BillsWeek

What Does a Single, Gay, 50 Year Old Look Like?

2012-01-18T16:28:00.000-07:00

So Michelle Obama has turned 48. It's kind of shocking to be older than the First Lady. I mean, Barbara Bush and Nancy Reagan with their old lady hair seemed much more advanced in years. But the current occupants of the White House are practically peers. At this rate, in the next administration, I'll be complaining that the President and First Spouse are too young to have a clue about what they're doing and that in my day ...

You get the picture.

I have to admit that this last birthday rattled me. I'm now just one year away from the half-century mark. It's not that I'm afraid of death or being unattractive. I treasure each and every gray hair. It's more that I don’t know how I should act.

What does 50 look like? The image that first comes to mind is of active grandparents. But I'm not a grandparent, nor are there prospects for becoming one.

I sort through my mind's database of images for living as a nearly 50 year old single, childless, gay person: Eccentric uncle. Spinster aunt. Confirmed bachelor. Gay divorcee. Pathetic looser. Crazy cat lady. Hmm. The closest one that fits is crazy cat lady.

It's not about how I look to others, but rather how I see myself. There's a shortage of helpful role models for people of years, in general, let alone single ones. Add gay to the mix and, well, I might as well be the only one.

The best older role model that comes to mind is Betty White. She's beloved, respected, active, funny, and she's 90. Doesn't help me much right now.

A role model for the unmarried, in my mind, is single gal Doris Day in the 1960's movie, Pillow Talk. She's strong, beautiful, busy with her career, and has a housekeeper. Of course, in spite of fiery independence, she settles down in the end with Rock Hudson. Needless to say, she's not old in the movie, and gay didn't exist on the screen then.

It's pretty gay that I use Pillow Talk as an example. It's pretty gay that I vividly remember Rock Hudson in the bathtub scene, but I digress.

I don't sit around and pine for a husband, like Sally Rogers on the Dick Van Dyke show (another fairly gay reference and dubious single role model), but neither do I commit eternally to my singleness, forever free from the bonds of husbandly attachment. I simply want to know how I'm supposed to act now that I'm approaching the AARP demographic.

This just in. Rosie O'Donnell, I'm observing as she talks to Piers Morgan, is exactly my age. She's gay. She's engaged, but single for now. She looks fabulous. Maybe I just need to look around a little more.

Third Wheels Provide Balance

2012-01-03T16:50:00.000-07:00

As a pretty much confirmed single individual, I've had a lot experience as the third wheel. “Third wheel” is the designation usually given to that extra person society traditionally looks down upon because she or he is not attached to another.

Well I have news for society. Recent studies indicate that unmarried people are likely to be in the majority soon.

Only 51% of U.S. adults are currently married, an all time low (I don't remember where I heard the statistic - for all you know I just made it up). This is mostly due to people waiting until later in life to tie the knot, but I'm sure divorce and economic changes play a part – to say nothing of those who live as coupled without the legal sanction.

So for now, the norm continues to be going through life in pairs. Since my friends are way beyond trying to "fix me up" just to even out the number at dinner parties, this means that when we get together, I'm the odd one.

While society prefers couples and all the symmetry they bring, I relish my role as "extra." Third wheels provide balance. We keep couples from falling over.

With this power, of course, comes responsibility. When a couple seems about to topple over as a result of conflict over a minor item, such as whether to put cilantro in the salad, I'm often looked at to settle the disagreement. It's kind of like being Vice President, casting the deciding vote in the Senate.

During more significant arguments, such as in what religion to raise the children, I'm more cautious. Tempting as it is to blurt out what I know to be the correct answer, I make it a practice to never take sides in the biggies.

If you piss off one person in the couple, you've lost both friends. And most seriously, if the couple starts to break up, be careful. Now more than ever, do not take sides. They may reconcile and when they do, the pair will remember everything you said about the one you sided against and in a united front that only a newly reconciled pair can muster, the third wheel will be spun off to search of other couples to balance.

Most Awesome Moments of 2011

2011-12-19T16:37:00.000-07:00

There is no shortage of lists these days. I suppose it's the most efficient way of reviewing the old year as we prepare for the new. So in honor of the end of the year, here is my personal list of Awesome Moments from 2011:

Finding out that people actually do read BillsWeek
Going to that little local donut place (Walton's Donuts on Leetsdale) on the way to work
Watching all five seasons of Brothers and Sisters on Netflix
Attending new member classes at the Episcopal cathedral
Seeing lots of friends from back east as they passed through Colorado on their summer trips
Estudiar español y recordar algunas palabras
Deciding that instead of going to Village Inn for a piece of pie, we'll go and buy a whole pie to take home instead
Two, count 'em, two separate trips to San Diego
Charles let me have a Christmas tree this year - he did break one ornament, but that's better than the whole tree, so I guess he's turning into an adult cat finally
The discovery that visiting every Colorado state park is not going to take one year, but probably three or more
Xanax
Going to the Atomic Cafe for biscuits on Sunday mornings
The Occupy Movement
Learning how to delete channels on Pandora
Listening to BBC Witness on the iPod at 24 Hour Fitness
Near daily cuddles with Freddie, the Pomeranian who lives next door
Herman Cain's spectacular downfall
Figuring out how to use the automatic thermostat on the car heater (I've only had the car three years)
Watching the hawks outside my office window

Happy Holidays! See you next year!

Dying Dishwasher Spurs Appliance Crisis

2011-12-01T16:38:00.002-07:00

When I remodeled my kitchen, the green dishwasher which melted all of my plastics was replaced with a white one that had heat control; the green stove featuring uneven metal coil burners was discarded in favor of a white model with a smooth glass top; the green fridge sporting metal shelves was replaced by an energy efficient white unit containing glass shelving. All the cheap dark corkboard cupboards and drawers were replaced with European style (or so I was told) glossy beige and blue ones.

My modern kitchen!

As a relatively new homeowner, I felt like I had taken a big step towards transforming the dumpy fixer-upper where I lived into a showpiece home.

That was 12 years ago. Since then, every three or four years, I've done a major remodel on a different part of the condo, the most expensive of which was the bathroom, itself worthy of a separate writing.

Thing is, though, I'm wondering if it's time to start all over and again invest in the kitchen.

I'm asking because the "new" dishwasher I got in 2000 is making a loud noise - like a death rattle. Recent Thanksgiving guests could barely converse without shouting over the rhythmic clang-chunk, clang-chunk, clang-chunk sound.

Do all appliances age at the same rate? Will I have to replace everything at the same time?

My worst fear is not the cost, but whether I have the nerve to empty the freezer. See, I love to freeze stuff. I really like the idea of being prepared for that blizzard which strands me in the house for several days with lots of frozen soup on which to survive. So every time I cook, I set something aside and stick it in the freezer. It feels very secure, like money in the bank.

The problem, however, is that I don't take stuff out as much as I put stuff in. It gets to the point where I'm cramming and shoving just to make room for a sandwich baggie of leftovers.

I recently found a jar of unidentified frozen substance that I was pretty sure predated the last couple of blizzards. I thought about thawing it to save the jar, but decided it was too gross to contemplate. I threw it away to make room for a baggie.

There are also a couple pounds of meat someone gave me in 2010. I don't know how long they had it before that. I've heard of people eating 10,000 year old mastodon found frozen in a glacier. The meat in my freezer isn't that old, but I'm still not sure how long I should keep it.

Way in the back of the freezer, I fear, could be items dating back to the Clinton administration.

As I foraged for a snack one afternoon, I found an old ice cream sandwich. It looked ok. But when I bit into it, my teeth encountered something completely dry, spongy, and flavorless. All ice cream had been defrosted away, leaving nothing but a scummy white shell between ancient husks of wafer. I gagged on what was basically a mummified frozen snack. I only finished it because I was hungry.

Epilogue: The good news is I have cleaned out the freezer and now it's nearly empty. The bad news: they are predicting snow this weekend.

Is it OK to Listen to Christmas Music Before December?

2011-11-16T16:30:00.000-07:00

Every year, starting in late August, shoppers complain that while browsing patio furniture clearance sales at the local department store, Christmas music can be heard. We shake our heads and agree that this seems to happen earlier every year. We are shocked - shocked! - at the crass commercialization of the holiday.

Everyone knows that the yuletide season shouldn't start until Thanksgiving midnight when the stores open.

Some, Christians mostly, insist that they won't acknowledge Christmas one moment before the first Sunday in Advent, the church’s official four weeks leading up to the celebration of Christ's birth.

In theory I've agreed, and yet, as I fight to hold off ho-ho-hoing until the church says it's ok, I've started to reconsider my position on the subject. Must we limit holiday happiness to a set of rigid dates?

December 25, after all, is not really Jesus' birthday, but a date selected by the early church to coincide with the return of the sun after the winter solstice (and to usurp more ancient heathen celebrations occurring at the same time).

So why do we have to wait until some date on the calendar before we start whistling Jingle Bells? What about that old Dickensian adage that we should keep Christmas in our hearts all year around? What Dickens meant, in part, was that it's ok to enjoy Christmas TV reruns when they are shown in July.

Most of December is just one rush rush rush after another - from obligatory work parties to attending your friends' kids' concerts. It's exhausting. But amidst all the craziness, music can provide a nice break. Sometimes a particular tune takes us back to another time, a happy holiday in the past. Oh sure, there is seasonal music we don't care for. I know a woman who practically goes homicidal when "Santa Baby" comes on. I personally chafe at heavy-metal versions of Little Drummer Boy. But overall, I'm always happy to start hearing the familiar tunes in the stores.

This year, I set up my Pandora holiday channels in early November. I may even get some decorations out before Thanksgiving. Mind you, at noon on January 1, I'll shut off the music and take down the lights. I know that according to the church, Christmas lasts until January 6, but come on, a person can only stand so much.

Winter, Like Laundry, Just Keeps Coming Back

2011-11-09T16:25:00.001-07:00

No matter how much laundry you do, there's always going to be more. We don't stop wearing clothes just because clean laundry is folded on the closet shelves (or in my case, just tossed into the closet somewhere).

The trash can in the kitchen also continues to fill no matter how empty we try to keep it.

And dishes: any given evening after cleaning up, we admire the gleaming kitchen, counters free of all used plates and pots, the dishwasher rhythmically cleansing the residue of dinner away. It is never long before the first dirty glass appears. You just got everything washed up and now it's messy again!

Life never stops, even when we want it to.

We don't stop consuming beverages just because the dishes are done. The laundry basket doesn't stay empty - you toss a little into it every day, eventually stuffing it beyond overflowing, and finally you have no choice but to wash a load.

I suppose you could think of it as the circle of life: like birth and death, over and over again. Autumn is a good time to contemplate life's cycles, like the rotation of the seasons, one right after the other, repeatedly over time.

Winter is kind of like laundry. You think it's behind you but it always comes back with its dark nights and cold weather. What happened to summer? Wasn't it just a few days ago that every window was open? And even though we've barely recovered from the last round, it's time to prepare for the holidays again.

The years roll by faster and faster, like the washer's final spin cycle. Which reminds me, I need to do a load.

Falling Palms: Autumn in Southern California

2011-10-18T17:38:00.000-06:00

There were more people than seats in the tiny little boarding area. I was torn between sitting on the floor or walking around with my heavy carry-on bag. It would surely be more comfortable to sit, but I'd be on a plane for two hours and I thought I should keep off my butt as much as possible.

When the usual boarding rituals finally commenced, I waited anxiously to be allowed on the plane. But first the disabled could board. Then families with small children. Then special club members and people assigned to the seats with extra leg room. I wasn’t in any of these groups. Then the back five rows could board. Then the back 10, and so on.

As people shuffled forward, the gate agent got on the PA system and announced that the flight was overbooked. They needed a volunteer to be bumped to a later flight. In exchange, the volunteer would receive a voucher for a free flight in the future.

I was so tired, all I wanted to do was get home. Traveling is such a hassle and the less time spent at the airport, the better.

The agent made another announcement: still looking for a volunteer to get bumped. Won't someone please come forward?

I couldn't believe no one wanted that free flight. I suppose everyone was just as tired as I was. On the third request for a volunteer, I heaved myself and my carry-on off the floor and made my way through the gathered passengers. I told the agent that, yes, I would volunteer to get bumped.

Cut to several months later. It occurs to me that I still have the voucher and it will expire after one year if I don't use it. I feel like I have to use it on something special -- not the places I usually fly, which would be San Diego and - well, just San Diego. Frontier's international destinations don't interest me. No other destinations excite me. I suppose I could get worked up about going to Florida to visit Disney World and the retro-futuristic Epcot Center. Key West might be fun, but everyone in the advertising is so thin and hairless, I wouldn't fit in. New Orleans is fun, although I don't have many sober memories of it. Forget New York - I'm still not over having to live there in the 80s.

I've been lucky to be able to travel through the years. I've watched a wall of fog envelope San Francisco. I've stood on a sandbar in the Gulf of Mexico with a school of little fish encircling my ankles. I've leaned over the edge of a pier, Pacific storm waves soaking my legs high above the normal waterline as dolphins and pelicans just yards away feasted on the stuff stirred up by the surf. I've been totally confused by driving on the left side while coming to a roundabout in the UK. I smelled the breath of a humpback whale off the coast of Cape Cod. Last year I went to a retreat in West Virginia - Appalachia in the autumn.

I've been around. I once even took a cruise off the coast of Nebraska - a steamboat on the Missouri River. We went from Brownville down to the nuclear power plant and turned around.

Is there any place that I would like to see but haven't? Not really. My favorite vacations are the ones where I do a lot of beach walking and sitting and relaxing. Guess I'll go to San Diego again - this will be twice in one year.

Southern California in the autumn. Doesn't conjure images of falling leaves and crisp chilly mornings. But to be fair, those big palms do fall off the trees. You could get killed if you happened to be under one as it lands. I will take my chances. Meanwhile, the voucher was generous and I am, this time, able to upgrade to the special seating with extra leg room. Looks like I’ll be among the first to board this time.

Lure of the Cult

2011-10-12T17:08:00.000-06:00

Inside a chilly stone building, the assembled gather over the symbolic remains of a revered leader. Chanting punctuates the ancient rituals which draw followers from all over the city. Indoctrination ("education") for newcomers is provided.

I held off the sect's advances as long as I could. But after several years of watching from the sidelines, I've finally given in. I am now becoming officially indoctrinated, falling slow motion into a cult that has existed for hundreds of years, many of them a bit on the bloody side.

You see, I am participating in new member classes (the Catechumenate) at St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral.

It seems like I have to try as many denominations as I can. I started out Presbyterian and briefly flirted with the United Methodists. After a stormy stopover in the United Church of Christ, I discovered peace and spiritual resonance in the ancient traditions of the Episcopal Church.

Lots of my fellow members from the UCC congregation left at the same time I did, the result of serious congregational contention. Many of them moved on to become Unitarian.

But I had to be different. I went for the more dramatic tradition. I chose mystical and ritual over practical. I like the colorful robes, the gigantic organ, and the kneeling. I love having communion every Sunday. I'd probably be a great Catholic if it weren't for their absolutist exclusiveness and some theology that I just can’t swallow.

The Catechumenate is nine months long, and if I so choose, I may officially join the church around Palm Sunday. No other church that I've been involved with demands such commitment from newcomers. I like that the cathedral, and the 70 participants in my class, take this seriously.

I have many questions I hope will be answered in the coming months: Why do Episcopalians wear black so often? How do they manage to keep disease from spreading when everyone drinks from the same communion cup? Is the Anglican community really protestant, or just Catholic-light? How do they decide where to put those signs that say, “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You”? How many Episcopalians does it take to screw in a light bulb? Ok, I already know the answer to that one, but I’m not going to say it. I need to show some respect or I may be looking for a new denomination soon.

PostBlog from Scottsbluff – Pigging Out in the Panhandle

2011-09-26T17:38:00.000-06:00

You might think it strange to take a 24 hour road trip to Scottsbluff, Nebraska with the primary goal of eating a lot of local food. Well, I never denied being strange. This is what my friend Brian and I did a couple weekends ago.

Highlights of the eat-fest included a Scotty’s cinnamon glacier - ice cream mixed with a slushee and flavored with cinnamon. It tasted like Christmas. It was totally worth the drive.

Of course when in Nebraska, one must have a Runza - seasoned beef and cabbage cooked inside delicious, doughy bread. We also sampled some of the delectable local Mexican cuisine, and had a delightful breakfast at a greasy diner.

We were pleased to be accompanied by my niece and sister-in-law who reside in the area. When it comes to eating, I can always depend on my family. Every event with my dad or my siblings centers around food. Every holiday, birthday, actually any gathering for any reason – we never miss a meal. Even when one of us is in the hospital, we don’t forget to eat.

Wherever two or three Calkins are gathered, I always say, there is food also. Our obsession with food isn't limited to just consuming vast amounts of it. We use food to show love.

After going through surgery a while back, before he was fully conscious, my dad sent me out to get him a chocolate malt from Cold Stone. I got one for myself as well so he wouldn’t have to eat alone. That’s just the kind of guy I am.

The afternoon of a different surgery he asked for two éclairs from Lamars - the kind with frosting filling, not pudding, per his exact specifications. The nurse said he wouldn't be hungry so soon after surgery. Clearly she didn't know who she was dealing with.

I've been more or less on Weight Watchers for the past year. I do weigh less than when I started and I look pretty good. When, after losing 30 pounds, I visited my dad, he said he was proud that I'd lost so much weight. He then proceeded to pull out cheese and crackers, chips and dips, olives, and beverages for us to consume before heading out for dinner.

It's not just my dad. It's all of us. On those rare occasions when my sister comes to visit me, the highlight is often a trip to Whole Foods where we buy little samples of cheese, some crackers, maybe some potsticker dumplings to snack on. One time we bought an entire cake (moist, with fresh berries in the whipped cream filling) for just the two of us. And let me tell you, it was good.

I have to admit that it's not just when I'm with family. I make food part of many routines in my life. For example, one of the locations of my gym just happens to be next door to Whole Foods. It seems only natural that after working out, I should head over to the store's deli for a specialty sandwich (turkey, fig jam, greens, and brie on a club roll). And while I'm there, how can I not go by the bakery and pick up a couple of those big, fresh chocolate chip cookies? I have just come from the gym, after all, so eating these treats won't make that much difference.

You see, while showing love to others with food, I've also learned love myself.

Smoke, Sexual Harassment, and No Seatbelts

2011-09-20T17:26:00.002-06:00

It's a wonder we survived the 1960s. I’m not talking about the cold war, Viet Nam, or hippies.

I've just started watching Mad Med on Netflix - a show on A&E about an advertising firm in 1960.

In addition to the plot and characters such as the mysterious and troubled Don Draper, and in spite of being horrified by much of what I see, I'm fascinated by the 1960 styles and attitudes. Like a car accident, I can't look away.

It is a world made for straight, white, men. The only African Americans in Draper's life are the nearly invisible elevator operator and the guy who brings the sandwich cart around. Gay and lesbian people are either invisible or reviled, and live in constant fear of losing their jobs or worse. When a divorcee moves into the neighborhood, she is greeted with gossip and hostility, except for one of the neighborhood husbands who makes a pass at her.

They did things in 1960 that we wouldn't dream of doing now. For example, they smoked - in the office, in the kitchen, in bed, in the doctor's office, in the car... There is smoking in every scene. Pregnant women are smoking. And they drink: at the office, at lunch, everywhere. People drink mass quantities of wine and liquor. Sloshed, they get in the car and drive, and nobody says a word!

Also in the car, no one wears a seatbelt. Little kids climb from the front seat to the back seat and back again, as Mom speeds down the street.

I don't think Mad Men is exaggerating, except perhaps in the sexual harassment department. In Mad Men, if you're a secretary (and all secretaries are female), you should expect to be hit on by men in the office, multiple times, and you don't complain. Sometimes, you give in. This certainly happened in 1960, but surely not as much as Mad Men portrays. While my dad referred to his office staff as "the girls," I doubt very seriously if he sexually harassed them. On the other hand, without today's consequences, and with 1960 views of women in the workplace, I suppose sexual harassment could run amok.

Don't be fooled by politicians who tell you things were better in the good old days. I'm not saying we don't have problems now. But at least there isn't second hand smoke in the office, gays and lesbians can usually find a safe place to be, and we work our own elevators.

Have a Nice Day

2011-08-25T17:08:00.000-06:00

Some recent management handbook must say that the restaurant host, while seating you, should ask, "So how are you doing today?" I heard those exact words twice last week, first at the IHOP near my home and again at the Olive Garden in Fort Collins (hey, don't judge me – Olive Garden has great salad).

On the surface, it's a harmless question. You're supposed to answer, "Just fine, thanks." But my first instinct is to answer honestly. I doubt if the host wants to know about my sucky day; that my foot hurts and I just backed into another car. What if I just came from the doctor having learned I have a terminal disease?

Less intrusive but still annoying is the common wish people bestow upon strangers: "Have a nice day." At least with that one, there's no opening to discuss my sore foot.

A lot of people don't like "Have a nice day." It doesn't always ring sincere. I've been tempted to answer "Have a nice day" with, "Too late!" But I never have. When you think about it, even if it’s not sincere, the person saying it wouldn’t necessarily want you to have a bad day.

While sometimes irritating, I think I'd rather have these courtesies than the grunts of surly, snarly wait people and store clerks found, for example, in some east coast establishments. They don’t even say thank you, let alone "Have a nice day."

Given the choice I'll take false friendliness to open hostility.

A friendly thank you or even "Have a nice day" shows that a server at least has good manners. And good manners help to keep society civil, which judging from the House of Representatives (brought to you by the Tea Party), is not a bad thing.

So now that I’ve made a hostile comment about the Tea Party, I will sign off. But before I go, I really do hope you have a nice day.

You Know You’re from Scottsbluff If …

2011-08-11T16:57:00.000-06:00

There is a big new trend on Facebook: hometown nostalgia pages. The one I'm interested in, You Know You're from Scottsbluff If ..., has become so popular I can't keep up with all the posts.

Not surprisingly, food figures prominently in the discussions. It's not for nothing that the Nebraska city was once named one of the fattest in the country. It seems people scattered around the world savor the memory of Scotty's burgers and fries, rumbas, a rum flavored Coke beverage from the Dash In (Dash Out to the Dash In), and Taco Town.

Of course, non-food things are also remembered such as the elevator at Penneys when Penneys was downtown, stores staying open late every Thursday, the zoo being free, and a hair salon which used its phone number in a catchy radio jingle that remains entrenched in our minds four decades later (Six Three Two, Thirty-Two Ten, The Barber Den).

I only lived eight years in Scottsbluff, compared to 22 in Denver, which I consider my home town. But I have to admit that those eight years were formative, and since I was graduated from high school there, I suppose Sco-blo deserves at least honorary hometown status.

In the 70s (maybe still today), bluffers were a very proud people. We were different from, better than, the rest of Nebraska which was flat and humid and boring. Our town was built, along with twin city Gering, at the base of the magnificent bluff where trapper Hiram Scott was said to have died in the 1840s. Easterners (that is, people from Omaha and Lincoln) had no idea what a treasure existed way out in the panhandle.

Scottsbluff wasn't huge but it had two TV stations (both now defunct, I think), an airport, traffic jams (when you had to wait for a long coal train at the crossing), movie theatres, a symphony, an art center, and lots of shopping which attracted those unfortunates who lived in smaller panhandle towns. Around 1980 when the mall opened we thought we were really big stuff.

Scottsbluff was a good place to be a kid. You could ride your bike everywhere including the zoo and the movie theatre. There were enough people there to make a lot of friends, but few enough that you always saw someone you knew when you were out.

Certainly there was no anonymity. Corporal Paul Manley of the Nebraska State Patrol (who had his own radio spots – think the Shane Company but about driving safely) went to our church and reported to my mother that I'd run a stop sign. Yeesh. There was another time when I was goofing around in the street with a friend and a woman yelled out her front door, "Bill Calkins, does your mother know what you're doing?" I'm not going to say what it was. You'll have to guess.

Coming out as gay in Scottsbluff was very public regardless of whether I wanted it to be. Like all small communities, tongues wagged. Minds weren't always open and many of us fled at the first opportunity. I couldn’t wait to escape to the urban east, Lincoln, where indeed I did experience more diversity. I've since learned, however, that closed minds and gossip aren't limited to Scottsbluff or small towns in general. You can find ignorance everywhere.

I suppose we get nostalgic about hometowns because they help define who we are. The common experiences of a having shared a high school, dragging Broadway, and eating cabbage burgers at Bailey's Town and Country unites many of us who otherwise would have very little in common.

Bailey's and the Dash In no longer exist. But I understand Scotty's is just as good as ever. I feel a road trip coming on ...

Postblog from the Southwest: The Definition of Diversity

2011-07-26T17:13:00.001-06:00

I get so offended when people from the west coast lump Colorado in with the Midwest – as if Ohio and the Centennial State have anything in common. Colorado is a land of cowboys, high plains, desert, and rugged mountains. Of course, if you live in California, it's just part of that great flyover which is of no consequence.

Please spare me the comments about how all Californians don’t think that way. I know that. I’m just using a little hyperbole to make a point.

