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 

Brother Townsend, by Cecil Bethea

Twenty-three passengers on the Mayflower were ancestors of Prescott Townsend  ancestors. Another forebear was the only man to sign the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of the Confederation, and the Constitution. On almost any route that Townsend took to grade school on Boston’s Beacon Hill, he would past a monument to an ancestor or to an event in which some kinsman had participated

Townsend was born in 1895 when the blue bloods of Boston still considered themselves Brahmins and felt contented.  Henry James called them, “the sifted few”.  Besides his inherited wealth, his father was also the head of a large coal company.  When Townsend was fifteen his father died.  At sixteen he told his mother that he liked other boys.  She merely answered, “Be careful.”.

During his eighteenth summer, he went out West to work in logging and mining camps of Idaho and Montana where he met people unlike himself.  The International Workers of the World, derisively called the Wobblies were trying to organize a union amongst the unskilled workers and hobos with whom Townsend worked.  He developed a lifelong interest in street boys and drifters, the outcasts of society.

At Harvard, he evidently was more interested in tennis than books, but he survived.  So many attractions drew him into a very active social life.  After all, he was in the SOCIAL REGISTER.  Harvard was very pro-British during the first years of World War I.  To do his part, he joined the Naval Reserve.  After the United States had entered the war, Townsend was called to the colors, where he performed various duties including being commanding officer of the Naval Unit at Texas A & M.  After being demobilized, he returned to Harvard to finish his senior year and later to enter law school.

Law school palled, so at the end of his first year he quit.  So many interesting things lured him on to various adventures. In the tropics of Mexico, he was the co-discoverer of an unknown salamander which was named for him.  In Paris, Andre Gide recommended the deserts of North Africa.  Townsend organized a small caravan with willing. complaisant, or hungry young men.  During his visit the Rift Rebellion, an attempt by the Arabs to oust the French was taking place.  One small battle interrupted the progress of his party.  He insisted that the fight stop because he as an American had precedent over their squabbles.  Strangely enough the combatants ceased their gunfire while the American passed.  How things have changed for American tourist!

Back in Paris, Townsend became involved with the Bohemians; in fact, Bohemia became a part of him for the rest of his life.  In Boston he was the patron of poets and a little theater.  Actually he owned the building where the theater had its quarters.  His house became a home for various nomads of the artistic and Gay worlds.  Although he bragged he had never paid for sex, it was difficult to turn down a man who is supplying you with bed and board.  During his later years, all of his tenants chipped in to pay a handsome young man to supply Townsend’s needs

During the 1950's Townsend was much more than a horny old man.  He was a Gay activist.  Actually one could make that ACTIVIST.  The Boston chapter of the Mattachine Society had him for one of his co-founders.  Just as all the chapters had strife between the radicals and the conservatives.  The organization asked him to make his efforts to repeal the sodomy laws of Massachusetts a personal cause rather an organizational one.  Townsend did not want understanding and sympathy from the public but rights.  Confrontational was his usual means of operation. On April 17^th, 1965, he was in Washington for the first Gay demonstration.  Seven Gay men, three Lesbians, and a straight woman friend marched in front of the White House. No doubt he was the oldest.  In 1970, he drove down from Boston for the first parade to commemorate the Stonewall protest.  Even at seventy-six, he was amongst the first two hundred to start the parade which grew to thousands.

In his later years Townsend was not welcomed by other Gays because he had evidently forgotten the meaning of personal hygiene and looked like derelict.  No matter he was a participant in Gay functions.

Prescott Townsend should be remembered for uncompromising attitude toward Gay rights, his early organizing of Gay, and his early participation in early Gay demonstrations.

He was a Founding Brother.

© 9 Nov 2005 

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 18the, 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 memoir writing class.  While it doesn’t offer criticism, it does offer feed back.  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.