Hope on the Horizon

How is it that I, a proud pessimist, have the slightest tinge of hope for America’s future? Mostly because tens of thousands of people are marching peacefully, here and abroad, against obvious and entrenched racial injustice—day after day after day. Military leaders balk at treating peaceful protesters as the enemy. Pressure builds for the powers that be to address that injustice. And inroads are being made.

Statues honoring slaveholders and Confederate leaders are being removed, from the American South as far away as England. NASCAR and the military are retiring the Confederate battle flag, which is a symbol promoting segregation. Police departments are banning chokeholds and no-knock warrants, encouraging police to monitor each other’s compliance with new standards, and having their budgets redistributed away from military weapons and training towards supporting their communities for better health, education, and prosperity. For example, there is a movement to stop armed police from responding to situations that really call for community mediation, mental health professionals, or social workers.

I like to think that the triple blows of the pandemic, economic collapse, and social unrest have so undermined America’s unfounded belief in our strength and exceptionalism that increasing numbers of us are willing to acknowledge that we are flawed and need to change.

If Mitt Romney can march and chant “Black Lives Matter,” maybe we can hope that others will locate their moral compass and their backbone, and will be open to constructive change.

A Strange Contentment

A Strange Contentment

My emotions have been a mystery to me for most of my life. This usually bothers me only when they’re uncomfortable, because I want to understand how I’m feeling so I can do something to make myself feel better. Without that insight, I cultivate responses that can help me regardless of the specifics, usually distraction or self-comfort.

I recently noticed that my good feelings are often equally mysterious. I get this ripple of something pleasant in my chest, and notice it with baffled appreciation. I try to remember what preceded the ripple and inspect it for clues about its cause.

Sometimes I’ve just paused one activity, taken a deep breath, and turned to something else. Sometimes I’ve just figured something out or accomplished something. 

Sometimes I have a sense that my digestion is working smoothly, for a change, and my internal chemistry is in a relatively good state. Lately, I’ve been noticing this pleasant 

ripple of feeling when I get up from the throne, which also suggests a happy digestive system.

Sometimes, I can just remember the happy little ripple and feel its echo, completely divorced from anything in my environment or any particular thought. This is a lovely ability to have, and makes me smile, which is itself both a response to and a cause of happiness.

For so long I have been my own worst enemy, with an inner critic frequently beating me up and eroding my self-esteem. Maybe I’m discovering a new member of my internal committee, one who is simply happy here and now. I will call her my happy camper, and hope for her frequent attendance.

Where Do I Belong?

Where do I belong? A question of many facets. First, the literal. Where I belong these days is in my home or outdoors wearing a mask and at least six feet away from everyone else.

This question is usually asking, with whom do I belong. Where do I fit in? With whom do I have something in common? Who are the people I care for? Who are the people who care for me?

Whom did I find while engaging in common interests? Who came together with me around a common identity? Who continue to get together because we like each other, and because our get-togethers get us out of our homes and into the presence of other human beings?

Do I belong in the synagogue where I’m a dues-paying member but hardly ever attend services and no longer work in any committee? I have synagogue friends from 30 years ago, but haven’t more than greeted in passing for the last decade.

Where else might I belong? On this planet? In my skin? At the places on the internet frequented by like-minded people?

Turning it around, who belongs with me? For whom do I make a welcoming space? To whom do I give the benefit of the doubt?

So many questions and even more answers, because every moment is different and my mood varies along with my self-esteem and my willingness to even conceive of myself as belonging on this planet at all. But the relationship between self-esteem and belonging is circular: I need to feel vaguely good about myself to foist my presence on anyone else, but if I haven’t spent time interacting with anyone else I start to wonder if I actually exist.

To accept and justify the gift of my existence, I feel the need to be doing something to improve others’ lives. I take the most responsibility for my friends and other members of the intersecting communities to which I belong: lesbians, seniors, writers, liberals, San Franciscans, etc.

Anyway, in this time of sheltering in place, one of the most helpful things I can do for myself and others is to reach out and have conversations with my friends. To recognize the other as a person worthy of being listened to, to share my similar feelings and affirm that we’re both human. When I’m down, I can share that with someone who is also down and be comforted by our common humanity. Or I can share with someone who is less down, and maybe begin to hope that a better mood might come around to me in due course.

And I remind myself to listen to friends who call me or share in a Zoomed meeting, not just to reassure us of our common humanity, but also to notice any particular need that I can help with.

Dana Vinicoff

Liturgical Pieces for Pride

Blessed is the Rainbow

Blessed is the rainbow: the variety of bright colors, the individuality of each color. The grouping of these colors into a symbol of unity, of pride, of variety, celebrating the unique identity of each of us, and the strength in our unity.

Peace in Pride

Spread over us the shelter of your peace, O Eternal. Let us march and sing and chant wrapped in your protection and love. Let us spread your peace as we march and sing and chant, that all our scattered queer ones may come together in peace and pride.

My Brilliant Career

My Brilliant Career

I wanted to be the best student in my high school class, or at least to be recognized as a “Scholar of the Month.” I came in second in my class of 997 students; I was salutatorian instead of valedictorian. I did give the valedictory address at graduation, though; it was awarded by audition. I never made Scholar of the Month. As various of my friends received the honor, I gathered that the award was based on extraordinary achievement in a specialized area. Although I won some scholarships and awards in English and public speaking, I must have been too much of a generalist to shine in the way they wanted.

Fast forward past college, law school, and a judicial clerkship. I settled into a career in legal publishing where I got to be a student for my living. As a writer, I got to study a variety of legal topics under the law of various states, to synthesize my understanding into a structure, and to lay it out in the most accurate and reader-friendly words and paragraphs I could build. I loved figuring out each new subject: moving the pieces around until the picture was complete, tidying all the connections and edges, and wrapping it up with a bow.

Midway in my career, the writing was moved outside the company to independent contractors. Editing wasn’t as satisfying as writing, but at least I had the last chance to tinker with the writing and put my stamp on it.

