Believing, by Betsy

For the first two decades of my life I religiously recited a creed almost once a week affirming a belief.  Later in my 30’s I stopped doing this because I realized I really didn’t believe the things I was saying I believed. I had no hard feelings about the church, I just stopped believing. I’m referring to the liturgy of the Episcopal Church where I was baptized and confirmed.  The creeds recited in the church liturgy—the Nicene and Apostle’s—were so familiar to me that I could recite both from memory at an early age.

Why are children taught to claim beliefs which they are too young to understand, accept, or reject?  Could it be that IF it is etched deeply enough into your psyche, you will hold on to it for life, never questioning it. It becomes “yours.”  It feels good and it keeps us “safe.”

I recited as I’m sure most of us did, the Pledge of Allegiance every day in school hundreds of times before I ever pondered to what it was that I was pledging allegiance. Around third  grade I thought it odd to pledge to a flag, a piece of cloth hanging on a pole or a wall even while understanding that it is a symbol of our country.  But still why the rote recitation? I think we all know the answer to that question.  By recitation it becomes part of us, we own it and hopefully, later in life, we understand and embrace its meaning.  Never once did an adult explain to me what I was reciting and what it meant.  Just that the recitation was not only important, but also part of one’s life—part of one’s day—like brushing your teeth.

 The next question that comes to mind is why do some examine their beliefs and others go through life never doubting?  I cannot answer that for others, only for myself. I don’t remember my parents teaching me to think critically about anything. They were good parents and I loved them, but they did not question the standard cultural beliefs—at least not out loud. They were not ardent about spreading the teachings of the church, but they accepted those tenants more as a matter of being good Christians and good citizens. I pretty much went along with them, I guess. I really don’t remember. Believing was not “big” in our day to day life. At the same time doubting and challenging was not big either.

I think my mind became “ripe” for critical thinking when I was in college. Or maybe I simply was not mature enough before then. A light came on when I realized I could not will myself to have faith that something was true simply because I was told to do so or because I was told the consequences would be painful for me if I chose not to. One teacher, Professor Jaffe, taught me to question everything. I suppose that’s because that’s what one does in Philosophy class.  But I learned from Professor Jaffe that what is important about learning is thinking for oneself, as well as being exposed to the information. What one does with the information is the whole point.

Thinking back, it seems that it was my husband who put me up to applying critical thinking to   my religious beliefs.  They may have been faintly held beliefs; nevertheless, they had been a part of me for a long time. He simply raised the question one day, “maybe Jesus was just a good man and not divine. How do we know for sure?”  That’s when I made a conscious decision not to take that leap.  We started discussing the power of the church historically. How most of the wars fought throughout history were fought over religious beliefs.  From then on, I questioned everything, my feelings as well as my beliefs.  It was years later, however, that I took any action regarding the feelings I had been questioning in regard to my sexuality.

I am not trying to say that critical thinking is good and faith is bad. They each have a place in my life. But what I do say is that when believing gets in the way of accepting facts and blocks applying information to form one’s opinions, there is a problem. Believing versus gathering information and forming a point of view seems to be the conflict going on today in some political situations. When I see Trump supporters interviewed on the evening news, what I see is people full of fear holding a belief because of that fear, and holding it in disregard of the facts. For example, the belief that ISIS is the greatest threat to life in the U.S. today. ISIS is coming and therefore we all must have guns to protect ourselves and our families. One look at the numbers would make anyone question that belief: in 2013 deaths from ISIS-16; deaths from gun violence-33,000. The numbers speak for themselves if one is willing to take a look at them.

For me it is hard to put my faith in something a book says, even a book considered sacred, or something a person or institution tells me to believe. Yet until I grew up this is what I did and what I was taught to do. This is what most people are taught to do. If it works for them, more power to them.  But it does not work for me and I cannot imagine it ever doing so.

© 12 Jan 2016 

About the Author 

 Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading, writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.

Leaving / Rejoice, by Will Stanton

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

Leaving

He was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1991.  We knew the inevitable end; we just did not know when.  Each passing day, each passing year, was, in its own way, leaving.  We both understood that.  Some acquaintances told me, “Why don't you leave him?”  I would not, not that way.  I stayed.

