Eavesdropping, by Gillian

I say the days of eavesdropping are over. Like so many other things, it is obsolete; extinct. Voices yell intimacies into smartphones, while people's every thought, word, and deed, flood from Facebook and Twitter. We have entered an era more of anti-eavesdropping; of trying not to hear the intimate details of everyone's life; their every opinion. Not long after the last Superbowl a friend and I met for lunch. The business- men at the next table were so raucous in their analysis of the game that we had to move to another table. Next to that one, two women talked incessantly, almost as loud as those men, not to each other but into their phones. Eavesdropping, if you can even use the term, has become obligatory.

As a kid, especially being an only child, I loved to eavesdrop. I recall clearly one conversation on a bus. The young couple in the seat in front of me had a very emotional, if whispered, argument over whose fault it was that the girl was pregnant. I got quite an education. The last time I rode a bus, which actually was to get to Cheesman Park for the start of this year's Pride Parade, a young guy yelled abuse into his iPhone the entire trip. Apparently, his girlfriend was pregnant, and, very apparently, he was displeased. He repeatedly called her a 'fucking stupid bitch', occasionally switching to 'stupid fucking bitch', which seemed to exhaust his vocabulary. I really didn't want to hear it. I hurriedly shoved in my earbuds and turned on my iPod. Definitely we are in the anti-eavesdropping era.

I was first taught to eavesdrop by my parents. They listened constantly to Mother Nature, who never stops talking. Through them, I learned to relish birdsong, which of course is eavesdropping. They aren't singing to me - they sing to each other, or perhaps to themselves simply for the glory of the welcome light of morning. Mum and Dad taught me to listen to the whispers of the wind in the trees, or the howling of it against the window panes, and to know what it meant for tomorrow's weather. From my aunt, and later from a wonderful teacher in high school, I learned to listen to the whispers of the rocks. They also never stop talking, but oh so quietly. If you can manage to hear them, they tell the amazing history of our planet, and they tattle-tale on Mother Nature herself. They give away her age. As far as our planet is concerned, at least, she is middle-aged; half way between birth and her life-expectancy of nine billion years. The rocks tell us that dinosaurs once roamed right here, where we sit this Monday afternoon. (Not exactly here, on the second floor, but you get my drift!)

But there's something up with old Ma Nature. She's not as quiet as she used to be. Her whispers became louder. Over the more recent decades she has begun not only to talk out loud but even to shout. She knows something. She wants us to know. But we don't listen.

We are well into the anti-eavesdropping era.

We really don't want to hear it.

We put on our headphones and turn up the music.

Mother Nature is desperate. We must hear her. She will be OK, as will the planet, at least for another five billion or so years, but we must save ourselves. She tosses tumultuous tornado swarms at us to wake us up, and hurls humongous hurricanes to get our attention. We ignore her. In 2003 as many as 70,000 deaths in Europe were attributed to record heat. In June last year London hit it's highest temperature on record, at 103. TV shots showed train tracks buckling in the heat. But this July as I tried to watch the tennis at Wimbledon, (I say 'tried' because it was rained out day after day) London was treated to the wettest month on record. Last year's heat waves in India, Pakistan, and parts of South America broke all records. Australia has had to add new colors to weather maps to accommodate temperatures never experienced before. Climate craziness.

2015 also brought heat records to Alaska and parts of the American southwest. Meanwhile we recently had record rainfall in China, and across this country from Texas to Washington D.C.

And still we hear nothing.

Mother Nature might as well be silent for all the attention we pay.

Flames roar from the forests on every continent. Even as I write this, sitting on the patio, I smell in the air the smoke from the Boulder County fire. Another fire blazes on Hayden Pass, Colorado, which they do not expect to contain before October.

Mother nature absolutely screams.

Still we do nothing.

A few years ago, residents of several Polynesian nations banded together in a desperate attempt to get the world to care about their islands, which were, and of course still are, disappearing into the Pacific. In their traditional hand-hewn wooden boats, they temporarily were able to block the mouth of the Australian harbor from which a huge coal-ship was ready to leave. The coal was destined for the huge hungry mouths of the Chinese coal-fired energy plants, whose energy goes to fill the huge hungry mouths of the endless factories producing goods for the endless huge hungry mouths  of the world's insatiable consumer appetites. Don't blame Australia. Don't blame China. There's plenty of guilt to go round. We are all guilty. I still drive my car, and occasionally I fly on a plane which is exponentially worse for the environment. Those south-sea islanders get it. It's in your face down there; quite literally. When that beautiful blue ocean which once lapped at your feet, starts to slap you in the face, you get it.