Eventually, they bumped me up to managing increasing numbers of publications. I got to spend less and less time with the words and paragraphs, and got less and less satisfaction at my job.

I managed my finances so I could retire early. Now I can spend as long as I want writing and tinkering with my own words and paragraphs.

Body and Spirit

Body and Spirit

When my mind is a blank, a remembered fragment of spiritual direction suggests I pay attention to my body. OK. I have itchy wrists from sun allergy, muscle knots lining my right shoulder blade, and, perhaps related to this, a tingly numbness in my right forearm alternating with achiness there.

None of this is of any great import, certainly not life-threatening. But they keep my attention focused on these little things, distracting me from thinking about the risks I took today to see my friends in person. And they keep me from dwelling on the Covid tests I took today. Even remembering them I dwell on the physical discomfort, instead of appreciating how scary it was for me to acknowledge the reality of this disease enough to get tested for it. To acknowledge that I have factors raising my risk of dying from this if I do catch it, and to remember that people have caught it despite taking all the precautions.

There is no assured safety, even if I am in the 90^th percentile of precaution-taking. Invisible particles of virus land where they will and follow their own imperatives. All I can do is the best I can without driving myself crazy. Take all sustainable precautions, and reach out for as much of my normal B.C. life for which I’m willing to bear the risks. And, of course, reach out to help my friends maintain their sanity within their chosen levels of risk avoidance.

Tim the Postman

My letter carrier is the only person from before Covid who is still in my life in the same way. When I retired, he became the person I saw most often. And he still is.

Our relationship began this way. My living room is at the front of the house. I could hear him opening the mail boxes. I opened the front door once or twice after he had put the mail in my box. After that, he started knocking on the door so he could hand me the mail directly.

I learned that his name is Tim, which I find easy to remember since my cousin Tim was also a mailman before he retired. If I wasn’t home and Tim had a package for me, he would give it to a neighbor or put it somewhere safe and leave me a note written on the back of an envelope. We greet each other if our paths cross outside my home. When I caught him at his truck once, he remembered that he had a package for me and handed it to me. I give him a tip at Christmas.

Post-Covid, he still knocks on my door and hands me the mail, wearing no mask. His cheery smile is the last lingering piece of interpersonal normalcy in my life. All other encounters take place over the internet or from six feet apart.

I ran across him the other day while walking six feet from a friend; I hailed him “There’s my man Tim,” and we smiled at each other. I cherish his presence in my life, my last link to the old normal whose loss we all grieve.

Wibbly Wobby Time

Wibbly Wobbly Time

Lots of folks are having trouble remembering what day of the week it is, now that most of us are away from the structure of work week and weekend, of scheduled meetings and events. It’s a problem I solved when I retired nine years ago. I update my universal calendar with the date and day of the week each morning while I’m getting dressed. 

When I need reminding during the day, I ask myself what day it is and answer accordingly. If I’m unclear, all I have to do is wake up the iThing in my breast pocket; its wakeup screen has the time, date, and day of the week in nice big print. Nope, I usually know what day of the week it is, however meaningless that distinction may seem these days.

My problem is with what time feels like; it seems to stretch and contract at whim. A single day can last forever, or I can look back at a complete vacuum where the last week should be. 

I made a point of restarting my daily journal in early March in part because I sensed that these times would be especially slippery; I wanted to keep track of what was happening and how I felt about it. My memory for what happened and when it happened is particularly bad, so I hoped a written record would anchor me more firmly in time. Maybe it would help me navigate the stormy seas that had come to us all.

Not that I’m keeping track of how many days we’ve been in lockdown; that way lies madness. It’s going to be months if not years before we seniors can blithely head outside with no concern for contagion. I just wanted to lay down a trail of where I’ve been so I can look back on some record of my travails and accomplishments, worries and appreciations.

It has helped some, having a written record to review. But what a weird time we’re living through. The days when I was glued to televised impeachment hearings seem like another lifetime. Worry about who made the better showing at the candidate debates seems utterly trivial now.

We might have to develop new means of marking time: the last time we ate with friends at a restaurant; when we understood our age made us especially likely to die from this; when we learned what ‘flattening the curve’ and ‘social distancing’ meant; when we learned about the hotspots in nursing homes, prisons, and meat-packing plants; etc. etc.

I don’t know. Maybe the only times that matter are ‘before’ and ‘now.’

The Japanese Beatle

I was listening to the classical music station the other day, when the announcer introduced a piece by Paul Chihara. That name was a blast from my past.

In 1971, Prof. Chihara had taught musicianship to my class of music majors at UCLA. Among ourselves, we called him the Japanese Beatle. He was short, dynamic, and a bit bedraggled. His elbows were coming out of his sweater sleeves, and he wore the same pair of increasingly ragged pants most days. At the end of the year, I coordinated a class ‘thank you’ gift for his teaching by sewing leather patches to the frayed elbows of his usual sweater and buying him some new pants.

The next I heard of him was the composing credit for the gripping score to the movie I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. He also wrote the score for Crossing Delancey and many other movies and TV shows. He won many awards for his composing, and has been commissioned to write pieces for many orchestras.

Nostalgia filled me when I heard his name the other day, and I wondered if he was still alive. Google told me that he was, and sent me to his website. I left him a message reminding him of our times at UCLA. No response so far, and I’m trying not to hold my breath.

Sudden Darkness

A Metaphorical Fiction

When I wake up, I cannot see anything. OK, I keep my bedroom dark, but this is ridiculous. Only in the darkest part of the night can I see nothing in my bedroom, and this does not feel like then. My time sense tells me it’s morning, and I should at least be able to see the stripes of light at the edges of the window blinds. But no; I see nothing when I look in that direction. All right, I grab my Apple device and push the button to wake it up. I hear the click, but there is no light whatsoever.

I get out of bed and stand up with great care, mindful of the obstructions at the head of my bed and the electric cords that might be underfoot. I feel and avoid them, and grope my way to the light switch near the door. Activating it has no effect.