I did not cry as a child.  My mother told me that, and we both pondered my difference from other children.  Of course, I felt emotion, but nothing seemed to drive me to tears.  That changed later.  A special someone came into my life who truly mattered - - - and then left.  It was the leaving that changed me.  As the famous 19^th-century, authoress George Eliot stated,  “Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.”

I always have been sensitive to others, perhaps unusually empathetic and caring.  That increased significantly after his leaving, both with people whom I knew, and also even fictional characters in movies.  If, in viewing well presented stories,  I become particularly attached to characters who have deep bonds with each other, I apparently identify with them, at least subconsciously; for, if they part from each other, either in having to leave or, perhaps, in dying, emotion wells up within me.  Such deep emotion comes suddenly and unbidden.  When a good person dies, leaving the loved-ones behind, the emotion catches within my gut.  When loving, deeply bonded people part ways, never to see each other again, that, too, deeply moves me.  Again, quoting George Eliot: “In every parting, there is an image of death.”

I admit it: I never have come fully to terms with reality, with mortality.  And, I'm not like so many who choose to hold deep-seated beliefs that this world is merely a stepping-stone to a so-called “better world,” beliefs based upon common indoctrination and, perhaps, upon fear and hope,  Oh, I don't mind so much the afflictions and death of inhuman humans, those whose cruelty and dire deeds harm others.  But, it is the good people, the loving people, people who have contributed so much to the betterment of humankind, whose leaving distresses me.  I would be so much more content if they (dare I say, “we”?) did not have to leave.

I understand and feel the passionate, poetic lines of Dylan Thomas:

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

So, with these thoughts of mine being presented close to All Souls Day (or in German, “Allerseelen”), with the cold days of December soon upon us, I prefer my thoughts to dwell, instead, upon our happier memories of May, our younger days, as expressed in the final lines of Hermann von Gilm poem, “Allerseelen”, “--- Spend on my heart again those lovely hours, like once in May.”

© 23 July 2016  

Rejoice

This presentation of mine today is very personal, and the first important comments are very blunt.  So, hang on, I appreciate your patience in my telling.  It deals with my medical condition over the last several years and my current frame of mind, which has developed, and perhaps even improved over time.

Among other conditions, my three major problems — mega-killer immune system killing off all my clotting blood platelets down to zero, large granular-T-cell leukemia, and the great possibility of developing blood-clots in any organ, brain, or in the circulatory system, — could kill me at any moment.  So little is understood about these conditions, and especially in my extreme case, that the medical staff are writing papers about me.  I consider that a dubious honor.

Yet, here is where I rejoice.  My attitude to all of this has changed markedly over the last few years.  When I first was diagnosed with these major problems, I was, of course, surprised, shocked, and dismayed.  Yet, a whole team of oncology doctors and nurses went to great, extended effort to treat me.  For a short time, it seemed to work.

Then a couple of years ago, I suffered a truly major event when it seemed that no treatment would ever help.  With each episode, the efficacy seems to diminish.  Many people might totally despair and wish to suffer no more.  I did not quite despair, but I was profoundly disappointed and felt resigned to my fate.  So yes, I did think about simply driving up to the mountains some cold night, park on some high point, and gaze at the mountain scenery until I fell asleep.  Of course, I never did.  I still have some pleasures and satisfactions in my life.

Well here again is where I rejoice.  Despite my circumstances, my whole mind-set has changed and improved.  I do what I need to do with St. Joseph’s Hospital the various Kaiser clinics, and all the doctors and nurses.  But, it is what I do and think and feel outside of all of that which is actually making me happy.

For one, just in a week of being out of the hospital and being able to go home on October 28^th (mind you, with some misgivings of the medical staff), I accumulated as much as fifty hours of accomplishing important tasks that, otherwise, would have been neglected and not gotten done.  In addition to being able to take care of bills and other daily obligations, I was here to go through the five days of repeated efforts to repair my broken furnace (thank God, the Denver temperature was unusually warm), the six days to deal frustratingly with Comcast to get my email back working so that I could communicate with family and friends, and to have one other repair done.  Now, if you understand, I felt satisfaction and actually rejoiced that I was able to complete those tasks.

