would a 60 year old today relate to my crazy ass stories of fucking with my high school mentor in the biology lab of a Catholic prep school on a Good Friday afternoon no less. Rather people relating stories of coming to queerness out of long and often very happy heterosexual unions often resulting in offspring during the swirling years of gay liberation, AIDS, Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and marriage equality would most likely resonate much more than tales of hallucinogenic trips at the bathhouses of the 1970’s.

So in closing I would like to anoint us all as the true sages we are and push us a bit to start sharing our deep wisdom about the many areas of life we have occupied, particularly the queer corners.

© 22 June 2014  

About the Author  

I was born in La Porte Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.

Where Was I by Nicholas

          In the early 1960s, I was in high school studying French, struggling with chemistry, hating algebra and the jerk who taught it, but loving English Lit and the teacher who taught that. High school was nothing until my senior year and then I learned to party and enjoy myself. The promise of just getting out of high school was enough to liberate my spirit. It was the great age of liberation with the civil rights movement and its innumerable clashes on the nightly news every day.

          Liberation for me came in drive down Interstate 71 from Cleveland to Columbus where I joined 45,000 other students at Ohio State University. New people, new studies, new challenges and suddenly I got to make my own decisions. OSU is where I took part in my first political demonstrations, volunteered to work in a community development project in Columbus, first doubted my Catholic faith, and first voiced opposition to the Viet Nam War. It was also where I had my first disastrous love affair that I didn’t even realize was a love affair until many years later.  

          And then I came out—to California, that is. Experiences in San Francisco and elsewhere in California are what I associate with “what did you do in the 60s?” When the ‘60s began and ended is a matter of interpretation or maybe just mood. Like many of the drug-induced experiences back then, the decade tends to wiggle and undulate on and off the calendar. It is not contained in a simple ten year span of time.

My political activism, however, was short lived. I stayed on the fringe looking in. I was on the edge of the crowd trying to escape the tear gas and bullets that summer day on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, not in the thick of it getting beaten up by police. I was in the back of the throng at the Altamont concert, kind of wishing I wasn’t there at all, but thankfully not crushed in front of the stage and amidst some lethal violence. I was stunned one day to see a friend appear in the bright California sunshine when he ventured out of his heavily curtained, smoky sanctuary/den, looking like a cadaver. But I wasn’t that drugged out cadaver and wasn’t headed in that direction.

I would work for a few months and then take off for a while, go hitchhiking, spend days climbing Mt. Tamalpais and watching the ocean from a sunny meadow. I came to think that this is how life ought to be. I would grow up, that is, settle down, commit to something, have a career, later, I kept thinking. There was plenty of time for that.

My project then was to stay out of the war and out of the army, a commitment based both on principle and downright fear. The fear was as realistic as the principle was laudable. I was against that war and couldn’t see myself joining in any war and when drafted to do so, said, no.

The motivation for my and others’ actions did not stem entirely from a sense that we were acting out grand laws of history as earlier revolutionaries might have but we came from a very personal sense of what was at stake for us. Beyond mere egoism and self-indulgence, it was an ethical standard based on me.

And there was music, always there was the music. Rock music took on an artistry ranging from the Beatles’ tunes and the poetry of Jim Morrison and the Doors to the blues of the Grateful Dead with the exquisite guitar of Jerry Garcia and the hard rocking of the Rolling Stones. From them I learned about Chicago blues, electric blues, hard and fast urban blues.

So, where was I in the 60s. I was in the city hearing black people tell their stories. I was on the all-night bus to New York City for the first huge anti-war march. I was hiking through Point Reyes on the Pacific Coast. I was filing appeal after appeal with my draft board. I was discovering yoga and quiet and meditation. I was discovering brown rice. I learned to bake bread. I was dodging cops to avoid getting arrested. I was bouncing around Speedway Meadow in Golden Gate Park probably hearing the Grateful Dead or Janis Joplin or Quicksilver Messenger Service. I was growing up and life was good.

© 2 June 2014  

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.