I’m starting to wonder if I am suddenly blind. Even on the darkest night, there is some light in my back hallway, because of the many windows. I step out of my bedroom into the hallway, and it’s still completely dark. Must be me, then.

I blink my eyes rapidly. I rub my eyelids gently to remove any sleep seed. I want to look at my eyes, to see if I can find anything wrong with them, but I can’t see anything, let alone my eyes.

I go to the bathroom as long as I’m up. Since I take this path when half asleep, I can manage it by touch.

Now what? Do I get dressed and try to get help? I can probably fumble with my telephone enough to speed dial someone.

What I’d really like is to get back in bed, fall asleep, and wake up from this bad dream. So I crawl back under the covers, but of course I’m way too agitated to even begin to relax. I grumble myself out of bed again, shuffle around the bed until I find my backrest, and heave it onto the bed. I wrestle the heavy pillow with arms into place and clamber up until I’m seated against it.

I cast my mind back to yesterday. Did I eat anything unusual? Did I stare at anything bright? Did I hit my head against anything? I can’t remember anything unusual about yesterday. Not much of anything, actually. But that’s nothing new.

OK; guess I’ll get up and dressed, and hope for inspiration. I get my underthings out of their drawer and make every possible mistake settling them into place. I grab a T-shirt from its drawer and yesterday’s pants and shirt from the chair on the far side of the bed. Hope I got the buttons aligned and the colors don’t clash too wildly. Oh well.

Should I try to call a neighbor for help, or just call 911? Lacking sight isn’t actually an emergency, I suppose. Hey, wait, now it occurs to me, I have neighbors closer than a phone call. I’ll just make my way upstairs and hope that one of my tenants can help me out.

This reminds me of how I met my next-door neighbor after locking myself out picking up my newspaper in my pajamas. Sometimes a beautiful friendship begins when one person asks another for help.  Fingers crossed.

Throatlump

I have often sung at funerals for members of my family. When my grief threatened to derail my singing voice, I soldiered on. I did a lot of acting, singing, and public speaking over the years, so I learned to set aside any pesky emotions like stage fright or grief while I was performing. That ability came in handy as various deaths and disruptions entered my life, but then it became a habit, and my emotions subsided into vague mysterious rumbles.

Sometimes I want to understand a vague emotion that has come to my attention. I consider what has been happening to me or what I have learned recently, and imagine how I would feel about that. Sometimes I have forgotten (or suppressed?) the underlying event, but the emotion reminds me that something problematic has recently come to my attention, and I reluctantly remember the problem.

I have various coping strategies for dealing with unpleasant emotions. Distracting myself with absorbing reading is my go-to default. Next up would be eating something sugary. Occasionally it might occur to me to get out for a walk, preferably in the sun. Once in a blue moon, I might try to do a little something to address the probable underlying problem by talking out or writing out how I feel about the situation.

For the last month or so, some negative emotions have hung around. They hover just out of my consciousness but close enough for me to sense them when I turn my attention in that direction. In short, whenever I attend to my throat, there’s a lump there.

I think it started when Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the race for President. My stunned sorrow at her departure has been perceptible whenever I attended to it. At the same time, the novel coronavirus was landing on our shores. As sickness and death mount, and the less-than-sublime federal response makes thing worse, and our lives are increasingly circumscribed, and returning to our prior lives becomes decreasingly likely, that lump in my throat has become basically permanent. I can feel it whenever I turn my attention that way.

So I try to slap some labels on the emotions causing my throatlump. I’m afraid that I’ll catch the virus, suffer, and die. I’m afraid that frightened people will act violently. I worry about the election in November and the survival of our democracy. I feel lucky to live where I do, and am very proud of our political leaders in the Bay Area and California. And I feel guilty about all my good luck, and challenged to somehow pay it forward.

I suspect that I’m not entirely alone in being so emotionally discombobulated. I wish whoever reads this all the clarity you can tolerate and all the comfort you need.

Physical Distancing and Social Solidarity

I've been at home since the first week of March. Already the rate of growth of Covid-19 cases is slowing here in the Bay Area, where the first stay-at-home orders were made. So we have hope that our inconveniences and sacrifices are bringing us closer to beating this virus.

My days aren't that different from what they used to be. The events I used to attend on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays have shifted to happening online. I didn't spend a lot of time outdoors before, and may even spend a little more time outdoors now. The limitations on my freedom of movement make me more appreciative of excursions that are still allowed - visits to my garden and walking in the neighborhood with a friend once or twice a week.

To express my gratitude for my blessings, I feel impelled to use some of my time at home for self-care. So I've been journaling and doing my little bit of Tai Chi for a couple of weeks now. More recently, I've added meditating and participating in Zoomed Always Active classes from my neighborhood senior center.  I'd been meaning to try a class for many months, but hadn't been willing to drag my body there. Now, with the class as close as my computer, I have attended four classes, and plan to continue attending thrice a week. As an obese and sedentary person, I inched my way into the aerobic part of the session as I gradually figured out what parts of the program not to do. Next week I will finally see what the strength-training part of the session is like.

I also feel impelled to build connections with others, to help me and my friends stay sane and well. I chat on the phone or Facebook Messenger several times a day, when I begin to feel isolated. Sometimes friends call or email me. Following a prompt on Next Door, I put a teddy bear in my window for neighborhood kids to find in their outdoor treasure hunts. I appreciate neighbors' recommendation of restaurants that are still open for takeout or delivery.

The sunshine has gone away for the weekend, and my solar-powered emotions are sinking. I'm already losing the impetus to reach out for videochats. Which means I should stop typing and just do it. Signing out.

A Prayer for Sheltering in Place

We are grateful for our homes, and we seek ways to help the homeless.

We are grateful that we have the means to keep ourselves fed, and we seek ways to help the hungry.

We are grateful that we can reach out to others by phone, email, and videochat, and we find ourselves reaching out to people from our past.

We are grateful for everyone who takes stay at home orders seriously, and we seek to help those who work in essential jobs for our sake.

We are especially grateful for first responders and health care providers who risk their lives to help save ours, and we try to get them all the protective equipment they need.