Hopeful-sounding treaties are signed every now and then, after endless wrangling, but always making agreements for future goals, not demanding big decisive action now. It all smacks, to me, of the alcoholic who intends to quit drinking once he's finished this last bottle of whisky. No! He has to quit now. Poor out the rest. We are all addicts, hooked on our lifestyles and standards of living. We need to quit now, not when we've smoked that last carton of cigarettes. If we don't start hearing Mother Nature's cries right now, it will be too late.

What if that man on the bus was not shouting abuse at his girlfriend, but yelling to me; to all the passengers? 'Fire! Fire! The bus is on fire. Get out now. Fire! Fire!'

I ignore him. I do nothing. All the people on the bus do nothing.

I don my noise-canceling headphones, turn up the music and go into anti-eavesdropping mode, breathing in the billowing smoke.

We would all say, that is just insane, suicidal, behavior.

Wouldn't we?

© July 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.

Connections, by Gail Klock

This is an extremely difficult topic for me to write about because it reaches into the deepest places of pain within my psyche. There have been many times in my life when I have felt extremely isolated, lacking a connection to anyone. I was the little child in kindergarten who chose to work on jigsaw puzzles during chose time because it was the only activity which involved no interaction with others, all the time hearing the other kids laughing and playing and wanting to be with them. In college, when on a camping trip with a class, I laid awake all night feeling totally isolated with others all around me, I felt like I was losing my mind. It was one of the longest nights in my life. The terror I was feeling was due to the fact I felt isolated, but I was too afraid to admit it. In both instances, and others like them, if I had only been able to reach out and say help me, I would have been okay. But I had learned to lock my fears away, I knew they were not to be hung out like dirty laundry. I came from a very stoic German family which mistakenly didn’t ask for help, even when it was needed. There was instead a false sense of pride in handling, or appearing to handle, all life’s trauma’s by ourselves. The reality was we all needed help, especially when Karl died at the age of two. Of course back in the fifties this type of help was not advocated or available. My dad’s yelling at my mom not to cry on the way to Karl’s funeral was not because he was a heartless bastard, it was because he was such a sensitive man, who loved this little child so much and his wife and his other children and he couldn’t deal with his own pain, much less take on and help the rest of us deal with ours, which he felt was his responsibility because he was the man of the house. These feelings never left him, they choked him until the day he died. When he was in hospice, a few weeks after my mother had unexpectedly died, he lamented to me he felt so guilty and helpless because he wasn’t there for her when she passed away. He was referring to the evening of the night when she died in her sleep. She had collapsed in the bathroom and he didn’t have the physical strength to help her up so he had to call the neighbors to help him get her up and to bed. He didn’t realize he had been there for her; he had nearly died the day after Christmas, just a month before, but after a week stay in the hospital he unexpectedly made it home. She had told all of us that she was not going to let my dad die first, she couldn’t handle the death of another person she loved so much. She prayed nightly, and I think quit taking her heart meds, for this to be the case. She died precisely as she prayed for, in her own bed, in her own home, next to her husband. My dad was there for her, by making the call for help to the neighbors, he provided the means to her prayers.

It was as this four year old child that I began to surmise that when in pain you don’t cry and you don’t ask for help. This was solidified further by my mother’s inability to provide emotional support to me or my brother due to her own debilitating grief. This was the point in my life when I began to experience a lack of connection with others. This was triggered once again when I was in college and became aware of my homosexuality. I instinctively knew, as did my girlfriend, not to reveal our relationship to anyone else. And in the hiding of who I was I was once again isolated from society, I could sense the darkness beginning to overtake me but I didn’t want to ask for help and I doubted there was any to be found. After all I had learned in my psychology class that homosexuality was a mental illness and I couldn’t face the label of being mentally ill. This was further exacerbated by the fact my grandmother had been in the state mental hospital in Pueblo and no one in the family understood why. None of us ever knew the diagnoses – but I did know from my visits to the hospital with my mom that I didn’t want to be sent there. It was very frightening to me as a child to realize my grandmother was locked up. So to avoid a similar fate, I ironically locked myself up, tighter and tighter. The longer I stayed in the closet the more I felt disconnected from mainstream society.

When I experience this feeling of disconnect I am unable to feel, it is as though I am locked away from everything, including myself. It is sometimes difficult to access the key which frees me from my emotional shackles and allows me to deal with the feelings which I am blocking. I have learned through years of therapy that I need to let myself feel the underlying feelings, which are either sadness or fear. It has taken me years to learn this and also to learn these negative feelings are not permanent and that it is normal to experience them.  I know this and most of the time I can do it, but I wish I could do it all the time and more quickly.