Emily Dickinson Lesbian Puritan Poetess by Louis Brown

I originally intended to do a report on the work of Constantine P. Cavafy.

However, after I took a good look at who wrote what previously on the Tell Your Story blog, I noticed that Colin Dale gave an even better report on Constantine P. Cavafy than myself. His article is entitled “Details,” dated 2-27-2013.  So I decided on my second choice for favorite of the past and that was Emily Dickinson, before which, however, on Cavafy:

When I was at SAGE New York, I looked at the Community Bulletin Board, and I noticed that there was going to be a public reading of the poetry of Constantine P. Cavafy. I guess over the years we have heard some mention of gay poets, Alan Ginsberg, and in 19^th Century France, Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine.  I wonder if Sylvester Stallone knows that his character Rambo has the same last name a gay French poet?

When I saw the ad for the reading of Cavafy’s poetry, I said to myself that an insightful gay libber did a good deed in trying to popularize Constantine Cavafy’s poetry. Right now for our community, he is the most interesting gay poet, the hottest potato, so to speak, for several reasons. Like the work of 19^th century homophile writers John Addington Symonds in America, Magnus Hirschfield in Germany, Edward Carpenter and Havelock Ellis in England, Cavafy’s poetry has a specific reference to ancient gay history, that is to our golden age, ancient Greece.

Wikipedia: Constantine P. Cavafy (/kəˈvɑːfɪ/;^[1] also known as Konstantin or Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, or Kavaphes; Greek: Κωνσταντίνος Π. Καβάφης; April 29 (April 17, OS), 1863 – April 29, 1933) was a Greek poet who lived in Alexandria and worked as a journalist and civil servant. He published 154 poems; dozens more remained incomplete or in sketch form. His most important poetry was written after his fortieth birthday.

He wrote in Greek.

+++

Emily Dickinson was a 19^th Century Lesbian Puritan Poet, called the Dame of Amherst. She was one of a number of writers of the New England “Renaissance,” which include among others two gay men Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Her years were 1830- 1886. When I think about it, I could have done a report on Walt Whitman, n’est-ce pas? Considering the historical period, we are talking about the Yankee defeat of the Confederate Army.

If Puritanism had not been so repressive, I am sure Emily Dickinson would love to have said something like, “When people ask why I never married, I would answer that I get a warm feeling when certain women enter the same room I am sitting in.”  But of course she couldn’t because it was “Verboten”.

  

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us -don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

[This teaches us how to be skeptical of politicians].

+++

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labour, and my leisure too,
For his civility.

We passed the school where children played,
Their lessons scarcely done;
We passed the fields of gazing grain,
We passed the setting sun.

We paused before a house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries; but each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses' heads
Were toward eternity.

+++

Snake

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him, -did you not?
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Unbraiding in the sun, -
When, stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature's people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

[Subtle resemblance to Edgar Allen Poe].

Moral of story: we need a Gay and Lesbian school to popularize our literary past.

© 27 June 2014  

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.

Mom by Lewis

I hardly know where to begin to write about my one-and-only mother.  "Mother" is the last descriptor she would ever want to define her function in life.  If she could, she would surely prefer to be remembered for her contributions to education, journalism, or faith than maternalism.  If I had to choose, I would say she bore more resemblance to the Mary Tyler Moore character in Ordinary People than Barbara Billingsley in Leave It to Beaver.  That is to say, she had few of the maternal instincts that we normally associate with Midwestern families of the post-World War II era.

Like Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, my parents slept in twin beds.  My dad dressed in a separate bedroom, which also served as his office.  Although my bedroom was just across a narrow hallway, I don't remember ever hearing any sounds coming from their bedroom that would suggest anything physical took place in that sterile space.  I never saw them hug or kiss, not even a peck on the cheek.  My parents didn't even argue, at least, in my presence.  My dad was a solid breadwinner, meek and mild-mannered as Clark Kent.  Together, they were the very model of the modern, Middle American, Methodist couple--except for their fondness for a highball before dinner.