Secondly, I have spent much of my home-time going back through some of my older, more interesting essays and stories for Telling My Story, carefully editing, and (most fun of all) locating and inserting delightful, augmenting images within the text.  I print them for myself, house them in plastic sleeves, and file them in several notebooks, separated by subject.  Yes, I do find great pleasure in this.

Third, at home, I have the pleasures of my fine piano, my TV, my computer, and all the comforts at home.  And on Sundays, I am able to go with my friends, whom I call “the usual suspects,” to a particularly good Perkins restaurant, have a particularly delicious breakfast, and then play the card-game called “Samba,” a form of canasta at my dining-room table.  That simple ritual is a welcome pleasure and provides me with comfort more than people may realize.  I, especially, have the pleasure of sharing that with my friends.

Good friends, kind friends, are the most important of all these factors.  I am truly appreciative and perhaps even ecstatic to have these warm-hearted encounters with my friends, more than they may realize.

And, that brings me to what finally makes me rejoice.  At this advanced age, with this, yet another, bout of terrible affliction, I finally have accepted my situation, doing what I need to do but not fighting the reality of it.  I have developed over time a more relaxed, philosophical feeling and attitude that “what will be will be.”  I am very thankful that, despite my condition, I feel little pain, very much unlike so many other unfortunate people.  I rejoice in my cheerful, positive, interactions with people, medical staff and very good friends.  My positive, uplifting connection to very good friends is, perhaps, my most powerful treatment, my greatest joy.

Thank you, all my kind friends.

© 15 Nov 2016 

[This is the last story (his “Good Bye”) Will Stanton read to the Telling Your Story group on 21 Nov 2016.  Sadly, he passed into history and memories on 1 January 2017.  He is sorely missed. — Editor]

About the Author 

25 Apr 1945 - 1 Jan 2017

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories.  I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones.  Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group.  I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.

My Favorite Gay Role Model, by Ricky

This should be an interesting topic for our story group.  I can imagine that there will be several gay role models written about; perhaps, one for each of the group members.  But, I can also imagine there will be some members who, like me, have no gay role models.  In which case, it will be interesting to see how those group members respond to this topic.

        As far back in time as I can remember, I only met one gay man (Jim Nabors) that might have become a role model but, was not.  The problem was two-fold.  First, I did not know he was gay until decades later and second, I did not know (or admit to myself) I was gay until decades later.

        In my pre-teen years, I did get to watch Liberace, if he was a featured guest on someone’s TV show.  I did notice his flamboyant costume and signature candelabra sitting on top of his grand piano and thought it was strange when compared to other pianists I had seen in movies or on TV.  However, no adult ever mentioned that he was probably a homosexual in my presence.  It would have been strange if they had brought up a sexual topic to me at that age.  If fact, the only people who did speak about sex were my peers when we finally reached puberty and began to share forbidden information, magazines, and photos taken from our fathers’ “hidden stashes”.

        In high school, I did not know any gay males.  In college, while I did mentally lust after a few males in my dorm, I did not act on the feelings because I was afraid of being labeled “queer” and, at that time, I was terribly shy and did not know how to make friends, straight or otherwise.  After I married, there was very little incentive to even mentally lust after males.  So, it was easy to consider myself “normal” and not homosexual.  Besides, I really did want a family.

        Like many gay men of my generation, marriage was expected by society and it became a place to hide one’s orientation and consciously or unconsciously suppress the desires.  Thus, during the marriage period for me there was no opportunity to develop a relationship with a gay person, so no role model appeared.

        At my current age, I am fairly set in my ways and I have yet to find or (in my opinion) to need a gay role model.  I obtained role models when I was young.  Not human role models, but philosophical role models. 

·       If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything.  (I don’t follow this one all the time, in fact never did follow it exclusively.)

·       Do unto others as you want them to do unto you.

And then came the philosophical role models that still dominate my life:

·       The Boy Scout Oath and the Scout Law. These two underpinnings were cemented in place by my joining the LDS Church.

This is why I am the nice-guy I am.