I have also learned that life presents us with lots of self-fulfilling moments, that is to say if I go into a situation expecting it to be enjoyable and thinking people will like me and want to connect with me, they do. And likewise if I anticipate the opposite I generally leave thinking I had been right, I was going to have an unenjoyable time, I wasn’t going to connect with others, and I didn’t. It’s that old bit of seeing a group of people laughing and looking at you. You might think, “They’re all looking at me and think I look fat in my outfit”, or you might think “They look like a fun group of people who like to laugh, I think I’ll join them.”

Sunday mornings for the past twelve years, minus a few months here and there, and Monday afternoons for the past two and a half years, have been an immensely important source of connection for me. I know when I walk into the Golden Recreation Center on Sundays and the Center on Monday afternoons I will feel connected with whomever I encounter there, be it a woman with a basketball or a fellow storyteller with a story. Feeling a sense of connection and the inherent sense of acceptance by my friends is what makes life worth living.

© 17 April 2017 

About the Author 

I grew up in Pueblo, CO with my two brothers and parents. Upon completion of high school, I attended Colorado State University majoring in Physical Education. My first teaching job was at a high school in Madison, Wisconsin. After three years of teaching I moved to North Carolina to attend graduate school at UNC-Greensboro. After obtaining my MSPE I coached basketball, volleyball, and softball at the college level starting with Wake Forest University and moving on to Springfield College, Brown University, and Colorado School of Mines.

While coaching at Mines my long-term partner and I had two daughters through artificial insemination. Due to the time away from home required by coaching, I resigned from this position and got my elementary education certification. I taught in the gifted/talented program in Jefferson County Schools for ten years. As a retiree, I enjoy helping take care of my granddaughter, playing senior basketball, writing/listening to stories in the storytelling group, gardening, reading, and attending OLOC and other GLBT organizations.

As a retiree, I enjoy helping take care of my granddaughter, playing senior basketball, writing/listening to stories in the storytelling group, gardening, reading, and attending OLOC and other GLBT organizations.

A Caveat Should Not Precede an Essay, by Cecil Bethea

A caveat should not precede an essay, but I should like the gentle reader to know my memory is not only fragile but also forgetful.  Too these events too between fifty and sixty years ago.  During that length of time a man could easily be conceived, born, reach adulthood, marry, become a father and even a grandfather.  Also you are dealing a fairly normal and average human being not the third law of thermodynamics which always acts as expected.

My first adventure unfolded when I was not even a practicing much less an adept homosexual.  I had gotten out of the Air Force and went down to the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa to see my long time friend Van who was working on his Master’s in history.

At that time Tuscaloosa had not been wet very long.  True the city had never been dry more like very damp what with the Northport Fruit Stand being open to all hours and quite willing to supply a list of potables.  Nothing too fancy.  I didn’t know anybody who drank Scotch, never heard of tequila, couldn’t afford Piper Heidsieck.  My needs had also been supplied by rum runs to Birmingham. 

There were few bars in Tuscaloosa, but Van knew one out on the outskirts.  I remember little about the place because it had little to remember.  We sat a table, drank beer, reminisced, told unshared experiences.  The clientele was college students being college students.  Talking sincerely the problems of the world.  Proving that all their profs were dullards.  Showing off their knowledge of German, French, or Spanish/ No Russian or Chinese in those distant days.  Of course every one who disagreed with them was an idiot.  I know this because I’ve heard college students talk since then.  The tables were small about 18 inches across with just enough room to hold an ashtray and several beer bottles.  The circumstances meant that you could easily hear or partake in your neighbors’ conversation.

Having not seen each other for two years, Van and I had much to discuss, so we ignored our neighbors.  Somehow or another two unknown men younger than we started talking with us.  One look at the two told me that they were probably from the football team.  Why they wanted to talk with us was beyond me because we had such dissimilar interests.  In fact, I wondered why ever did he want to talk to me. 

He didn’t.  Van saw some people he knew and went over to their table leaving me alone with the two football players.  This was to be my one and only conversation with football players.  Somewhere in that night, I learned their sport and that one was the quarterback.  Hereinafter, he’ll be known as the QB.  Also, he was a mediocre QB at least by Alabama’s standards.  They were much weightier than I, who was about the same size then as now which meant that I was heavily outmatched by one much less two.  Of course, I can chatter away like crazy to anybody; whether they can understand me is another matter. 