Mother grew up in the small, rural, southwest-Kansas town of Pratt.  She was proud of the fact that Alfred Hitchcock's one-time-favored actress, Vera Miles, attended school there.  Her father, the only grandparent I ever knew, was an engineer on the Rock Island railroad.  They raised chickens and a few cows on their small property on the edge of town.  There were six children, three girls and three boys.  Mother was the oldest.  As such, she had many responsibilities for home-making and child-rearing.  I suspect that that had much to do with her distaste for such menial labor in her adulthood.  She had more dignified aspirations.

Mother was quite intelligent.  She graduated from high school at the age of sixteen with her sights set on going to college.  It was 1923, however, and her parents saw no value in a daughter of theirs staying in school.  She was on her own.  She held a lifelong deep resentment over the fact that her brothers, none of whom were in the least interested in further matriculation, were given a car as their graduation present.

Denied any way of supporting herself on her own, she soon married.  By the time she was 23, she had given birth to a son and a daughter.  More and more, she was feeling trapped in a hopeless and loveless situation.  She wanted a career.  She was bright and ambitious.  Living with a man who she felt was never going anywhere in life and being saddled with two small kids was like being entombed alive.  So, in 1936, she filed for divorce.  Almost shockingly, she did not ask for custody of the children.  In those times, it was almost automatic that the children would be placed in the care of the mother.  Not so this time.  BJ and Joyce were placed with their paternal aunt, also living in Pratt.

Before long, mom and another woman had opened a beauty parlor above the Sears department store in Pratt.  She took the two kids to the movies every Wednesday evening.  Sixty years later, as Mom was brushing my daughter's hair at our house in Michigan, she started talking about the time she and the other woman ran a beauty parlor.  My daughter, who is bisexual, later related that she was getting the impression that there might have been more than business on the two women's minds.  Mother had told me some years before that her partner had, quite abruptly, sold her interest in the shop to her and taken off for California, never to be heard from again.  A lover's quarrel or a simple commercial transaction?  I'll never be certain.

The beauty shop was down the hall from the office of the man who would become my father.  They dated and were married in 1940.  It would be 4-1/2 years before mom got pregnant with me.  Perhaps it was the turmoil of WWII.  My dad didn't serve in the war because of his limp from polio contracted when he was 20.  Mixed blessing, I would say.

On the other hand, my suspicion is that Mom was just not interested in having another child.  By 1945, she was 38 years old.  She was still hoping for a career as a writer or secretary or something.  My fantasy is that on VE Day--May 7, 1945--my father swept my mom up in his arms and carried her to the bedroom where they had their own private celebration of the sweepingly historic occasion.  I was born on February 3rd of the following year.  A new era of American domination was dawning and I would be in on the ground floor.

There were a few small hitches, however.  Mom made plain many years later that I was the child my father wanted--his one and only.  In addition, in her view, I was a "deficit baby", that is, a parasite that siphoned off the calcium from her bones and teeth.  At the baby shower in my honor, they played a game where the guests attempt to estimate the birth weight of the baby.  All of the guesses, duly preserved in my baby book, were on the low side, suggesting to me that Mom may not have been taking enough nourishment.   My actual birth weight was over seven pounds, close to normal.

One of my earliest memories is Mom singing a lullaby to me.  The lyrics, written by Paul Robeson, are, in part and adapted, as follows:

Evenin' breezes sighin', moon is in the sky.
Little man, it's time for bed.
Mommy's little hero is tired and wants to cry;
Now, come along and rest your weary head.
Little man, you're cryin', I know why you're blue.
Someone took your kiddy-car away.
You better go to sleep now
Little man, you've had a busy day.
Johnny won your marbles, tell you what we'll do,
Mom'll get you new ones right away.

Sadly, that was a rare moment of tranquility between Mom and me.  Most of my recollections of close contact with Mom involved physical pain on my part.  Not to paint myself as a complete innocent, however.  Some of you may remember my story of many months ago about climbing the neighbor's chimney.  Years later, there was the time I walked home from school in a light rain without a jacket.  Mom was standing in the front doorway.  As I opened the door, she slapped my face, hard. 