Also, just to be clear, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the Midwest. I think Ohio is beautiful. It’s just that I take offence when others dismiss the flyover as one vast homogeneous region where diversity is as foreign as the ocean tides.

In my travels around Colorado trying to visit every state park, I’ve seen a lot of variety. I have to grudgingly admit that the northeast, say Fort Morgan and Sterling, look kind of Midwestern, with corn and wheat fields and just that touch of humidity. Southeast Colorado is high plains hot and dry and though I’ve never been there, I imagine it resembles west Texas, which after all, is not that far away.

This week, I’m vacationing in the four corners part of the state which, in terms of U.S. regions, belongs solidly in the Southwest.

One need look no further than some of the pueblo architecture in these parts to be reminded that this used to be Spanish territory. Spanish names dot the map and descendents of the Spanish as well as the more indigenous people are everywhere, a reminder that these Americans’ roots go way deeper and further back than my own.

Visiting the ancient cliff dwellings of Mesa Verde remind me that though we think history in this hemisphere only started about 1800 or so, there have actually been prosperous people with complex social and technological constructs for many centuries before.

If you really want a taste of the Southwest, just visit the Four Corners Monument, a marker at the point where Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah all meet. This interesting geographical occurrence, despite belonging to four states, is truly out in the middle of nowhere. This is desert with a capital D. To my eye it’s lifeless and barren, though the local Navajo selling food and jewelry at the monument would probably disagree. I seek the shade of a jewelry stand and buy a beautiful hematite necklace. I’m on the Arizona side of the marker, so I can say I bought this jewelry from a Navajo woman in Arizona. Don’t I sound well traveled?

Literally (sort of) burned out by the desert, I drive about 90 minutes and up several thousand feet into the green, lush pine and aspen forests of the San Juan range. This is more like what outsiders think Colorado looks like with its jagged peaks and breathtaking vistas. This year there’s been a lot of rain so everything is very green. Early in the morning, plumes of mist rise from the slopes like ghosts. At some points frustrated by the summer traffic, of course, I’m tempted to say that the San Juans look like the back of a camper and smell like diesel. But then I arrive in Silverton which is a truly historic town, preserved much as it was a hundred or more years ago. Unlike some other Colorado towns with their fake Victorian gingerbread looking facades, Silverton is the real thing. A piece of hot apple pie a la mode at the Brown Bear Cafe tops off the high drive in the mountains.

Those of us living on the Front Range are similar to my acquaintances on the west coast. We are at best ignorant and at worst dismissive of other parts of our state. There is a whole big Colorado out here which we should get to know. From the Southwest to the Midwest, Colorado is the very definition of diversity.

Nose Hair Signals That the End is Near

2011-07-21T16:53:00.000-06:00

It's a delicate operation. One false move and it hurts. A lot. Using tweezers would be worse. I use little tiny scissors which don't take out the whole hair, root and all, but merely trim it down so I have to do it again in a few days.

Lately, I've noticed something new. Some of the nostril hairs that I’m trimming are white. And that's just the tip of the ice berg. I have lots of white hair in other places. Where did it all come from? The hair in my ears is white. My beard has been white for a long time. My chest hair is turning white. The only place it's not white is on top of my head, and that's only because there really isn't much there.

It's not like I'm surprised to be getting older. True, I forget my exact age sometimes and have to subtract the year I was born from the current year. Really, objectively, I feel lucky to be getting old. By many measures, I shouldn't have survived this long. But here I am, saving for my retirement, wondering if universal health care will be a reality by the time I stop working.

I always told myself I'd age gracefully, without complaint, without regrets. Age is just a number, I always thought. I should welcome age and the wisdom it brings. Instead, I find myself continually surprised that the years are creeping up on me - and the decades are flying by.

Coming of age moments happen all the time.

For example, I occasionally go to the Village Inn near my office for breakfast. I've noticed that the same old guys are in there every morning. They talk with the servers like true pals, and say hello to each other by name. More often than not, the server doesn't even need to ask what they want to eat. She just brings it out. Kind of like how Betty knows to always bring me a coffee, no cream, and a large water. I kind of laughed at these old guys until it slowly dawned on me that I AM ONE OF THEM.

Face it: getting older is tough. Here are some of the frustrations I'm having as I age gracefully:

Things I did to my body years ago are coming back to haunt me. I’ll spare you the details.
I can't see.
My memory isn’t exactly slipping, but I vividly recall a meal I had in 1987 - and I can’t remember anything about yesterday.
I'm watching my friends age too. How can they look so much older while I still look the same?
I'm working with people half my age who, for example, don't know the origination of the "cc" in email (if you're younger than 35, I should tell you that we used to type each letter by hand, using carbon paper to make carbon copies (hence the cc) because we couldn’t just print another document.
When predictions of a disastrous future are made, it is with guilty relief that I think to myself how great it is that I'll be dead before it happens.

Which brings me to the most startling thing about getting older. It is the thing that nobody talks about: the realization that you are going to die. With more than half your life behind you, time is limited. If you've always wanted to do something, now is the time to do it.

It's just a shame that I have to spend the rest of my life trimming unwanted hair from my facial orifices.

Machines Replacing People in Everyday Interactions

2011-07-06T16:40:00.000-06:00

Every couple of months, I use this blog to spout off about technology. The occasion for this particular spout is that I just got a new GPS for my car. The Global Positioning System is a little gadget that plugs into the car's electric outlet (you know - the thing that used to be the cigarette lighter but isn't any more). A little screen shows me where I am and a voice tells me where I should be going.

It's one of those things we couldn't have imagined a few years ago and makes me think, as I often do, that we are living in the future.

The GPS speaks to me in a casual business-like female voice. I've started to call her Blanche. She really helps me out. Gone are the days when I have to mess around with a paper map and its complicated folds.

Of course, Blanche isn't perfect. In Vail with my sister recently, I decided to have Blanche direct us to a particular Mexican restaurant we were interested in. Blanch guided us to some empty lot on the frontage road which was clearly not a restaurant. My sister was not impressed with my gadget.

Blanche isn't the only new interaction I've been having with machines.

Since the classes I took earlier this year didn't work out, I'm attempting to learn Spanish from a computer program. If you pass by my place at just the right time, you'll hear me talking to simulated virtual people who only exist in software. They are Norman, Claudia, and Isabel. They always understand me in spite of my accent, and they are endlessly patient, allowing me to repeat each lesson as many times as I want.

Blanche and Isabel are not real people, of course, but sometimes I forget that. When Blanche reminds me just one too many times that I will need to turn right in a quarter mile, I sometimes call her a bad name. If I miss the turn, Blanche sounds just the slightest bit annoyed when she says, "Recalculating..." and attempts to get me back on track.

Technology pervades. Who goes anywhere without a cell phone? We use ATMs to interact with our bank and we check out our own groceries at the supermarket without even thinking about it. I can go all day without speaking to another human. And then there are the many times when my co-worker and I instant message each other though we sit only 10 feet apart.

I see where the Japanese are developing robots to take care of elderly people. Is this the companionship we have to look forward to in our old age? Yeah yeah, it's easy to complain about technology, but it really can help us. The Japanese robots, for example, will enable people to live more independently for a longer period of time.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that I contribute to technological depersonalization. In my day job as an Instructional Designer, I write curriculum that can be accessed from any computer in the company. Web based training at your own desk at your own speed is more efficient and requires much less interaction with other people. Whether that's a good thing is debatable. Hey, I didn't start the depersonalization of technology, I'm just making money off of it.

Animals Have Souls

2011-06-09T17:52:00.000-06:00

Of all the ridiculous nonsense religious people have spread throughout the centuries, one item in particular stands out. It first came to my attention when I was in about the sixth grade and my Sunday school teacher, a guy named Gary, pronounced with certainty that animals don't have souls.

Of course I knew he was wrong. Anyone who has been close to an animal, I thought way back then, would know old Gar was mistaken. In my case, it was a little black dog named Gyp who communicated with her eyes.

It wasn't the first or last time that an authority figure at church bombarded me with bullshit. But this one really got to me.

What you believe about a being's soul reflects how much you value said being. If you believe animals (or slaves, or women, or Russians...) don't have souls, it's easier to treat them badly.
I would like to think I value my fellow beings of all species.

Some people carry the value to extremes – by never eating another creature, or promoting animal rights above all other considerations. I don't go that far. While I wouldn't say that my life has intrinsically more value than any other, I also can’t deny that some life forms eat others. If you don't believe me, turn on one of the National Geographic predator documentaries.

Betty White, known for her decades long devotion to animals (oh, and something about a career in TV comedy), says that she's not interested in animal rights. Her concern is animal welfare. I think I'm with her. I want my cats well fed and comfortable. I don't think every right I have needs to be available to them. For example, what would they do with the right to vote?

I have so many food allergies, I couldn’t be a vegetarian even if I wanted to be. I'm not going to stop eating meat, but given a choice, I'll eat the animal that was ethically raised and humanely killed.

Somewhere I heard that some indigenous Americans thank the spirit of the animal before eating it.

I tried to thank a chicken after removing frozen parts from their plastic encased styrofoam container. It kind of fell short of the magnificent spiritual experience I'd envisioned.

Studies have shown that people who beat animals are more likely to act violently to other humans. I assume this means that respecting animals also increases our capacity to respect each other.

I HATE Talking on the Phone

2011-05-28T11:09:00.001-06:00

When the device in my pocket beeps or vibrates, I moan with dread. As I write this, I’m interrupted by a call from a worthy nonprofit wanting to pick up my cast off furniture with their truck, my alma mater suggesting that I increase my annual giving, and a pollster about the Denver mayor’s race. Those are the ones I answer. Most others go unanswered because they don’t show up on caller ID.

Thank goodness for caller ID. There are probably two people on this earth for whom I would answer any call, any time: my sister and my father. Unless I’m in an exceptional mood, the rest go to voice mail.

Thank goodness for voice mail.

Of course with voice mail, you have to return the call. I am terrible at returning calls. If you've called me and I haven't called back, I apologize. You are not alone. It's nothing personal. I'm not sure what the problem is.

I don't dislike most people. I like my friends. I just don't want to talk on the phone. I don't mind talking in person. Usually. I love email and texting. But the phone conversation is a problem.

Phones are everywhere in our lives. People use their cells out in public while standing in line or walking down the street. A man I dated once spent the entire evening on the phone. We didn't go out again.

I've heard guys talking on their phones in public restrooms. I go out of my way to flush loudly when encountering that situation.

Previous generations only used the phone for emergencies. If the phone rang in the middle of the night, you wanted to know who died. I miss those days.

If I do get roped into a conversation, I like it short and sweet. What is the plan, what needs to be done, what do you want from me, goodbye.

Chit chat? Let's save that for our "in person" time.

I don't know where my hang-up originated (hang-up - get it? har har har). Perhaps it goes back to the time I worked as a switchboard operator when I was between "career jobs." I had to answer by the third ring, route to voice mail, take a message, juggle people on hold, and handle multiple calls at once. I was not allowed to eat or go to the bathroom. After working the phone under such pressure perhaps I burned out.

Perhaps it goes back even further to when the homophobic aunt I didn't like called and my dad insisted that everyone in the family take a turn talking to her. He literally chased me around the house with the phone because I refused. I finally hid under a bed. True story.

I met a guy once who didn't have a phone. Talk about a lifestyle choice. He didn't want it controlling his life. And the little parasites do control our lives. What other instrument is allowed to interrupt whatever you are doing? What else demands that you drop everything and respond to its beckoning? For what else do we wake up from a nap, stop dinner, put down our work, or interrupt a face to face conversation?

I really can't explain why I have this strong anti-phone reaction while most people don’t.

It's probably some manifestation of social anxiety. Maybe I'm just contrary.

I’ve always tried to fight it and get over it, but I’m getting to an age where I think I should just accept it as an eccentricity and hope my friends understand.

If you have any ideas, give me a call. Better yet, text me.

Postblog from the Arkansas Valley: Cramming a Lot of River into One Weekend

2011-05-23T16:57:00.000-06:00

Arkansas Headwaters Official Page

Lake Pueblo Official Page

John Martin Reservoir Official Page

In a manic effort to see as many state parks as possible this summer, I decided to hit three this past weekend.

I don’t recommend it. It’s a lot of driving. One inch on my AAA map is actually a pretty long distance.

I had a lot of time to think in the car. I kept wondering if people call Southern Colorado, “SoCo.”

A lot of people shorten the names of places in Colorado. Everyone knows that “The Springs” is short for Colorado Springs. If you’re from Grand Junction, you might refer to your hometown as “Junction.” Likewise, I’ve heard people call Fort Morgan, “Morgan.” But I’ve never heard Fort Collins referred to as “Collins.” I have heard it called “Fort Fun.” There’s also the popular “LoDo” for Lower Downtown Denver. Some people call Aurora, “Saudi Aurora,” but that’s a different topic, a comment on the number of trees or lack thereof in the sprawling suburbaplex (I just now made up that word).

If you’re expecting a travelogue about my visits to the state parks, you may be disappointed.

To tell you the truth I tried to cram too much in. I was too busy worrying about the drive to enjoy the parks adequately. Sure, they’re all real pretty and interesting in their individual ways. Basically I followed the Arkansas River from its spectacular headwaters high in the mountains (Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area) down to the city of Pueblo (Lake Pueblo State Park) and out to the lowland plains (John Martin State Park).

Presumably, if I’d kept on going I’d have followed the river through Kansas, Oklahoma, and I suppose into the state of Arkansas, right to the Mississippi River.

In case I didn’t get it before, I’m positive now that the Arkansas is a major river. It cuts through SoCo’s near desert landscape like a wide ribbon of green. Following along on Highway 50, windows down so I could smell the sweet spring air, I had the opportunity to see some towns I’d only heard of such as Rocky Ford (home of those incredibly sweet, juicy cantaloupes) and La Junta (where some of the natives say they live in “Lunta”).

The big city on the Arkansas, however, is Pueblo.

I’ve always liked Pueblo. It has real character. From rusting factories to modest southwest-style homes, it’s kind of a cross between Youngstown, Ohio, and Tucson, Arizona. There’s no phoniness in Pueblo. No districts of fake lofts, no faux gingerbread (come on Vail, it’s cute, but maybe you’ve overdone it). Just regular people, in a normal, unpretentious town.

The point of my State Parks venture isn’t just to visit the state parks but to explore the rest of my home state. I saw a big chunk of it over the weekend.

So with something like 38 state parks left, I’ll keep going, but I’ll try to plan the driving a little better.

Postblog from the South Platte Valley: Barr Lake State Park

2011-05-14T17:41:00.003-06:00

Official Web Page for Barr Lake

Barr Lake was at one time an open sewage pit. In the 1950s and 60s all of Denver's untreated wastewater flowed into this reservoir just outside of Brighton, northeast of the metro area. 40 years later it is a haven for wildlife, lush with forests and wetlands, full of living things.

The first of many state parks I hope to visit over the summer, Barr Lake is familiar to me. I've bicycled and hiked even canoed the lake many times. I could have written this without going there this morning and it’s a good thing.

State Park Lesson Number 1: I have to share state parks with other people.

As I pulled up to the park entrance at 6:30 this morning, a committee greeted me and asked if I was there for the run. Now this often happens at Cherry Creek State Park where I go most Saturdays. That place is right in the middle of the urban jungle, almost a Central Park of Denver-Aurora. It gets crowded. But Barr Lake always seems so distant, so outside of the city. You never see crowds, and if you do it’s usually a gaggle of lively birdwatchers.

One of the things I enjoy the most is feeling like I’m back in the Midwest, surrounded by hay and cornfields, barns and horses. Unlike much of Colorado, this area is wet and swampy. Barr’s shores are less about sandy beaches and more about bayous. You’d almost expect to see alligators lurking amongst the cottonwoods standing in the shallow water. But as you gaze at the swamp, Longs Peak, in the distance white with snow, rises dramatically out of the plains.

I’ve never seen a gator, but over the years, I've seen many deer - some swimming in the water - hundreds of fish and thousands of birds, including the nesting bald eagles for which the park is famous. Spring is especially lively as hundreds of carp flop around in the shallows near the shore, spawning.

Barr Lake is a large lake (by Colorado standards), but it's fairly quiet. Large motor boats are not allowed. There are no jet skis, no water skiers. Even non-motorized boats (kayaks, canoes) are limited to half the lake - the other half is completely reserved for wildlife.

One thing you can do at Barr Lake is walk, nearly 10 miles, all the way around. Not only do you get a feel for the water itself, but the woods and farmland can be soaked in up close, including herds of sheep and cattle.

The hike is flat but can be muddy. The mosquitoes can be nasty. But if you're like me, you forget all about that when a train rolls by. A big part of the lake abuts the railroad. If you're lucky, you'll be near (but not on) the tracks when a giant freight train rumbles past, shaking the ground, and causing that child-like thrill: "A train! A train! Wave at the engineer and see if he waves back!"

So I was disappointed when I arrived at 6:30 this morning, ready for my hike and my communion with nature. What I found instead was volunteers setting up, orange cones marking the trail, tables with big water dispensers on them and those cardboard waste containers with plastic bags in them – all around the lake.

I don’t have bad feelings towards the big runs. I love that I live in a state where there is usually one somewhere every weekend: the Bolder Boulder, the Turkey Trot, the Cherry Creek Sneak, the Fury Scurry, and today’s Sean May Memorial Run. Sean May was a district attorney in Brighton who was shot a few years ago. I certainly don’t begrudge today’s runners their good cause. I’m sure the organizers cleaned up after themselves and the wildlife felt no ill effect.

The good news is that people do use the state parks. I just need to get over my hang-up about sharing them.

I did get a good hike in before the run started. I didn’t get to go all the way around the lake, but I saw two huge pheasants, a million swallows, several rabbits, and some geese with goslings. I stood on the dam looking over the expanse of water and saw a long coal train making its way towards the city. I put my hands in my pockets to keep them warm and thought about all the state parks I’m going to visit this summer. I’ll try to share better.

Chatting Over the Fence or A Thousand Miles

2011-04-30T16:20:00.001-06:00

That Wills sure is dashing, and I suppose Kate is pretty enough, as perfect brunette women go. All I could think of is what Di would have thought and how proud she’d be. Hey, I am gay, you know. I didn’t stay up all night watching the royal wedding, but I did watch some of the documentaries before and after.

One of the commentators commented that this generation of royals is more “in touch” than previous ones because of social networking. I guess that’s true, if you consider social networking being in touch.

In the old days, so it is supposed, people spent more time with friends and family and less time on the computer. You'd discuss the news of the day over the family dinner, swap events with a neighbor over the fence, and wave to passersby as you sat on the porch.

With increased urbanization and greater mobility, families are further away and neighbors are, likely as not, strangers. Yet we are just as human as we were before, with that need to reach out and be connected. We've just replaced the porch with Tweeter and the fence with Facebook. We still wave to people. They're just possibly thousands of miles away and the wave is electronic.

It's interesting to see how differently people approach Facebook. Some, of course, resist the trend steadfastly and refuse to sign up. Presumably they’ve found life satisfying enough without being connected to all their elementary school friends.

Some people on Facebook don't seem to log in, ever. Don’t they get lonely? Some don't include a picture of themselves. Other’s should find a different picture.

Some don't understand that posting a note on someone's wall is not private - friends of friends can see what they're saying.

Some post every detail of their lives. Every date, sneeze, and meal are recorded for the world to see. Larry in Pittsburgh never shares a deep thought, but I know that he had broccoli for dinner.

Some people don't tell you the important events in their lives, but go on endlessly about their cats. Yes, I am one of those. But my cats really are terribly fascinating and everyone should be aware of the amazing and cute things they do.

Common postings on Facebook include, yes, pets; politics; comments wishing people wouldn't put political comments on Facebook; kids; travels; weather; sports; and Jesus.

And lots of posts are about really ordinary things, but ordinary things that are interesting because you know the people (or some of them) and you can relate to what they're doing. I loved learning that Linda, a woman I knew in high school, now lives with her family in the old Johnson house down the street from where I grew up. I think it's interesting when Phil describes his bike rides in the snow or what his kids did in church that week. I enjoy Chuck's casual references to places in Omaha where I used to live. If it weren't for Facebook, I would have never learned that my niece was sick last year. I wouldn't know how much snow my sister was getting up in her Wyoming mountain home.

You might argue that social networking is shallow, that it keeps a distance between people. True, 400 Facebook friends are not the same as 400 close friends. But who has 400 close friends? My close friends are friends in real life and on Facebook. I don't see any problem with that. And Facebook is a good way to discuss the latest antics of my cats. And I really do want to know what Kenny, in New York, thinks about Kate’s stunning dress.

When Nature Calls I Have an Answer

2011-04-14T17:14:00.000-06:00

Back when the century turned, I purchased a little two man tent. Optimistic as that sounds, there were never any other men in it. Just me and a sleeping bag. And a very upset stomach.

When I was a kid I loved camping. My friend John and I would schlep out the big green canvas tent that was older than we were, set it up on the shores of Lake Minatare (home of the only lighthouse in Nebraska), eat bar-b-que potato chips, and revel in the sounds of the lapping waves which would sometimes creep closer over night as the water rose. I think part of the appeal then was sleeping away from home, independent if only for the night.

Things started to change when I went back country backpacking in Colorado with my brother. The mosquitoes were thick that year, and so tiny that they crawled through the tent’s mesh screens into our noses and ears. A planned week in the Mount Zirkel Wilderness turned into one miserable night plus a comparatively luxurious stay at the Motel 8 in Laramie on the way home. Now that was camping. Why didn’t we just go to Motel 8 in the first place?

As an adult, I tried camping again - with friends who went all out. There was a sleeping tent (for six) and a portable screened in day lounge gazebo. There were sleeping bags and auto-blow up air mattresses. A walk in (almost) cooler. A six-burner propane stove and roomy oven. Tarps on the ground. Skillets and pans of all types. Complete sets of flatware and nicer dishes than I had in my house at the time. Wash tubs. Portable food pantries (gotta get that food up there somehow). Large drinking water dispensers. Multiple director-style folding chairs with beverage holders. And every other gadget sold at REI.

It wasn't a campsite - it was a compound.

Anyone trying to get a feel for how the pioneers lived as they walked their wagons west would have to look somewhere else. Of course, setting up and breaking camp took hours with all that stuff. I thought it would be quicker and easier to drive into town and go to a restaurant than to fire up the six-burner and unpack all that food, but I was overruled. So I pitched my little two-manner, spread out my sleeping bag on the hard ground, and pulled out my bag of chips.

I didn’t really enjoy myself, but I felt like I was supposed to. I mean what self-respecting Coloradoan doesn’t like camping?

There's just no getting around the fact that regardless of what you eat or how pretty the scenery is, nights get cold in the mountains. It's worse when there is something foreign living in your stomach and you have to repeatedly get up to go to the bathroom, as I did that summer night in Rocky Mountain National Park some 20 years ago. Mom and Dad offered to let me sleep in the motor home with them, but I had my little tent and by-golly, I was going to use it.

Trying to sleep while shivering is hard enough - but when nature calls the way it did that night, you really have to answer. I lost count of the number of times I unzipped the sleeping bag, scrambled for my shoes, unzipped the tent, ran to the facility which was not terribly close, ran back shivering, rezipped everything, and then did it all again about every 40 minutes until morning.

As a new day dawned and a bright sun rose into a crystal clear blue Rocky Mountain sky, I decided that the only camping I was ever going to do again was at the Estes Park Holiday Inn with a heated room and full indoor plumbing.

The two-man tent took a final trip to Goodwill. I have never again shivered the night away with only a thin piece of material between me and the sky.

Don't get me wrong - I love the mountains and being outside. This summer I’m going to visit as many of Colorado’s state parks as I can. I plan to hike, picnic, gaze at the stars, search for wildlife, lean over to get a closer look at flowers, and imagine what it was like in the world before cities and suburbs dominated everything.

But after a day of communing with nature, you'll find me curled up in a real bed with a bathroom nearby. I’ll use electricity to read a book, watch TV, use my laptop, and make coffee if I choose. For a special treat, I’ll haul out some bar-b-que potato chips. Now that’s what camping should taste like.

Entertechnology: A BillsWeek Rant

2011-04-01T16:55:00.001-06:00

I've said it before and I'll say it again: we are living in the future.

For example, thanks to ever increasing technological advances, there are TOO many entertainment options.

What we can view, listen to, communicate on, and even read, are constantly expanding. Now we even carry our books around in thin little electronic conveyors of copy. No more lugging that tiresome thick paper volume around. All of this has no effect on quality. You can just as easily electronically access trash as classic literature.

We are so spoiled. My sister has a subscription to the New York Times and doesn't even have to step out on the front porch to get it, let alone drive into town to buy it at the local bookstore like she used to. All she has to do is start the coffee and turn on her Kindle; no need to even don her slippers.

My Dad has a satellite dish with millions of channels plus Netflix, Xfinity, and I don't know what else. He has so much to watch, he barely has time to be a productive member of society. If he doesn't want to watch anything (say his eyes get tired), he can always listen to Pandora over his satellite system.