Finally, the QB said he wanted to have sex with me.  I did not answer with shouts of “What kind of man do you think I am?”  It wasn’t necessary; I knew exactly what sort of man he thought I was.  Of course, I demurred to no avail.  Without my acquiesce, he said he’d knock me to the floor and tell everybody that I’d propositioned him.  Had the case gone to court, the QB could have pled rage induced by a homosexual.  Fifty years ago, it probably would have stood up in court especially when used by the quarter back of the Crimson Tide.  Pleadings did no good; possibly he enjoyed them. 

He said to go to the men’s room and followed me across the floor outside.  I cannot remember why, but you had to go outside to reach the comfort station.  The QB had locked the door but had yet to unzip.  Before anything could happen, Van came running out.  He yelled through the door that he had to leave immediately.  The quarterback said to tell him to go away, I did, Van said he couldn’t leave me out there in the middle of nowhere and started beating on the door and yelling.  I was freed.  Van and I ran to the car, sped off with squealing tires, and returned to his place by a tortuous route.

My next experience took place years [later] in Denver out at Vivian’s Den out at 17^th and Federal.  Although it fronted onto Federal, nobody entered that way, we all came through the back door from the parking lot.  Just inside the door was a level about twenty-five feet long with a jagged bar to the right.  Beyond that was a step down to the area that contained a pool table.  Next was a step up which led to the front door with the two rest rooms on either side.

One night, probably a Tuesday because only four or five of us were sitting at the bar with Leo as bartender.  He was the best gay bartender I’ve ever known: very outgoing, always talking with the customers, knew when your drink needed replenishing, never ignoring the paying customers while chatting up a possible trick.  We were sitting strung out along the bar talking about all sorts of things about the way we do at the Tuesday concave.  Four young men entered the bar, bought drinks, and went to playing pool.  Never have seen the quartet before, I ignored them.  Besides I was enjoying the conversation.

Eventually I had to go.  I went to the pool area where I waited for the shooter to shoot and for his ball to stop rolling as good manners dictated.  Then with no acknowledgment of the players, I went to the restroom and without locking the door, probably didn’t even close it.  There I stood with the seat down and me unzipped and doing my business before the commode.  Suddenly somebody came into the room.  Without stopping I turned to see one of the pool players.  He immediately said either “You God damned queer!” or “You fucking Queer!” but he certainly used the noun queer.  All this time he was pounding on my face with his fists.  Meanwhile I got through the door unzipped, wetting myself, bleeding from what was a split lip and what would be a blackened eye, pass the other three pool players to the safety of my own kind.  Leo made motions of calling the police but didn’t.

The young people today might wonder why we like Socrates stoically accepted our fate.  That was another time, another clime.  That was the way life was for Gays.  Knowing this, we made adjustments to our lives knowing that we never called the police, knowing that if our names were in a newspaper article our jobs were forfeit, knowing that we could be kicked out of the military in a full-dress parade.  Our leases could be abrogated for our felonious conduct.  Picking up a man could result in jail time.  But being young was very heaven and salved our souls.

© 31 Oct 2010 

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.

Birthdays, by Betsy

The following is an imaginary voice from the Universe heard inside a woman’s uterus by a viable life preparing for its day of birth.

“Now is the time for you to make your choice.  You may choose from these two options: gay or straight.  In other terms—homosexual or heterosexual.  Before you decide, let me explain the consequences of your choice.

“If you select the gay option you will have many obstacles in your life that you otherwise would not have. You will be considered abnormal by many people from the start, you could very easily find yourself being discriminated against by employers, landlords, merchants, and service providers. The law may possibly not offer any recourse for you if and when you are discovered depending on how the movement goes and the state of civil rights.  You could actually be put in jail if you are found out.

“You may feel constrained to stay in the closet for a long, long time, maybe forever. That means denying your truth to yourself and to others. This could have a serious impact on your emotional and mental health—possibly on your physical health as well.

“If you try to express your sexuality and live as the person you are; i.e. live as an openly gay person, you risk your safety, security, and wellbeing. You will keep your self-esteem and self-respect however. But there may be a price to pay for that.

“If you select the straight option life should be easier for you.  You will derive benefits from marrying a person of the opposite sex. As a woman, you will be safe if you serve him well.  You will be secure if you do his bidding.  You will have no difficult choices to make because they will all be made for you and to your advantage if you stay in line.  The only risk for you is that you might screw up because you don’t realize that you have all the advantages. 

“As I said, it’s your choice.”

The above scenario is, of course, absurd. None of this would happen because this choice is not available to us. This choice is never given to any of us before birth. We are born LGBTQ or heterosexual or gender fluid or whatever else yet to be defined—whatever else exists on the sexuality spectrum. 

The choice is made when we become aware, conscious, of ourselves—our feelings, what drives us, with whom we fall in love. We make the choices later in life when we understand that there IS a choice— and that choice, as we all know, is not who we ARE by birth, but whether or not we choose to LIVE as an expression of who we are.