We are grateful that a flood of information about the plague is at our fingertips, and we evaluate extreme messages for validity before we share them with anyone else.

We are grateful for the beauties of nature, and we will try to maintain the healing that is coming to the environment because of our self-confinement.

We are grateful for our health, and we pray that our small sacrifice will help slow down the spread of this pestilence.

Notes from My Shelter

So I've been mostly confined to home by government edict and sensible self-preservation for a week or so. As a mildly agoraphobic introvert, I'm relieved to be encouraged to isolate rather than guilt-tripped for doing so.

That said, I'm spending lots of time online. I find that the internet is filled with every possible reaction to our situation: angry rants, snarky humor, and resources for the homebound, which include beautiful images and sounds, lists of what to buy, recipes, uplifting thoughts, free access to concerts, museums, live animal streams, you name it.

I've been sharing the memes I find cathartic or otherwise helpful, and am honored when my friends like them or share them to their friends.

One of the most helpful articles said that it helps with stress and anxiety if you find some creative outlet or other means of achievement. So that's why I got back into posting here. I also restarted writing in my journal; my thoughts are important to me, and if I can't share them with others in person, I can at least commit them to writing.

Another article suggested we replace the forms of contact currently forbidden with others still available: a handshake for a phone call, a hug for an email, a smile for a video chat. So I've been phoning and video phoning people I haven't talked to in months. I put together a Facebook Messenger group so members of the Tuesday morning Koffee Klatch can virtually check in via video chat. It is heartening and nourishing to see each others' lovely faces again, and hear each others' voices.

That's all I got for now. Stay safe out there.

The Plush Owl

It peered down at me from the top shelf of the convenience store in the lobby of my office building. I looked back at it many times before succumbing to its allure.

The white plush owl with sand-colored wings, nose, and toes drew my attention often. Which was very often indeed, because I shopped in the store most work days. Its dark eyes were framed by inverted “V”s, leavening its apparent wisdom with a soupҫon of sorrow or anxiety.

I was reading Harry Potter during some of the years I worked in that building, but I don’t remember thinking of the owl as Hedwig. Plush owls aren’t very good at delivering messages. I thought of the owl as an embodiment of wisdom and calm, which I hoped she would share with me. At the very least, she would be something soft to clutch when the world seemed too much.

I don’t remember what I said to the clerk when I bought the bird, but given my penchant for honesty, I can be fairly sure that I didn’t lie about it being a gift for some youngster. I may have juvenile tastes, but at least I own them fair and square.

Nowadays she peers down at me from the top of the entertainment unit in my living room. Except for right now, when I have placed her on the table where I’m writing, for inspiration.

If I were to give her a name, what would it be? I am sure that she is female. I am a devout female chauvinist, so I wouldn’t be attracted by a male entity. Minerva might work, since the owl is her symbol. Minerva was the Roman goddess of wisdom, medicine, the arts, poetry, and handicrafts. I could hardly choose a better patroness to preside over my retirement. I’ve been seeking to artfully write and publish whatever scraps of wisdom I’ve acquired in my life. As my body ages, medical wisdom and the willingness to apply it come in handy. Maybe I’ll call my owl Minerva.

I hug her and close my eyes. There is a lump in my throat and angry sorrow in my chest over the departure of Elizabeth Warren from the presidential campaign. It helps a little that I have plenty of company feeling the same way. The situation reignites the gut-punch of Trump’s 2016 victory. Only misogyny explains why people would have voted for that mendacious, hateful, incompetent, self-absorbed, corrupt whiner instead of for the most qualified person who ever ran for the job. Lord knows the other Democratic candidates this year are immeasurably superior to Trump, but the standards applied to women candidates are also immeasurably stricter than those applied to men. It is still incontrovertible that a woman must be twice as good as a man to be thought even half as good.

Anyway, I hug Minerva, feel the lump in my throat, and wish for a good cry to wash the lump away.

The Yarn of My Life

I was slow learning to knit as a child. The holidays I spent with my mother were too short and too filled with family adventures for her instruction to take root. My brother had no interest in knitting, so we couldn’t knit as a family. Our holiday crafts were assembling plastic models of airplanes, knights, and monsters, and painting by numbers. So the little knitting instruction she gave me in those years didn’t stick very well.

Most of the year Eric and I lived with out paternal grandparents. Grandma also knitted, and her teaching stuck better, but then she died when I was nine years old. Grandpa Lou was not a knitter, but Great Aunt Anne was. She took up the challenge of continuing my training, also without much success.

I knitted a necktie for my sixth-grade teacher, Mr. Barbush. It was basically the right shape, but the yarn and needles were way too big and the straight knitting stitch was way too lumpy for the finished product to even resemble a necktie. Nevertheless, Mr. Barbush actually wore it the day of the gift, and thereby won much merit, good karma, and jewels in his crown.

Mother knitted every family member a turtleneck sweater one Christmas. Each sweater had triangles in a contrasting color knitted into the fabric around the neck and shoulders. The kids’ version had one row of triangles, and the larger ones for adults had two rows. They were knitted of sturdy wool, and were much too warm most of the time. As I grew up, the knitted fabric tried to adjust to me, growing wider (and correspondingly shorter) over the years, but eventually I could no longer get into it.

These sweaters had been knitted in the round, on four double-pointed knitting needles. This technique had too many moving parts for me to manage at that time. Mother tried to encourage me with stories about how my father knitted himself socks that way, anchoring one end of a needle in his belly button when it threatened to get away from him.

She did succeed in teaching me a complicated stitch that created rows of knotted loops. She said it was intended for creating furry fabric, by cutting the loops in half and brushing the ends until fluffy. I couldn’t bring myself to cut the loops; I really liked the texture of the rows of densely packed loops. The resulting fabric was very thick and warm. I decided to knit myself an afghan this way. However, I knew nothing about designing a pattern to result in a particular knitted shape. I just bought a ball of each color and type of yarn that appealed to me, and knitted the same arbitrary number of stitches in each row until the ball ran out. Since I had paid no attention to the contents or weight of the yarn, the balls were of varying weights and lengths. So I wound up with around 40 rectangles of various lengths and widths. I had to sort them into rows of approximately the same length before sewing the pieces together. The result was a small afghan of many colors and textures, but, boy, was it warm.