At the gym I can listen to my iPod or watch one of a dozen TV monitors tuned to the 24 hour news channels or ESPN. Some of the workout machines are affixed with their own private TV so I can watch the channel of my choice while working out.

Bars and restaurants all have multiple TVs playing around the joint.

I have almost as much entertechnology (new word I just coined for entertainment-technology) at my house. Now that I can watch favorite old TV shows on Hulu, I don't need to leave home for any reason. When I do go out, I have around 200 podcasts to listen to on my iPod (yes, I only have an iPod - it's soooo last decade). If I run out of those, I have hours and hours of music on the same little device. I am considering a long road trip just to listen to it all.

In the olden days, people sometimes left their homes to be entertained. You might actually go to a public place to be in the same room as the performers. Sometimes they played music. Sometimes they wore costumes and talked to each other, pretending to be someone else. The people watching would rapidly tap their hands together multiple times. It was called clapping. How quaint. Imagine having to leave your home to hear music or be otherwise entertained.

Now multiple individuals can be in the same room at home engaged in separate entertainments. During a quality visit with my dad recently, we both in the same room, simultaneously, headphones in ears, watched different movies on our separate computers.

Kids watch movies in the back of their minivans. Not poor kids though. They have to look out the window at the boring real world.

When I was a kid, a movie in the car was unthinkable. My sibs and I took turns choosing the radio station on long road trips. On late night family drives in the 70s, it was a treat to find an awesome AM rock radio station from Oklahoma City. That's right. KOMA out of OKC. I haven't checked but I'm sure that station is now a right wing sports talk mouthpiece.

Anyway, now each kid has their own iPod or whatever. Do they have some other way of practicing negotiation skills when they don't have to disagree over the radio station?

All this entertechnology is not perfect. I still have to get off the couch to switch my television from DVR to Roku. I can't use my wireless surround sound and my internet router at the same time because I guess they are on the same frequency and cancel each other out.

And on the subject of technology, my microwave is slower than the stovetop. My cell phone is not an i-anything and if it has applications, I sure don't know it and probably wouldn’t know what to do with it. My printer leaves inky blotches on what it prints, and does not double as a fax or a scanner. I have a digital camera, but no charger for it. And I HATE it when my phone beeps while I'm standing at the urinal.

How I long for the good old days when there were just three TV stations and an AM radio. Of course those days weren’t as simple as we remember: you had to get off the couch to change the station. How did we ever put up with that?

Eating Cheap Long Term Consequences

2011-03-23T12:01:00.001-06:00

Conscientious parents make sure that kids eat healthy. It is paramount that sugar be kept to a minimum. Fruit instead of cookies. Milk instead of pop.

It wasn't always this way. I recently produced a cook book from recipes my mother used over the years. It brought back memories, to say the least.

When I was a kid, my mother valued saving money more than nutrition. Sometimes she went a little overboard. But in the inflation besotted years of the 1970s, particularly for a mom who grew up on a Nebraska farm in the Depression, saving money was the most important thing.

It's not that we were poor. We had a large sprawling house, three cars, a swimming pool, and room for a pony (that is a reference to Hyacinth Bucket – don’t worry if you don’t know her). But Mom never got over the fear that someday, she might end up back in her dust bowl childhood with no indoor plumbing or electricity.

Unlike me, Mom grew up poor. Walking to the outhouse in the middle of a winter night was a chilly endeavor. And there was no air conditioning in the summer. On truly hot nights, a wet sheet might have to suffice. You had to choose between opening the window for the slight chance of a stray breeze or closing it to keep mosquitoes out.

I'm not sure what she ate as a kid, but she did mention seeing live chickens in the yard some mornings, followed by fresh fried chicken for dinner.

When I came along in the 1960-70s, you no longer had to see your food alive. It was the age of convenience food, pre-packaged, pre-health craze. All that mattered to my mother was that it was cheap.

I didn't know until high school that Tang and orange juice weren't the same thing. My sister and I, however, were acutely aware that drinking Carnation powdered milk was not the same as having the real thing. I, for one, was traumatized by that clump of undesolved off-white goo in the bottom of my glass. To this day, I can barely stomach milk except on cereal - and it helps if it's whole milk or cream.

But I do have fond memories of other food items from the 1970s. There are some which today's parents wouldn't allow near their children, but that are comfort food for us.

What aging Boomer doesn't secretly prefer Wonder Bread? Come on, you know you do. Well, I don't, but I think a lot of other people do. Slap some Miracle Whip and baloney between a couple slices, and BAM, you're a child again.

There's lots of other stuff we loved back then that we don't see often in this Whole Foods world. Velveeta processed "cheese-like" product. SPAM broiled in brown sugar. Jello with carrot shavings (a salad) and Jello with Dream Whip (dessert). Some cooking trends from those days are a little hard to believe. But did those overly processed foods hurt us, after all? Well, I do struggle with weight. I would rather eat cake than pita bread. But I would also rather have orange juice than Tang. And in the end, I'm pretty good at saving money.

Two Dimensional History Distorts Presidential Reality

2011-02-26T21:19:00.002-07:00

I just watched an episode of the 2004 Discovery Channel series, "Decisions that Shook the World," about Lyndon Johnson. It was a great illustration of how people are not all that they appear to be; are not completely good or totally bad.

While remembered for letting the situation in Viet Nam get so terribly out of control, Johnson also did more than any president since Abraham Lincoln to advance the cause of civil rights. These days, when we especially vilify our political opponents by, for example, seriously equating President Obama to Hitler and calling him the worst president in history (move over Andrew Johnson), it is important to see our leaders as complex and not as two-dimensional caricatures. I'm not claiming to be above this tendency. Just ask me what I think of Sarah Palin. I dare you.

President Johnson was a man of the Old South who used the "N" word freely but also pushed through the Civil Rights Act (which Kennedy was unable to do), the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act. Johnson was, to me, not particularly likable. He was crude and rude, vulgar and macho. Yet he used his old-boy, back-slapping style to get things done in congress, and wasn't above threatening old supporters who opposed his legislation.

On the subject of presidents who are usually seen as either all good or all bad, there's a new movie on HBO about Ronald Reagan. The mere thought of Reagan, actually, literally, has upset my stomach for 35 years. No one except for George W. Bush has had that same effect on me. As early as 1976, I feared Reagan as a war-monger and malevolent disassembler of valuable social programs. In fact, my father lost his job as a county psychiatrist thanks to The Gipper, and millions of mentally ill people were turned out of institutions to become part of the nation’s homeless population.

Reagan getting credit for the fall of the USSR is as bogus as anything I've ever heard. It most certainly would have happened anyway, and certainly not because he told Mr. Gorbachev to "tear down this wall."

Reagan refused to acknowledge AIDS as a problem, and I always found his folksy friendliness as phony as a seven-dollar bill.

It pains me to try to see the good in him, but this HBO movie about Ronnie tries to show him as the complex human being he really was, not the sainted statue, or pariah, that we now make him out to be. Especially when today’s "Tea Partiers" claim him as their patron saint, Director Eugene Jarecki points out that the real President Reagan would not only be too liberal for them, but would probably be embarrassed that they were besmirching his good name.

Clearly, LBJ gets the short shrift in history. I'm willing to give Reagan another look. But don't ask me to reconsider “W” yet. It's too soon.

Vacation Bender – A Cautionary Tale

2011-02-19T12:45:00.001-07:00

(The following content may not be suitable for all readers.)

Boy, did I go on a bender.

I’m not talking about alcohol. I don’t touch the stuff.

Party drugs? Hardly.

Sex? I wish ...

No, this was a gigantic, out of control, week-long, food binge.

My annual vacation to San Diego was great. I attended a workshop, hiked for miles along cliffs and beaches, observed newborn seals nursing, and drove with the windows down. There was, however, a darker side. It seems that six months of disciplined Weight Watchers goes right out the window when I’m away from home.

To start with, I went to IHOP on the way to the airport. IHOP is very interesting at 3:00 a.m. when the booths are full of the post-bar crowd, roughly counting great amounts of cash and seemingly unaware of Colorado’s smoking laws.

Anyway, it was “All You Can Eat Pancake Day.” The pancake breakfast comes with hash browns, bacon, and eggs. I very sensibly skipped the eggs (I’m allergic). But have you had IHOP pancakes lately? They’re so fluffy. I had to have a second serving. It was going to be a long day, and I didn’t know when I was going to eat again.

By the time I got to the airport I wanted a diet coke. I got to the cookie place on Consourse A just as they were pulling the giant fresh snickerdoodles out of the oven. Hot cookies go well with diet coke.

I think I blacked out after that. The next thing I remember was sitting in a booth at the Point Loma (San Diego) Dennys sinking my teeth into a patty melt where the rye bread was buttered and crisply toasted with two kinds of cheese melted over the juicy burger. That Denny’s has great fries which come out hot and crisp, and it would be almost rude not to follow all that with an Oreo milkshake.

My hotel room was on the top floor overlooking the harbor. Like all hotels these days, breakfast is included – bagels, waffles, whole milk for the Raisin Bran – need I say more? The room also had a refrigerator and microwave - perfect for making popcorn and stashing some of those juicy fresh California oranges.

And since I had those appliances in the room, I could save money by eating in part of the week. So I went shopping at Vons.

Vons is a supermarket chain in California and the Vons on Rosecrans is beautiful. Being in Southern California, part of the store is permanently outside. And that bakery! Well, it couldn’t hurt to just buy one box of those big chewy cookies and spread them out all week. Unfortunately, I got through them in two days and had to go back to Vons for more.

When traveling, it’s important to avail one’s self of local food. In-N-Out Burger is a very popular chain in Southern California, but I controlled myself by only getting the single cheeseburger and fries, not the double. And I very smartly drank diet coke while somewhere in the back of my mind, a little voice was saying, well, something. I decided not to listen.

Did you know there was a Baskin Robbins on Point Loma Boulevard? Right on the way to the beach! I was on vacation you know, and I could count it as lunch.

After a peppermint shake, I decided to go healthy for dinner so after a couple hours of beach time, it was back to Vons where I bought a little container of Tomato Bisque soup. I could almost hear songs of praise from the Weight Watchers angels congratulating me on my moderation.

Two delicious spoonfuls in, I noticed on the ingredients that the soup was made with butternut squash. Squash is one of those things that, um, causes my intestines to explode. I couldn’t pour that stuff down the drain fast enough.

I was too worried about my stomach to go out. Fortunately there were some cookies left, and some popcorn.

You know what I haven’t had since last summer? Papa John’s pizza. I figured if it was just cheese on a thin crust, it couldn’t be too bad. I could eat half one evening and save the rest. But the box didn’t fit in the little hotel refrigerator, so I ate the whole thing.

Finally, my trip was coming to an end.

In exchange for being bumped to a later flight, I received a voucher for a future Frontier trip. And for my trouble, the airline also gave me some food vouchers to use during my nine extra hours at the airport. It’s not easy to eat healthy at an airport.

The Chillis at San Diego International is a nice big one where you sit down and get waited on. The fries are ok, but not as good as Dennys. I chased that down with a fancy coffee drink and a big cookie at Starbucks.

That was lunch. I had another voucher and needed dinner before catching the late night flight.

One of the things I’ve bragged about since starting Weight Watchers is something that, well, I can no longer brag about.

But when I sank my teeth into that long-forbidden, salty, two all-beef patties, special sauce – you know the rest - Big Mac, and fries, my relapse was complete.

Back home in Denver, carrying nine extra pounds, I went to King Soopers for basics. The big soft cookies beckoned from the bakery but I kept going. Now that I’m home, whenever I get a hunger pang, which is about every 15 minutes, I reach for the grapes.

A One-Finger Salute to February

2011-02-05T10:47:00.001-07:00

I've had it. I don’t know how long I can stand it. I hate constantly being chilled to the bone even inside my home. I feel like an astronaut when I have to put on boots, coat, scarf, gloves, and hat just to take my trash out. Is it right that my fingers hurt every time I go outside? Why is it that the interior of my car doesn't warm up until I pull into the parking lot of my destination?

I usually keep a good perspective on the darkest time of year - at first. Early winter has it's enjoyable moments. The holidays sparkle with colored lights and festive merriment. It's fun to pull those sweaters out of storage. The afghan on the sofa beckons cozily. Fantasies of toasty soup and hot chocolate envision a season of cocooning in front of a fire, or in my case, the television.

But by February, the sparkle has turned to gray slush. This is the long stretch between holidays (Valentine’s Day doesn't count unless you're in a new relationship or work for Hallmark) when the drudgery of living without something to look forward to is compounded by endless darkness and cheerless dreariness.

This last round of below zero temperatures pushed me to the limit. I actually wore four shirts at the same time, in hopes of being a little warmer. I considered wearing mittens to bed except it brought to mind an eccentric uncle who wore gloves in the summer.

If Colorado’s Front Range isn't encased in snow and ice this time of year, it's dry and brown. The plains are dusty, dirty, and smoggy between snows. I am aware that the sun is up a little longer each day (everyone is reminding me), but the warmth of spring and the smell of green grass is still a distant dream. And our snowiest month, March, hasn't even started yet.

This past week as I shivered under a heavy blanket and two cats, I watched blizzard coverage on WGN, the TV station out of Chicago that everyone gets on cable. The Windy City was socked with their third worst snow in history, stranding motorists for hours and causing headaches for the outgoing Daley administration. Hey, I'm from Nebraska - I love seeing weather on TV.

I remember winters in the Midwest. One year in Lincoln, my front tire got caught in the same ice rut multiple times over a period of months. It didn’t melt. It might still be there. I remember not seeing the sun for weeks at a time. Denver is downright tropical by comparison. At least our snow melts between snowfalls and we do have the occasional 60 degree day.

Ah! 60 degrees! That's around the average temperature in San Diego this time of year. Sometimes it's a lot warmer. But there is no snow, at least down in the city. There is occasionally snow up in the nearby mountains, causing many who live at sea level to drive up a couple thousand feet to see it. Watching local weather in California, I’m amazed that, unencumbered by snow tires, people visit the chilly mountains wearing flip-flops and actually roll around in the freezing stuff I desperately try to escape.

Next week I will take my 12th annual vacation to San Diego. Leaving a poor winter-bound friend to sit my house and cats, I'll be staying at a nice hotel, Facebooking on a balcony looking over the bay at the downtown skyline. I'll have to motivate myself to drive over a big hill to get to the beach, but I'll be wearing shorts. There’s an In-N-Out Burger on the way. I'll drive with the windows down. I'll gaze at palm trees and think about how they don’t look real. I'll walk barefoot in salty wet sand.

When I return from 10 days of lovely California sunshine, April will be that much closer. And if it rains, I’ll still enjoy myself. Rain isn’t snow.

We Have Nothing to Fear but ... Volcanoes and Elevators

2011-01-29T16:51:00.001-07:00

I'm not what you'd call a hysterical person. I maintain my calm and usually think logically through every problem before reacting. My analytical outlook prevents me from panic when unforeseen disasters occur - with one or two notable exceptions.

I am totally nervous about the supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park.

Every 600,000 years or so, this volcano erupts, burying North America in ash, disrupting the climate worldwide, and causing the extinction of countless species. 1,000 times larger than Mount St. Helens which exploded in the northwest in 1980 and blew ash all over our cars in Nebraska, Yellowstone, which is due for another eruption (could be tomorrow, could be another 100,000 years), will completely obliterate everything 100 miles in diameter. Goodbye Old Faithful and Jackson Hole. No more Tetons. The town where my sister lives would be toast.

Think that’s a shame but you could live with it? Think again.

Poison gasses will wipe out all life for at least 1,000 miles in every direction (most of the western U.S. including my home in Denver). The atmosphere all over the world will be darkened by ashy air for several years, plunging our planet into an ice age resulting in mass famine and starvation.

While other people watch "reality" TV shows like American Idol, I watch a lot of real reality TV on the Science, History, and National Geographic channels. Ask me anything about asteroids, mega-tsunamis, viral pandemics, solar storms, gamma rays, and anything else that could wipe us out. Though I don’t sleep well, I’m up on how the world could end.

But I can't watch Animal Planet. It upsets me too much to see a cat or dog suffering in the vet’s office, even if they do get well in the end.

You know, there are a lot of things more likely to kill me than a volcano, so it's odd that this is the one that keeps me awake at night.

For example, I drive to work every morning in the dark on a crowded freeway going 75 miles per hour. As if this alone didn't put me within a hair's breadth of a sudden and fiery end, what about the other idiots talking on cell phones and doing their makeup while driving ... But my neurotic anxiety about volcanoes doesn't extend to traffic situations.

I do have fears not related to natural disasters.

I fear my windshield washer fluid will run out. I fear I won't get to the airport two hours before my flight is scheduled to leave. I fear the cable will go out during Modern Family.

In addition, riots in other countries, crime, unemployment statistics, the eventual bankruptcy of Social Security, Sarah Palin – all are frightening, but I don’t lose sleep over them like I do those natural disasters where we have no control.

There is a place for fear: it motivates us to get away from situations which might harm us - if we can get away.

But fear can also be irrational.

I was once stuck in an elevator for about five minutes during which I worked myself into a full-fledged panic attack. I can't logically explain why I was so upset, but the guy on the other end of the emergency phone loudly and clearly got the message that no, I could not hold on a few minutes more. By the time the security and maintenance departments came with a big crowbar to pry the doors open, I was in a frothy sweat and I really had to go to the bathroom.

If I'm that way in an elevator, what will I do if that volcano blows?

Anti-Gay? Are You Sure?

2011-01-18T18:02:00.001-07:00

A recent Facebook exchange has been bothering me.

One of my FB friends declared that a public persona was probably a conservative Republican and therefore anti-gay.

It’s no great leap to make such a claim. One only need look at congress to see who votes pro-gay (Democrats, in case you were wondering), and who votes anti-gay (Republicans, duh). Yes, there are exceptions, such as Senator Susan Collins (R) from Maine who has, at worst, a mixed record.

Just to make my own bias clear: I am pro-gay and very wary (not to mention weary) of most Republicans, particularly conservative ones.

Another FB friend, however, defensively and angrily responded to the first FB friend that as a conservative Republican, neither she nor her other conservative Republican friends are anti-gay.

True – there are Republicans who are not anti-gay. The Log Cabin Republicans are largely gay and Republican. In fact, many Republicans are fiscally conservative (wanting to limit the amount of money government spends) and socially, well, moderate. Frankly, I don’t know of any socially liberal Republicans, but I could be wrong. Let’s stick with moderate.

I agree we shouldn’t paint any one group of people with the same brush. Don’t even get me started on the red-state/blue-state stereotypes that after the 2004 election cast everyone in the middle of the country as homophobic, racist, war-mongering fascists. Wherever you go, you can find people who are quite accepting of those different from themselves. And, everywhere you go, there are rabidly hateful and intolerant individuals.

What bothers me about my conservative Republican friend who is not anti-gay is the vehemence of her defensiveness. She seems quite sure that she has been unjustly attacked by our broad, sweeping generalizations. And yet, I doubt if she has ever lost a job because of her sexual orientation. I’ll bet when she’s sick, her husband is allowed into her hospital room, no questions asked. I’ll bet her very basic civil rights have never been subject to a majority vote. I’m sure that while she was growing up, she never ached to see role models in literature or on TV, or in her own family, who resembled herself. I’ll bet she never wondered, as a child, if there even was anyone else in the world like her. I’ll bet when she was asked to be on a committee at church, no one questioned whether her orientation disqualified her from serving. I’ll bet if her spouse died, his family would not sweep in, pretend that she didn’t exist, and claim ownership of all his belongings.

Really, who has the right to be defensive and angry here?

Here are some questions I’d like to ask of anyone who says they aren’t anti-gay.

1. Do you believe most people who identify as gay or lesbian can choose not to be that way?

2. Do you believe that lifetime commitments between two loving partners should be legally sanctioned with every benefit of a heterosexual marriage, no matter what their genders?

3. What would you do if you found out one of your children were gay?

4. Should patriotic gay and lesbian Americans who feel called to serve their country in the armed forces be allowed to do so without fear of expulsion?

5. Do you believe that a child can be healthfully raised in a loving home that just happens to be headed by a same sex couple?

I won’t bother to spell out whether how you answered renders you pro-gay, a little homophobic, or anti-gay. Just consider your answers and think twice before lashing out in anger at a GAY PERSON who may NOT completely understand YOU.

And if you answered the questions the same way I do, then I’ll agree you aren’t anti-gay, no matter what your political affiliation.

How Do Parents Do It?

2011-01-07T17:24:00.001-07:00

Worn out from a tough day at work, I navigate the rush-hour freeway home.

It's not unusual to stop at Petsmart for cat litter or food, or stop at the supermarket for my own supplies. Miscellaneous errands to Target, Great Clips, or Walgreens are often part of the commute home.

Finally, much later with darkness having descended, I pull into my carport.

Home at last!

In order to avoid multiple trips, I simultaneously juggle a back pack, a gym bag (from the early morning pre-work workout), groceries, cat food, and whatever else as I trudge from the car to the front door, stopping at the mailbox on the way.

Arms full, before leaving the mailbox, I attempt to sort the junk from the mail that I want, in order to minimize what I have to carry. When I finally reach my doorstep, I have to put everything down, dig through my pocket for keys, and unlock the door - placing my foot strategically near the floor by the doorframe in case there's a cat plotting to dash out.

Usually, both cats greet me noisily as I re-gather up all the bags and mail and come inside. As they circle around me, I fumble for the light so I don't accidentally step on them. Their meowing is intense and insistent. They have been sleeping all day and are ready for some action, commencing with their dinner.

It doesn't matter that all I want to do is put my feet up and veg for a while. I don't drink, but the thought of a beer and a moment of quiet is rather appealing at this point. If I sit down and, for example, boot up the laptop to check email or scan Facebook, Lily, senior cat, places herself in my line of vision so I am unable to see the keyboard or the screen. She’s not above sitting on my wrists as I type. Neither cat will let me pet them now - they have other plans.

Reluctantly, I drag myself to the kitchen to prepare their dinner - Lily is allergic to half the food I give them and Charles won't eat big chunks so I have to mash it up for him. Their kitty dishes may still be in the dishwasher which I hurriedly started early that morning, so I open it up and debate whether I should empty the whole thing now or just take out what I need.

In the hallway, a basket of laundry resides. I put it there before leaving home to remind me that I need to wash some clothes.

The cats don't care. They want to eat. Now. Somehow, they eventually get fed, the dishwasher is emptied, and the laundry is rotating in the machine.

I may now consider my own eating. Should I have one of the frozen dinners which I really don't like but that are convenient? Should I put some effort into cooking? If I'd thought about it, I would have picked up some Japanese take out on the way home - but of course, that would have been more to carry in. I haven't ordered a pizza since going on Weight Watchers, but it sure is tempting if only because it would be so easy.

When the laundry is done it needs to be hung or put away. There are newly dirty glasses and plates to put in the dishwasher. The cat boxes need cleaning. The housework never ends!

When I eventually get to collapse and rest from a long day, I can't help but wonder how parents do it. I can barely care for two cats and myself without being exhausted and overwhelmed. What would I do if I had to feed children every night? And help with homework? And baths and stories? I think the cats can't wait, but I know little humans can't.

Though the food wasn't always good, though she sometimes made me crazy, my mother always had dinner on the table at the end of the day. Her house ran like clockwork. How did she do it? I think I'll put my feet up for a moment and give it some thought.

Things to Do Before I Die

2010-12-30T14:49:00.001-07:00

I've reached the part of midlife where a man typically buys a red sports car, dates a teenager, and gets hair transplants in the futile attempt to recapture his youth.

I’m in no danger of doing any of those things. But between a recent birthday and the coming of a new year, I sense mortality creeping ever closer.

I have no desire to be young again but it has occurred to me that at this point there's more time behind me than in front. As a result, if there's anything I want to do I'd better get it done before it's too late.

So to commemorate the passing of another year, I set out to make a bucket list. In case you don't know what that is, a bucket list is a list of things you want to do before you die.

Turns out it isn't as easy as I thought.

It's tempting to write down the usual clichés, but most aren't things I really want to do. For example, I could list sky diving, but I'm not trying to speed up the end of my life. Another typical item for people in this part of the country is climbing all 54 fourteeners (mountains over 14,000 feet) in Colorado. I can't think of much I'd rather not do more.

I've really already done most everything I ever wanted to do. I've lived in some varied places. I've earned a Masters degree. I get paid to do what I love, which is writing. Granted, my technical and training materials aren't best sellers, but still...

Just surviving this long is quite an accomplishment considering how I spent my 20s. Some of my friends didn't make it this far. I'm a lucky guy.

So what is on my list?

I've always wanted to stay at the Brown Palace - Denver's finest historic hotel. It's luxurious, dripping with Victorian elegance, and expensive. It's also haunted. I've never been able to justify spending the money it costs to stay there. But one of these days, I'll just cough up the dough and go.

I would like to visit the three states I've never been to: Alaska, Maine, and Vermont. Saying I've been to all 50 states seems more doable and frankly more interesting than 54 mountains.