Personally, I understand very well the consequences of denying who I am and living as someone I am not. Once I became aware of my sexual orientation I was able to make that choice, respect myself, and be happy and fulfilled. 

Those who wish to change us LGBTQ’s, punish us, put us away, or whatever, seem to imagine that we all experience the above in-utero scenario and we should be punished or, at least, forced to change because we made the wrong choice.  We made the choice in-utero and were born gay yes on our first birthday, because we chose to. REALLY!  Or, if they do not accept that absurdity, they want to punish us for expressing our real selves—for living as gay people.

I choose to live in a world which accepts every newborn baby for exactly what it is—everything that it is.  I choose to welcome every life into this world as perfect as I did one week ago my first great grandchild.

You know, I’m convinced he’s gay because of the way he waved when he was born. Then when he started primping his bald head his mother and grandmother and Auntie Gill were convinced too.  He’s lucky. He knows he is loved by us all—gay or straight.

© 14 Nov 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.

A Defining Word, by Ricky

People use words to communicate.  In spite of a few of my acquaintances whom never refer to me as a person, person of interest or disinterest, I use words to communicate.  It behooves all people to communicate accurately by using words whose meaning everyone understands.  Those of us who have (or still have at our senior age) a large vocabulary and can actually remember the words when we need them, hold a big advantage over those persons with a limited vocabulary – this category does not include young children whose minds are trans sponge and cis blackholes.  Any parent can testify to the reality of that fact.  Perhaps you can remember a time when you were small or when your young child accurately used or asked for the meaning of a “colorful” word while your mother was standing nearby – words like: shit, cock, fuck, bitch, son-of-a-bitch, gay, lesbian, homo, or pervert.  A child’s vocabulary expands very rapidly indeed.  Especially when following a child’s inquiry, the adult blurts out “Where the hell did you hear that word?”  The answer is nearly always, “From you Daddy.”  At this point, you get a very very stern look from your mother who is still standing nearby.  (Add “hell” to the previous word list.)  By the way, does anyone know why little children seem to delight in saying those words at the most embarrassing time, place, and circumstance?

While growing up from age 10 forward, I spent many hours of my summer vacation from school reading for recreation to pass the time I consumed babysitting my twin brother and sister.  I had many opportunities to interrogate a dictionary to obtain the meaning of a word, if I could not deduce its meaning from the context of the usage.

If I didn’t know how to spell a word in elementary school, my teachers would always tell me to look it up in the dictionary.  I always retorted, “How can I look it up if I don’t know how to spell it?”  I finally quit asking and just tried to figure out a way to write my assignment without using that particular word.

At one time I was a good speller.  I never won the class spelling bee but I was often 2^nd.  When I graduated high school, my ability to spell began to fade away.  Now I depend on my computer’s ability to know what I am trying to communicate and to spell all the words correctly and place them into proper grammatical position.  I’ve discovered that usually the computer and I are both week in the grammar area.

Communicating by pronouncing words correctly (making allowances for regional dialects and not writing a homonym for the correct word) is equally important for presenting a positive image to others along with having your message correctly understood.  Perhaps you can remember President George W. Bush’s mangling of English (some may call it misspeaking or misquoting).  “Dubya” attended some prestigious schools:  Harvard Business School, Yale University, The Kinkaid School, Phillips Academy, and Yale College.  Yet his mangling (there I said it again) of the language does not reflect well on those institutions or upon the Texas education system, which already has major problems of its own.  It goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) it does not reflect well upon him either.

Words are used to label things and people.  However, labels do not define a thing.  Poorly paraphrasing Shakespeare, labeling a rose a skunk, does not accurately call to mind its sweet smell.  Placing a label on a person does not accurately define who or what that person is like and the danger of mislabeling someone is all too great.  People are too complex to be categorized by a label.  Humans are more than just words.

I am tired of writing on this topic so here is the defining word of the day, “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”.  If you don’t know what it means, look it up in a dictionary or just watch Disney’s “Mary Poppins”.

© 22 Feb 2016 

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 

Consequence, by Ray S

Since the beginning of time for the little I know, there have always been untold numbers of situations that resulted in serious consequence to the doer or the doee. Doubtless you may have a few situations of your own that might need to be kept secret, or some sort of cleansing-emotional confession. So goes the state of consequence = GUILT.

There are some old tired consequences such as the ones found in the King James book or the Talmud and the warnings by Nostradamus. “Watch out or there’ll be hell to pay.” Think about your ticket and fine for overtime parking. Can you still be sued for breach of promise? What about divorce or wedding vows?