"How dare you not wear a coat in the rain.  Do you want to get sick?"

"I'm sorry.  I wasn't thinking", I said in complete contrition, hoping to appease her anger.  (After all, it had worked before when I suggested that mom stop worrying and ask God to take care of me.)  Still, I was blind-sided by her action.  Looking back on it now, I believe that Mom resented being stuck at home as a lowly housewife and my getting a cold would only aggravate her sense of obligation and despondency.

When I had a spanking coming, it's delivery came at the hand of my mother.  Her hands were good for other things, as well.  When I had ringworm of the scalp, it was she who was stuck with the most unpleasant job of removing the hairs from a circular patch of my scalp about two inches in diameter with a pair of tweezers, one-by-one.  About five minutes at a time was all either she or I could stand.  When I got stabbed in the hand with a pencil at school, it fell upon Mom to dig out the remnants of graphite with a needle.

I believe that Mom simply did not have the disposition for being a caregiver.  I remember her telling me about having to care for my paternal grandmother, who was dying of colon cancer in the early 1940's.  It was clear it was not something she found rewarding. 

But Mom's hardness was shown in other, perhaps even less endearing ways.  When I graduated from law school, my parents drove to Detroit from Hutchinson, Kansas, for the ceremony in Ford Auditorium downtown.  With about an hour to go before the procession began, Mom announced that she wasn't feeling well and wanted to stay at our house.  I was terribly disappointed but not surprised.  She had been deprived of the opportunity to be a part of such an occasion in her own right; how tough it must of been for her to look back on her life of nearly three-quarters of a century as principally a home-maker and not feel big-time self-pity.

Her predicament came most into focus for me on her 50th birthday.  I was practicing my Hawaiian steel guitar--hats off to The Lawrence Welk Show--in the utility room across the tiny dining room from the kitchen, where Mom was ironing.  All of a sudden, she burst into tears.  I had never witnessed such a scene in our emotionally sterile household.  Being gay--though closeted even to myself--I wanted to rush over to her side to comfort her.  But I had not the slightest idea what to say to her.  I had no clue what was going through her head.  Had Dad said something before leaving for work?  So, I just kept on playing my syrupy music, which seemed to be of no help whatsoever.  Fifty years old, ambitious, and still ironing in the kitchen.  That's enough to depress anybody.  I myself don't iron to this day.

On my parents last visit to Michigan in 1989, Mom was sitting in the new family room addition.  At one point, she said, "I think I must have left my cane upstairs".  We had no upstairs.

After my Dad died in 1990, my entire family--wife, two kids and I--went to Kansas to take care of Mom.  It soon became apparent that Dad had been covering for Mom for months.  She was not able to live by herself.  We moved her to a "progressive living" type of senior housing--independent living, assisted living, and nursing care. 

Initially, we thought independent living would be the best choice, as she was still able to do quite a few things for herself.  Ten weeks later, we got a call from the staff.  Mom was having hallucinations about someone being under her bed and was not regular about showing up for meals.  They suggested moving her to the nursing section.

Within a week or two, we got another call, one which caused my mind to harken back to my daughter's story about my Mom's possible sexual orientation.  My mother had gotten out of bed and dragged her roommate from her bed onto the floor.  Then, Mom had sat astride the other woman demanding sex, saying, "You are my husband and you owe me!"  The institution informed me that they had to tie my mother into her bed with straps and that she would have to be moved to a different facility as they were not equipped to handle such behavior.

Not only was Mom suffering from the side effects of medications that lower one's inhibitions, but she also was apparently afflicted with Alzheimer's disease.  It was Christmas Season.  I had to quickly find her a place with an Alzheimer's patient wing.  The nearest decent one was in Wichita.  We moved Mom there as soon as the arrangements could be made. 