        The Boy Scout program stopped me from becoming a juvenile delinquent.  I was already on the path to become one because I had no parental supervision and lots of time for my idle hands to find the “Devil’s workshop.”  I could say that my scoutmasters were my role models at the time I needed a role model.  It was a pity that they did not know I was sexually confused and they were not gay.  Who knows what or who I may have become if they had un-confused me at that age.

© 23 February 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 was sent to live 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 9-11-2001 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 

Hunting, by Ray S

Here is my pathetic hunting story. I have told you all several stories before of my states of extreme self pity. I was so very sure I must have been an unwanted adopted child. This attitude became most evident when members of the family realized that their social or vacation plans became complicated by the need to figure out what to do with the Boy Child.

Everyone’s Saturday night plans were such that the low man on the totem pole turned out to be the Big Brother who had plans to spend the evening with a lady friend, evidently deemed of great romantic potential. Could anything dampen one’s plans better than having to take the Little Brother along on the date of a maybe lifetime? But the parents had plans for that night too, and they took seniority precedence.

After arriving at the home of Brother’s amore, they settled the child in with necessary coloring books (this story predates TV) and the funny papers, and warned him to stay put while they stepped out for a brief journey to a local ice cream parlor, or so they said.

As I previously described to you the glorious degree of ‘poor me’ took command. After obediently wearing out the box of Crayolas and memorizing the Tribune’s comics, a decision was arrived at by His Nibs: “I will show them. I’ll run away and they will find me never, never, never!” In this instance the open road consisted of several neighborhood blocks dimly lit by an occasional street lamp.

Eventually the spirit of revolt lost some of its motivation and maybe it was time to return to the frenzied desperate arms of the would-be guardians. Only then did the forsaken one realize that after searching and hunting for Young Lady’s house, His Nibs was lost.

Sitting on the street curb, two fists rubbing away the tears from two sad and maybe repentant eyes, he looked up to his side at a tall blue-uniformed man. The man reached down for a little arm and softly said, “Come with me, I’ll take you home.”

© 26 September 2016  

About the Author 

Birthdays, by Phillip Hoyle

My fifteenth birthday was a day of celebration but not so much over me as it was over our family’s move from Junction City to Clay Center. Don’t mistake this by thinking we were excited to be leaving an army town to go to some idyllic place in the countryside. Actually we kids were horrified to think we were moving to a town with only one four-way stop light. We were going out to the sticks in our minds. Still, the move was a celebration.

Probably this birthday was the first one I had that didn’t feature a cake with candles, wishes, and the suspense of wondering if I would get all of the candles blown out in one breath. The night before we family members went to several neighboring houses to sleep since all our goods had been packed the day before into a moving van. Tippy, my beagle, stayed in our garage, the cats on the back porch of the house. We came back for them in the morning. When we were ready to leave, we kids went to get the three of them for the trip. I put Tippy on the leash, Lynn got a good hold on Kissy—her Persian ’fraidy cat—and Holly picked up Mascot—a reprobate tomcat that one rainy afternoon had come home with our youngest sister. I said I’d get the car door. Tippy insisted on sniffing something and then we took off in a run around the west side of the house. The girls and their cats came around the east side of the house just as Tippy and I burst by. Kissy clawed Lynn in a desperate and successful attempt to escape. We got Mascot and Tippy into the car and went searching for Kissy who was nowhere to be found and, if she heard us calling “Kitty, Kitty, Kitty,” didn’t care. We had to leave her and go meet the truck some forty miles away.

During the drive to Clay Center, Tippy hung her head out the open window, Mascot got sick in his litter, and Lynn cried over the loss of her pet. Finally we got to the new town and opened the house to receive our furniture, appliances, and personal effects. I don’t recall a cake or any such celebration, but I do know I began to move into my room, one with a large closet, plenty of wall space for my artwork, and a carpeted floor. The junior decorator in me was a bit over-excited for already Mom had ordered drapes and such, and we were setting out to re-do the whole house.