During my high school years when I lived with Mother, she guided me through every stitch of a complicated pattern for a fisherman’s sweater. She had to show me every step at least once, but I finally succeeded in finishing the sweater correctly. It was a tour de force, and I was very proud.

Musical Strangers

It must have been about 1985 when I started attending the recorder workshop at Dominican College in San Rafael. I learned about the early music workshops from my voice teacher, but was more interested in playing recorders with other people than singing. Getting a group of recorders to sound fairly good is a lot easier than tuning up a group of singers. If you put your fingers on the right holes and don’t wildly underblow or overblow, the right notes will come out.

I had come roaring out of the closet after the Milk/Moscone murders. I was out to everyone except for relatives of my grandparents’ generation, and they probably suspected.

So when I decided to spend a musical week with a group of strangers, my question was not whether I would come out to them, but rather how and when. The workshop was run by the San Francisco Early Music Society, so I didn’t expect to meet much homophobia. After all, San Francisco is the city where the love that dare not speak its name never shuts up. Had I known how many of the workshoppers came from other states and other countries, I might have been less optimistic. In retrospect, though, it seems to me that they had chosen to come to our turf, so they were in no position to complain about local mores.

I don’t remember my deliberations, but I decided to make a bold statement on arrival and let the chips fall where they may. I was the proud possessor of one T-shirt advertising my membership in the Pacific Lesbian and Gay Singers, and another one for the (imaginary) Lesbian National Forest. I would wear one of these explicit T-shirts the first day of the session, and let them do my speaking for me.

Which is how I found other lesbians in the group, including the workshop director, Frances. We looked familiar to each other and finally figured out that we had been classmates in the music program at U.C.L.A. a decade or so earlier. Later in the week, an older couple quietly made themselves known to me. Turns out, we are everywhere! I got no negative comments, and never noticed any unfriendly expressions. If you knew your fingerings and could keep up with the other players, you were in. Period.

Music in My Life

“She shall have music wherever she goes.”

Music and I go back to my elementary school years. When I wasn’t singing to myself at recess, I was humming quietly in class, driving my neighboring classmates crazy.

Grandma tried to channel my musical bent with piano lessons, which I hated. My short fingers weren’t suited for the ivories, but I learned enough to be able to plunk out a melody that I wanted to sing.

Uncle Jack had a bit more luck teaching me to play ukulele, which suited my hands. I worked my way to playing a full-size guitar as I grew up. I played a lot of folk guitar in my junior high school years. When I joined Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, I used my guitar skills to accompany congregational singing in my role as a service leader.

I took voice lessons through high school, college, which complemented my B.A. in music. I got a new voice teacher when I came to San Francisco for law school.

I picked up recorder playing in my teens. After law school, my voice teacher introduced me to the San Francisco Early Music Society. I attended their week-long residential recorder workshops for many years. During my Lutheran period, I played bass in a recorder quartet that accompanied hymns at small services. Despite my small hands, I wound up playing the large bass recorder because I was the only one who knew its fingering and could read bass clef. I also helped establish the San Francisco chapter of the American Recorder Society, and played in a trio at the memorial service for my best friend’s mother.

However, the instrument I have played most consistently and best has been my singing voice. I sang in nearly every chorus that was available to me—high school choruses, the U.C.L.A. Madrigal Singers, the San Francisco Civic Chorale, the Bay Area Lutheran Chorale, and the Pacific Lesbian and Gay Singers. For a number of years, I conducted a small choir for Congregation Sha’ar Zahav. The pinnacles of my avocation were touring California with the Madrigal Singers and singing the soprano solo in the Faure Requiem at Grace Cathedral with the Pacific Lesbian and Gay Singers.

“I hear singing when there’s no one there.” Some music is running through my head nearly all the time. I often sing a morning Psalm while making my bed. I have a thank you song that I usually sing when I leave the house.

If I read about or think of any words to a song I know, that song will be stuck in my head until another one takes its place. And I delight in singing snatches of song that happen to fit into a conversation or the current circumstances.

Music has given me so much in my life: a way to make friends, a way to fit in, a way to contribute. Song lyrics help me to express various emotions, and to measure my feelings against them. Listening to music can get my toes tapping, my head bobbing, and my whole body doing ballroom dance. Music sometimes washes over me in waves of its energy.

I listen to a lot of classical music these days, in part to mask noise from my upstairs and downstairs neighbors. While enjoying the music, I also try to name the piece, or at least to name the instrumentation or form of the piece. And if I can’t name the composer, maybe I can at least pick his country and century. Challenges and mysteries are two of my favorite things.

Mother’s Friend Jerry

Mother’s work friend Jerry was the first person I knew was gay. This was around 1960, so he wasn’t wearing Gay Pride buttons or rainbows. Mother knew he was gay, and told my brother and I that he was gay, and then dropped the subject. Moreover, when we saw him, he was often with his partner Ralph.

He was a bit like my father in shape – around five feet nine inches tall and muscular through the chest. He had dark brown hair, possibly dyed (mother’s certainly was), carefully styled to mask his receding hairline.

He wore stylish, color-coordinated clothes. They were made of quality fabrics, like cashmere and camel hair. Some pieces had been tailored personally for him.

He and Ralph created perfect adventures and lovely meals in their beautifully appointed home.

Jerry and Ralph were queens, I now realize. They spoke and moved with a hint of daintiness. They had the “gay accent.” The pitch of their speaking voices rose and fell more musically than is customary for straight men. Their pitch fell at the ends of sentences less of a distance and with less finality than straight men’s.

I can’t remember any signature scents of Jerry’s, but he must certainly have picked up cigarette smoke from Mother’s chain smoking – if not his own.

