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.

To Wake Up

Life’s Work

“Life’s work is to wake up,” wrote Pema Chodron. This is a Buddhist sentiment. “Waking up” is a modern way of stating the goal of enlightenment, the state of knowing that the whole universe is connected, and that we are part of this whole. Knowing that all beings are made of the same star stuff. Knowing that the way we treat others affects us, and that the way we treat ourselves affects others, because we are all connected.

We get into trouble when we think of ourselves as separate from others, as separate from the universe. We can wind up acting selfishly, treating ourselves as more important than others. Or we can lose sight of our own worth, treating others better than we do ourselves.

I have fallen into both errors over the years. I grew up in the middle class. I expected to go to college and earn a decent living. When I decided against the careers that my music degree qualified me for, I had the means to complete law school without having to get a job or a loan.

I was doing worthwhile work as a lawyer, but felt unworthy of the privileges life had bestowed on me.

I had also been feeling bad about my lesbian nature as sinful. But then I met gay Christians and studied the context of the Biblical proscriptions against homosexual conduct. I also came to wonder why same-sex coupling was seen as so much more sinful than other Biblically proscribed conduct, like wearing blended fabrics or eating shellfish.

I learned about periods in history when gay pairings were affirmed, and other times when gays were beaten to death or burned, and how many were medically tortured in efforts to change their sexual orientation.

That was when I woke up to that fact that I was part of a misunderstood and oppressed minority. I came to believe that I would help myself and many others by working to end that oppression.

Nowadays, when I am tempted to believe myself separate from others, I can remember that I am part of the LGBT community, am a human being like other human beings, and am made of the same star stuff as the rest of the universe.

My Committee

My Committee

There’s a committee in my head. The loudest member at any time usually controls my behavior. There are probably more members than I’ve noticed and named, but here are the ones I know.

My inner child is a lazy brat. When I find some pending chore or event to be onerous or somehow threatening, she cocks a snook and goes: “Nyah, nyah! You can’t make me.” She takes great pleasure every second she keeps me immobile. Her grasp on my controls fades only when the penalty for failing to act outweighs the pleasure of inaction or when there is more relief to be had from doing whatever it was than in avoiding it.

A more responsible member of my committee is the good soldier. When I was moved in my teens from Harrisburg to Berkeley to Santa Monica, my soldier accepted her orders and adjusted. When she was in control, I either forgot or suppressed memories of my last home so I wouldn’t be immobilized by grieving what I’d lost. Instead, I’d turn my energies to getting familiar with my new home.

A wise philosopher makes an occasional appearance on my committee. She looks at the lemons in my life and makes lemonade. When some plan falls through, or seems like it might do so, she figures out how to salvage the situation, find some alternative treat, or get something else accomplished.

My inner mother isn’t always wise or nurturing. When something goes wrong, she’s equally liable to blame me for it as to say ‘There, there; it’s not your fault.” Sometimes she counsels distracting myself with a book until I calm down a bit, and sometimes her advice is to punish myself with sarcasm until I’m ready to move on.

What my committee really needs is a chairwoman, someone who stands apart from the reflexive reactions and has the perspective to know that each member is only a part of the whole. Someone who can stand up to the loudest voice and say, “Thank you for your contribution. I’d like to hear what the other committee members have to say.” Someone who can lay all the points of view on the table and examine them with kindly curiosity. Someone who won’t be paralyzed by incompatible choices or perfectionism. Someone who can come to a good enough resolution, knowing that it doesn’t have to last forever, just long enough for a good try.

Wait a second. If I can imagine this person, how much harder can it be to imagine her onto my committee? Oh, the real problem will be remembering to summon her when the need arises. We’ll see how that goes.

Grandpa Lou

Grandpa Lou

I have mostly fond memories of Grandpa Lou, my father’s father. When my brother and I came to live with him and Grandma Fan in Harrisburg, he was about 58 years old and I was a toddler.  I lived with him until I was 11 years old.

He was named Leib Winokur when he was born in Ukraine in 1898. He came to America in 1906 with his family, and became known as Louis. Sometime before he married Grandma Fan, he changed his last name to Vinicoff. Maybe at her request.

He owned Vinicoff Electric Company, which sold electrical supplies. He drove a red pickup truck with the company name on the side.

I don’t think I ever saw his office or shop. It’s probably just as well that I didn’t. One evening he came to pick me up at a friend’s house wearing a gauze eye patch, because a dangling wire in the shop had scratched his eye.

One time I was cleaning Grandpa’s plastic eyeglasses for him, and broke the frame. I was mortified, but he was very kind about it, telling me that they were old and ready to be replaced. I mostly have chosen metal-framed glasses for myself ever since.

Grandpa and Grandma belonged to the Jewish country club, where she played golf and he presumably smoked cigars and drank with his buddies. To this day, if I catch a whiff of cigar smoke, I smile and think of Grandpa, even while my friends express their disgust.