Later that day, after the van had pulled away and things were settling down, I went outdoors to set up Tippy’s new home in the garage and eventually to assess the lawn. The new power mower was due to arrive the next day; I wanted to be ready. Since the big old house sat on three corner lots, I was trying to figure out how to organize my attack on grass and weeds. I heard a ruckus in the north yard and went to investigate. There I found Mascot stealthily marking his new territory and blue jays in great screaming protest attacking him like protective dive bombers. Such drama!

We were all moving in and making our best ways into the future. I would have new responsibilities, a new school, new teachers, new church, and new friends. I hoped nothing would dive bomb my attempts to make my way. And fortunately I found a strong music program, many activities with kids at church, and a new job. Actually it was the same job—carrying out groceries—but in a new store, this one managed by my uncle who paid me twice as much as my dad had in our other store. I felt like I was growing out of boyhood in a rapid approach to adult life, and I felt ready for it all. While the day’s activities were exhausting and probably there was not a birthday cake, the whole package was a celebration of life and of a new future for me as I began the sixteenth year of my life.

© 14 Nov 2016  

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

My Happiest Day/Leaving, by Pat Gourley

From the Pali Canon:

The Buddha was speaking to a group of monks. He said, “Monks, suppose that this great earth were totally covered with water and a man were to toss a yoke with a single hole into the water. A wind from the West would push it East; a wind from the East would push it West; a wind from the North would push it South; a wind from the South would push it North. And suppose a blind sea turtle were there. It would come to the surface only once every 100 years. Now what do you suppose the chances would be that a blind turtle, coming once to the surface every 100 years, would stick his neck into the yoke with a single hole?”

And the monks answered, “It would be very unusual, Sir, that a blind turtle coming to the surface once every hundred years would stick his neck into the yoke.”

And the Buddha replied, “And just so, it is very, very rare that one attains the human state.”

My happiest day was January 12^th, 1949. This was the day of my birth and it took place in La Porte Indiana.  Based on the Buddha’s thoughts above I was one lucky fella. Putting blind turtles aside and relying instead on actual current knowledge of the development from a fertilized egg to viable fetus your chances are probably less than 20% of making the grade. A very significant majority of embryos never make it beyond the first couple days or weeks following conception.

If according to the most extreme “right-to-lifers” human life begins at conception then heaven is overwhelmingly populated with embryos. Or do embryos have fully actualized souls with developed human personalities? Sorry but that is a bit beyond my comprehension. And if you do believe in God having a direct hand in inflicting his will on all sentient life on the planet then that would make him by far the world’s leading abortionist. There really are a lot of holes in this whole “God thing” when you start to critically ponder it, which of course is why the whole business of “faith” was cooked up. To quote Dana Carvey’s SNL character the Church Lady; “how convenient”!

 And the gauntlet doesn’t end with a live birth but the odds of making it to at least the age of reason, which the Catholic Church tells us is age seven, is certainly much better than in ages gone by. If, however, you are born in many of the poorer countries of the world your chances of dying in infancy are still considerable.

So I must say that the happiest day of my life came with the added bonuses of being born a white male in the United States. This could only have been better if I had been born white in a western European democracy, post 1945 of course.

I suppose I could also say the happiest day of my life, the one with the greatest long-term daily benefit, was the day I came out. Only problem there is pinning down the exact date. My coming out was certainly a process with at times fitful starts and stops, a gradual evolution lasting from about age ten until my mid-twenties. I was certainly much happier at the end of this process than at the beginning. There was though no particular day filled with bolts of lightening from on high and a choir of angels singing to usher me to the promised queer land.

I therefore must return to my day of birth as my happiest since this provided the opportunity for all that was to follow. I am very happy that I was not one of the millions of embryos that inadvertently wind up getting flushed down a toilet or expelled into an open sewer. I truly am one lucky son-of-a-bitch.

I am now left to often ponder what it will be like to take my final leave. Let’s face it all the other leaving one engages in life is really small potatoes compared to the final exit. It is often the paralyzing and at times incomprehensible fear of our vaporizing into nothingness after we take our final breath that has spawned the very many human creations of an afterlife and higher power. If only we aren’t really leaving but rather transitioning to something better and eternal, the ultimate bit of delusional thinking. The idea that I am so great that the Universe can’t possibly go on without me is now in my mind simply deluded human hubris.