Mostly what I remember is his enthusiastic energy. He poured himself into the project of the day – whether it was a picnic by the beach, opening a wine bottle with my Swiss Army knife, or figuring out how to operate an electronic Christmas present.

My mother, brother, and I once drove from Santa Monica to Santa Barbara with Ralph and Jerry. We were going to have a picnic in a park near the beach.

I was maybe 10 years old, which would make it the early 1960s. The only picnics at the beach I had experienced were where we bought tacos, snow cones, and drinks from the snack bar, and ate them while sitting on our beach towels before they attracted too much sand.

Jerry and Ralph’s idea of a picnic was in a different league. Their car had a large trunk, all of which had been pressed into service. They brought out a tablecloth for the picnic table. They brought out china. They brought out silverware. They brought out crystal stemware. They brought out a chafing dish and lit a flame under it to warm the contents—fricasseed chicken, which they lovingly ladled over the homemade biscuits they had brought.

I cannot remember the other comestibles, but surely there were vegetables, drinks, and dessert, at the very least. What I do remember is seeing them pull item after item out of that huge trunk, placing them on the picnic table, and arranging them just so.

I think my family was impressed out of our socks. I for one was on my best behavior so as not to fall below the standard of civility set by that sumptuous repast.

Gibson In the Park

I remember being in a production of William Gibson’s play, Dinny and the Witches, in John Hinkel Park in Berkeley in 1965. Our director was Aida Brenneis, the mother of my classmate Lisa. Their family lived near mine on top of Grizzly Peak. The story I heard was that our families became friends when my father, a plastic surgeon, was called on to rebuild their son’s face after a messy bike accident. At the time, I had never met a person named Aida. Her mother, also named Aida, was a descendant of Giuseppe Verdi, the composer of the opera Aida.

Aida was a trained thespian and a skilled director of children, so she undertook that summer to keep her daughter and friends busy and out of mischief with this play. It included a few songs, but wasn’t really a musical. I was cast as one of the witches, Ulga. She is described as “very ugly but also very vain,” “the death witch [who] hates humans. She is very efficient.” In our production, the witch actresses were supposed to double as “devil-made, whorish, beautiful young women.” I refused to play this role, and it was handed off to someone else. I don’t remember my reasoning at the time, but suspect it included disbelief that I could pass for beautiful, unwillingness to pay a whorish person, and my as yet unrecognized butchness.

The stage was an amphitheater in the wilds of Berkeley. As active young people, we stayed warm enough to avoid frostbite. Aida gave us very effective training in projecting our voices to be heard in the last rows. The father of a cast member was a composer, and he composed music for our handful of songs.

I remember none of my lines in the play, and only one line that was directed to me: “Ulga, don’t be vulga.” I do remember some snatches of the songs, and one performance in which my prop pistol was not in the cauldron where it was supposed to be, so I had to use a pretend gun. I blamed myself and the prop master for that bobble, but the show went on.

I remember performing the next year in a Garfield Junior High School production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. I was Feste, the jester, so I got to sing a few songs. We performed in modern dress, and I accompanied myself on a borrowed autoharp. I became good friends with my classmates who played Maria and Malvolio, since we had so much dialog together to rehearse and memorize.

I remember a few years ago when an all-women performance of Twelfth Night by the Cal Shakes came to San Francisco. Hearing the old lines warmed my heart, and I might have sung along with their Feste, except that they used different music. Having learned and played the part made me feel connected to the play.

Queer Elder?! Me?!

I must be a queer elder, mustn’t I? I’m definitely a lesbian: my experiences with boyfriends never got beyond kissing. Once I enjoyed my first lesbian lover, I never looked back. And most folks would consider me an elder, since I qualify for Medicare and senior discounts.

So, what does it mean to be an elder, and how is being a queer elder any different?

I like to think that living into my seventh decade has given me some gifts to compensate for the sheer wear and tear. For every decrease in pain-free range of motion or clarity of eyesight, I hope that I gain whatever tenacity, wisdom, or acceptance comes with having survived more challenges, wrangles, and people who are every bit as weird as I am. At worst, my experiences show me which approaches don’t work. The more mistakes I have made, the more things I know better than to do again. I don’t waste the time and effort of repeating old mistakes; I have the opportunity to make new ones.

Most kinds of physical or emotional discomfort are familiar to me. Thus, when I experience them again, I have the means to comfort myself with the knowledge that I got past them before and will probably survive them again.

Being a queer elder suggests having wisdom gained from my queer experiences, personal relationships, and lifestyle. Living in San Francisco, I have some experience with gay rights activism, especially in religious communities and politics. I can tell youngsters who grew up in more accepting times what it was like marching in the early Pride parades, what it was like standing outside City Hall after the Milk-Moscone murders, and what it was like having my civil rights determined by mayors, governors, courts, and elections.

Openhouse provides many ways to share our experiences with others—in writing, on video, in person. Being fond of the sound of my own voice, I take advantage of most of these opportunities. I tame any unrealistic expectations and my own perfectionism by remembering that I can only speak for myself and my experiences. Everyone’s life is unique, and we all have something special to share.

Let’s take on the mantle of queer elderhood with grace or at least resignation. We stand on the shoulders of our own elders. Let’s pay it forward to nurture the next queer generation and to preserve our history for the ages.

Cat and Dragon

Cat and Dragon; responses to two prompts

As to a prompt about what animal I identify with, I must have been a cat in an earlier incarnation. I dislike getting wet, especially in the rain, but also in a swimming pool. I can tolerate a bath for hygiene’s sake, as long as it includes floral-scented bubbles.

I luxuriate in textures like my cat does. She will lie on, knead, or choose to vomit on the softest surface she can find. I love to pet her wonderfully soft fur, and seek to wear my own fur coat in the form of corduroy, flannel, and suede. I’d wear cashmere every day if I could afford it.

My cat finds the warmest surfaces for sleep, including the cable box and my lap, and follows the sunshine. My emotions are solar-powered—I get gloomy when it’s dark and days are short, and I smile when I finally step out into sunshine.