I'd like to learn Spanish. It's a prominent language in the U.S. and likely to become more so (in spite of the narrow-minded efforts of some who would like to legislate it away).

And then I'd like to go to South America and speak it. One fun fantasy is to walk down the Avenue de Mayo and sing, "I want to B A part of B A, Buenos Aries, BIG APPLE!" In case you're not gay, that's from the musical, Evita.

That's my short list. I guess I'm pretty lucky to have had such a satisfying life, or at least reasonable (low?) hopes and expectations. And upon reflection, I probably have plenty of time to do these things before I kick the bucket. But perhaps I’d better Google Spanish classes just in case.

A Huge Leap in the Right Direction

2010-12-18T16:22:00.001-07:00

Today’s 65 to 31 vote in the U.S. Senate to overturn the misguided 17 year old compromise allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military (NY Times story), but only if they keep it a secret, is a major step forward for our country.

There are times when I think we’re going backwards, what with all the political extremism and ignorance so evident among candidates in the recent election.

But today let’s put that aside and celebrate a huge leap in the right direction.

Yes, it shouldn’t have taken so long.

No, it’s amazing that we are so far behind other countries like Israel where everyone has to serve, without consideration of sexual orientation, and Canada, where in every province, gays and lesbians can get married.

Clearly we have a long way to go. But I believe we’re going to get there.

When I came out of the closet at age 17, the military was the furthest thing from my mind. I registered for the draft, but I had no intention of joining up, and I was quite relieved when I realized that they wouldn’t take me anyway. It never occurred to me that it should be my right to serve. I just wanted to move to the big city where the other gays were and live my life in peace.

Back then, I never would have imagined that legalized gay marriage would be the central controversy of the gay rights movement. We’ve come a long way.

Sure, I want things to happen more quickly, but this kind of change is hard fought. Women’s suffrage took nearly a century. Slavery required a bloody war. But eventually, missteps, battles, and all, we eventually get to where we need to go.

And of course there is still sexism and racism, and there will always be homophobia. But sexism and racism are fringe in the 21st century, unacceptable to the mainstream. Homophobia is now one step closer to the fringe as well.

Desegregation of the armed forces signaled the eventual end to legal segregation everywhere in the U.S. Today's decisive victory over "Don't Ask Don't Tell" signals the eventual crumbling of institutional homophobia. When the majority of military people think it's a non-issue, it’s easy to foresee that only the most die-hard religious fundamentalists who wallow in their own bigotry will be left behind.

We’ll need to keep fighting, but today, let’s stop for a moment and celebrate.

Making the Most of the Holidays by Doing Less

2010-12-04T10:52:00.001-07:00

I didn't go to the company party this year. I just didn't want to. By the time Friday night comes around, I'm exhausted after a long work week. I don't want to dress up.

While I'm at it, I'm not sending out holiday letters this year. Scrambling for stamps and cutting my tongue while licking envelopes is a daunting prospect. Anyway, I suspect that Facebook, for better or worse, is making the holiday letter something of a relic.

I’m often called a grinch. I own that. I’ve been called worse.

I'm not putting up a Christmas tree for the second year in a row. My two year old cat, Charles, won't let me. I tried it. He wants to eat the branches. And I mean the plastic, synthetic branches of my artificial tree. I didn't even get the glass ornaments out. I'm sure he would make quick work of those.

General principle: if it causes more trouble than pleasure, or if the merriment is compulsory, then I opt out. It’s all about boundaries. My energy is limited.

I haven’t Christmas shopped for several years. Everyone I know has way more stuff than they need - including me. The last time I was in a mall at Christmas, I think Pat Schroeder was our Congresswoman and I saw her shopping at Niemen Marcus. Instead, I’ve made a practice of donating the money I would have spent on presents to the Denver Dumb Friends League (the local Humane Society). Family members seem to appreciate that as much as any doo-dad I could buy them.

Why do we drive ourselves crazy with activities that don't add to our or anyones’ enjoyment of the season?

I haven't gone to a New Years Eve party for several years. I don't drink and I can't stay awake late. I prefer to quietly reflect on the coming year and perhaps make a reasonable resolution or two. New Years Day, I want the flexibility to be depressed about the prospect of a long, dark winter without being forced into false cheer.

Don’t get me wrong. When I do elect to take part in holiday goings-on I will do so with relish.

Here’s what I plan to enjoy before the year changes:

Lights. Lots of colored lights. Charles did allow a couple of strings at home, just not on a tree. Most years, I drive around the city looking at lights. There’s a house in my neighborhood which is loaded with illumination and even has its own radio station so you can listen to music choreographed with moving parts and sophisticated light shows. And in Denver, no tour of lights is complete without driving by the City and County Building, easily the most spectacular holiday display in the Mountain Time Zone.
Dinner at Fresh Fish Company. Yes, for me, Christmas, New Years, and my birthday are all one big glop of holiday. Like many restaurants, if you sign up for it, Fresh Fish Company sends a postcard every year near your birthday allowing a percentage off your entre equal to your age. That grilled salmon and asparagus drizzled with hollandaise sauce with a side of garlic mashed potatoes is getting closer and closer to half price for me.
Time with family. My family is a lot of fun and it just wouldn’t seem right to celebrate Christmas without them. This year, my siblings and nieces and I will converge on my dad’s house in Fort Collins. I’ll probably make corn chowder for Christmas Eve. Some of us will go to church, most of us won’t. I’ll drive home to Denver late so I can feed the cats and get some sleep. Christmas morning, I’ll rise early and head up there again.

So you see, I’m not a total grinch. I simply like to get the most out of my holiday by doing less. If you see me at a festivity this month, you’ll know I’m not faking merriment. If you don’t see me, well, happy New Year.

Traditions Bring Meaning to the Holidays

2010-11-21T10:20:00.001-07:00

Ah Thanksgiving! When people of every faith (or none at all) gather with family and friends to reflect on the good things in their lives.

Many cultural traditions play out this week. It’s the one occasion when most of us eat turkey. It’s the busiest time of year at airports. It’s when we untangle the colored lights, plug them in, and check whether enough bulbs are burned out to justify buying a whole new string.

There are traditions unique to each family. Some like the cornbread Stove Top stuffing mix while others prefer the herb flavored. Others mix the turkey dinner with traditional ethnic food. Some, for example, garnish sweet potatoes with layers of brown sugar and thousands of mini-marshmallows.

And what would Thanksgiving be without the crystal dish holding the traditional jellied cranberry sauce in the shape of a tin can?

It’s these folksy customs which add color and distinctiveness to a celebration. We have a little gem in my family which is repeated every Thanksgiving.

At some point during the preparation of the traditional meal, the cook, usually the host, turns to the guests who have congregated around the food preparation area, and from the heart, with all the feeling a major holiday can inspire, says:

"Ok. That’s it. Get the HELL out of my kitchen."

The first year of this request to vacate was at my sister's house. Her mother-in-law, several guests, and her sister, brothers, and nieces were milling around half prepared dishes of food, adding chaos to an already chaotic situation. The noise level had risen to the point where the two inhabitants of the adjacent living room were unable to hear each other. Without warning, my sister cried the famous words which have so oft been repeated.

Experience had taught those of us related to her by blood to do what she said. Her brothers, sister, and nieces left the kitchen immediately. Unaware of the risk to their health and well being, the less-experienced in-laws and friends laughed and remained huddled around the counters. I was too afraid to peek in and see what happened next.

Kitchens are instinctive gathering places. It probably dates to those chilly Thanksgivings celebrated by early homosapiens who lived in caves. To escape the relentless cold, all the cavepeople and their families and friends gathered around the fire for warmth -the same fire over which the cavehosts cooked the traditional mammoth meat.

In the 21st century, the living room is also warm, but as the guests arrive, they intuitively migrate to the kitchen, chatting happily as the cook/host struggles to create counter space.

Meanwhile, the living room, where chairs are carefully placed to facilitate traffic flow and maximize social interaction, is empty - except for the cats who have discovered that the appetizers on the coffee table have been left unattended.

Does Martha Stewart ever have to deal with this stuff?

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy my guests and I'm happy people like spending this special day in my home. I like talking and catching up as much as anyone.

But it's stressful to coordinate a large dinner which you only prepare once a year, juggling an unnaturally large bird which was frozen just the day before in a floppy disposable foil roasting pan, monitoring several side dishes which need various amounts of heating, checking on rolls which can easily burn, and timing it perfectly so that its ready to eat all at the same time.

About the point where the turkey is done, the corn needs 30 more minutes, and it's time to start the gravy - a delicate and precision operation which could affect the outcome of the whole dinner - I wave my baster in the air and bellow the traditional holiday plea.

Stunned, most people back away, out to what's left of the appetizers.

Fortunately, my momentary lapse in hospitality is forgotten as soon as the steaming gravy flows over the mashed potatoes.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Postblog from the Virginias: George Washington’s Nephew Slept Here

2010-11-08T14:48:00.002-07:00

I may write a blog about what happened at the actual retreat, but it really was intense and I’m still processing. As you can see below, just getting there was an experience in itself.

I knew there would be rolling hills and in early November, a variety of colors from light brown to deep red, highlighting the heavily vegetated landscape. I knew that it made sense to fly into Washington DC to attend a retreat in West Virginia, only 63 miles – but at least two worlds – away.

I’m not unfamiliar with the region. I did time in the Old Dominion back when I was young.

What amazes me about the east is that everything is so close together. Yet these 63 miles from DC to WV, the distance from my Denver condo to my dad’s house in Fort Collins, couldn’t be more starkly different.

And the differences are sudden. When you cross a border here, you have really gone someplace.

I’m glad I sprung for GPS with the car rental.

The Virginias were not built on a grid. No road or highway goes in a straight line. When driving through “The District,” as some call the city of Washington, you start on a parkway. The GPS directs you to exit onto a little two-lane road which takes you to a major highway. Turn off onto another parkway going into suburban Virginia where you zig-zag over to a toll way which twists and turns toward the mountains, which (being from Colorado) you suspect is that little ridge up ahead.

Northern Virginia, at least this part, is dotted with gigantic new mansions. There is serious money up here. Everyone has room for horses and every home seems to have a greenhouse attached. Three or four story houses sit on lush grassy acres, the cuttings of which must be used to feed the horses.

I have never seen so many vineyards. Is Virginia known for wine? Sign after sign beckons me to come in for a taste, but I continue my journey, eager to reach my destination before dark.

I have the feeling that when it gets dark out here, it’s really dark.

There is no sense of direction when you are used to always having the Rocky Mountains on the west. Without the reassuring instructions of the electronic GPS voice, I wouldn’t have any confidence I was going the right direction.

Sure enough that little ridge marks the border to West Virginia. The mansions with horses suddenly give way to ordinary houses featuring multiple pickups in front. Vineyards yield to bait and tackle. The only large new buildings are churches.

My retreat is in an historic mansion which sits on a 300 acre plantation said to have once been owned by George Washington’s nephew. I have no reason to doubt the pedigree, but it does seem that to give anything legitimacy in these parts, there has to be some connection to old George, or at least Thomas Jefferson.

The problem with this mansion, though it dates back to the 1820s, is that the GPS doesn’t know about it.

This remarkable feat of technology, in communication with satellites high above the earth, directs me to turn off the state highway onto a county road and proceed for 20 miles. I’m then told by the feminine GPS voice to turn at the corner where a paved road, one lane wide, circles some scary, rednecky looking mobile homes.

“Mabel,” I hear clearly in my mind, “Where’s the shotgun? There’s a stranger drivin’ on our land.”

The pavement becomes dirt by a wood where four deer leap in front of the car just as the road comes to a sudden end.

“You have reached your destination,” the GPS happily intones.

Uh, no, I haven’t. I have no idea where I am.

I consult the directions I printed out on Google-Maps before I left home. They make no sense at all. I am lost.

Long story short (too late, I know), I get Zelda (the name I’ve given the GPS lady – we’ve grown close over the past few hours) to direct me to a Pizza Hut in the little town a couple of ridges over. After driving back and forth around West Virginia’s Panhandle, taking many false turns but seeing lots of beautiful country, I finally arrive at George Washington’s nephew’s plantation.

It’s only 63 miles from National Airport, but look how far I’ve come. It must have seemed a universe away two centuries ago. I guess folks back then knew how to get around without help from Zelda. Or else they were smart enough to just stay at home where they belonged.

An Election That’s Out of This World

2010-10-28T17:50:00.001-06:00

Every election cycle seems more excessive than the last. Candidates are more extreme. Commercials are increasingly outrageous and definitely more prolific. The public appetite for "change" is huge. Does anyone remember that the politicians they want to change away from in 2010 are the same ones they voted in just two years ago in the name of change?

Don't even get me started on the Constitution. Like the Bible, the Constitution is occasionally dusted off and conveniently re-interpreted in order to fit the immediate purposes of the user. Many of the obnoxious Tea Party people who want to "go back" to the constitution don't even know what's in it.

Ken Buck, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate here in Colorado, is all for the Constitution but is not in favor of the separation of church and state.

Huh?

Christine O'Donnell, running for Senate in Delaware, seemed genuinely surprised that the most sacred of our national documents contained such a clause.

Another odd thing about this election is that, in spite of a national tsunami of Tea Party activism, the TP (pun intended) chosen candidate for governor of Colorado (I can’t even remember his name) is trailing in third place, behind Democratic Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and the American Constitution Party candidate, famous anti-immigrant, and let's face it, racist, Tom Tancredo. Guess which one I'm for.

But the most stunning thing I've seen this election season was the one that caught me off guard as I filled out my mail-in ballot last weekend.

Initiative 300 reads:

"Shall the voters for the City and County of Denver adopt an Initiated Ordinance to require the creation of an extraterrestrial affairs commission to help ensure the health, safety, and cultural awareness of Denver residents and visitors in relation to potential encounters or interactions with extraterrestrial intelligent beings or their vehicles, and fund such commission from grants, gifts and donations?"

Ok, my first observation is that it really is much too easy to get just any preposterous notion on the ballot. But this goes above and beyond.

I might expect such an initiative in a wacky place like San Francisco or even nearby Boulder, but here in the Mile High City where most of us live in "the real world"? I thought I’d seen it all when at least three marijuana dispensaries popped up within walking distance of my house.

Denver has its whimsy. There's a giant two-story tall blue bear, for example, looking into a window outside the convention center. Our local airline, Frontier, features a different animal character on each plane, every critter marketed with a distinct name and personality. And while we're at the airport, you may have noticed that instead of a regular roof, the terminal is topped by what looks like a circus tent.

But extraterrestrials on the ballot?

Local officials are embarrassed. Some fear it will scare away businesses looking to relocate. Apparently they think the big blue bear attracts business, but ET scares business away.

Personally, I don't see the harm. No public funds will be used. And isn't any publicity for the city good publicity? If I were in a colorless, depressing metropolis back east and looking to relocate, I think I'd be attracted to a whimsical town out west that has the imagination to anticipate possible contact with life from other worlds.

So I voted YES on 300. And while I’m at it, perhaps I'll make sure the guest towels are ready, just in case a little green alien stops by.

Here’s to Another Wild Weekend

2010-10-17T16:00:00.003-06:00

Sunday Morning – I can’t move. I’ve stayed in bed long past the usual time. My head is pounding. The cats knock things over to get me up. Their breakfast is overdue. It’s 6:30 a.m.

You see, I stayed out much later last night than normal. I imbibed substances my body isn’t used to and I indulged in entertainment usually only enjoyed by a whole different strata of society.

It’s not that I did anything illegal. I was simply invited by some good friends to a fund raiser for the Rocky Mountain Arts Association.

The evening featured lots of movers and shakers, artists and patrons, Lesbians in all their finery, and gay men who probably spent hours getting that casual put-together look just so. Many were drinking wine and engaging in sparkling conversation. The highlight of the evening was a monologue delivered by Leslie Jordan, one of Hollywood’s most outspoken and notorious gay comic actors. You may remember him as Beverly Leslie on Will and Grace, or Brother Boy (channeling Tammy Wynette) on Sordid Lives. There was even a silent auction whereupon I bid, but didn’t win, a lovely hand-sculpted vase.

I made several trips to the bar and drank copious amounts – of club soda and diet coke. The worst things I consumed were scallions wrapped in bacon, runny brie baked in a flaky pastry, and little fruit tarts with the crust dipped in white chocolate (not my finest Weight Watchers hour …).

And the most shocking thing of all: I didn’t’ get home until almost 11:00.

What has happened to me?

Friday and Saturday nights used to be time out on the town. I never got home before 11:00.

In those days, it was only right to have some fun after a week of hard work. With Saturday and Sunday looming as relatively free days during which I could recover, I could stay up late and "PAR-TAY."

Most of the world seems to continue in this way. One only need venture down to LoDo, the district in Lower-Downtown Denver where every weekend, brew pubs and coffee houses are crowded to the point of overflowing. Partiers clog the sidewalks and horse-drawn carriages clop down the 16th Street Mall as taxis and pedestrians try to cross.

Or so I've heard.

I haven't been to LoDo after dark for maybe five years. And then I was only leaving Coors Field before the game ended so I could beat the traffic.

Nowadays, by the time I get home from work on Friday afternoon, I'm too tired to even think of going out. As I fold back the comforter around 8:30 p.m., I recall my youth when friends and I didn't even leave for the bars until 10:00. After last call several hours later, those of us who weren't lucky enough to hook up would head to breakfast at the White Spot, a 24-hour diner populated by drag queens which long ago disappeared under some of those fake new lofts in the Golden Triangle along Broadway.

Now, if I'm not too sleepy, I'll watch some recorded Science or History Channel documentary on my DVR until about 9:30 when I can no longer hold my eyes open. It's a good bet I'll be fast asleep by 10:00.

About 5:00 a.m., when in the old days I'd just be getting home (mine or someone else’s) to plop into bed, I now stretch, throw back the covers, and rise to feed the cats. The most thrilling part of the weekend is beating the crowds at King Soopers before the sun comes up.

I don't date much these days and I can't help but wonder if, in part, it's because I go to bed so early. If I force myself to be out at the bewitching hour of 8:30, my dinner companion observes me as I yawn widely, rub my eyes excessively, and jerk my head back suddenly as I fight off sleep. It's usually no reflection on him.

I suppose I’m just getting older. But I wouldn’t mind, say, a breakfast date every now and then.

There must be other single, middle aged gay men who engender the "early to bed, early to rise" lifestyle, but I can't figure out how to find them. They don’t hang out at King Soopers early in the morning, that’s for sure.

Lighter and Tighter – The Continuing Saga of a Middle Aged Man’s Quest for Physical Fitness

2010-10-01T18:12:00.001-06:00

Why did I wait until so late in life to get into shape? Until recently, I never lifted a weight or performed a curl. The last big rubber ball upon which I balanced tenuously was a bouncing Romper Room toy with a rubber strap.

My new personal trainer, Rick, asked me at our first session what sports I played in high school. "Um," I stammered. "Piano?"

Rick has to teach me everything, I mean everything, from scratch. I don't know a crunch from a hole in the ground. When he says, "chin-ups," I break into a cold sweat - PTSD from high school when without any instruction or direction, we were told to do chin-ups, the number of which would determine our grade. I never did one. Not one. Looking back at "physical education" in school, I remember a lot of physical, but not much education. 30-some years later, in my advanced middle age, I am finally learning from Rick about correct posture, how my body works, and what is connected to what.

Rick is demanding, but also shouts encouragement and praise.

He is always yelling things like, "elbows in," or "shoulders back;" but most of all, it's "work your core."

The idea is - well, I'm not sure what the idea is, but I trust there's a good reason for it.

I've become very mindful of my core. Yesterday I had a little allergy attack. As I sneezed, I told myself to "sneeze from the core." When I empty the dishwasher, I concentrate on "lifting and reaching from the core." As I throw the trash bag over the edge of the dumpster, I'm "activating my core." I also think about my core during other, more personal activities.

Something must be working because I'm seeing results. My posture is better. I feel "tighter" around the middle. I've discovered muscles in my back. Today I felt a big muscle in my leg I've never felt before. For the first time in years, I can feel the bones in my butt when I sit down.

With the intense combination of working out and rigorous adherence to Weight Watchers (trademark R), I've lost 30 pounds since mid-July. Yea for me!

There are downsides to my healthy regimen. Getting up at 4:30 a.m. for personal training makes me tired and cranky. When I fainted on Rick one morning, he lectured me about the importance of eating before working out, necessitating the need to get up even earlier.

It is true that Weight Watchers is not a diet as much as a lifestyle. I can eat anything I want as long as I count it in my daily food budget. But realistically, there are some things I just don't eat. If having a brownie means I get less at dinner, I'll usually skip it. I crave chocolate chip cookies but limit myself to two every other week. I haven't ordered Papa John's pizza since I don't know when. DQ blizzards are few and far between.

I can't even be in the same room as potato chips. One serving is about 15 chips. Please! That's just a handful. If I open a bag, all contents are devoured instantly. At a party recently, a large buffet was spread across a counter, prominently featuring several open bags. In a cold sweat, I had the impulse to call my sponsor - something I could do if I was in Overeaters Anonymous, which I'm not. So I left the party, went to King Soopers, purchased some low fat popcorn, and returned to the party.

Hey, anyone who knows me knows I can't do this without drama.

The biggest challenge of getting in shape is staying that way. I hope to not be one of these people that loses the same 50 pounds over and over.

Can I keep it up (or down as the case may be)? The suspense is building: Will I buy another ten sessions with Rick or start working out on my own? How long can I avoid a hot fudge brownie sundae at Dairy Queen? Will I give in to one of those nacho Tuesdays at the office cafeteria? Will I ever again have the taco platter at Little Anita's (it's about two days worth of Weight Watchers points)? Can those low-cal ice cream bars really be any substitute for a “gotta have it” at Cold Stone Creamery? How will I cope with the coming holidays - all the cookies and the frosting and my sister's mashed potatoes with sour cream?

Stay tuned for updates.

At the moment, however, I’m going to go lie down. I’m feeling a little faint.

For some previous entries about my “getting into shape” saga, click on the links below.

Yoga for the Round and Stiff

Fitness Newbie Surrounded by Experts

Least Likely Passtime

Facebook Comment Stirs Controversy

2010-09-21T18:02:00.001-06:00

I've written about politics, breast cancer, interpersonal conflict, obnoxious loudmouth media personalities, death, the relative merits of different regions of the country ... but nothing is as controversial as a statement I made on Facebook last week: that my Charles is the cutest kitty ever.

Turns out, lots of other people think their cat is the cutest ever. I was even chastised for not considering my other cats, present and past, in the comparison.

Ok, first of all, cut me some slack for hyperbole. There was never really a contest on which cat was the cutest. I’m not surprised that everyone thinks even their own butt-ugly cats are cute.

But when Charles jumped up on our visitor’s suitcase like he owned it, I knew, at that moment, that he was the cutest.

Charles is my performer. Of all the cats for which I've been guardian, Charles is the one that everyone sees. All the others fly into the closet or dive under the bed when a visitor arrives. Charles is the only one, who upon hearing a knock, runs toward the door instead of away. He gleefully accompanies guests into the bathroom and will often climb onto the shoulders of any human who happens to be sitting down in there.

Charles also chases the vacuum. I have to be careful about professional cleaners and repair people in my condo because he'll get right in their faces – and their tools. For example, Charles thoroughly enjoyed playing with the wires and equipment the cable guy brought with him when installing my new DVR.

Don't get me wrong - I love all my kitties. They all have moments where I swear each is the cutest ever.

Lily, my other current feline companion, is a lover. She sleeps with me, watches TV with me, and basically demands that I sit down and pet her when I'm not doing something more important. And there's never anything more important.

Lily actually sits on my wrists when I type on the computer. I’d be irritated, but when she does it, I swear she is the cutest cat in the whole world. So I have learned to work my fingers without moving my arms, thus accomplishing the computer task and also acknowledging Lily as the center of attention, a.k.a., the world.

Only a couple of humans know how sweet Lily is, however. She doesn't like to pose for pictures, and certainly doesn't come out for company. She is a more private persona where Charles is "out there," WAY out.

That's why you see his picture so much more than Lily's on Facebook. If she'd pose, she'd get her picture taken too. She just doesn't care.

I think people go way overboard about their pets. Does a dog really need a sweater in the fall? Would Facebook or YouTube even exist if it weren't for animals?

I'll patiently look at the pictures of my FB friends’ average dogs and cats (sometimes, I’ll even look at pictures of human children, but I only have so much time). To you, I'm sure, your kid or critter seems totally cute.

I'm just stating a fact when I say that Charles really is.

Muggy Night on the East Coast

2010-09-02T17:30:00.001-06:00

Hannah’s Journey Stirs a Memory

If you’ve logged on for some of my weekly snark, sorry to disappoint. The changes that inevitably accompany September have me in a reflective mood.