Though I am convinced that the human dance on this planet is a going to be limited and very short in the grand scheme of things that does not in any way diminish how fucking amazing it will have been. In growing into the label of humanist, or atheist if I am in a particularly ornery mood, I want to be able to say that when I do take my final leave I will have left things a bit more conducive to other sentient beings able to experience and enjoy the wonder of being one of those lucky blind turtles.

© 29 Oct 2017 

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.

Another Plug for Metropolitan Community Churches, by Louis Brown

Romans 6:23, King James Version (KJV)

²³ For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

“Consequence” is a term of logic, that reminds me of the inevitability of death for sinners as stated in the above-cited Biblical quotation. This often repeated phrase always bothered me. It was used as an excuse to persecute heretics and gay people. It reminds me further of the so-called “clobber passages” often cited from the Bible. Homophobes use this phrase not only to persecute gay people and other non-conformists, they use it to justify their internalized irrational hatred of all non-conformists and people who are different.

Most gay people accept the basic premise of the homophobic version of Christianity and become atheists or agnostics or adopt earth-oriented spiritualties. Personally, I side with Lesbian and gay male positive interpreters of Christianity. In refuting the homophobic version of this Biblical citation, I would remind the homophobe that God did not ordain that majorities get the moral right to define “sin”. Well, MCCR is doing a good job in refuting homophobic prejudice in Bible studies.

My parents were non-conformists and had a negative view of Christian churchdom. Presbyterians (our ancestral denomination) consisted, according to them, of hypocrites who go to church and worship the almighty dollar and call it God. The Catholic Church has a history of sympathizing with Hitler and Mussolini and then makes the dubious claim of being the ultimate moral authority for their believers and for everyone. What a joke!

Personally, I would not go as far as my parents. But we should be on guard for hypocrisy in the Church and for intolerance for non-conformists, but give gay and Lesbian Christians the opportunity to construct a more tolerant, a more enlightened version of Christianity.

© 11 Oct 2016 

About the Author 

I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA's. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.

Nostalgia Regained, Gillian

I have always thought myself blessed; I can live the time and place where my nostalgia takes me any time I want. There are countless books, and especially movies, about Britain during World War Two - the time and place of my early years. There are not as many of the later 1940's, or the '50's and '60's, but there are enough. If I want to return to my childhood amongst remote farms, I can watch and re-watch the old PBS/BBC series, All Creatures Great and Small, which feels to me to be an almost exact replica of my childhood environment.

If I want to feel that stirring patriotism of the war years, emotions which I think I recall but in fact was probably too young, I can watch the old black-and-white movies of the time, many of which are cloyingly sentimental, such as, In Which We Serve, The First of the Few, or the unabashed propaganda of Mrs. Miniver.

In the '50's and '60's came an era of more realistic movies dealing with the many issues remaining after the war: Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Billy Liar, and Georgy Girl.

 

Or those films whose only purpose was to make us laugh, like the wonderful selection starring Alec Guinness.  

And then, along came The Beatles with It's a Hard Day's Night, which appeared in 1964, a year after I graduated from college. A nostalgic ride if ever there was one. 

In the year of my birth alone, 1942, Britain produced over 50 movies set in Britain. Yes, it is easy for me to take that trip down memory lane any time I feel so inclined; which I did quite frequently over the  years. Opportunities for nostalgic trips via the movies are even more plentiful, of course for Americans. But most other first-generation immigrants like me are not offered this escape; at least it is not immediately available from the local library, and probably not even these days from Netflix and the like. How many movies are there that would have you jump aboard and be immediately transported back in time to 1940's Latvia or 1950's Guatemala?

But in later years something seemed to go wrong. I no longer delighted in this armchair time-travel the way I used to. In fact, rather the opposite. Movies, either fiction or documentaries, depicting my time and place of nostalgia, whether made back then or current depictions of it, tended rather to depress and anger me. They make me cry. They are sexist, classist, xenophobic, homophobic; all the ists and ics you can think of. They are bigoted, 100% white and 100% heterosexual. They are all about the unthinking, unquestioning, superiority of men and equally unquestioningly subservient women. They made me question not only my memory but my very sanity. This is the piece of history upon which I gaze with such affection? It has been said that nostalgia is a longing for a time and place which never existed. I fear that must be what I suffered from for much of my life. Sadly, I began to see it more clearly for what really did exist, and did not particularly like it.