I can picture him reading the newspaper in an armchair in the living room. Mother told me that I learned to read from Grandpa while we read the newspaper together. Which might explain why I could already read by the time I started first grade.

Once Grandpa gave me a square purple cough drop from his jacket pocket. It was delicious, and may have contained codeine. Many times thereafter, I looked in his pockets, in hopes that another luscious morsel had found its way there.

Grandpa liked to be comfortable in his clothes. When too hot, he removed a layer, regardless of style. That was a problem when he visited Southern California one summer. He removed his shoes and socks for a walk of a couple blocks, and burned his feet rather badly. Not one to learn from others’ mistakes, I did the same thing to myself decades later. I took off my shoes and socks at a Mime Troupe performance in Dolores Park in July, and got second-degree burns on the tops of my feet.

We had a rumpus room in the basement, which had a bar at one end. I wanted to use the bar for writing, and Grandpa installed an overhead light for me. I remember writing there a Nancy Drew-like story that involved the neighborhood department store. I am grateful for his efforts to support my writing so long ago. And I hope he would be proud of me.

  

Childhood Hideaways

Childhood Hideaways

As a child, I had my own bedroom. My platform rocker and a new Nancy Drew mystery were all the hideaway I needed for myself.

I had a girlfriend who lived a few blocks away, though.  We played together in an attic above her family garage. It had retractable stairs that we could pull up after us, but her mother could pull them down whenever she wanted to. Since our physical explorations of each other could be interrupted with little warning, we had to be able to get decently clothed at a moment’s notice.

No other actual hideaways come to mind. The trees in our yard weren’t big enough to support a tree house, but I climbed them every so often anyway.

One summer’s day, I was swimming with friends at the country club. I decided that we should have a tea party on the bottom of the pool, where it was still and quiet. So we breathed deeply, exhaled enough to sink down, and sat in a circle passing pieces of pretend cake and sipping from pretend tea cups. That’s how a sci fi fan plays house. Since we had to surface for air every minute or two, the party lacked continuity, and our frustration soon broke it up.

I was a little sprite of a kid, and sometimes just had to see if I could fit myself into some small space. The Jewish Community Center playground had a cement turtle that formed a rough hemisphere with a diameter of about four feet. The shell was maybe six inches thick, and it cleared the ground by about a foot. I could crawl under the edge of the shell, and sit cross-legged inside it. Away from the shouting and running of the more active day-campers, my introverted self enjoyed the quiet, calm, and safety of my borrowed shell.

I continued to like tucking myself into small places, if only to prove that I could fit. I was in a high school physiology class when I just had to get inside the wheeled cabinet housing our skeleton. The class had not yet started, and the cabinet’s door faced the edge of the classroom, so few kids saw me step in and pull the door closed. The teacher, however, did see me enter, but dear Mr. Lucas shared my playful spirit. He wheeled the cabinet around so the door faced the class and he stood next to it. I stepped out of the cabinet with a proud “ta daa!” to my startled classmates.

The last time I tucked myself into a small space, I was in college. I got it into my head that I could get my body into a clothes dryer. I did get myself in there, but the space was so uncomfortably confining that I immediately backed out. Thank goodness my roommate was too civilized to close the door on me or, even worse, turn the machine on.

Since leaving college, I have lived alone, and my home has been my hideaway. It gives me all the privacy and security and, usually, quiet that I need.

Wild Weather at Wildwood

Wild Weather at Wildwood

My lover Sarah and I were at Wildwood Resort for a yoga retreat. Wildwood is a rustic place on top of the hills above the Russian River. We had met there at another retreat a few years earlier. We had driven there from the Bay Area, blissfully unaware that there could be any problem with the weather. We were enjoying the views, the yoga and meditation sessions, mealtimes, and each other when soaking rainstorms parked themselves overhead.

I don’t remember which happened first, but the power went out and the buildings started leaking. The increasing cold, darkness, and wet made our stay less and less comfortable. We went to bed early to preserve power in the flashlights. Then the lack of refrigeration began to impair the quality of the food. Finally, we heard on the radio that flooding was expected along the Russian River, and we would need to leave for home a day early or we would be stuck there for several days until the waters subsided.

I panicked at the thought of being confined in increasingly unpleasant circumstances, and we fled as soon as we could. My intense need to leave rendered me deaf to all planning and advice. We were supposed to drive together as a caravan, but I pulled out as soon as we were packed. We were supposed to make a different turn at the bottom of the hill, but I forgot – until a passing Highway Patrol officer redirected us. I made another unwise turn that brought us into flooding on River Road, but I drove ahead despite the sign. As the water rose up the tires and the car started to lose traction on the roadway, I clenched the steering wheel and alternately prayed for help and urged the car forward.