Cats love to be on elevated surfaces, to look down on the world from a high perspective. My cat likes window sills and the back of the couch, but will also perch on the platform of my balance-beam scale, which is all of three inches above the floor. At less than five feet tall, I used to climb ladders to reach high places. Nowadays, I use a reaching tool a lot, and look other people in the eye only if they sit while I stand, or I stand a step higher than them.

Like my cat weaving between my legs or climbing up my chest, I enjoy contact with people I like, such as a touch to the shoulder or a good long hug.

My cat is a maniac for climbing into cardboard boxes and paper bags. When I was younger, I took pride in fitting myself into very small places like a skeleton cabinet or a clothesdrier. More recently, I settle for being enclosed in my home, what with my gently increasing levels of agoraphobia.

My cat can be emotionally effusive, in her own imperious way. She showers me with gifts of rats and mice. Sometimes she greets me by flopping on her side, showing her belly. But when I’ve disturbed her by moving too much in bed, she’ll stalk to the farthest corner and plump herself down, giving me her back.

Cats are known for elegance, independence, and curiosity. I identify with the independence and curiosity; two out of three ain’t bad.

Another prompt had me writing something with the following ten words: dragon, delicious, dangerous, dearly, driver, downright, depth, deliver, drown, and decision. So I made this foray into fiction:

A little brown dragon lived in a cave on the side of a hill. A vegetarian, she ate mostly delicious tender fronds of the fennel bushes that filled her territory.

She was a homebody. She felt it would be dangerous to roam far from her cave, where she could be attacked by bigger dragons or targeted by trophy hunters.

She dearly loved her little dell, which had a happy gurgling stream and all the plants she would ever need to eat. She would nap in the warm sun, and curl up in her cave when it rained.

One day her eye was caught by a bright gleam of light bouncing off something in the depths of the stream. She was a strong swimmer, so she did not worry that she might drown if she dove into the stream to retrieve the object.

Her decision made, she took a deep breath, plunged underwater, and picked up … something. She was downright baffled by the object in her claw.

It was metal, sure enough. Its surface was very hard and smooth. She struggled to find a way to describe its shape.

It had an inside and an outside, and seemed solid enough to hold water. She rinsed it clean in the stream and found that it did indeed hold water. She used it to deliver water to some fennel seedlings she was growing to replace what she had eaten. She had seen how the plants in her dell prospered after the rains, deducing that the water was a driver of growth.

She still didn’t know who had made the shiny thing or how they had used it, but she was happy with her new watering can.

Who is My Community?

Today's buzzword is community. What is community? How is it created? What circumstances foster it? How is it revealed?

The word "community" comes from a Latin root that means "common." A community is a group of people with something in common. More specifically, it is "a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics and which either is perceived or perceives itself as distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists."

I these questions as a member of the so-called LGBT community. Outsiders may see the LGBT community as a monolith, but it contains many sub-groups who see themselves as communities: political activists, artists, the leather community, etc. And any one person can be a member of several overlapping communities depending on her neighborhood, gender presentation, occupation, activities, religion or lack thereof, and so on.

I find it helpful to separate two kinds of community: communities by identity and communities of caring. By identity, I am a retired older lesbian living in San Francisco, and my affiliations include a synagogue, a brunch group, and two support groups.

How is a community of caring formed? Good question. Some communities of identity include caring for each other as an element of their identity, such as religious congregations and extended families.

In my experience, a community of caring develops when members of a community by identity allow themselves to depend on each other. When they explicitly or implicitly agree to come to each other for support, and have a reasonable expectation of getting help.

I saw this happen when members of my brunch group had surgery, and the others visited them, sent and brought food, helped them with chores, and encouraged them. We take each other to medical procedures and the emergency room. We call each other to listen when we just need to vent.

Pretty much any community of identity has the potential to develop into a community of caring. As I see it, the key is for members to express openness to supporting each other. For as many of the group as are willing to explicitly agree to help each other to the extent of our ability. And to express this agreement not just once, but regularly.

And then, in any group needs will develop. If the members are in contact with each other, and believe that they have a mutual aid agreement, they will ask each other for help and receive it, and the group will grow stronger and closer with each need met.

The Roller Coaster

The Roller Coaster

At a family occasion in Santa Monica, a friend of the family told a story about a roller coaster in France. I’m not sure who the teller was, but my guess would be Nancy Nimitz, as she was the most consistent non-family presence in Santa Monica. She was the daughter of Admiral Chester Nimitz, a hero of World War II complete with an aircraft carrier named after him. Since she, like my uncle Malcolm, worked for the Rand Corporation (he in economics and she as an expert on Russia), I imagine they met at work. I liked her a lot; she was smart and witty and irreverent. The story seems like one she would tell.

I don't know if the story was true, but we kids loved it. She said that the builders had tried to make the scariest, most exciting roller coaster ever. They were very pleased with their creation, and had tested it thoroughly with sandbags standing in for passengers. Came the dedication day and the honor of the first ride was accorded to the mayor and other city officials. However, at the end of the ride, they all were dead, their necks snapped.

Not long afterwards, my mother took me, my brother, and a cousin to Disneyland. We went on the Matterhorn Bobsleds ride, a type of roller coaster. After a little conference at the top of the ride, we had our plan. As the car neared the bottom of the mountain, we all keeled over bonelessly, as if our necks had been snapped. Mother had been watching us and knew exactly what we were doing. She stepped away from the fence and pretended that she didn't know us. When the attendants came running up to the car, we smiled sweetly up at them.

Lo these many years later, I wonder why we kids loved the story so much that we decided to re-enact it. Why we felt no horror or sorrow at the meaningless deaths of the officials, but only macabre glee. Maybe it’s because kids don’t believe in death; the only deaths we have seen so far in our lives have been fictions on a screen or in writing. At any rate, the story really impressed us at the time, and it lingers in my mind still.

Council on Religion and the Homosexual

The Council on Religion and the Homosexual was formed in 1964, about ten years before I arrived in San Francisco. In the mid-1970s, I became its co-chair, and participated in its fight against the Briggs Initiative. Founding members of the Council were still on board when I arrived, and they told me the stories of its founding.