I rather blamed my efforts, over the last few years, to become a more spiritual person. This has, as indeed it is part of it's purpose, raised my consciousness; allowed me to see things more clearly, as they are, rather than as a blurred concoction of my own designing. But I hated that I was robbed of my nostalgia; my place of escape on a bad day.

More recently I have turned yet another corner. I can still take that magic carpet ride. I can still enjoy depictions of my past. It is simply that I have lost those tinted lenses through which I once gazed with love and longing.

I wouldn't go back there if you paid me!

In 1952, when Alan Turin was arrested for his homosexuality, I was an English schoolgirl of 12. What hope was there for me to deal with, or even acknowledge, my own homosexuality? Not that anyone knew anything of Turin at the time, all he had done for the Allied war effort was kept under the secure wraps of the Official Secrets Act for decades, but his terrible story is emblematic of the attitudes of the times.

So now I again enjoy movies and books portraying that life I once lived. They no longer make me angry. They simply offer pictures of a past which, thankfully, no longer exists. They remind me of the many ways in which we have moved forward, for all that at times it seems that we have not. I can recognize that past of which I was a part, with at least a modicum of objectivity. I neither hate it nor love it. It once was, and now it's gone. Those spiritual teachers/guides would be proud of me. I am truly, at least in this one instance, living in THE NOW!

© May 2016 

About the Author 

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

Covered Wagon, by Cecil Bethea

Dear Sirs,

You all should know that Mary’s Bar actually did exist here in Denver, but years ago it was urban renewed into a parking lot.  About five years past the parking lot became the site of the building housing the offices of the two newspapers.  An actual takeover of the bar took place during World War II, but I know none of the details.  The result is that my account is fiction in all details except for the name of the establishment.

Having had nothing published, I have been told to include something about my life.  A biography would be slight, I’m from Alabama but have lived in Denver for over fifty years.  My life was certainly not exciting and no doubt of little interest to almost any one.

Then on August 25^th of last year during the Democratic Convention, everything changed.  While coming home after doing some research on the Battle of Lepanto at the public library, I became enmeshed in a demonstration by the anarchists that bloomed into a full-fledged conflict with the police.  Because the eldest of the protestors could not have been thirty, my white hair made me stand out like the Statue of Liberty.  The police in their contorted wisdom decided to take me into custody. During their manhandling of me, a photographer for the Rocky Mountain NEWS took a splendid photograph of me being wrestled by two 225 pound policemen.

After the publication of the photograph and an explanatory article in the NEWS, fame came suddenly and fleetingly.  However, I do understand that my name is embedded somewhere on the Internet.

Since then I have testified in seven trials of the protestors.  Also the A.C.L.U. is working toward a lawsuit for me.  Not the sort of suit that stirs up visions of orgies in Las Vegas with the payoff.  The lawyer has warned me not to splurge at MacDonald’s.

The best!

© 23 Feb 2009 

About the Author 

Although I have done other things, my fame now rests upon the durability of my partnership with Carl Shepherd; we have been together for forty-two years and nine months as of today, August 18th, 2012.

Although I was born in Macon, Georgia in 1928, I was raised in Birmingham during the Great Depression.  No doubt I still carry invisible scars caused by that era.  No matter we survived.  I am talking about my sister, brother, and I.  There are two things that set me apart from people.  From about the third-grade I was a voracious reader of books on almost any subject.  Had I concentrated, I would have been an authority by now; but I didn’t with no regrets.

After the University of Alabama and the Air Force, I came to Denver.  Here I met Carl, who picked me up in Mary’s Bar.  Through our early life, we traveled extensively in the mountain West.  Carl is from Helena, Montana, and is a Blackfoot Indian.  Our being from nearly opposite ends of the country made “going to see the folks” a broadening experience.  We went so many times that we finally had “must see” places on each route like the Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky and the polo games in Sheridan, Wyoming.  Now those happy travels are only memories.