At this point, I would have given almost anything to have my old Mom back.  Her disease may have dulled the loneliness and frustration of losing all track of time and familiarity of face and habitat but I can only imagine that those last three years were nearly unbearable, both for her and the staff and other inhabitants, for whom Mom had nary a kind word to say.  It was during that period that my half-brother--her son--died of lung disease at the age of 63.  I never told her.  How could I, when she kept saying that BJ was coming to pick her up for a drive?  At the end, she no longer recognized me.  She died surrounded by strangers, pushing a walker down the hallway, saying antagonistic things to those she passed.  Was she ever truly happy?  Did I ever make her smile?  Either I don't know or I can't remember or both.  I do know that I made my Dad smile and I guess that will have to do.

© 2 December 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.

Poetry Tree by Beth Kahmann

Some need Poetry like another whole in their head,

Well, I certainly don’t need another whole in my head, Beth said.

Others need it to fulfill a proverbial scratch that needs itching

Or a needlepoint project that needs more stitching

Others still ache and crave

And must partake and create, 

In order to be saved.

Others, still, need it to quench a gnawing thirst, just like a water balloon, ready to burst.

One common denominator or thread seems to be that some cradle their Poetry, as if it is Communal bread. 

All I know is I get bursts and phrases of conjunctions and dangling participles that randomly float around in my head, even when I’m in bed

And when I am able

I sit at my table

striking pen to paper

creating, cultivating my own little song, rhyme, Haiku or fable

Sometimes I awaken from sleep or slumber or meditation, my mind firing with anticipation.

Then the words and phrases spill forth before I say my morning affirmations.

I feel so blessed to see Poetry as my passion and my friend.

I feel like a kid again

who gets a free snow day and gets to play and play and play all day.

All I know is my soul is saturated with utter joy.

Not unlike a Toddler Turning Two who receives a brand new sparkling toy.

Not sure why the title of this poem is Poetry Tree, well that’s because to me………Poetry is Rule Free!!!!

14 July 2014 

About the Author 

Beth is an artist, educator, and is very passionate about poetry.

She owns Kahmann Sense Communications (bethkahmann@yahoo.com).

Keeping the Peace by Will Stanton

In 1967 when I traveled through Yugoslavia, all the diverse states and ethnic groups were unified under the stern, deft hand of Marshall Tito.  Keeping the peace required a person of his universal admiration, status, and cleverness.  Although I was, at the time, quite young and not particularly well versed in world affairs, even I could see the underlying signs of entropy and conflict.  Sewn together at the end of World War I into a makeshift nation, differences and suspicions between Muslims, Orthodox Christians, and Roman Catholics, were just too deeply engrained for the nation to last once Tito was gone.

The western-most state of Slovenia had more in common with Austria culturally and ethnically than it did with its eastern counterparts.  Also, for a so-called communist state, it was very democratic, in some ways even more so than America.  Upon my entering adjacent states, I noticed differences in the cultural, religious, and political atmosphere.  During World War II, the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia claimed to be an independent fascist state with an uneasy mix of Muslims and Christians.  Farther east, Serbia seemed more primitive and populated by stern, dour people who easily adhered to communism.  Muslim minarets were in far greater evidence than in the western states.  I had no idea that, after Tito’s death, my perception of Yugoslavia being an uneasy alliance of very different peoples would prove to be so prophetic.

I recall in particular the ancient town of Mostar in Bosnia.  I took a picture of the world-famous stone bridge that arched over the deep ravine of the Neretva River. 

16th Century Mostar Bridge

Of my  more than three hundred slides from that year, that color slide of the old bridge and the stone buildings on either side of the ravine was one that literally was of prize-winning quality.  The Ottoman architect Mimar Hayruddin built the narrow, stone bridge in the 16^th century, and the bridge was the subject of many paintings and photographs over the centuries.  During the early 1990s, however, neither the bridge nor the peace stood.

In 1992, the area of Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia. The central government in Beograd, Serbia, retaliated.  Mostar was subjected to an eighteen-month siege by the Yugoslav People's Army.  They first bombed Mostar in April, 1992.  The Croatian Defense Council responded.  Continued shelling destroyed the iconic bridge, the Franciscan monastery, the Catholic cathedral, the bishop's palace (with a library of 50,000 books), and a number of secular institutions as well as fourteen mosques. 