August 1985

La Guardia’s runway steams as midnight radio plays from a previously distant city
A cool bath in rare silence offers momentary relief from a muggy New York night
Exhaustion
But who can sleep?
The future swells unending, limitless potential
Anything can happen
A whole life lies ahead

September Present Day

Open windows welcome breezes on a dry mile high evening
Yesterday I would be delighted – everything wanted then is now achieved!
Internet oldies echo from the past and a hot shower soothes stiff bones
Sleep looming long before midnight, fade to reflections of the past
Now is good but wanting something new
Excitement to look forward to

From a distance, I watch enviously as a new generation deplanes in the east
Unimaginable humidity forever marks this moment of infinite potential
Anything can happen
A whole life lies ahead

Wyoming May be Out to Get Me

2010-08-28T12:12:00.001-06:00

Wide open spaces, mountain ranges coming and going in the distance. That endless highway so romanticized in the American mindset. The freedom of the road.

Then of course there is the relentless wind. Plus blizzards, sudden dust storms, and hail.

My first trip there as an adult was with some college mates, driving to spend a wild New Years in my sister's new home town. Suddenly, truly without warning, the clear dry pavement gave way to deep slush. I lost control and slid off the road - way off, out into a field where the snow went up to the window and scraped some necessary parts off the bottom of the car.

Since then, there have been multiple flat tires, numerous car-sliding-on-ice events, and several near misses with deer and trucks.

I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that Wyoming is out to get me.

Because both my sisters live there, I've had the opportunity to visit many times, often over Labor Day weekend. I love my sisters very much and enjoy seeing them, but I have an uneasy relationship with the Equality State.

Home to some beautiful places such as Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming is, by population, the smallest state in the U.S. But when you're driving for hours through the endless, treeless plains, it's surely one of the largest. The great distances between towns make parts extremely isolated so if something happens, you might be stranded for a while. Cell phone coverage is sparse along some stretches, so you truly are at the mercy of the elements.

For example, with the nonstop wind, if there's any snow on the ground, even if it's sunny above, chances are you can't see the road because of ground blizzards.

It's not just the landscape and weather that make Wyoming a challenge for me. There seems to be some, well, bad luck whenever I go there. A couple of years ago my dad came with me. The Saturday night of Labor Day weekend, we had to rush him to the nearest hospital which was 70 miles away. He recovered. I was a mess.

Sometimes my health acts up as well. Another Labor Day, I had to pull off the interstate at Terry Bison Ranch near Cheyenne to deal with sudden and severe nausea and muscle pain. It was the first flair up of what turned out to be West Nile virus. I spent the next several months fighting fevers and holding ice packs on my arms to decrease the pain. I can't really blame that on Wyoming, but isn't it odd that the symptoms first appeared there?

I have to take full responsibility for some of the disasters I encounter, like taking a wrong turn outside of Lander and accidentally going hundreds of miles out of my way to Rock Springs, which is not the loveliest place to be.

Unusual things happen to other people in Wyoming as well.

My sister once hit a deer in the dark on the road near her house.

Let me make that a little more clear. She wasn’t in the car. She ran into the deer. In the dark. With her body. While she was jogging.

In addition to the plethora of wildlife on the road, domestic animals can also cause inconvenience.

A cattle drive blocking the highway is always fun to see - for the first half hour. Who says traffic jams are limited to urban freeways at rush hour? When stuck behind real honest to goodness cowboys on horses herding cattle, I struggle to repress my mile high road rage and focus on the natural beauty of muscular denim-sheathed legs firmly working a saddle. Sometimes they drive little 4x4s instead of horses and it’s not quite as sexy.

The locals aren't always friendly to people from Colorado. Their view is that we’ve ruined our state with population and pollution and now want to ruin theirs. I don't doubt they have a point. But I try to go the speed limit and dispel whatever stereotypes I can about my home. It’s unsettling to hear snarling behind your back along the lines of, "Greenie go home," while gassing the car or visiting a rest area. "Greenie" refers to the color of our Colorado license plates.

My mother was out walking one time when a neighbor of my sister’s fired some shots at her. To my knowledge, she’s the only member of my family who has ever been shot at, and some of us have lived in some pretty scary neighborhoods.

It sounds like I don't like Wyoming, but I do. The people who live there are generally warm and friendly (greenie-haters notwithstanding). The time we slid off the road, for example, a trucker stopped within minutes to tow us out. My sisters' friends are colorful and interesting and come from all over the world to live in the wide open west. My niece and nephew grew up trusting just about everyone in their community, absent of crime and urban misery. There aren't many kids who can have horses in their back yards or who can leave their belongings on the sidewalk in front of the local shop without worrying they'll get stolen.

I just personally don't have good karma there.

Next week I go up for a Labor Day visit. I have new tires on the car and snow is unlikely (but not out of the question). Dad's in good health. I'm in good health. Hunting season will have started, so most folks itching to shoot will be out in the boonies. I think it will be ok, this time.

Denying Reality – Revering Falsehood

2010-08-20T22:33:00.001-06:00

So is President Obama a Muslim or not? I don’t know who to believe. Glenn Beck, or everyone else?

Of course the President is not a Muslim. It is a proven, indisputable fact. It’s been demonstrated over and over again that he is a practicing Christian and has been for a very long time. Yet, new polls this week show an increasing number of Americans believe he’s Muslim.

Let’s quickly brush over the question of whether it would be such a bad thing if he were. He isn’t.

What is wrong with people in this country? Are we that stupid or do we just believe what’s convenient to believe?

Selective knowledge is convenient. How easy it is to forget the First Amendment when a house of worship is being built in a location that makes us uncomfortable.

No matter how we harangue Supreme Court nominees about following the Constitution to the letter, it’s very easy to switch gears and casually suggest changing that hallowed document when it inconveniently challenges our prejudices about who should be a citizen.

We are the most information saturated people of all time, but so many of us believe incredible lies in spite of overwhelming evidence:

Global warming is a hoax
The holocaust never happened
The earth is flat
Evolution is just a theory
Barack Obama was not born an American citizen
FOX News is fair and balanced

Perhaps I’m overly preoccupied with the truth. I seem to dwell on scientifically viable fears that most people just ignore.

While most other American viewers were watching America’s Got Talent the other night, I watched a two hour program about the seven top ways the human species might be wiped out. Why I opt for this type of programming for my evening entertainment, I can't say. But that list included:

Gamma rays from outer space
Passing black holes
Killer asteroids
Viral pandemics
Nuclear weapons
The super volcano in Yellowstone
And of course, climate change, which was number one on the list

The fact that I remember all seven off the top of my head tells you something about where my head is (I don’t even remember my own work phone number). But I will tell you this: that program was legitimate science and the evidence was presented by real scientists; not talk show drama queens (Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh) who never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

With all the information at our fingertips, why is it so hard for a technological population such as our own to separate the fact from the fiction?

Frankly, the facts are much more sensational. I lose a lot more sleep worrying about that super volcano than about the mosque in my neighborhood.

Howdy from Tourist Country

2010-08-13T16:43:00.001-06:00

Colorado is a tourist destination. I know that surprises you enormously, but sometimes those of us who live here forget the close proximity of attractions that many others travel a long way to see.

A couple of weeks ago, for the first time in the 21 years I’ve lived here, I went to the top of Pikes Peak. If it weren’t for friends visiting from Georgia, I would have missed the bluest sky ever, a herd of bighorn sheep, and of course the home made donuts at the top. Pikes Peak was just one of many options within reasonable driving distance that I gave my guests for sight-seeing. Others included the Royal Gorge, the King Tut exhibit at the Denver Art Museum (DAM), and a hot springs near Winter Park.

I haven’t seen any of those other attractions either, and probably won’t unless more friends visit from the east.

I say the east because visitors from the west are generally less impressed with what Colorado has to offer. After all, California has better weather and beaches. The mountains in Washington and Oregon seem bigger (even though they really aren’t) because they rise from sea level. Also, those mountains are arguably more interesting because as volcanoes, they could blow at any time.

It’s the visitors from parts east that seem to enjoy Colorado the most. Families from Michigan, Illinois, and Nebraska plan their entire summer vacation around the chance to see a little scenery, touch some snow in July, and cool off at high altitudes. Iowans a little less so – let’s just say that you had better not be in a hurry if you get behind a car from Iowa in the mountains. At that speed, by the time they get to where they’re going, they’ll just have to turn around and go home.

Visitors from further east are really surprised by what they find here. One of my professors from graduate school heaped praise upon Denver by saying, “I was surprised to see such a bustling little city out there!” His impression was formed on the train from Concourse A to Concourse B while changing planes at Denver International Airport.

Easterners may insult us out of ignorance, but some westerners are pure snobs. While I personally like the Midwest and occasionally fantasize about moving back some day, Californians who think Colorado is part of that region are just asking for a pointy cowboy boot in the behind. And don’t even get me started about being described dismissively as “the great flyover.” Hey if that’s all this is to you, don’t visit. Just fly on over to the stinking cesspools of “civilization” and good luck trying to cool off there.

It’s the folks from the central and eastern time zones that seem to most appreciate being out here.

As one companion from Virginia watched a tumbleweed roll in front of the car near Boulder, he said he didn’t realize there actually were such things. Snapping a picture through the window, he explained that he thought they were just props used in movie westerns.

Years ago a friend visited Denver from New York City. He repeatedly declined offers to go to the mountains, but very much enjoyed what he called his visit to “the country.” I don’t think he left the city limits the entire time. It was enough for the Manhattanite to see green grass and trees through the Starbucks window.

Some friends’ relatives visiting from New Jersey bragged about catching bunches of trout in Estes Park. Turns out they literally stuck their rented lines into a crowded barrel of non-native rainbows. Hey, at least they had a good time and left some of their Jersey dollars here.

My favorite story is about taking a European to Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. He didn’t realize we would actually drive into and up on top of the mountains. He was just expecting to drive around them, admiring from afar.

Yes, I’m poking fun at people who actually enrich my state by visiting. In fact, when I see Colorado through their eyes, I’m reminded of how great it is to live here. After all, when I lived in the east, where did I go for vacations? You guessed it.

Of course that was before I discovered how much I like San Diego.

Oblivious to Nature? Stay Inside!

2010-08-07T09:42:00.001-06:00

Though there’s still plenty of heat left this year, mornings are cooler and the days are getting shorter. Some local schools are already in session. It’s occurring to people that summer is winding down.

This morning as I took my weekly 5:00 a.m. hike out at Cherry Creek State Park, there seemed to be more joggers and cyclists than usual. Surprisingly, out on the water in addition to the rowing club, speed boats with water-skiers and even jet skis were starting to pollute the otherwise peaceful morning quiet with their noise.

By 6:00 I heard booming announcements from a loudspeaker near the marina. Much as I wanted to continue my communion with the prairie grass, cottonwoods, and pelicans, I decided to hightail it back to the car before the race or marathon or whatever it was came my way.

I understand that I have to share the park. Situated smack in the middle of the metro area, CCSP is the most used state park in Colorado. Considering the miles of surrounding urban concrete, it’s remarkable that just 20 minutes away from my house (when traffic is light), I can be in the middle of a forest observing deer (today I saw a youngster with spots), or watching the breeze blow the rushes from side to side as all awareness of the city slips away.

Until about 9:00. Even when it’s too cold to water-ski, the shooting range is open. I’m not even sure where it is, but I definitely hear the “pop” and “boom” of individuals using that part of the park to exercise their second amendment rights.

A little later, a high-pitched whir can be heard. It’s the model airplane people, using their area to buzz and dip their miniature flying craft like prehistoric dragonflies.

Down the road a stretch, dogs joyously run, leash-free.

I guess it’s great that so many can use the park for such varying activities. If I finish hiking and meditating before 7:00 a.m., I can pretend I have the whole place, more or less to myself, and good for all those other people for using their state park the rest of the day.

I do have a question, however. Why do so many joggers and cyclists have headphones on? Why on earth would they listen to iPods when the distinctive sound of meadowlarks echo across the plains? Wouldn’t they be safer if they could hear me driving up behind them as they take up two thirds of the road?

Today I observed a couple run right by a startled deer. These people paid no more attention than they would to a squirrel in the yard.

I was raised to appreciate the sighting of a deer. All through my childhood, if one of us pointed out the car window and said, “Deer!” all conversation would stop. A couple of us would whisper, “Where? Where?” and everyone would look as long as the timid creature could be seen.

Now if one of us had to pee, good luck getting that car stopped, but I digress. Where was I? Oh yes, people wearing headphones out in the woods.

Here’s a thought. If you’re oblivious to nature, just stay inside so it’s less crowded for the rest of us.

What I Didn’t Tell Them

2010-07-27T18:05:00.001-06:00

Is it impressive or is it sad that I recently summed up the past 25 years of my life in two paragraphs?

It was one of those wonderful Facebook moments where you suddenly find people with whom you long ago lost contact.

Though "virtual," the reunions were wonderful. I really enjoyed reading what my friends had been up to since 1986.

Of course I was expected to provide the same information. What aspects of a person’s life do others want to hear about? Personal? Professional? Marriage and children (or lack thereof)? Mutual friends and acquaintances? Perhaps I was over thinking it, but I decided to challenge myself as a writer and convey the most important things that have happened to me in as succinct a way as possible. With a sense of satisfaction, I summed up my career, family, and health in two medium sized paragraphs.

Then I got discouraged. You mean I can say everything important about my career, family, and health in just two medium sized paragraphs? I must be the most boring person in the world.

I’m sure my friends realized that what I told them was merely an outline. Many more interesting things have happened to me than that.

So I’d like to share with you a sampling of what I did NOT include in the two paragraph nutshell about my past quarter century. Since 1986, I:

Replaced all of my LPs with CDs
Cohabitated briefly with an artist
Wrecked two cars (neither was my fault)
Lived in four different regions of the country
Wrote for a couple of local weeklies (all defunct now, of course)
Sold my car and did public transit for a few years
Remodeled my kitchen
Lived with a total of four cats
Pledged to my local public radio station, boycotted said station, then pledged again
Complained about the new airport
Developed an allergy to bananas
Remodeled my bathroom
Got laid off from three jobs
Joined and dropped out of a queer square dancing club
Replaced the VCR with a DVR
Put all of my CDs on an iPod
Remodeled everything but the kitchen and bathroom
Bought a hybrid car
Visited Wyoming several times
Said every summer, without fail, "I really should spend more time in the mountains"
Got irritated when the local public radio announcers mispronounced "Chez Artiste," one of the local movie theatres
Thought seriously about moving to California
Joined a gym
Got on Facebook
Made this list

Well. Hmm. Maybe I’ll just stick to those two paragraphs. They were more interesting.

Disgusting Byproduct Helpful Supplement

2010-07-15T17:37:00.001-06:00

I hate cottage cheese. It’s made of curds.

One friend insists that he loves it on a bed of lettuce with some pepper. I question his ability to enjoy food. The only thing more tasteless than cottage cheese is lettuce.

Basically a waste byproduct of milk, cottage cheese has lately become a prominent feature in my meals.

When I complain, something I rarely do, I am bombarded with suggestions from more experienced culinary savants. I've tried combining it with pineapple, mandarin oranges, strawberries, blueberries, and spices (such as pepper or basil). I’ve had it for breakfast and lunch, as a dip and a dressing. But it's still this lumpy curdy stuff.

Those little curds rub against your teeth, fill your mouth with the taste of disgusting milk-byproduct, and slide grudgingly down your throat.

But if you can choke it down, this milk byproduct has its advantages. It's filling, provides protein, and contains little in the way of fat or carbs.

If only it provided gastronomic pleasure.

Cheese is usually such a good thing. I like to go to Whole Foods and grab little scraps of exotic chesses for a dollar or two, take them home, and sample them on crackers. I love nothing more than a grilled cheese sandwich or a cheese burger. Extra cheese on pizza is a good thing. But I can't imagine putting cottage cheese on any of that.

You may be wondering why this is an issue for me.

For the past few weeks, I've been making different choices about how I eat in order to lose some excess poundage. Since joining the health club last fall, I have only gained weight, to the point at which my shirts are getting tight.

To give my new choices structure, I have enrolled in Weight Watchers (trademark R). I am not doing the "D" word. The "D" word is too extreme for me. People often end up gaining their weight back when the "D" is over. “D”ers often seem to hate their bodies and are frequently of the opinion that if they just lose a little more, they'll look perfect and their lives will suddenly turn awesome. I am not doing that. I am simply changing elements of my lifestyle to accommodate more healthy eating habits.

Tomato, tomahto - also frequently eaten with cottage cheese.

Unfortunately, I hate to be hungry, and I've learned that a good way to eat and be full without adding to the poundage seems to involve cottage cheese. It’s also convenient: I can easily take it to the office. And I'm allergic to so many other things that alternatives are somewhat limited.

Fries for lunch are no longer an option, at least on a daily basis. And chips are out completely until I learn to eat just a few instead of devouring the whole bag in one sitting. I'm not talking about one of those little lunch sacks either - I'm talking about the big, family sized bag.

Yogurt is good but not as filling. Raw vegetables only go so far with me. Too much fruit, well, trust me, I have to limit my intake.

Wow. I'm so grouchy, you'd think I was "D"ing. Truly, I'm usually not hungry as long as I supplement my eating with (ugh) cottage cheese.

I wonder if you can deep-fry it.

Coming Out of the Closet in a Most Surprising Place

2010-07-07T18:23:00.016-06:00

Notable events in Indiana history:

In 8000 BCE humans first came to Indiana.
The first European, Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle arrived in 1679.
Indiana became state in 1816.
In 1909 the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was founded.
In July 1954, a record temperature of 116 degrees (F) was recorded.
In July 1980, 30 years ago this month, I told someone, for the very first time, that I was gay.

I was 17 years old. There was no discernable gay community in Scottsbluff, Nebraska at the time and there was certainly no internet to help me connect to the rest of the world. What I did have were my dad’s psychology books and an ability to find every word written about homosexuality in the public library – not all of it, of course, encouraging, or for that matter, accurate.

Most gay people come out of the closet when they move to the big city or go to college. I traveled a thousand miles to come out in the rather conservative state of Indiana.

It was not my intention to come out that week. Between my junior and senior years in high school, I boarded a bus with bunches of kids from western Nebraska for the first ever Presbyterian Church Youth Triennium, a huge convention of young people from all over the world. Bible study, youth ministry, the cold war, evangelism, and social issues were among the topics addressed. New music was presented, concerts were performed, and friendships made. For many, it was an eye-opening time of discovery and a turning point in our lives.

My primary memory of the week, however, was sneaking into the workshop on the church and homosexuality. The card in my hand said I was supposed to go to something else. I didn’t know if I’d get away with it. But the room was packed full of people who didn’t have the right card, and the workshop leaders weren’t turning people away.

The presentation was rather radical. In 1980, LGBT issues weren’t as thoroughly discussed in churches as they are now. The workshop leaders talked about scripture, community, and the fact that gay and lesbian Christians did exist. Above all, we were assured that no LGBT person was alone. There were lots of us out there.

At the end of the workshop, I hung around until everyone else had gone. I approached one of the facilitators and said, very maturely, that I thought the workshop was excellent and thanked him very much.

He smiled and waited.

“That’s all,” I thought, backing away.

He smiled more and said very gently that if I wanted to talk, he was available the rest of the week.

The next day, I met him in a quiet area on the University of Indiana campus and poured my heart out. I guess I was pretty typical. Every session at that workshop had a boy or girl like me hanging behind, dying to talk. But what may have been typical for that wonderful man was a lifetime opportunity for me.

It was in that loving, accepting, Christian context that I first declared my sexual orientation. There was no judgment or condemnation. The Bible wasn’t used as a weapon to shame me into conformity. No one told me I was going to hell. In fact, I was told repeatedly that, paraphrasing scripture, love passes all understanding and casts out all fear.

Love was – is – what it’s all about. I’ve never doubted for a minute that God loves me. Angry as I’d always be with fundamentalist Christians who forget that love is the primary commandment of Christ, I never stopped believing that God’s love overcomes every kind of hate and fear. I’ve always believed, preached, and taught that if we love each other with integrity and justice, we are doing God’s will.

Coming out at the church convention in 1980 was such a good experience, that when I got home, I came out to everyone. While it took my parents a few years to come to terms with it, most everyone else I cared about, including my brother and sisters, accepted it and accepted me in the wholeness of the person I was.

In 1989, at the Presbyterian Youth Triennium, this time at Purdue University in Indiana, the workshop on homosexuality and the church was held again. As the workshop leader, I patiently waited for those kids who were hanging back to come and talk to me if they wished.

Secret Life 30 Years Ago Comes Back to Haunt Me

2010-07-01T21:49:00.002-06:00

An unfortunate scandal was uncovered during my otherwise successful venture into the Midwest last month. A nostalgic picture of my old college dorm in Lincoln, Nebraska, innocently posted on Facebook, sparked conversations online and off between people who "knew me when" and those who only know me now. A secret from my past was uncovered which I would have preferred stay hidden forever.

I think I should be excused for some youthful indiscretions. After all, everyone experiments in college, don't they?

There I was, my first week on campus, free of the constraints of home and parents for the first time, eager to fit in, hormones running wild, and all these attractive young men trying to recruit me. Though it was basically against my values; though members of my family would ridicule me; though I knew it would only lead to trouble, I couldn't help myself.

I joined a fraternity.

In my defense, I didn't last long. The guys who worked so hard to recruit me lost interest after I joined, and I just couldn't believe the ridiculous ceremonial tradition and other B.S. I had to put up with. So I quit.

The second frat was a little better.

I know what you're thinking - didn't I learn my lesson the first time?

Let's face it, I knew I didn't belong in the Greek system; I just wanted to be around the guys.

The second frat was nicer - that is, the guys were nicer. The atmosphere was more easy going and there was a high level of acceptance of the considerable number of us who were gay. I made some good friends there, some of whom I even see on Facebook now.

But it was still a frat. The silly ceremonies and overly close living conditions were just too much for me.

Six of us shared a filthy bathroom. We had rice for dinner every night (I didn’t start eating rice again for 10 years). Dozens of us shared a phone and had to pick out our own calls home from the long-distance bill. This was in the days before everyone had their own cell phone.

I will say the parties were fun. It was during one of these when I first made out with a girl – pretty much the only time, actually. We didn’t get very far because my gay roommate walked in on us. Like I say, everyone experiments in college.

Most objectionable to me, however, the solemn pledging and the ceremonies and the robes and the candles struck me as, well, idolatrous. If I was going to put all that effort into sanctified chanting and solemn tradition, I'd rather do it in church where it might mean something. See, in addition to being a lustful, out-of-the-closet gay college student, I was, like now, a rather committed Christian. The progressiveness of my views and my liberal theology didn’t stop me from feeling guilty about participating in the veneration of a godless fraternal society. The secrecy was cult-like. I didn’t care if the others found friendship and brotherhood this way, but it really wasn’t for me. I was much more interested in the gay bars on “O” Street Saturday night, and First Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ on Sunday morning.

As soon as I could, I went back to the dorm with my own room and variety of bad food which included chilli frito, chicken a la king, and hardly any rice.

My frat brothers were very understanding when I moved out. I actually appreciated them more for that.

So, my secret is out. I feel kind of relieved. No more lies. No more deception. And no more housing-neutral language when I describe my college experience.

I wonder if that girl I made out with is on Facebook. I should look her up.

Postblog from Home: Final Thoughts on the Excellent Adventure

2010-06-18T07:41:00.001-06:00

My goal was to spontaneously travel to someplace different, by car. I almost succeeded. The spontaneity fell by the wayside early in the trip. Hopefully planning ahead isn’t such a terrible character trait after all.

My selection of destinations may seem a little odd: a tour exploring the haunts and homes of Abraham Lincoln seems like the trip a couple of elderly geography teachers might take. Hodgensville, Kentucky, Springfield, Illinois, and of course Lincoln, Nebraska are not “hot” destinations for the typical single gay man. But can you see me on a gay cruise in the Caribbean with all those shirtless posers? I might enjoy watching, but I’d be too self-conscious to talk to anyone.

I certainly didn’t mind traveling alone, but I would have enjoyed a companion who would also nerd out about the park ranger presentation at a national historic site.

Why can’t a tour company offer a gay bus tour of presidential museums and libraries? Now that’s something I could get into, and there would be something to talk about with the other gay nerds.

The good news is that I enjoyed myself thoroughly, and as should happen after a trip away, I’ve returned with a renewed appreciation of my home. In fact, driving into Colorado at dusk was breath taking with the sun setting behind the mountains, and the air dry enough to crack the windows open and smell the fresh cut hay along the South Platte River. It was the perfect way to end a trip in which every state was beautiful in its own way.

Be sure to check out my pictures on Facebook. While not National Geographic worthy, they’ll give you a taste of what I saw.

Meanwhile, I’m starting to think about where I should go on my next excellent adventure.

Postblog from Nebraska: Subtle Distinctiveness - and Food.

2010-06-16T16:15:00.001-06:00

Though very much at home in Colorado, I am Nebraskan to my bones. Here’s one indication: at each stop during the past week’s road trip, the first thing I wanted to know was the temperature and the humidity, and whether there was a chance of thunderstorms. No one is more obsessed with weather than a Cornhusker. Driving across Missouri today, I also noted standing water in the fields and tried to ascertain the condition of the crops. Though I’ve never even planted a garden, it’s all about the crops when you’re from Nebraska.