My trusty car kept going, and we drove through drenching rain and heavy winds, on the largely deserted roads where we had been directed by another officer.

It seemed like hours, but we finally reached Santa Rosa, a bastion of civilization that had electricity and solid roofs. We settled into a restaurant for a hot meal, relaxed, and rejoiced.

Introvert-ish

Introvert-ish

I bill myself as an introvert. I’m usually quiet when in a group of people. When we’re eating, I chew my food so thoroughly that there are few times when my mouth is not full. So, unless I’m with people who also talk through food, I’m limited to comments I can come up with that fit into the conversation between bites. I’m happy listening to others while I chew, though, so that works out.

My definition of introvert focuses on my energy being drained when I spend time with two or more others. After an hour or two, I start looking for ways to make a graceful exit. If I need to stay with a group for an extended time, say at a party, the worst situation for me is to be standing with a small group of people. Eventually the others tire of our conversation and move towards other folks, and I am left alone, like a fish beached by the ebbing tide.

I do best at parties when I find a comfy place to sit and interesting people who stay seated near me. If they get up and go away, I’m OK if there’s something interesting to look at. My favorite party was a Bay Cruise celebrating our company’s 100^th anniversary. After we ate lunch, I toured the bridge and was allowed to steer the boat for a while Then I found a place on the foredeck and spent the rest of the cruise just watching the Bay go by.

On the other hand, I’m also a show-off. Given a script to read or sing from, I’m quite content to stand up in front of a large group of people. I’ve always been like this, from acting in children’s theater, delivering my high school valedictory address and competing in a televised quiz show, to performing in musical theater as an adult and delivering a Perspective on KQED radio. I may have a little stage fright, but I get up there and do it. What can I say? I like the sound of my own voice, and am happy to share it with the world.

Homosexuality

Homosexuality: nature or nurture?

Yes; both of them.

Why do we need to know what causes homosexuality? It matters because prevailing beliefs affect our lives. People who believe that homosexuality is not a choice are more likely to enact laws to protect gays’ civil rights. People who believe that homosexuality is chosen tend to favor criminal penalties and conversion therapy.

I believe gayness is a naturally occurring biological variation. This is backed up by research finding that same-sex pairings occur in similar amounts in all societies and all times. And they’re not limited to humans. Same-sex couplings have been observed throughout the animal kingdom: there are gay rams and lesbian monkeys.

I think gayness is like handedness. Both account for a small percentage of the population and run in families. You’re more likely to be left-handed if your parents were left-handed, but heredity does not explain everything. Both my parents were lefties, yet my brother and I are right-handed. This may be in part because we were mostly raised by a right-handed couple. My brother was a year and a half older when we came to live with them, so his right-handedness is more shallowly rooted than mine. He had trouble identifying his right hand as a child.

As to our sexuality. We may learn how to interact as a couple from our parents, but their example doesn’t seem to determine whom we as adults find attractive. Straight parents have gay kids and vice versa. Our father was gay, despite his marriage to our mother. My brother is straight, and I am gay. But any influence our father had on our sexuality must have been genetic; we never knew him to be gay while he was alive and we never lived with any gay couple.

Some researchers have thought that hormonal and other factors during gestation can affect one’s sexual orientation. For example, there’s a theory that a boy’s chance of being homosexual increases with each older brother he has. (See The Atlantic, How Older Brothers Influence Homosexuality, Olga Khazan, April 27, 2016) But that research is not very convincing, and has nothing to say about lesbians.

As to whether homosexuality is a choice. In a very few cases, maybe. Especially when there is no one of the opposite sex available or a person has been damaged by interactions with them. But in a culture where heterosexual bliss is held up as the supreme happiness, why would anyone choose to be part of a misunderstood and oppressed minority? And we have it really good in the United States. Gays are still likely to be beaten up, imprisoned, or killed in much of the world.

Having crushes on girls seemed natural when I was a girl. Falling into bed with my college roommate also felt right. When I converted to Christianity, though, their unwavering disapproval drove me away from her and into trying to be what the church expected of me. That didn’t work. So when I finally met gay Christians and other religious folk, I heaved a sigh of relief and gave up trying to be straight. I am proud to know who I am and I no longer try to be anything else.

Long Time No Post

I'm not quite sure why I've been silent for more than a year. Perhaps my time as co-leader of Openhouse's Queer Elders Writing Workshop has siphoned my creative energies away from this blog.
As it happens, though, the Coronavirus pandemic has suspended the workshop and all other Openhouse group activities for the next several weeks or months in hopes of spreading out the inevitable infections to stay within our hospitals' resources. And, as a person over 60 years old, I am advised to limit my exposure to groups of people.
So, I'm mostly at home for the next while, and sharing my accumulated writings of the past year, at the very least, seems like a good use of the time.