Look what’s happened to good old boys and locker room parlance. Here’s the question: when is it sexual harassment and when is it dirty conversation between consenting parties? What constituted sexual harassment of the male gender, present company excluded or may be included—it depends on who, what, and when, and of course, maybe?

The devil’s in the details-how many times have we been beseeched to “REPENT” for the end is coming? And don’t forget the little red warning light that comes on with the message CHECK ENGINE, or EMPTY.

Presently we citizen’s who are registered to vote in this November’s presidential election are faced with some truly numbing consequences. But fear not because our shining peroxide white knight has this ‘fixed’ election all wrapped up. You can’t go wrong with Mr. Putin’s gang working the computers and the Fox Network and Donald’s “fact finders” grinding out more lies, lies, lies. Oh sorry, I got the wrong candidate, but that’s alright because the new Attorney General will take care of those consequences.

About global warming—another lie, and if some insignificant foreign second-rate NATO countries do have a little seacoast shrinkage, we will threaten Russia to stop producing nuclear and start shoveling Siberia into the Pacific Ocean to cool things down.

What are the consequences of all these lies about a little friendly groping? It was pretty convincing preceding the last debate with the happy maidens attesting to it was “Just like one big happy family.”

To top that bit of showmanship, the Donald will present to the USA a joyful, giggling group of 426 previous contestants of Trump reality TV shows. They will bear witness to what has been sanctimoniously labeled sexual harassment by ship-jumping party members; they all were extremely pleased and somewhat aroused by the candidate’s attentions. Their payoff will be front step seats at the Trumpian Coronation.

Every day it gets more exciting. It has become a huge game of “Truth or Dare.” Hold on to your bikini, Sister. Or better yet, “Truth or Consequences” and guess what? This time no one tells the truth and every one of us gets the consequences.

P.S. do you have a valid passport for Canada?

© 17 October 2016

About the Author 

Life before Ice, by Phillip Hoyle

It’s no wonder Mom was happy to live in town where almost everyone had electricity in their homes. Not so on the farm where she grew up just ten miles south of Junction City.

When Mom moved into town to attend high school, she entered a new world of running water in kitchen and bath, flush stools inside the house, electric lights in every room, natural gas stoves and heating systems, and refrigerators that could even make ice. No wonder to me that she never wanted to return to the farm except to visit her folks. And when she was being courted by a young man who wrote for a newspaper, was buying into his father’s grocery store (that wonderful citified substitute for a farm garden and fields), played the piano like a dream (classical, church, and jazz), and sang with expression and in tune, it looked like her life could become one of relative ease, say contrasted with her mother’s.

In town Mom could have ice every day—winter and summer: iced coffee (which she abhorred), iced tea (great with meals in summer), and iced cream (need one say more?). She could quickly get ice onto a burn, bruise, or swelling should a child need it, and make better whipped cream by beating it in a bowl surrounded with ice, on and on. And should she see a need for a large quantity of ice for any reason, she could simply call the local Ice House and the Ice Man would show up to deliver the size and style of ice needed. It took me years to understand any of this; in fact, I just figured it out this year, 2016, my 69^th year, when I started writing about my early childhood.

My great grandparents on both sides of the family rarely had ice and certainly had no electricity in their homes. My grandparents grew up without electricity but fortunately got some when the Hoyle’s moved from Dwight to Junction City, Kansas in the 1920s and when the Schmedemann’s greeted the national rural electrification program to Clarks Creek in 1947—the year I was born. I’m sure the same was true of my rural Colorado in-laws as well. To my amazement, my mother-in-law used to eat crushed ice a lot, even had her own ice crusher to make it. For her the habit may have been some kind of celebration of what she had missed in childhood and probably kept alive the hope that she might someday retire to life in town. Eventually she did so and kept enjoying her shredded ice.

My family was lucky to have a refrigerator with a freezer compartment. It was rather new, probably purchased the same year I was born. I say this because the folks’ old refrigerator, a small one with a very small ice maker near the top, went out to my maternal grandparents’ farm. Their lives surely got easier. By the time I could make sense of anything, we in town were living high with running water, city sewage, electricity, natural gas heat, a gas range and oven, a swamp cooler, and a refrigerator with a freezer unit. This was luxury in our town. Ice was made in cubes at home using trays with movable grids. Pull up the handle and out pops the ice cubes, but watch out; they might be all over the floor. Or you might have trouble getting them out at all. That’s when we’d run water over them to begin the melting.

I take it all for granted and do so love my Monday bowl of Guinness Ice Cream with chocolate chunks, but that could be for the enjoyment of the ale flavor and that of my favorite candy.

