Hooves, by Pat Gourley

“That horse has left the barn”

When I hear the word “hooves” in nearly any context I think of horses though many different mammals have hooves. My early days on the farm never involved horses so I may have made the association of hooves with horses after watching Gene Autry and Roy Rogers on 1950’s TV.

 I remember that the often ridiculous and blatantly racist TV westerns seemed to distinguish between native American horse-hoof prints from those of the always white settlers, American lawmen and cavalry by noting whether the horses had been shod or not. Native horses had no shoes whereas those of the white folk always did, a simplistic view since many native tribes were quite adept at acquiring horses from settlers and others who shod their horses. On these TV shows, blacksmiths were often shown dramatically forging by a fire while shaping the shoes and then nailing them onto the horse's hooves. This really is the extent of my connection with the word "hooves", though I do vaguely recall older male relatives on occasion playing “horseshoes”. That was a game though that never caught on for me personally.

Another memory of hooves was the apparent use of fake cows hoofs being used by moonshiners wearing them to throw off federal agents chasing them during Prohibition. Not sure exactly how this worked since cows have four feet and humans only two. However, wasting time on thinking about this application of hoof-foot-wear as a means to sneak to one’s moonshine still in the woods will do little to address any real-world problems these days I am afraid.

I can though make a tangential leap from hooves by way of horses and cows to the phrase: “That horse has already left the barn”. This implies of course to the after-the-fact reality that it is too late to do anything about whatever. If one adapts this as a worldview these days there are many things that seem too late to do much about whether we want to admit that reality or not.

Climate change sadly is one reality that it may very well be too late to do much about. That horse seems to have galloped away and kicked the door shut with both of his back hooves. Still, in my more optimistic moments I can’t help but think that if we were to embark on a Manhattan Project to save the planet that salvaging an at least livable, though probably less than desirable, planet might be doable.

Laughably perhaps I can hope that the recent hurricane evacuations for both Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and Rush Limbaugh’s beachfront properties in Florida might turn into teachable moments. That however does not seem likely.

My go-to person around all things climate change and how this is intimately tied to capitalism specifically is Naomi Klein.

I highly recommend her two most recent works: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate and “NO is Not Enough” subtitle “Resisting Trump’s Shock Politics and Winning The World We Want”. Here is a link to these works and Naomi in general:

http://www.naomiklein.org/meet-naomi

It isn’t that the Donald Trumps and Rush Limbaugh’s of the world don’t believe in climate change, I actually expect they do. It is that they realize better than many of us that the only effective possibility for addressing this catastrophe is a direct threat to their worldview and way of life. That their greedy accumulation of goods and capital will save them from the resulting hell-scape, in the end, is truly delusional thinking on their part.

I feel the only viable solution being an acceptance of the socialist ethos:  From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

© 19 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. 

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.

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.