The group was formed to connect homosexual activists with religious leaders for mutual dialogue and education. Its founders included clergymen (and they all were men) from various Christian churches. They were joined by leaders of the gay rights groups of the time: the Mattachine Society, the Society for Individual Rights, and Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, the founding mothers of the Daughters of Bilitis lesbian organization. When they incorporated as the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, they may have been the first corporation in the U.S. to use the word “homosexual” in its name.

No story of CRH is complete without the tale of the New Year’s Eve Ball. The clergy and activists decided to fund-raise by holding a ball at California Hall on Polk Street. The ministers feared that the police would try to break up the party, so they told them their plans. The police response was to pressure the hall’s owners to cancel the event. After that didn’t work, some of the police may have agreed not to interfere with the dance.

Nevertheless, on the night of the ball, the police pointed floodlights at the hall’s entrance and photographed everyone who entered the hall. Taking their pictures was what the police did to intimidate gay men; publishing their pictures in newspapers often ended their jobs and destroyed their family lives.

The five hundred or so attendees were joined by about fifty police officers, whose very presence was threatening. The straight religious folk experienced police harassment for themselves, as peaceful partygoers confronted by so many officers and paddy wagons.

Then several officers demanded to go inside. CRH had hired three lawyers, foreseeing such a request. They told the officers that the party was a private one, and that they had to buy tickets to enter. The police promptly arrested not only the three lawyers but also a ticket taker standing nearby.

Randy Shilts described these events in his book on Harvey Milk, The Mayor of Castro Street. He wrote: “The ministers held an angry press conference the next morning, likening the SFPD to the Gestapo and demanding an investigation. Even the Catholic archbishop was reportedly up in arms. For this, if no other reason, City Hall had to respond.”

The arrested lawyers were defended at trial by ACLU attorneys, who got the charges dropped. City Hall assigned police officers to “smooth relations with the city’s gays.”

           Not only did police harassment decrease, but incumbents and aspiring politicians recognized the size of the gay community and began to seek their vote. In exchange for gay support, San Francisco assemblymen Willie Brown and John Burton introduced a bill to repeal the statute forbidding gay sex. Dianne Feinstein credited the gay vote for making her president of the Board of Supervisors. This led to her becoming the mayor of San Francisco, and now she’s the senior Senator from California.

So the New Year’s Ball was a seminal step in turning gays from an oppressed minority into a powerful political constituency.

My Favorite Books

Formed by My Favorite Books

Having inhaled books all my life, having retreated into print when my feelings were in an uproar, having relied on reading to keep panic at bay, I cannot choose a single book as having been my consolation and refuge.

Nevertheless, when I thought about the first books I remember reading, books that I have continued to reread, books whose characters live in my mind because they are part of me, one series glittered with light as if it were covered in diamonds: the Peanuts comics by Charles Schulz.

I remember Uncle Paul telling my brother and me about the Great Pumpkin, a godlike figure who comes from the most sincere pumpkin patch to bring toys to good children. He or it was an acceptable and useful divinity for Jewish kids like us.

My father had a vast library of paperback books, shelved at least three layers deep. Among the spy novels, science fiction, and medical treatises, I found a 1952 edition of the first collection of Peanuts cartoons, entitled simply Peanuts. My father wrote his last name on the inside cover, and Charles Schulz autographed it on the first page. I claimed the book after his death and have it on my shelves to this day.

As I said, I identify with several of the major characters in the script. First, of course, Charlie Brown. He’s something of an underdog, getting picked on by neighborhood kids, but they like him enough to keep on playing with him, and he teases them from time to time. I felt like Charlie Brown when I was teased or mocked by my contemporaries. I identified with Charlie Brown’s eternal struggle to fly a kite that didn’t get eaten by the tree, both literally (having my own kite munched on) and metaphorically (by attempting some new sport or other endeavor, and having it immediately come crashing down in failure, injury, or both).

Schroeder is the little kid who plays classical masterpieces on his toy piano. I shared his love of music, if not his piano skills. I can’t think of Peanuts without hearing in my mind the jazzy music of Vince Guaraldi. Dad loved that kind of music, and I even tried to play his sheet music for Dave Brubeck’s jazz piece, Take Five. Dad was a very capable piano player, and he supported my musical efforts of singing and playing folk guitar.

Linus joined the strip in later years, sucking his thumb while surgically attached to his security blanket. I could really relate to him, since books were my security blanket. He could use his blanket for comfort, and also as a weapon. I could use books for comfort, and studying schoolbooks gave me good grades and skills to earn my living.

The character initially named Violet became Lucy later on. Even as Violet, she would offer to hold a football for Charlie Brown to kick but would jerk it away at the last minute and send him flying. This became a symbol to me of the unreliability of the universe. I did identify with her proud self-identification as a “fussbudget.” When she set herself up as a psychiatrist offering brusque advice for 5 cents, I felt tenderly possessive of my mental blocks; I would never entrust any of them to her.

Getting back to Linus, books and music have been my lifelong security blankets, and I thank Charles Schulz for showing me how they could support me on my way through life.

Reading as LGBTQIA

Alphabet Reading

                                                        

Loving to read as far back as I can remember.

Getting books for my class from the bookmobile, I gather treasures with glee.

Bumped up a grade because I could already read.

Tearing through Nancy Drew mysteries like potato chips.

Quietly sitting in a corner, always entertained.

In a noisy school bus, just me and my book.

Attempting to write my own stories.

Leave the house without a book? Never.

Gotta have a way to corral my thoughts.

Being without a focus can lead to panic.

Technology to the rescue; Kindle has me covered.

Quickly digitizes every book I might want to read.

I seldom buy dead tree books any more.

Amazon saves my sanity; I am loyal to it.

Leisure means freedom to read as long as I want.

Good books last longer when part of a series.

Boring books I quickly close; I have many others.

To write my own books is a current focus.

Queer Elders Writing Workshop supports me.

I like to encourage other writers.

As addictions go, reading is not so bad.