Another indication has to do with sports awareness: while I have next to none, what little I do have is related to Nebraska University football. I almost instinctively know who they’re playing some weeks, and I secretly delight in their wins. I laugh at the big rivalry between NU and CU which exists only in the minds of Coloradoans. Ask any Nebraskan who their rival is and they’ll tell you it’s Oklahoma. Colorado is barely a spec on the radar. Of course the reorganization of the conferences (big 10? big 12?) has messed that all up, so Colorado will have to find some other pretend rivalry.

Nebraska is a quirky state and requires a different kind of appreciation. Anyone can “ooo” and “ahh” at the mountains – that’s so obvious.

The Cornhusker State is a place of more subtle distinctiveness. I felt it today as soon as I crossed the Missouri River from Iowa. As if on cue, bugs started to smash into my windshield at such a rate that the wiper fluid couldn’t keep up. Why are there so many more bugs here than in all those other states I visited?

I was barely into Lincoln before I came upon an Amigos restaurant. Amigos, a Nebraska based chain, is home to the cheese Frenchie, which used to be served at the old Kings restaurants. Let’s see, there’s also Runza for those unique enclosed sandwiches and fabulous fries, and Valentino’s pizza of course – I could just eat my way from Waverly to West O Street and back again.

Oh yes, and on a side note, Lincoln is also the capital city of Nebraska and home to many institutions of higher education.

But the food, really, is what I plan my visits around.

Postblog from Illinois: The More Things Change the More They Remain the Same

2010-06-15T15:46:00.002-06:00

After just over a year in office his presidency seems doomed. No one is happy with him. He doesn’t go far enough. He goes too far. He compromises too easily. He’s cold and distant. The country has polarized to a point where reaching out to both sides seems an impossible and thankless task. The President lacks the necessary experience and worldliness to get the job done. He actually appointed rivals to his cabinet. Many citizens unrealistically look to him to solve all of the big problems. Others deeply hate him. Many fear for his safety.

I’m sure that it isn’t easy to be President Obama. He has a huge job. I myself get frustrated that he seems to drag his feet on, say, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” the policy which prohibits gays and lesbians from serving their country in the armed forces. I wanted to throttle him when he kept compromising on health care reform. And the news this week reports criticism that he seems restrained in his reaction to the Gulf Coast disaster. His practiced and tempered language doesn’t reflect the outrage of the nation.

I hope President Obama takes some comfort in knowing that all of the statements above were also bestowed upon another President, Abraham Lincoln. As I wandered through the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield today, I kept seeing Obama as a similar recipient of the vitriol heaped upon Lincoln. For example, discussion of allowing African Americans to serve in the army alongside whites mirrors “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”: there was intense fear that the morale and discipline of the troops would erode so much that national security would be threatened.

The museum does a terrific job of presenting Lincoln in the context of the politics, events, and even technology of the time.

Often, the flesh and blood part of Lincoln’s life is overwhelmed by myth. It behooves us to remember that while he was indeed a very great President, he was also a human being. He suffered nightmares and the deaths of his children. He was regularly exasperated with his wife. He had a wicked, even lewd, sense of humor. He was a brilliant politician who could spin the truth in order to appease rivals. We conveniently forget that some of his views were uncomfortably different from our own. For example, while he advocated the abolition of slavery, he didn’t view African Americans as truly equal. His thought was that after emancipation, it would be best if they all returned to Africa.

Abe Lincoln is a little like Jesus Christ in that everyone wants to remake him in their own image. Just take your predetermined beliefs and justify them by telling everyone how Lincoln would agree with you. 21st Century discussion of Lincoln reflects our current concerns rather than anything he would have thought about. Anti-abortionists claim him as an emancipator of the unborn. Lincoln is said to have suffered from depression or bipolar disease (clinical terms which weren’t in use at that time). I’m amused at the vehement discussion about whether he had sexual relations with other men. Why is it so important to assure ourselves either way? In fact, though he did share a bed with his friend Joshua Speed, we will never know for sure what, if anything, happened between those sheets and frankly, what difference does it make?

Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, and the rest of us are reflections of our own times and cultures. But while the issues change from decade to century, we continue to struggle with how to be a nation of free people.

Postblog from Indiana: Random Observations

2010-06-14T19:35:00.001-06:00

Local TV news is the same everywhere – except in Denver they don’t report the temperature-humidity index which, by the way, was over 100 degrees Sunday in Louisville. At 11:00 p.m., the temperature cooled to a manageable 85, the humidity 75%. At the same time, I noted on the Weather Channel that Denver was at 51 degrees with rain.
Remember Stuckeys, the once ubiquitous gas, snack, and tacky souvenir places in the middle of nowhere along the interstates? They are mostly closed now, but you’ll be glad to know that many of the buildings are still in use – as adult sex toy shops. I imagine that since they are outside city limits, municipal regulations don’t apply.
So far, Colorado has the worst rest areas. Illinois has the best. In Missouri, I took a nice little nap on a picnic table in the shade. A few Zs make driving safer – as long as you’re not at the wheel when you catch them.
BP is thick in these parts. Fortunately I have been able to find alternative places to spend my fuel dollars.
Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky drivers all follow the speed limit better than those in Colorado. I’ve only been tail-gated once by an impatient speed maniac. The obnoxious vehicle was from, you guessed it, Colorado. I try to positively represent my state by driving with patience and consideration. But it’s tough when you have to pass those damn slow Midwesterners all the time. It doesn’t help that the speed limits are lower in the east.
You can pick up NPR everywhere. What’s more difficult is avoiding The Car Guys. Every time I changed stations on Sunday I caught the beginning of their annoying show and had to switch to the country music countdown. It was either that or fundamentalist “Christian” radio. No thanks.
I thought gas was expensive in Illinois – until it occurred to me to drive into the towns to fill the tank. Service stations gouge interstate travelers.
Rivers are a lot bigger east of Kansas. Mountains are bigger west of Kansas. Pickups are the same size everywhere.
Yogurt doesn’t explode when you open it at 1000 feet elevation.
Kentucky bluegrass grows naturally in Kentucky – in fact, their natural landscape is what people in Denver’s suburbs spend a lot of time and money to create artificially.
If you order iced tea south of the Ohio River, beware – it will be sweetened before you get it.

Postblog from Kentucky: Distilleries, Abe Lincoln, and Shoney’s

2010-06-13T17:48:00.002-06:00

“The sun shines bright in my old Kentucky home
'Tis summer, the people are GAY …”

June 13, 2010 - Leave it to my friend Frank to include the second line of the state song. Actually, until 1986, that was a very racist second line and they changed it. I don’t know how that “gay” reference passed notice.

I’ve been to Louisville many times, but usually I’ve flown in and out, missing the surrounding area. There is history here, and character like crazy. For example, some of the earlier local residents were real hillbillies who supplemented their incomes by making, uh, “spirits” or “hooch,” and selling it, um, beneath the radar of the law.

Mammoth Cave is near where I’m staying in Elizabethtown, south of Louisville. The Nebraska Wesleyan choir once sang in the huge, dark cavern many years ago. Today I settled for singing in the car with the Dixie Chicks at full volume.

I think that those of us who pride ourselves on living in such a spectacular state (I’m talking to the Coloradoans now) forget that there are other amazing places in this country. Many of us ignore the “flyover” in favor of either coast. But we miss a lot that way. Driving through Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana today, I saw beautiful rolling farmland, magnificent mountains, and even the awesome Hoosier National Forest. That’s right: a national forest in Indiana.

Tomorrow I will visit the National Historic Park where there is a log cabin reconstructed, as near as can be surmised, like the one in which Abraham Lincoln was born. Finally an historic home I can visit without reflecting on how small my condo is. According to the AAA book there are organized nature hikes too. Just my things: history and hiking.

My other thing, of course, is food. I spotted the first Bob Evans restaurant in Missouri today and several more after that. I think tomorrow I’ll be visiting Bob for some of his famous soft, hot rolls.

But that’s not all. Near my hotel here in E-town is a Shoney’s – a southern chain where in my Virginia days I used to savor the most wonderful strawberry pie. Guess where I’m going for dinner.

On a less enthusiastic note, I have to confess that I freaked out last night in KC about getting the last available room in the hotel. Because of that, I had a slip in my plan not to plan and, I’m a little ashamed to say, I made hotel reservations for the next few nights. It is too stressful to worry about getting a room, particularly when just breathing in this humid country works up a sweat and I really want a shower at the end of my drive. But first, pie.

Postblog from Missouri: Is This Oz?

2010-06-13T03:26:00.001-06:00

Instead of going to California or staying home like I usually do when I have time off work, I decided this summer to just get in the car and drive - destination unknown. I tried very hard not to plan this trip (except for a stop in Nebraska) and to be honest, it wasn't easy. But the following postblog is a written snapshot from my travels.

Saturday June 12, 2010 - Listening to a Tom Shane ad on The Fox radio station made me think that there isn’t much left in the world that is unique. I listen to the same ad on the same station at home in Denver, only today the station’s number on the dial and the Shane Company address were different. Kansas City doesn’t look like Denver. It’s older, for one thing, and its downtown buildings are more interesting. But as everywhere else in this country, the next WalMart is only one exit away.

The first day of my “excellent adventure” took me through Kansas where billboards reminded me regularly that Jesus is the real deal. The sunflower state probably has the same number of fundamentalists as the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Instead of the Taliban, however, Kansas has Fred Phelps, leader of the gang that pickets funerals and carries a sign that says, “God Hates Fags.” As I neared Topeka, Phelps’ home base, I drove a little faster with the idea of leaving Kansas behind as quickly as possible.

Being gay, though barely according to some friends who question my decorating and fashion abilities, I thought today of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, going from black and white to color as she left her home state, and saying innocently to her dog, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

And now I’m over the rainbow, camped out at a Missouri Quality Inn near the stadium where the Royals play. (Is that the first sports reference I’ve ever blogged?)

It’s fun to see the Midwest again. There are lots of trees, and it’s so green! Before dinner, I drove and hiked through a huge park complete with trails and campgrounds, and enough foilage to really get lost in. Living in Colorado, I’m not used to forests that aren’t in the mountains. And when the sun went down, I saw the strangest thing: little bugs that fly around and light up! We sure don’t see fireflies at home.

Keeping true to my goal of not over planning this trip, I can’t say for sure where I’ll be tomorrow. I am looking forward to seeing more of the beautiful Show Me State and following the call of the open road.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Why are you doing this? Every year I take a week off in the summer. Usually I just stick around home, perhaps driving to the mountains once or twice. This year I wanted to do something different. Realizing that when I do go places, I get a little OCD and plan everything out to the greatest detail, I decided to challenge myself. I took off this morning from Denver with no plan (almost) and an open mind about where I’d be going and what I’d be doing. This risk taking did spawn a thrill: I got the last room available at the Quality Inn. Whew! That was close.

Are you really doing this alone? The implication of this question is that it’s odd, even sad, to be traveling on an adventure alone. I assure you, I’m enjoying myself very much. The news today tells of a 16 year old girl who attempted to sail around the world alone. Well if she can try that, why can’t I do this? Besides, if I waited until I had someone to do things with, I’d never do anything!

Open the Window and Kick Off Your Shoes – A BillsWeek Summer List

2010-06-09T18:24:00.002-06:00

Ok, I know that technically it isn’t summer yet, but when temperatures hover around 90 degrees and the cold beverage container is “sweating,” I’m not interested in whether the sun has reached its greatest distance south of the celestial equator. It feels like summer in Colorado and I LOVE it, and here (in no particular order) are some of the reasons why:

Open windows
Hot (usually) dry days and (mostly) cool nights
Trees and trails
Thunder storms
Shorts (on myself and others)
Bare feet
Showing snow to tourists from the east - in July
Outdoor movies on Fillmore Plaza (I never go, but I like the idea)
Driving up to 10,000 feet to cool off
Going to the mail box or taking out the trash without having to put on more layers
That blast of dry air when you first get off the plane after a trip back east
Hiking to the old homestead ruins at Golden Gate State Park
Sidewalk dining at Las Margaritas
Fresh strawberries and blueberries
Trail Ridge Road
Movies and music at Chautauqua in Boulder (I’d like to go more often than I do)
Fewer obnoxious kids on the city busses going to/from school
Driving to neighboring states without fear of snow
People everywhere enjoying being outside – walking dogs, chatting with neighbors, riding bikes, just hanging out
The outdoor pool at the health club is open
Russian ladies in the park watching their grandchildren
TV reruns of Christmas shows
Peoples’ dogs on the patio at Liks (ice cream)
Nearly weekly events in Civic Center from People’s Fair to Pridefest (one of the largest in the U.S.) to Taste of Colorado (I don’t go often but I fully recommend them)
Watching the Rocky Mountain Rowing Club early Saturday mornings at Cherry Creek Lake (I do this every week)
Fresh strawberries and blueberries mixed into fine vanilla ice cream
Concerts in City Park (I rarely go but it’s really great to have the option)

And finally:

When it’s summertime in Colorado, I almost forget that I’ve recently, seriously thought about moving to California.

Their Mountains are Older

2010-06-02T18:42:00.001-06:00

“The Great Smokies are the largest single mountain range …”

So begins a quote from the Smoky Mountain News of Waynesville, NC, February 14, 2003. The sentence widens my eyes and a major objection commences in the back of my Colorado throat.

“… in Eastern North America.”

While calmed by the qualifier, I still roll my eyes at the tone of the claim.

The quote kicks off a mystery novel I just started, High Country Fall, by Margaret Maron.

Maron’s mysteries spill beyond the genre into literature. She has a way of capturing the modern rural south (no, it’s not an oxymoron) which makes you feel like you are there. When the primary character, Debra Knott, swelters in a North Carolina summer, the sweat drips down my back. When she chats with neighbors at a large community picnic, my mouth waters for the ham, fried chicken, and biscuits they eat.

I “did time” living in the south, pursuing my graduate degree 20 years ago, in Richmond, Virginia. To say perspectives vary between regions of the country is an understatement. For example, I couldn’t get used the Virginian reverence for war heros – I’m talking about the Civil War, which was fought over 140 years ago. Even in the artsy, hipster part of town called The Fan, Monument Avenue is dotted regularly with magnificent statues of Confederate generals. Stonewall Jackson was less than a block from my apartment. To hear some (not all, to be fair) Richmonders discuss the war, you’d think they were talking about events which happened to them personally. The bitterness against the North is, for some, as fresh as if the “the war of Northern aggression” were still being fought.

When I lived there, I bristled at being called a Yankee. I am from the West. My state didn’t exist during the War Between the States. That anyone from outside is considered a Yankee, no matter where they are from, relegated me to the status of foreign visitor. While always treated with courtesy, I would never outlive my outsider standing.

Not that I was always a paragon of tact and tolerance, myself. I didn’t make any friends by saying, for example, “The war is over. You lost. Get over it.”

The quote about the Smokies reminds me of my reaction to hearing Virginians extol the virtues of their own Blue Ridge Mountains.

Though technically not yet a Coloradoan, I looked down my long nose at the locals and told them that if they wanted to see real mountains, I’d be happy to take them up to, say, Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park.

While unable to deny that the Rockies are quite impressive, my friends in Richmond sniffed, “Your mountains may be bigger, but ours are older.” End of conversation.

I grew to appreciate those beautiful little eastern mountains, dripping with history and character. And I would recommend a drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway anytime.

Meanwhile, if anyone from back east would like to see some snow, in July, at 13,000 feet, just give me a call.

The Acceleration of Time (or What do You Mean the 30th Reunion is Next Year?)

2010-05-26T17:51:00.001-06:00

Though I long ago resolved not to be preoccupied with age in my declining years, it's happening anyway.

Out of the blue, several Facebook postings this week herald the coming of my 30th high school class reunion next summer.

When I was in high school, I never contemplated living 30 years, let alone having a 30th high school reunion.

I didn't attend the 10th or 20th. I'm not sure I'll attend the 30th, but it’s happening regardless.

Where did the time go?

I've always heard from my elders (I very much respect them, by the way – young people, take note) that the older you get, the faster time flies.

When I was a kid, I was vividly aware of the differences between 1972, 1973, 1974, and 1975. To this day, I can see a hairstyle from the 70s and tell you within about 12 months what year it was popular. My bright plaid pants with cuffs looked great in 1974, common in 1975, and silly by 1976.

Fast forward just 10 years: I lived in a different city every year or two for most of the 1980s. If I now hear a Madonna song on the radio, I can tell you whether I lived in Lincoln, New York, Omaha, or Richmond when it was popular.

But things changed in the 90s. I stopped moving around, yet the years flew by. How can I be nostalgic for Breakfast At Tiffany's by Deep Blue Something when it seems like it just came out? By the way, I really like that new artist, Sheryl Crow. I hope her career takes off.

I still wear shirts I wore in 1999. They look ok to me - maybe a little tight. Have I become an old dork? I'll never forget going out once with a slightly younger guy who guessed my age based on my shoes. Any self-confidence in my animal magnetism quickly evaporated.

The days, weeks, months are flying by. I regularly say, "Is it Friday again already? Where did the week go?" The good news is that while weekends once seemed so few and far between, they now come with increasing frequency.

I read a month or so ago (or was it a year or two?) that scientific studies point to possible physiological reasons why older people experience time in an accelerated way. It may be more than just the perspective of age.

So I have just one question. If time is speeding up, why is the last 30 minutes at the office the longest hour of the day?

Planning to be Spontaneous

2010-05-20T18:24:00.005-06:00

It is very difficult to not compulsively sit down, get out the AAA literature, Google some destinations, and make reservations. But I am determined NOT to plan my summer vacation.

As I reported a couple of blog entries ago (Organizer has Trouble Not Planning), I’ve always had a fantasy about just getting in the car and driving. No destination. See where the road takes me. But it’s a challenge to wait that long.

My thoughts go something like this: “Maybe I’ll spontaneously drive up to Manitoba and hit Minneapolis on the way back.” Or, at the suggestion of a good friend, “Without planning to, what if I drive through Michigan around the north shore of Lake Superior, and visit Minneapolis on the way back.”

Not all fantasy road trips involve swinging by the Twin Cities.

Commenting on the previous blog, a friend suggests road tripping to the mountains of North Carolina – the eastern version of “the middle of nowhere.” Another friend invites me to visit the Lincoln-Omaha area, what I used to call “Metrobraska.” Either or both of those sound like fun.

I’ve thought about some travel themes such as visiting all the state capitals between here and St. Paul, which is next to Minneapolis.

Another fun theme: go to every town of Springfield in a 10 state region. Yes, there’s one in Minnesota.

But the goal here is to challenge myself to behave in a different way from usual. Instead of planning everything down to the minute, which is my natural tendency, I’d like to see what happens if I have no plans – just the wide open road.

Here’s as much as I want to prepare ahead of this trip which begins June 11 or 12 and could last as long as 10 days (so not really long enough, perhaps, to go all the way to North Carolina – Minnesota on the other hand …):

Fill the tank.
Pack a cooler with drinks and snacks.
Fill a travel bag with cool clothing – I’m fairly certain it will be hot wherever I go. Hmm, the North Shore could be chilly I suppose. Ok, I’ll bring a jacket as well.
Drive out to Monaco Parkway and turn either left or right.

After that, I’ll be as free as one of those truckers in a country western song, with only the stars and the radio to keep me company.

That reminds me, I’ll need to bring my iPod. Perhaps I should start a list.

No Such Thing as Free HBO

2010-05-12T17:29:00.000-06:00

Holding an official looking clip board, the cable company representative told me through the screen door that they had been reviewing my account and discovered that for what I was currently paying, I could have many additional premium channels including all of those from HBO.

Not only that, I could have a Comcast land line phone with unlimited long distance to all 50 states and Puerto Rico.

I don't think I have ever called Puerto Rico.

In spite of the fact that my cell phone is adequate and I already have hundreds more channels than I could ever possibly watch, I invited him to come in and sit down so we could discuss it further.

As Charles, my 18 month old, jumped up on his lap and sniffed the clip board, we discussed my cable needs. I apologized for the cat. He said that he'd gotten the same treatment from the animals next door and didn't mind.

So evidently, this wasn't just a special visit because Comcast was interested in me. In fact, my neighbor, Terese, subscribed to the same new package that I did.

I realized much later that I should have asked, "How can I keep the same service I have now and pay less?" Oh these sales guys are slick.

As the Comcast guy made an appointment for the technician to come and install the replacement modem for my new land line phone, I thought that I might as well ask about a second DVR for the bedroom.

I rarely view TV shows "live." With the digital video recorder I can watch at my convenience and fast forward through commercials. The only problem is I have to do it in the living room. Since I've been falling asleep on the sofa a lot, it has occurred to me that it would be nice to watch The Daily Show in bed.

So for between eight and nine dollars per month, I now have a DVR in my bedroom - with HBO and Starz.

Meanwhile, I realized that if I was going to have a land line, I should probably get a telephone. Terese told me about a sale at Sears, so for $20 I bought one with a speakerphone, caller ID, and some other features I'll probably never use.

On Sunday, my new DVR, phone, and modem were piled up on the dresser with my wireless router and bedroom TV ready to use. Charles enjoyed playing with the new wires, and I looked forward to an evening in bed with The Simpsons and a few reruns of Sordid Lives.

It wasn't the relaxing utopia I was expecting. In fact, my 20 year old mattress was kind of lumpy. As a matter of fact, I suffer from considerable insomnia, and I often wake up without feeling in one of my arms. Spending more time watching TV in bed would only make it worse.

So my new $800 memory foam mattress (on sale!), arrives this Saturday. I can hardly wait to snuggle up with the cats and enjoy some recorded natural disaster documentaries from the National Geographic Channel - on my new, comfy mattress.

I guess you can't have free HBO without paying a price.

Organizer Has Trouble Not Planning Summer Vacation

2010-05-05T18:29:00.000-06:00

Among my strengths are organization and planning. From managing large project teams at work to hosting a huge holiday meal for 25 people in my little condo, I meet many challenges by writing it down first, anticipating every possible scenario, and following a plan.

Most summers when I have time off, I stay at home. I figure since many people come to Colorado for their vacations, why would I want to leave? I plan to go to the mountains, enjoy local cultural attractions, and catch up on home projects. Usually, however, I end up sleeping the days away, or watching movie after movie after movie without doing any of those other things. A day or two before going back to work, I realize I haven’t done one thing I thought I would do. Rest is all well and good, and I save money by staying at home, but I think this year I should do something more adventurous – something that really is a vacation from my routine.

Regular readers know that my big vacation every year is a winter trip to San Diego. For over a decade, I’ve escaped the cold, barren landscape of Colorado February for California’s spring-like weather and sunny beaches.

This year, Colorado was so cold and brown, and California was so green and warm, I almost didn’t come home.

The question is, what should I do this summer?

I’ve always had a fantasy about just getting in the car and driving. No destination. Just see where the road takes me.

But naturally, I’ve never actually done this. What if I get someplace and can’t find a hotel room? Reservations must be made ahead of time, just to be safe. What if I get to the middle of nowhere and run out of gas? When you’ve traveled in Wyoming as much as I have, you know that’s not such an unlikely possibility.

When I was a kid, my family got into the RV and headed for the Grand Canyon. It was a long, hot drive. My mom required us to drink one pop an hour (the only time she ever did that) so we wouldn’t dehydrate. My dad was sure we’d be able to find a campground near the national park without any problem.

He was wrong. To stay anywhere near the Grand Canyon in the middle of the summer, you have to make reservations months ahead. After driving for days on end, we parked at an overlook, peered into the canyon for a few minutes, and turned around to go home.

You really can’t appreciate the grandeur of such a place in less than a half hour.

The lesson: plan ahead.

When I was young, I loved to travel spontaneously. I once wandered around England in a rented car with no idea about where I was going. But somewhere along the line, I lost my desire to explore. The last time I was adventurous out on the road was probably in 2003 when my friend Brian talked me into leaving the interstate to visit Ole’s Big Game Lounge in Paxton, Nebraska.

So this year, on June 12, I’m going to get into the car and start driving. I will not go to California. Nor will I go to Wyoming. There are a few other places I probably won’t go, like Texas, but other than that, who knows where I might end up?

The test until then is to avoid planning. Stay tuned to BillsWeek for updates on this challenging situation.

Old Technology in Fiction Can be Distracting

2010-04-28T17:39:00.001-06:00

While mopping through ketchup during my lunch break, I’ll often have one of Sue Grafton's alphabet mystery series in front of me. Detective Kinsey Malone has a gun but hates to use it. She drives an old VW Beatle. She likes men but has trouble loving them. She's also not above breaking and entering if it will help the case.

And as far as I know (I'm only up to Q), she's stuck in the 1980s.

Picture it: a rainy night. The car won't start. The shadows close in. The angry suspect doesn't want Kinsey on his tail. As the danger increases, Kinsey makes a mad dash for the phone booth across the street. As the bad guy's footsteps come nearer, she closes the folding glass door behind her, puts down the gun, and rifles through her bag looking for change so she can use the pay phone.

I don't like picturing Kinsey in the 80s. I want to picture her now. It really annoys me when she types her final report on a manual typewriter.