© 5 Dec 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 LGBTQ Hopes for 2017, Pat Gourley

At first blush my most important Queer hope for 2017, and that would stretch to 2020, is that Donald Trump remains the president. No, I haven’t lost my mind. I am very aware of what a terrible indictment he, and his election, is of the tattered state of our democracy. Though he is certainly racist, xenophobic and sexist in the most despicable of ways his attitude toward LGBTQ folk was certainly muted during the 2016 campaign.

If we loose Trump through impeachment, early retirement or most likely a big myocardial infarction that leaves us with Mike Pence. In addition to the negative qualities attributed above to Trump we get a toxic dose of homophobia. Pence truly scares me. At least with Trump I do on rare occasions see very human expressions on his face. He is malleable around most things except perhaps his ingrained sexism. Pence, on the other hand, is a zealot and I see in his steely gaze a real hatred for all things Queer, feminist and just plain other. Catholic fundamentalism is truly something to fear.

My second hope for 2017 is that we LGBTQ people do not further abandon our strong and to date very productive sense of queer identity. Identity politics, fueled of course by the powerful coming out process, has been at the root of our success. This has been success, not only through self-acceptance in the form of our own internally vanquished homophobia, but also success in the form of an emerging place at the table of society at large. 

The main hurdle has always been overcoming our own internalized homophobia.  The key to this has been a realization on a soul level that we are different in many ways and that these unique traits are gifts. We can and do exploit and extrapolate these differences to the larger society for a profound mutual benefit. Harry Hay had it absolutely right in asking his three questions of the early Mattachine: who are we, where do we come from, and what are we for. Finding the answers to these questions is not a finite task but an ongoing process that continues to evolve to our benefit and that of all sentient beings.

My third and last hope for 2017 is that our Story Telling group continues to thrive. Our sincere participation in this group really is in part the antidote and juice we need to steal our resistance in the coming Trump years. Whether we want to openly own it or not our participation in this group is a revolutionary act that is soul food for our ever-evolving queer identities.

Recent proof of the power of this Story Telling collective of LGBTQ folks was the memorial for our friend and comrade Stephen Krauss. The event was attended by a variety of individuals and groups all of whom had been important in Stephens’ life. The Story Telling group may well have been the most recent group he was a part of in his 70 odd years.

The group was very well represented at the memorial and I thought provided a loving and a very purple patina to the whole event. Thoughts expressed by Gillian and Betsy and the powerful readings by Lewis and John were all heart-felt testaments to how quickly we as a group have come together in just a matter of a few short years. It is one of our many queer gifts, our ability to coalesce quickly when the space to do so is available, through shared life experiences, into a vibrant and a truly supportive community. I sincerely hope this continues to grow and thrive in 2017.

© January 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.

Flowers, by Nicholas

I find flowers amazing. They appear delicate but yet can be strong and resilient. Their shapes and colors vary wildly from the palest shades to the brightest hews. I have tulips in my yard that are pure white and some that are so deep a purple as to appear black.

I trace the progress of the season through flowers, what’s in bloom, what is preparing flowers stalks and buds, and what has finished. Already I have spotted tiny leaves breaking through the ground in my yard. Within weeks flowers will appear.

When I lived in San Francisco, I marked the beginning of spring with appearance in late February of the plum tree blossoms in Golden Gate Park. Any day now, their pale pink flowers will appear breaking the dreary coastal winter with their delicate brightness.

Here in Colorado, at the lower elevations, it is the brilliant yellow of the forsythia that dares to announce Spring. Even though we have many more weeks of winter, maybe even the worst of winter, ahead, these tiny flowers will soon appear. I have two forsythia bushes in my yard. The early one will show blossoms by the first of March. The other one is later by about a month.

Around St. Patrick’s Day, I will uncover the planter boxes on the porch and plant pansies with their delightful array of purples, yellows, oranges, burgundies and splashes of white to brighten those late winter days. Pansies love the cold and are beautiful in the snow. It’s the summer heat that will kill them off.

Then some early daffodils will appear, starting what I call their annual “death march.” I don’t know why this variety shows up so early only to face hard freezes and heavy snow. But they persist and eventually bloom in time for a spring snow to crush them. The snow won’t kill them, just bury them. Fortunately, I also have later varieties with the good sense to wait until the weather is more favorable.

Tulips are beginning to show up but they seem more patient and wait out the winter weather to bloom later. A little bit of snow heightens the brilliance of the colors in bloom. But it doesn’t take much to push them all to the ground.