I was amongst the first members of the memory writing class.  While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does offer feedback.  Also, just trying to improve your writing helps no end.

Carl is now in a nursing home; I don’t drive any more.  We totter on.

Clubs, by Betsy

In 1950 when I was 15 years old our family moved from New Jersey to Louisiana.

I have often said a comparable change would be moving from Earth to the moon.

In this case, however, the moon would have been populated with humanoids who had their own culture and language--very much different from anything I had ever encountered in my young life. However, I was young and I had much to learn and experience. 

The first difference that I noticed in my new home was the blatant discrimination and racist practices carried out against people of color. I’m not so sure the same thing was not going on in New Jersey. I suspect I just didn’t see it. It was hidden. In the deep South, it couldn’t be hidden because of the large population of African Americans.  Almost every household in my new hometown had at least one black person working for them. These family servants had to have their own toilet facilities usually outside or in the garage, their own private glass from which to get a drink of water (never would a white person want to drink from the same glass!) We all know about the public drinking fountains.

Of course, the schools were segregated as was everything else. I left the South to attend college in New York State in 1953 never to return except for visits with my parents.

After federal legislation made segregation illegal in the 1960’s nothing changed much in Louisiana. These southern people are slow moving indeed.  It was not until the late 1970’s that they finally were forced to allow black people to use public facilities such as restaurants. On one occasion when I returned to Hammond for a visit, my high school friend suggested we go out to dinner. She assured me they had solved the problem of integration by making the city restaurants into private clubs. Most whites belonged to all the clubs and there were many of them. We would have to take our own liquor since it was no longer a public place. The private clubs could or would not get licenses to sell liquor. 

White folks continued for decades to claim that the culture of segregation is justified because everyone is happy with the status quo including blacks. That’s how we want it and that’s how they want it, was the claim.  People want to stay in their place and keep to themselves. Keep to themselves, maybe, but stay in their current place--please!

The last time I visited Hammond, Louisiana was in 2003 when I attended my fiftieth high school reunion. I had no family there except in the cemetery in the church yard.

I was happy to see that the public places that had had a brief existence as private clubs--they had all become public places again, businesses now open to all people. The college in Hammond--a branch of Louisiana State University--included many black students, and many higher paying positions previously unavailable to people of color were now occupied by African Americans. Change comes slowly but change for the better had indeed come to Hammond Louisiana albeit at the expense of the lives of many good people and many hard-fought battles lasting for decades.

It saddens me more than I can say to watch the evening news and see that racism is alive and well today in the United States of America--land of the free and home of the brave—and not just in the South.  At the same time, I am happy to see that public places are not changing into private clubs in order to avoid the law of the land. The law of the land has made segregation in public places illegal as it should be. In spite of this institutional racism is prevalent. A young law abiding African American or Latino male in some locations is suspect simply because of who he is. Racial profiling is common practice in some areas. Our prisons are filled with men and women of color in numbers disproportionate to the population. In recent years, we have witnessed the passage of laws in some states designed to make it almost impossible for certain people to vote. Those laws, in my opinion, target low income people of color. 

While being white, I have not had to experience the horrors of decades of discrimination I have described here. I have, however, experienced on a very few brief occasions the hatred felt toward a person who is perceived as being different and a threat to the power structure. We have seen that progress against discrimination and hatred can come quickly when our leaders pass laws making discrimination illegal.

I want to believe there is a basic innate goodness in all human beings on this planet--our leaders, law enforcement officials, even the wrong-doers and criminals.

Let us step back and consider our place in the universe--so small, so isolated, so seemingly vulnerable.  At the same time, we must consider that we are creatures who have the capacity to love each other and to love this tiny speck of rock we live on.  Love is the means to peace on Earth, I believe.  Let us look beyond our egos and other constructs of the mind. It is our egos that drive us to create clubs so we can segregate ourselves from each other. Let us all look inside beyond our egos and awaken to our very core, our being, which is love. I do believe love is the answer for us humans.

 © 23 Mar 2015 

About the Author 

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading, writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.