Kinsey should have a cell phone and a laptop. But Grafton has made a conscious decision to set these novels in the 80s so the storylines flow together better. I suppose it could be distracting if at the end of one book it is 1986 and at the beginning of the next, it's two weeks later and 2007 (I’m reading another book about relativity and space time, but that’s not the subject here).

I suppose it's just my quirk to deal with, but I'm really distracted by old technology in books, movies, and TV.

In the movie Broadcast News, the workaholic network newspeople run through the hallways carrying huge video cassettes. If Holly Hunter is such hot stuff, why doesn't she just download the video digitally? I know, I know, the movie was made in 1987 when high tech meant having video in cassettes instead of on those giant reel-to-reels.

I think part of the problem is that technology changes so quickly. Our gadgets come and go out of date before our popular fiction does. Case in point, video cassettes or no, William Hurt is hot in this movie.

Quick poll: who still uses a fax machine? I don't think Kinsey even has that option. She is always mailing something (you know, with an envelope and stamp) and waiting several days for a response.

If the book or movie is old enough, it’s less distracting and more amusing. For example, in the 1957 film, Desk Set, with Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, a computer occupying several rooms threatens to take over the company. When the giant machine malfunctions, it spits thousands of paper cards all over the place. The lesson, of course, is that computers can't replace people.

At least in the 1950s they couldn't. Now I'm not so sure.

Before my very eyes, technology is changing. When just, like, five years ago, I heard a prediction that the internet and television would morph together, I thought, "What do I give up? My computer or my TV? Well, it won't happen for a while yet."

But it's happening. I just installed a little contraption which picks up the signal from my wireless router (or at least it's supposed to - there are some kinks to work out) and plays content from the internet through the TV/surround sound/home entertainment system.

It doesn't stop there. It's now common to carry your phone, web browser, global positioning system, office assistant application, games, TV, and tons more stuff on one gadget - that can fit in your pocket.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: we are living in the future. Think about it. The new stuff we have is more advanced than what we were expecting just a short time ago.

I want to call Kinsey Malone and tell her that it won't be long before she can type her reports and keep her billing records, and instantly gather and send information from all over the world, on one little machine that she keeps in the back seat of her car.

Spence and Kate would never believe it.

Global Warming? We Should Be So Lucky (or, Relaxing With Television)

2010-04-21T20:12:00.001-06:00

In 1859, a coronal mass ejection caused telegraph lines to burst into flame. Since that was the extent of high tech communication in those days, nothing else really happened when the sun rained unruly protons and electrons on the planet. Protected by Earth’s magnetic field, most people didn’t notice anything but an unusually strong aurora borealis.

Cosmologically speaking, these solar storms are not unusual. In fact, another CME is predicted. This time, more than telegraphs will be affected. Our power-based infrastructure, from electricity to communications, is dependent on satellites and power grids which could black out when the sun "ejects" again. Scientists warn that the world could be catastrophically disabled for months.

No lights. No television. No refrigerators or cell phones. I picture myself cowering in a closet as gun-toting, survivalist extremists plunder the city.

How do I know about this?

I spend many an evening relaxing to documentaries on the Discovery, History, and National Geographic channels.

Occasionally opting for educational programming over brainless entertainment, I sit riveted to the screen as scientists describe in detail how the world could come to an end. Volcanoes, asteroids, viral pandemics killing tens of millions: all are inevitable and have the potential to, if not end life, change it forever.

Usually, about 40 minutes into each program, the somber narrator says, "It's not a matter of if this will happen. It's a matter of when."

I don't need distortion from FOX News to make me worry. I don't need Nostradamus or predictions about "2012" to cause anxiety about the future. For that, I rely on actual science, graphically broadcast through cable TV.

Sometimes I think we know more than we ought to. In the time before mass communication, our worries were limited to more local problems. News was what you learned of your neighbor while visiting the general store. Of course our ancestors lived with anxiety too. Starvation, for example, was just one crop failure away for many of them.

But do I really need to know that the super volcano at Yellowstone blows up every few hundred thousand years, plunging the world into darkness and leading to the extinction of species? It could happen tomorrow or in 50,000 years. But it will happen. There is not a thing we can do about it.

Geologically speaking, the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was not that unusual. It's only a matter of time before another random object from Space crosses our orbit with the same effect as thousands of nuclear bombs.

Smaller disasters aren’t much better to contemplate.

The Cascadian Slip Fault, just off the coast of Oregon and Washington, gives way every few centuries. The last time it happened was in 1700 according to carbon dating at the site and also records of a related tsunami in Japan. The next time, a 9.0 earthquake and accompanying ocean waves will wreak havoc in the great northwest.

And we all know that one of these days, California will be leveled by "the big one" – a long predicted earthquake the length of the San Andreas Fault.

Tragic as they are, hurricanes are small fry. That volcano in Iceland causing some inconvenience in Europe is a pipsqueak. Floods? Blizzards? Climate change? We should be so lucky.

Hmm. I wonder what will happen on Idol this week.

Census Tests Good Citizenship

2010-04-16T16:20:00.000-06:00

Everyone should take responsibility for being a good citizen. Part of living in a free society (ok, we can discuss the accuracy of that description later) is that everyone must do their part to keep things working. And for Americans, in many cases, we do it voluntarily. I love those signs along the highway, for example, that announce which civic and business organizations are keeping that stretch clean: The Kiwanis, First United Methodist Women, Al’s Plumbing and Heating, The American Nazi Party … Ok, maybe not all of the groups are nice ones, but they are doing an important service by picking up the trash along the road.

It concerns me that with Social Studies increasingly cut out of the curriculum, our children learn less and less about citizenship in school. Even the word itself seems old-fashioned. The most visible example of Americans “participating in our democracy” are those annoying “Tea Party” people who not only make demands purely in their own self interest, but don’t seem to understand even the basics of how our government works.

I take pride in my good citizenship. I recycle (most of the time). I vote in every election. I obey traffic laws (well maybe not always speed limits, but I have a very full schedule… ). My cats are spayed and neutered. And I drive a hybrid car which is a never ending source of self-righteousness.

Unlike many complainers in the United States, I have no problem with the census. It is, for one thing, constitutionally mandated. The data is helpful to government and businesses in countless ways. So if I can, I would like to help.

Except for one thing - I think I threw away my census form.

See, it’s because of junk mail. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even go to the mailbox unless I’m expecting a Netflix DVD. It’s a pain to stand over the trash can and carefully sort out the bills and rare personal correspondence from the newsprint, pizza coupons, and catalogs of companies I haven’t ordered from in years (this is a time when I should recycle …). It’s not hard to imagine a piece of business class post, mass mailed from some obscure federal office, getting lost among the junk. I must have tossed it without a thought.

This is surely a blot on my citizenship. I would be embarrassed to have a census worker come to my door. It’s not like I’m too ignorant to know it’s a census year. I’m not going to answer the door holding a shotgun, proclaiming that I don’t want to be counted because I don’t trust the “govermint.” I would probably apologize for making them come to my house because I was so careless with the mail.

Apparently I’m not the only one who, for whatever reason, almost didn’t participate. As I tried to enter King Soopers the other day without being accosted by the usual folks asking for something (you know, the Shriners, pollsters, girl scouts), a woman intercepted me and asked if I’d been counted.

Before I could snarl that all I wanted was some milk and cereal, and couldn’t I just enter the store one time without being harangued, I realized she was giving out census forms. I stopped in my tracks, took an envelope and thanked her.

The next day, my stats were on their way to the feds, my model citizenship restored for one more day.

stamping out! Random acts, of Capitalization and, senseless Acts. of punctuation

2010-04-07T16:50:00.000-06:00

i have a Sign, Above; My desk at Work - proclaiming the Title; above Which is one of My Missions in Life - writing! poorly On Purpose Is harder, Than it Looks (for me - but. i spend Several Hours a Week! editing sloppy Punctuation even, stuff Written. By Upper management who. should Know better has our Educational System, deteriorated that Much or Is This, A result of The internet, age, which,. includes, An increase In texting that usually results in writing, Shortcuts abbreviations Etc. or perhaps it Has Always Been this Way i believe english is a Living Evolving language and I make A distinction between casual Writing on say facebook versus a More formal, report at Work! but Without some Standard's. it Is difficult 2 Communicate don't get me Started on grammar usage and, the way, other People drive i may b a Snob but. 1 Thing i Know 4 sure; My Ability to Edit and correct, Other's horrible, punctuation, and, capitalization, Ensures greater Job, security At Least I Hope so

I Do Not Clean Alone

2010-04-02T16:56:00.000-06:00

I don’t believe in ghosts in the usual sense, but I do believe that I am haunted by my mother every time I clean the house.

I hate cleaning more than anything. I’d almost rather go to the dentist. I really hate it. But is it worse than living in a dirty home?

I like to play a little game called, “How many inches of dust can you stand?” It’s even more challenging when I don’t feel well, like this week when I missed two days of work.

I won’t bore you with the details of my illness, but I will say that I knew I was feeling better when that little dust ball near the TV (the screen of which itself was covered in a layer that dulled the color of every broadcast) – that little dust ball I’d been staring at for 48 hours finally got to me. Like Lazarus, I rose from the sofa, summoned the Windex and went at it.

This is where my mother comes in. She wouldn’t tolerate, for one minute, a dust ball near the TV. Dust simply wasn’t allowed in her home. Her standards were extremely high. When I came to visit from graduate school one time, I tried to help her clean, and she yelled at me for vacuuming the stairs wrong. How many ways can there be to vacuum stairs? I stopped offering.

Mom was notoriously hard on professional house cleaners. Even near the end of her life when she could barely walk or talk, she’d leave sticky notes around the house reminding the cleaning woman to “dust the banister” or whatever was “forgotten” last time.

That’s why she haunts me now.

It’s all I can do to dust the surface of things. But her voice is in my head reminding me to get under the knick knacks, not just over the surface. She still tells me to get the floor’s edges, vacuum under the chairs, and dust WITH the wood’s grain instead of against it.

I don’t think she liked cleaning any more than I do. She was just tougher. Her sheer grit overcame any inclination to be lazy.

For several years, I hired a service to clean for me. I had to stop that when Charles, my 18 month old (kitten) came to live with me. Unlike every other cat in the world that I know of, he doesn’t hide when the vacuum is going. He chases it. In fact, he loves to help clean. Chasing the dust rag is great sport, and attacking the sheets as I throw them over the bed is tremendous fun (see photo). Making the bed always ends with a kitty sized lump in the middle. This makes hospital corners, which my Mom bent over backwards to teach me, very difficult. And it makes me unable to subject the cleaning service to his attentions. I would have to pay more for them to put up with him, or they’d accidentally let him out because he runs to the door whenever someone comes over.

It was only recently that I could overcome my mother’s voice as I cleaned the house. It occurred to me that I don’t have to feel guilty for not edging the carpet or washing the kitty nose prints off the windows every time. Or ever. Oh I still hear the voice – I just realize now that I don’t have to let it control me.

I live alone (well, with Charles and Lily). I clean for myself. If it’s good enough for me, it’s good enough.

My neighbor loves to clean. She vacuums every day. In spite of her cats and dog, the place is always spotless. I wish I loved to clean like that. But it will never happen. I’ll have to settle for not feeling guilty when I finally do run the dust rag over the tops of things and vacuum around the chair, and I’ll do the windows some other time. Maybe.

Open Up that Golden Gate – Maybe (Part 2)

2010-03-24T14:10:00.001-06:00

Last week, I announced that I was seriously considering a move to Southern California. This week, I promised some pros and cons. On impulse, I created a survey and asked my Facebook friends to comment. This was not a scientific poll. But it also wasn’t a Fox News poll where every question was completely slanted towards a predetermined result.

I am impressed by the thoughtful responses to the survey. For the most part, folks seem happy where they live. Coloradoans in particular are passionate about their home. I was also touched at the amount of care expressed for me. I have some truly wonderful friends, coast to coast.

Here are some of the data from the survey:

63% of the respondents came from Colorado/Wyoming/Western Nebraska (in other words the “local” region); 16% came from the west coast; 5% came from Nebraska (east of the Panhandle), and 16% from somewhere else. I’m sure the fact that the majority of respondents are local affected the percentages in the rest of the survey.
68% prefer four distinct seasons; 21% agree that Colorado has only two seasons (summer and winter, all year around); 11% like the idea of green grass throughout the year.
Given a choice, 68% prefer the mountains; 27% prefer the ocean; 5% don’t take advantage of living near either one.
For solitude, 26% prefer the beach and 74% prefer the mountains.

The best part was the advice written to me. While anonymous, I have a pretty good idea of who many of you are.

Excerpts:

“I think Bill should do what he wants … and stop paying attention to what I say in the comments section of his blog.”---- Oh, by the way Phil, you do seem to comment more than others on the blog, but I think that’s because Blogspot makes it difficult to leave comments unless you’re a scientist or engineer.
“I cherish seasons, have never met a natural wonder grander than the Rockies, and (also dream) of relocating to Southern California.”
“If you’re bored, I say get out. You can always come back.”
“Getting off my mountain bike on a quiet trail in Boulder County may be the only place I’ve ever found that I can just sit still and “be” for a while. If you haven’t found that place ... yet … keep looking until you do.”
“DON’T MOVE DON’T MOVE DON’T MOVE DON’T MOVE DONT MOVE”
“Just don’t move to (someplace in Nebraska). 12 distinct seasons a year, secluded places to get away … but you need them … because of the closed mindedness that is such a part of the culture.”
“Do what your heart tells you to do.”
“So Cal is expensive! Traffic is even worse than Denver. Denver has more sun than So Cal. The people are nicer in Colorado … You can almost always see the mountains (from anywhere) in Denver (but) You need to be at the beach to see the ocean.”
“Rattle your cage.”
“I love the ocean, but having grown up … where the seasons NEVER change, I’d never live in a place without seasons again … it overrides my love of the ocean and indifference toward the mountains.”
“You would miss the mountains!”
“Move to California!!!”
“Just do it! … Life is truly an accumulation of your experiences … The mountains (are different) in CA, but there still are mountains and they’re really beautiful.”
“Be careful about trying to make your get away place home.”
“Plenty of fun in the sun in California, just find a place where you aren’t living on top of others … there is (also) all the good wine and wine country.”
“Do what your heart tells you to do … the grass always looks greener someplace else … you will find yourself in a tough housing market with high pollution in a highly body conscious gay community where it is tough to make new friends …”
“Your soul belongs in Colorado.”
“I would miss you … but you have to do what makes you happy.”
“Reach for the sun.”

While the conclusions are not all in agreement, this gives me some good material with which to think. Sometimes it helps just to know that I have the option to do something. If I don’t feel stuck, I’m less anxious to make a change.

Meanwhile, here are some of my responses to other comments received:

Yes, I know about the earthquakes, but when the Yellowstone supervolcano blows, we're all doomed anyway.
I'm pretty sure there are doctors in California. Also Mormons.
Orange County in particular is heavily Republican. You can't even swing an underfunded social program without hitting a Republican. But I've lived among those people before. I can do it again.
No, Alaska is not under consideration, no matter who resides there.
I wouldn't move to California without a huge increase in income. I am not cheap.

Just wait until I get into one of my periodic fantasies about moving back to Nebraska.

Open Up that Golden Gate – Maybe (Part 1)

2010-03-19T10:25:00.001-06:00

I’m seriously considering a move to Southern California. That’s a big temptation considering we’re in the middle of one of those famous Colorado March snowstorms. But this has been on my mind a long while.

I’ve considered the Golden State many times over the decades. When first graduating with my teaching degree in the 1980s, I interviewed with several California school systems. I even passed the California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST) to qualify.

Later, I married a man from San Francisco who made the move east to be with me. He nearly talked me into returning to the Bay Area with him, and then decided to go - alone. I came that close to living in Frisco (that’s passive aggressive for San Francisco – they hate it when you say Frisco – and while you’re there, ask them about their trolley cars – they hate it when you call the cable cars trolleys).

Probably best I didn’t go.

The past decade I’ve vacationed in San Diego once or more a year. Southern Cal is warmer and less densely packed than San Francisco, which has a somewhat Manhattan feel to it – including the provincialism and snobbery. I did time in Manhattan long ago. No need to repeat that miserable experience.

Historically, Colorado’s Front Range is a stop on the way west. Many young Boomers were on their way to California when their VW vans ran out of gas near Boulder and they ended up staying. Perhaps I’m gassed up again and ready to go.

I know what you’re thinking, but Denver has traffic and smog too.

Last month in San Diego, for some perhaps fortuitous reason, I ran into a lot of people who had lived in Colorado for many years. To a person, they loved California and had no regrets about relocating. When I asked about contending with traffic, high cost of living, and earthquakes, they replied that it was, and I quote, “Totally worth it.”

Regular readers will remember that in September, I considered a move to Chicago. Well, as the temperature dropped and relatively mild Denver began its annual six month chill, I realized that one winter in Chicago would kill me dead.

Now it looks like if I want to pursue them, some opportunities may soon arise on “the coast.” Even if those particular opportunities don’t materialize, I may just go find some more.

It’s also possible that as April arrives and the grass greens up, I’ll forget all about it – until November.

In the next BillsWeek, some pros and cons of picking up my middle aged ass and heading into the sunset.

You Can Pick Your Friends but Relatives Are a Crapshoot

2010-03-10T18:21:00.000-07:00

I guess genealogy is very popular and easier than ever thanks to the internet (no, I don’t capitalize that word – it’s not a proper noun; I don’t know why people think it is, but never mind).

Anyway, I was recently contacted by what my family calls a “Shirt-Tail Relative.” This was a guy I never heard of who is a cousin to my second cousin’s wife. I do know my second cousin; he’s a great guy. But when he gave this STR my number, I was sorry I answered the phone.

STR wanted some information about my family for his genealogy project – info about my siblings, who lives where, and who begat whom. He didn’t know my mother had died, and he wanted to also talk to my father (who I subsequently called and warned).

Yes, he said, he is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons, you know), which was predictable enough. Genealogy isn’t just a hobby with those folks. When they go to Heaven (proper noun), they try to take the whole family with them, even to the point of baptizing relatives who have already died.

Also predictably, he said he was a republican (I don’t think they are all that proper so I’m not capitalizing it).

So he was delighted to share with me some exciting news that he uncovered in his research.

Apparently, my mother’s side of the family is related to (gulp) Sarah Palin.

My ears were ringing with shock, but I think he said that I was a sixth cousin to the former governor of Alaska. To drive the point home, STR reminded me that Sarah’s unmarried name was Heath, the same as my grandmother’s. It seems some of the Heaths who didn’t settle in the sod houses of Nebraska kept going west, all the way to, I’m not kidding, Wasilla, Alaska.

I’m sure that Sarah wouldn’t be any happier about our connection than I am. I know sixth cousins are not all that close, but I just shudder to think that I share any genetic material with that stupid, dreadful woman.

Why can’t I be related to somebody awesome, like the Kennedys, or even someone from the same political party, such as Joe Biden?

I’m quite sure that if I invited Sarah to a family reunion, she wouldn’t want to come. I’m also sure that I wouldn’t care to grace Wasilla with my presence, not that I’d ever receive an invitation.

STR assumed I’d be thrilled with this news. I was not. I couldn’t get him off the phone fast enough. I had to call my sister and whine. My niece, who my sister was visiting at the time, thought the whole situation was hilarious.

All of which only goes to prove the old expression: “You can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your relatives.” Indeed.

Yoga a Stretch for the Round and Stiff

2010-03-05T08:02:00.001-07:00

I have been participating in a yoga class.

Take a moment to let that sink in.

If you've known me for a while, you know that I am not the yoga type. I make fun of anything where someone might say, “Ohmmm.” Until last September, I wasn't the working out at a gym type either, but people can change.

Yoga is great exercise. It’s non-aerobic, so it's easy on the old knees.

Did you know there were a lot of different kinds of yoga? Some types are more mystical, others more physical. There is hot yoga. Bikram yoga. Ashtanga yoga. Power yoga. Tantric yoga. Naked yoga. I'm just in Beginning Yoga.

After the first class, I felt quite righteous about my healthy new lifestyle choice - until the sore stomach muscles kicked in. Who would have thought that sitting and lying on the floor, extending legs and arms, and twisting could lead to such pain? My body, I have learned, is not very flexible.

I’m also ignorant when it comes to muscle composition. When told to stretch our quads, I have to look at the person next to me. I don't know what a quad is.

The instructor is very nice and patiently bends my arms, waist, and ankles this way and that to conform to the pose of the moment, but I'm stiff and my body's not the ideal shape for yoga. I'm not long and thin. I'm round.

But I'm plugging away and I hope to be more bendy real soon.

Namaste.

BillsWeek Guest Entry: Confessions of a Drag Hag

2010-02-28T10:45:00.006-07:00

Sometimes the best surprises come in fabulous packages. Last summer, guest blogger Joey Halligan discovered and recorded one amazing drag queen. Now, he's in the process of helping her go national, including competition in the Logo network's First Exceptional Drag Queen contest. Here's his story:

It all started one scorching day in June during the Denver Pride Festival. Nina Flowers and her band of drag performers took the main stage and performed in front of nearly 275,000 spectators. There I stood, among all the other viewers, wondering just what these girls were about to do.

They performed to songs by such artists as Lady Gaga, Pink and Beyonce. In the spirit of collecting memories of that fun summer day, I took pictures of them all. But when Felony Misdemeanor appeared on stage, I saw something different.

She displayed her signature sartorial elegance. She worked the stage and the audience. But there was something drastically different about Felony. In fact, she was the only one I recorded. She was the only one that looked natural in her element. As the show came to a close, I knew I would be watching the video clip of Felony again, and it would probably end there. I was wrong.

After the show, Nina Flowers introduced her girls to the crowd. She brought them out individually and let each diva have her moment of glory. Felony Misdemeanor, like all the rest, underwent a rapid wardrobe change, and upon her reentry to the stage, wore a tank top with 10 digits. A random selection of numbers? Of course not. She was silently publicizing her phone number, made a phone gesture with her hand and mouthed the phrase: “Call me!”

The next day I was watching all my footage from the weekend with a friend and came across her performance. I couldn’t believe this drag queen printed her phone number on her tank top for all to see!

We had to call. How could we not? At the very least, I had to tell her “good job”. Just as I expected, we went straight to her voicemail but still left a heartfelt message, telling her just how good she looked on stage. To my surprise, she called back.

During the next few days, we exchanged phone calls and text messages. Before I knew it, I was cheering her on at her local performances and bringing along friends to watch (and tip, of course). We then started talking about her plans for the future. We thought of ways to market Felony to the public, created a complete website and supported her along the way. We even created pseudo roles that all made up the Felony Misdemeanor project, aka Team Felony.

Now that I know Felony, and as the boy behind the make-up, I have a new-found respect for female impersonators. The transformation is jaw dropping. But more than anything, Felony is an amazing person - in and out of drag. She loves to eat all kinds of food - the spicier the better, play video games and hang out with friends. Sounds pretty normal, huh? You never quite know when or where you’re going to meet great people.

Visit Felony’s site at http://www.felony-misdemeanor.com/ and vote for her to be Logo’s first Exceptional Drag Queen!

Joey Halligan is an excellent human being and occasional contributor to BillsWeek. You can reach him at JoeyHalligan@me.com.

Scott Brown Can Do It But Miss America Can't

2010-02-26T17:46:00.001-07:00

Scott Brown, the new senator from Massachusetts, is handsome, charming, and Republican. The press has made much of the fact that because of his election, the Democrats have lost their super-majority. Of course the dems weren’t making any use of it, but that's not what I want to write about today.

My question is, how can Scott Brown get away with having posed nude?

In case you missed it, Senator Brown did a centerfold for Cosmo in 1982 when he apparently wasn't running for public office. Beyond some guffaws on programs like the Daily Show and Wanda Sykes, this, well, exposure, has barely been mentioned.

Why, when a good looking Republican politician is "revealed" in uncovered repose, is it basically laughed off? But when a nude picture of Miss America surfaces, she is forced to step down.

Can you imagine the Republican outcry if a nude picture of Barack Obama surfaced from 1982? Like Scott Brown, he's handsome and charming. But I'm sure the GOP would be apoplectic with outrage, decrying the President's values and judgment.

Naturally, I got online to find the photo of Scott Brown for research purposes and I have to say, he's pretty naked (read that any way you like).

Because of the internet, it is easier than ever to turn scandalous photos loose on the world. When a video surfaced of Olympic champion Michael Phelps smoking a joint last year, all hell broke loose. College students are cautioned today not to be photographed drinking beer for fear it will be published on a social network and potential employers will find it. Yikes, I’m wondering what embarrassing moments of my youth were documented and may surface online.

It's awfully easy to get into trouble for an indiscretion caught on camera. Why does Scott Brown, who actually went to the trouble to pose, get away with it?

Cadence of the Tides

2010-02-17T21:19:00.002-07:00

“Remember you are dust.”

3:30 in the morning and wide awake, I go to the cliffs.

In pre-dawn darkness and heavy fog, I only hear the cracking of the waves below, the eternal rhythm of a nearly endless ocean from which that early living creature commencing all known life crawled to the shore.

I feel it in my heartbeat.