When it is safe to come out in late spring, the cherry tree will overnight burst into white blossoms. And then the iris will show up. When I was a kid, we called them flags because they bloomed around Memorial Day. Maybe because of climate change, my iris seem to be almost finished by the end of May.

Soon the roses will appear and the first bloom is always the best. My favorite is the bright red rose near the back door.

When the warmth of spring begins to turn into the heat of summer, the hawthorn trees flower. The white flowers are pretty but they, frankly, stink. For two weeks, my backyard will smell of rotten fruit. However, the bees love these malodorous blooms and the yard will hum with the buzzing of thousands of bees harvesting what must be rich nectar.

All summer, my garden will be full of bees attracted to the flowers on the herbs I grow. I use the oregano, sage, chives and thyme from the garden but I think the bees get more use of my herbs. The little yellow arugula flowers seem to be especial favorites.

I think climate change has altered the flowering time for the lilies. They used to be a late summer flower with their oranges and yellows. But now, it seems that they bloom by early July and are finished before August. Maybe it’s the dry heat of Colorado, but late summer sees a lull in flowers. And then in September, some come back to life—like the hot pinks and reds of the impatiens—and bloom again before the cold returns.

Fall brings its own colors as the plumbago produces its cobalt blue flowers along the front walk. And I know what time of year it is by the shade of the sedum. Early summer, its flowers are white. Gradually, the color turns to a pale pink. And in the fall, they deepen to a dark red and then rust. It’s amazing to watch this one flower change color over time.

So, that’s the year in flowers in my yard.

© 13 Jun 17 

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.

Why Donald Trump getting elected POTUS is not the Apocalypse or End of Days, as so many liberals claim, by Louis Brown

(1)                        Most Democratic politicians and rank and file Dems. Are “devastated” by DT’s victory. I’m not.

(2)                        When I could not vote for Bernie Sanders, I chose Jill Stein. But even she is overreacting in her revulsion for DT

(3)                        DT claimed, for example, he is going to impose tariffs on products, especially on automobiles that are imported here from foreign countries especially when those products could/should have been produced here. Buy American!

(4)                        The allegedly pro-Labor Democrats claim that protectionism is in the long run counterproductive because it impedes free trade. Well, yes, when so-called free trade makes companies profitable, which it does do, 99.9% of the profits, however, go to the upper 1/10 of 1% of the population. The American working class gets unemployed and impoverished on a massive scale.

(5)                        Also, DT has hinted that he is going to adopt Rand Paul’s isolationist foreign policy. I he does, that means peace for a change. All we are saying is give peace a chance. What is the actual difference between left-wing pacifism and rightwing isolationism anyway?

(6)                        DT said he will do business with Bernie Sanders when the time comes.

(7)                        Most everyone has noticed that Hillary Clinton goes to war at the drop of a hat while Barack Obama has fallen head over heel in love with perpetual war in Afghanistan. The American people do not want this war at least not forever. If HC got into office again, it would have meant more and bigger wars and endless hostile trade deals.

(8)                        In other words, DT is promising (at least) important concessions to the real liberal left. We should be gratified not “devastated.”

(9)                        Over my life time, I have been told that protectionism and isolationism are unworkable and extremely destructive in the long run. Considering everything, this is exactly what we desperately need right now.

(10)                  Did you notice that Hillary Clinton’s campaign attracted the approval and support of three undesirables: Meg Whitman, Michael Bloomberg and Henry Kissinger? That should make you suspicious. “Be afraid, be very afraid!” as Rachel Maddow puts it.

(11)                  Bernie Sanders heroically and ultimately unsuccessfully tried to dissuade HC from courting the favor of Wall Street and its leaders. I think Bernie Sanders should think in terms of starting a third political party, he should abandon the sinking ship that is and will be soon be the “new” conservative Democratic Party, as it becomes more bellicose and hostile to American working people, the Dem. Party will, next election, definitely shrink dramatically in size and influence.

(12)                  I thought the election campaign went on too long; the word “hate” was used much too often.

(13)                  Of course, Hillary Clinton did get more votes than DT, yet DT is going to be President. That does seem unfair.

(14)                  Anti-Trump Democrats repeated endlessly that DT was a racist and hated and disrespected women. Personally, that did not ring true at least not to my ears. DT is not a racist and he does not hate women. In fact, in general, DT seems broad-minded and willing to negotiate.

(15)                  My elder and elderly brother, until this last election, voted Democratic, Democratic, Democratic in almost all Presidential elections. In this past election, he voted for DT. DT appears to be actually less of a rightwing reactionary than Hillary, if he follows through with his campaign promises. If he does keep his promises, he will be reelected easily 4 years from now.

© 12 Nov 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.