Civil War Destroyed the 16th Century Mostar Bridge

It took the intervention of the United Nations and the European Union to attempt to bring relative peace to the area by forming a Croat-Muslim coalition and then trying to convince the Serbian government in Beograd to accept a peace plan.  The Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was comprised of a majority of Muslims and a minority of Christians.  Fighting broke out among them, too.  Before the agreement could be signed, the Muslim-led forces fought bitterly against the Christian Croats in attempt to control Mostar.  The Christian Croat forces dominated Mostar, controlled the  western part,  and the Muslim Bosniak population was expelled and driven from their homes to the eastern side.  Peace, empathy, and humanity crumbled among the ruins of Mostar’s stone buildings.

Finally, a U.S.-led agreement was signed, and Mostar was placed under E.U. administration with the German mayor from Bremen governing and a British general in charge of U.N. troops.  The peace accord resulted in a very shaky union of two autonomous regions, the Serb Republic and the Bosniak and Croat Federation.  Decision-making was run by a system of ethnic quotas that has stagnated making agreements and has stifled economic recovery.  The editor of an independent Mostar website has stated, “They never will reach agreement.”

Nine billion Euros have been spent rebuilding the region including Mostar’s bridge and city buildings, but there still is no reconciliation among the inhabitants.  The two city-sections each side of the river still have their own electricity provider, phone network, postal service, utility services and university.  Croat and Bosniak schoolchildren attend separate classes, studying from different textbooks.  The Croats, in the majority, want the town unified.  Suspicion and hatred are so deep that there appears to be little chance of that.  In January, the situation took a violent turn, when a bomb blast toppled a monument to fallen soldiers of Bosnia's Muslim-dominated wartime army.

Such hate and violence is not unique to Bosnia.  I have pondered long and hard about the failings of humanity, its capacity to hate and to harm its own kind.  For one contributing factor, I am well aware of the continuing debate concerning the relative merits of religion, good versus bad.  Muslim, Christian, Jewish, whatever, sometimes I wonder if Bill Maher is right; the world would be better off if there were no such thing as religion.

But, that is only part of the problem.  Much of the blame is placed upon individuals, their failure to grow into informed, wise, caring people who feel genuine empathy for others.  Inflexible, unquestioning belief in one’s own religion or politics and denial of other people’s religion or politics is symptomatic of just one aspect of the religiosity-mind, a mind so entrenched in one’s own beliefs, even if they defy fact and reality, that any attempt to see beyond them is hopeless.  Any attempt to prompt such people to look beyond themselves and to consider other people and their ideas is met with strident resistance, anger, and sometimes even violence.  We see such toxic mindlessness today even in our own Congress and among the voters and media-pundits who support them.

The wide difference between well informed people with good critical-thinking skills versus those persons with religiosity-minds astounds me.  The famous philosopher Schiller once stated, “Against stupidity, the gods themselves labor in vain.”  I realize that medical researches have found actual evidence of certain differences in brain structure between people that give an indication of which way one may think.  I also realize that learning plays a large part in how one develops his beliefs and method of thinking.  I can only dream of a cure for the religiosity-mind, some medical procedure perhaps on the genetic level so that all those born in the future will develop inquiring, thoughtful, empathetic minds.  Perhaps only then will the world have a chance of keeping the peace.

© 13 May 2013  

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.

Poetry of the New Jersey Turnpike by Ron Zutz

I hope that I shall never see

A restroom stop named for me.

A stop whose hungry drains are pressed

Hoping for my bladder's best.

A pit that stares at crotch all day,

Awaits my trembling hose to spray;

Urinals that in summer's rush

See some sights that would make me blush;

Over whose mouth men have rained;

Bladders no longer filled with pain.

Piss is made by fools like me,

But pissoirs named after Joyce Kilmer -- only in New Jersey.

© 30 June 2014 

About the Author 

Ron Zutz was born in New Jersey, lived in New England, and retired to Denver. The best parts of his biography have yet to be written.