The rhythm of the ages, of ancestors I cannot fathom, of a mother that I miss, the loved ones yet to be conceived in the ebb and flow of mortal life.

We come and go and come again, the cadence of the tides. The red clay sticks to my shoes. The sun rises for another day.

“And to dust you shall return.”

Bayside on V-Day

2010-02-14T19:29:00.000-07:00

Sitting on my balcony overlooking the bay
Left snowy Denver early today
Toes wiggling in the open air, computer on my lap
San Diego skyline brightens Valentine crap
Palm trees waving gently, lowering my stress
Went to Orange County, was not overly impressed.

Reasons Why I go to San Diego Every February: A BillsWeek List

2010-02-11T18:25:00.000-07:00

Surfers off Ocean Beach Pier

The smell of green grass.
Palm trees.
The Pacific Ocean.
Surfers in the Pacific Ocean.
Spring-like temperatures generally in the 60s (this time of year). I’ve been there when it’s been in the 80s and the 40s, however, so dressing in layers is a good idea.
Wildlife in The Pacific Ocean (seagulls hanging out, pelicans diving off the pier for fish, sometimes I even see dolphins).
Wearing shorts and sandals outside.
Ocean, Coronado, and La Jolla Beaches – where I spend hours and hours walking along the Pacific Ocean in my shorts and sandals.
Ocean Beach Pier: the longest on the west coast and a great place to watch the large waves coming in off the great Pacific Ocean.
Balboa Park – site of the 1915 World Exposition, an outdoor pipe organ, and palm trees. You can also lie on the green grass and watch big jets fly just over your head on their way to the local airport.
The airport, by the way, is conveniently located near downtown, just minutes from wherever you want to go, unlike some other airports which are miles and miles and miles away from the city out in the middle of nowhere.
Cheaper to get to than Hawaii or Australia.
The option to visit Sea World, the Wildlife Park, a first class zoo, the Scripps Aquarium, whale watches, the Maritime Museum (where you can walk around on an old sailing ship which carried immigrants from England to New Zealand I believe), Los Angeles just up the road, or Mexico just down the road. Of course I rarely or never do these things, but it’s nice to have the option.
People in San Diego drive up to their local mountains when it snows. I do not do this.
Flowers blooming.
This is the time of year when the seals at La Jolla give birth to their pups. So cool to see those wiggly little babies torment their more staid elders.
Watching air craft carriers and huge Navy ships come and go. There are also sailors.
Hiking on the Sunset Cliffs. In shorts. In winter.
I don’t care what anybody says, I think California is awesome!

Breaking Up the Long Winter Blah

2010-02-05T21:15:00.002-07:00

As winters go, Denver isn’t bad. We occasionally get the big snows, but it melts within days. We don’t have the ruts of ice on the street that you find in the midwest. When I lived in eastern Nebraska, that first November snow was still there in March as a pile of dark, hard ice. Here in the mile high, the winter temps can climb into in the 50s. The sky is often a magnificent deep blue, and the snow covered Rocky Mountains stand guard over the city.

But in my opinion, this time of year still sucks, even in Colorado. From my office window, I can see a carpet of dirty air lying over the region. “You mean we are breathing that stuff?” we regularly say of the infamous winter “Brown Cloud.” All the trees are bare and, well, brown, and while we're at it, so is the grass. There is not a stitch of green anywhere.

There are many Coloradoans whose favorite season is winter. I am not one of them. No matter how luxurious the "champagne powder snow" is up in the mountains, it’s still brown down here.

The colder weather is tolerable during November and December. There are holidays to look forward to, and time off from work. Pretty colored lights brighten the darkness. It's fun to get out the sweaters and flannel sheets.

By mid-February, Christmas is a distant memory and Memorial Day is impossibly far away. There seems no relief from the dark nights and brown days. I've always hated February.

There are parts of the world, however, that are warm and spring like - where people wear shorts and don't have to put on a coat, gloves, and a scarf just to take out the trash.

About a decade ago, I added a new holiday to my year. In the middle of every February, I pack my shorts and head to the sunny city of San Diego. In February, southern California basks in the comfortable 60s and 70s. I spend most of my time walking up and down the beautiful beaches or watching huge Navy ships moving in and out of the bay. I have all the tourist areas practically to myself because Californians, having a different perspective on winter, are too cold to venture out when it’s only 65 degrees.

I should mention that I did go to south Florida once and it was ok, but Florida weirds me out. It's so flat. I don't understand why the ocean doesn't just wash over the whole state. I had trouble sleeping for the anxiety of it. And culturally, Florida is basically New Jersey south. I was never comfortable with the aggressive rudeness of the east. In California, people are friendly and courteous, just like at home.

But unlike home, San Diego has a beautiful coast punctuated by sandy beaches and dramatic cliffs. Flowers bloom all year around. The grass is green. You can go to concerts in the park - in February!

I love San Diego. A week from now I'll be heading out there for the eleventh year in a row.

Up yours winter!

When I come back from “the coast,” spring will only be a few weeks away and I will have worn my shorts.

Silver Lining Looking Haggard

2010-01-30T09:10:00.001-07:00

Don’t you hate people who name their cars? I call mine The Silver Lining. Not only because it’s silver, at least in its original state, but because it was the consolation prize for having my old car totaled by a reckless SUV driver last spring.

I loved that old car. But the Silver Lining is my dream car. A Nissan Altima hybrid, the design is wonderfully aerodynamic, combining the look of a sleek sporty sedan in the front with the old-fashioned boxy lights in the rear. I’ve always wanted an Altima, and to get a hybrid of this model is quite rare in Colorado. And the name, Silver Lining, reminds me of the golden age of rail travel when the title of the train contributed mightily to the excitement of the journey: The California Zephyr; The 20th Century Limited; The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe; The “D” – Ok, maybe not that one…

I don’t have a key for my cool, modern car, just a FOB. Don’t ask me what that means. All I know is that if the FOB is in my pocket, I can push the start button and the quiet electric engine will turn on. The little electronic hum is all that you can hear when first accelerating, before the regular gas engine kicks in. One friend said it felt like she was in a space ship. Of course, she was on pain killers at the time.

It feels great to have a car to be proud of, that people are interested in. Of course, I don’t understand how it works at all. When asked how much power it has or how big the engine is, all I can say is, “Look, it’s a pretty silver!”

I’m sure I’m not unusual in that when I first got the car, I vowed to always keep it clean and in good condition for years and years.

There is, however, the matter of my parking space.

The first car I had when I lived at Bowling Green Condominiums, a little 1994 Sentra, zipped right in and out of the assigned space which consists of an overhead roof and two solid rusty brown polls delineating my spot from my neighbor’s. The next car, the one totaled last May, was a 2002 Sentra, slightly bigger, which I had to slowly enter the space so I wouldn’t hit the polls.

The Silver Lining is nice and wide, sizeable enough to seat passengers comfortably in back, and long enough to have a roomy trunk.

But those big rusty polls haven’t moved. I didn’t have the Silver Lining for even a couple weeks before I hit the fender against one of them, adding a dark, rusty finish along the front right bumper.

Being so very careful watching the fender a few weeks later, I scraped and dented the right rear door, chipping off some of the beautiful silver paint.

Ever so careful again, I was pulling in one day, watching so as not to hit the left poll, when the right side mirror got caught. As the car kept moving, that awful sound of the mirror cover crunching caused my insides to wince. My Facebook entry that day: “I just can’t have nice things.”

The Silver Lining was starting to look like a piece of junk.

But there’s more.

I have this habit of pulling up as far as I can into a parking space. Unfortunately, this means I scrape the bottom of the car against those concrete parking space things. The other day as I was flying down the Valley Highway, I heard this kind of flapping sound from underneath. I knew what it was. Sure enough, the “splash guard” was hanging down.

So I’ve decided that my car, which I’ve owned for just over six months, needs to look new again. This week, it’s going in for some cosmetic surgery. Don’t ask me how much it’s going to cost, just be assured that I won’t pay off the loan as quickly as I’d originally planned. But it’s worth driving a beautiful car of which I can be proud.

And I’m going to be so careful from now on. I vow to keep it clean and in good condition for years to come.

Corporations are Not People

2010-01-24T13:28:00.002-07:00

The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned a century of precedent and ruled that corporations have the same free speech rights as human beings. The primary effect of this revolutionary decision is to allow businesses to support any candidate or political cause without limitation.

The supremes have basically granted personhood to big companies, unleashing them to, for all practical purposes, control the nation.

What's it called when business runs the country: corpocracy?

In any case, prepare for big changes. Little guys running for office won't stand a chance. Only those at the beck and call of big business will serve in legislatures across the country. That $10 you donated to Obama? It won’t make much difference next time. The president will be too busy courting Wall Street to ask for your puny contribution. In fact, what you think about anything matters much less now than ever before.

Don't think local politics won't be affected. When the neighborhood association resists the building of a new McDonalds with a drive through, increasing trash, traffic, and danger to playing children, who do you think will best be funded in the next city council election? The candidate who, in exchange for corporate money, favors the easing of zoning laws. It will take a lot of bake sales to compete with that.

Thanks to those five Republican appointed justices, politics might now go the way of sports.

Debates will be sponsored by, “Kraft Macaroni – it’s cheesier!” Campaign ads will be shamelessly paid for by, “Dupont - for without chemicals, life itself will be impossible.” Look for a Bank of America logo next to the presidential seal when the Commander in Chief addresses the nation. Watch for Nancy Pelosi to be wearing a Pepsi ball cap while doing press conferences on the capitol steps. Will Harry Reed have to do commercials portraying himself running from the senate to the White House with a bill in hand to be signed by the President – wearing Nike shoes?

Do you think John Hickenlooper, mayor of Denver now running for governor and one of the first successful microbrewers in the nation, will be able to tolerate having to be sponsored by Coors in the election?

Do you think I’m joking?

Corporations are not people. They have no moral compass, no shame, no soul. Their only reason for existence is to make a profit. If they can get away with their logo next to the presidential seal, why wouldn’t they? Our elected leaders, those charged with keeping our cities, states, and country working, are at the mercy of big money and there is nothing to stand in the way of the corpocracy taking over.

Massage Relaxation Short Lived

2010-01-21T20:23:00.001-07:00

All the relaxation from today’s massage is completely gone.

I always look forward to my biweekly massage therapy. I time it to be at the end of the day so that I don’t have to go anywhere or do anything afterwards. I can then theoretically remain in my peaceful stupor for the rest of the evening, curl up with the cats, and watch TV before drifting off into a tranquil sleep.

It rarely actually works out that way.

It starts off well, of course. When I arrive at the studio, I am ushered into a dimly lit room with new agey music softly covering the noise from outside. Isaac, the therapist, leaves me in private for a few minutes so I can take off my clothes. I love taking off my clothes. I’d be such a good nudist, except I get so chilly. I’ll never forget going to a nude beach near Santa Cruz, California and having to wear sweats because it was so cold. But I digress.

After disrobing, I crawl under the heated blankets on the massage table, situate my face in the face holder, and wait for Isaac to come back. Ahhh! Sometimes I’m asleep before he even enters the room.

Isaac very professionally works my back, my arms, my legs, and even (blissfully) my feet. He then rouses me to turn over so he can do my neck and shoulders. He has this way of finding the tense muscles and working them really hard, even occasionally using his elbow - strangely painful and comforting at the same time.

After an hour, Isaac tells me he’s finished and leaves the room so I can get dressed. I HATE this part. It’s so awful to have to put on dirty, sweaty, socks after having been blessedly naked under a clean warm blanket. I leave the dimly lit cocoon and emerge squinting into the bright reception area.

Then, at the peak of rush hour, I get to drive home. Finding the gap in traffic so I can turn into the busy street with just a few meters to get into the left turn lane is a nightmare. Navigating my way home among stupid drivers and short yellow lights finishes me off.

By the time I walk through the front door, I’m completely tense again. But it’s not over.

Thinking ahead, I usually go to the store before the massage so I’ll have something for dinner when I get home.

So as I open the door to the condo, I’m carrying my back pack, my gym bag, a handful of mail, and a bag of groceries. With great skill, I’ve manipulated the key into and out of the lock while simultaneously blocking Charles, the kitten, with my foot to keep him from running out.

Inside, I drop all the bags, block Charles from getting to the groceries, and fumble for the light.

Having slept all day, both cats, Lily and Charles, are ready for action. No sooner do I kick off my shoes than they are both insisting on being fed. It is a loud, unrelenting, chorus of meow-wailing. I cannot look at the mail. I am not allowed to go to the bathroom. I mustn’t take the time to hang up my coat. They want to be fed now. Oh, I’ve tried behavior modification and all that hoo-ha that I learned in college, training and conditioning them to wait until I’m ready, but they just meow and meow and meow, getting underfoot and knocking things over until I reach for the cat food.

As they eat, I unpack my groceries, prepare my dinner, and take my pills. The benefits of the massage are completely gone.

After eating, the three of us: Lily, Charles, and I, climb onto the couch for our evening cuddle. I have a stiff neck. They are completely relaxed.

I can’t wait for the next massage in two weeks. I really need to loosen up.

This Virus Isn't Fair - A BillsWeek Whine

2010-01-15T17:39:00.000-07:00

It's back and I can't believe it. The day after Christmas, I came down with the first cold I've had in years. My immune system has withstood the perils of coughing coworkers, people who don't wash after using the restroom, sneezing children in public places, and most recently, the locker room at the health club where guys are overheard to cough loudly and then say, "I'm past the contagious stage."

But the stress of the holidays (sharing everything with family from togetherness to food to germs), lack of sleep during that busy festive week, and severe below zero temperatures which actually made it hard to breathe, wore my body out and made me susceptible to "the bug that's been going around."

It was never very serious. I had both flu shots (H1N1 and regular) early in December so I wasn't worried about dying. I only had a fever for one day. I didn't miss much work because I was taking time off anyway. I only missed a couple days of working out, which has become something of a compulsion.

The worst was coughing so much at night that I couldn't sleep. The usual drugs didn't work. I also lost my voice and couldn't talk on the phone when I most wanted to.

And now it's back. My energy is zilch and I'm reaching for the cough drops again. Dang it! I am now the person coughing in the office that people look at wanting to say, "Don't bring your disease here."

I drink orange juice. I use hand sanitizer, even keeping a bottle on my desk at work. I wash my hands so much that I have cracked wrinkly skin. And still I cough. It's not fair.

This weekend will be dedicated to cold survival: sleeping, cat cuddling, blankets, resting, watching movies (falling asleep in the middle, necessitating watching them again), and reading if I can focus my eyes.

I will, of course, try to make it to the gym. Coughing is no excuse for slackness. And I'm surely past that contagious stage.

The Uneasiness of Division and Unity Concurrent

2010-01-08T17:50:00.000-07:00

I’ve been thinking a lot about my grandparents lately. Perhaps I’m getting old enough to see passing time actually turn into history. I’m also trying to remember that the strident and divisive discourse in American life these days is really nothing new, frustrating as it is.

What’s the correlation?

If I hadn’t been related to the parents of my own mom and dad, I don’t think we’d have known each other. Their worlds were completely different from mine. All four of them were staunch Republicans, life-long residents of rural areas and small towns. One of my grandfathers was a terrible racist. My mother’s father and step-mother, the pair I was closest to growing up, were appallingly myopic. If it didn’t conform to their central Nebraska worldview, formed in the 1920s and shared by everyone of their daily acquaintance, they didn’t understand it, couldn’t tolerate it, and were not interested in learning about it.

My maternal grands were nice to me when I was young. I visited them on their farm a couple times a year and enjoyed exploring the woods and dilapidated old buildings in their barnyard. I particularly loved hearing their stories about the old days.

My grandfather’s family came over from Germany in the early 1900s. He taught his parents the English he picked up at the country school. The family suffered when World War I came along and the community ostracized them for resembling the enemy. Grandpa could never relate this experience to that of the Mexican immigrants who came to work in the local factory in the 1980s. Instead, he said, the Mexicans brought crime and took jobs away, and they didn’t even speak English!

It wasn’t just ordinary racism that enflamed their prejudice. When I told them I had enrolled at Nebraska Wesleyan University, Grandma nearly had a stroke. “But that’s Methodist,” she cried, barely spitting out the next part. “They have Bishops!” I hadn’t realized that Methodist and Catholic were practically the same to these people. How could I tell them I was queer?

While my parents struggled for a while and then came to accept, even celebrate, the fact that I was gay, my grandparents were unable to acknowledge it even enough to deride it. The best they could do was politely ignore what was perfectly obvious.

I never gave them the courtesy of pretending I was anything but what I was. I even pushed it into their faces a few times; once by bringing my boyfriend with me on a visit and sleeping in the same bed with him. Grandma’s only remark was to ask which of us did the cooking, since we were both men.

Over time, I couldn’t tolerate their intolerance. All their information came from other ignorant people and conservatives like Paul Harvey (sort of the Rush Limbaugh of the day). When my mother finally forced the issue and they still wouldn’t discuss my real life, we became estranged. I didn’t speak to my grandfather for 15 years until the month before he died. His only question for me after a decade and a half was, “What kind of car do you drive?”

And yet, I respect these people. They embodied some of the best Midwestern characteristics which I try to exemplify myself: common sense, practicality, and independence. These people lived history: immigrating to America; the worst of the great depression and dust bowl; the dawn of rural electricity, telephones, and indoor plumbing; and prohibition (Grandpa claimed to have followed bootleggers, unbury their whiskey, and reuse the bottles). Perhaps there was so much change in their lives that they lost all tolerance for change later on.

Though they are dead, I continue to struggle between respect for and anger towards them. How can I admire someone who hates Mexicans and rejects me personally? How can I rage against people whose practical temperament I emulate?

It’s the same struggle I observe in our national life. We seem so divided. Republicans simply will not compromise because their only goal is to oust the Democrats. Progressives, on the other hand, debate with each other to the point of powerlessness.

It’s something of a comfort to know that Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were the best of friends before differing beliefs caused many decades of estrangement. But both loved their country, and that country survived those early years of national division and bitter partisan politics. The two men reconciled late in life.

Does the uncompromising character of Americans from John Adams to my grandmother to me mean that we can’t live together? Or does the tension somehow keep us moving forward? No answers here, but I’m sure plagued by the questions.

A BillsWeek Guest Entry: You had me at LOL

2010-01-06T17:05:00.007-07:00

Turns out this old Boomer is not alone in adjusting to technology. Apparently changes affect Gen Y as well. This is Joey Halligan's second contribution to BillsWeek and I think there may be more. Stay tuned! - editor

I just received a text message from my father. It read: “Joey, I need tech support. Pls call me when you can. Love, Dad.” My father is 63 and texting.

As recent as three months ago, my cell phone plan included 300 text messages for an additional $5. That included incoming and outgoing texts. However, picture messages were a la carte - a whopping 25 cents each. In the last four years with that plan, I may have gone over in text messages once, and it wasn’t by much. Then I got swept in by the overwhelming text craze. Now my phone buzzes constantly throughout the day. Fortunately, I’ve switched to an unlimited text and data plan since then.

I never considered myself someone who couldn’t live without their phone, until the last few months I suppose. Yet I can’t say that I don’t enjoy the interactions, which often seem more like interruptions. At what point, however, does technology cross the line of keeping us connected into creating an addiction to stay connected? Seriously, do I need to know every time you use the bathroom or stop at a red light? By the way, I hope you’re not texting and driving in Colorado - that’s illegal now.

But when my phone vibrates and my best friend in Florida sends me the latest picture of her 2 year old son, I stop everything. Then another friend will send me a picture of an outfit at the store and asks for my opinion before buying. Then Facebook sends me my nephew’s status update letting me know he’s bored at home with nothing to do. Of course, I’ve only subscribed to five of my closest friends and family members’ Facebook status messages, anything more than that would be text suicide.

So when did personal conversations evolve into hours of text exchanges? I used to be the first to say, "Just call!" You can say everything you’re texting in a fraction of the time! Yet here I am, averaging 1215 outgoing texts in a month. Drop your calculator, I’ll do the math for you: that’s about 40 texts a day, not including the more-than-likely accompanying inbound text. Yes - that brings me to a total of nearly 2500 texts a month. And that’s now. Who knows what I’ll be averaging in 3-6 months. For all this, I blame three things: my curiosity, the curiosity of my closest friends, and a QWERTY keyboard on my phone.

So is texting really all that bad? If it causes a vehicular accident - yes. If it isolates you from all other forms of interactions with people around you - yes. If you answer a text in the middle of a meeting at work - yes. If used wisely, texts can be a quick way to stay connected and exchange quick thoughts. But when you slowly start to forget what your friend’s voice sounds like because you only associate them with the acronyms they send, you may want to snap out of it, and ask them out to enjoy a cup of coffee or a meal.

“Can u pass the salt? lol jk :-)”

Joey Halligan loves technology. Need tech support? You can reach him at JoeyHalligan@me.com.

Decade Changes Without Fanfare

2009-12-29T06:59:00.000-07:00

The passing of the “00s” into the “10s” leaves me somewhat less than captivated by the permanent numerical change in the calendar.

It seems to me that the changing of a decade used to mean more. I remember sitting with my mother in the family room wondering what the 1980s would bring. We were blissfully unaware of the coming Reagan years which would roll back social progress and make greed fashionable. We had no idea I was about to burst through the closet door, beginning adulthood as an out and proud gay man, surviving one of the most terrifying periods of gay history when thousands were felled by AIDS.

1990 brought a full set of fresh hopes and expectations: a new career, new home, a wide open future. I didn’t know yet that I would feel the full effects of homophobia, get married and divorced, change occupational paths multiple times, or buy a home all by myself.

The last change of decades, of course, also brought a new millennium. Perhaps that’s why this new decade seems less interesting. It will be another thousand years before we match the excitement of Y2K when I drove up to Nebraska and celebrated the four-digit calendar turnover with my brother’s family over fireworks and a giant cookie on which I mistakenly wrote in frosting a welcome to the year 200 (yes, two hundred).

Prior to this millennium, talk of the future always began with the phrase, “By the year 2000 …” Predictions were as much hope as fact. By the year 2000:

Our cars would fly.
Robots would serve us in our homes.
Colonies of humans would populate the moon and Mars.
We would no longer eat food because all nutrition would be consumed in pills.

Ever since 2000 I have felt like I was living in the future. In some ways, actual change in this decade has been as amazing as we imagined in the 1970s.

By 2010:

Everyone carries their phone with them. Remember when the Star Trek communicator seemed so astounding? It didn’t do half that of our modern cell phones.
There are hundreds of channels on the TV. There are even multiple channels dedicated solely to golf – quality is another subject altogether.
The President of the United States has African ancestry.
Ordinary, everyday information can be sent around the world in less than seconds – from my sofa, no less (while I watch one of hundreds of TV channels).
Everyone can distribute their own writing or broadcast their own video with the technological potential to reach millions. If I wanted to, I could publish a text reporting to the entire world what I had for dinner or when I last went to the bathroom. Whether anyone cares is somewhat irrelevant.
In some states and many countries, including now Argentina and Mexico, men are marrying men and women are marrying women. I couldn’t have imagined.

Perhaps we’re just too tired to celebrate the passing of a decade like we used to. In addition to coping with the many changes, and adapting to the new technology, the past 10 years have been tough.

A controversial President was put into power without a majority vote.
Evil forces we didn’t understand attacked our country and caught us unaware, unleashing our own irrational response in the form of two wars we cannot seem to end.
While the world is brought closer by technology, our country is increasingly divided and polarized, neither side willing or able to consider the others’ point of view. The world’s poor are left out of the conversation completely, but perhaps that is not so new.

The changing of a decade reminds us that time passes on a personal level as well. Some loved ones pass away while others are born. Marriages begin and end. Jobs and careers come and go. Friends drop out of our lives and sometimes drop back in.

The youthful hope of 1990 is calmer and more confident now, somewhat wizened, with a bit less stamina, and a little less arrogance. Certainly there is less hair on top and a few more wrinkles down below. Whatever this new decade brings, there will certainly be change, and there’s no telling what we’ll be remembering in 2020.

The Truth Behind the Christmas Myth

2009-12-24T10:10:00.000-07:00

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior… He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.”
- Mary, mother of Jesus, in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 1

Some expected the messiah to come in a huge, apocalyptic ball of fire swallowing up evil doers. Others expected a new King, dressed in a purple royal robe, riding in on a fine white horse with a huge righteous army to overthrow the corrupt government.

When John the Baptist started to publicly repeat the prophecies of Isaiah, it caught the attention of the religious power elite (perhaps the equivalents of our Pat Robertson or the Pope). The idea of a messiah coming to upset the status quo was distressing to them. Their power was threatened. But John was too elated to care what they thought. "I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, 'Make straight the way of the Lord'".

Mary's words in the Gospel of Luke (the Song of Mary, or Magnificat) are meant to be sung. She rejoices in being blessed with the chance to serve God. She magnifies the Lord.

Most mainline American Protestants are not good at expressing faith with outward joy. At best, we might utter a monotone litany of praise.

Rather than reflect quietly on the meaning of it all, we could be moved, inspired by John's and Mary's joy, to proclaim to the world that our Savior is coming to save us from the darkness of sin.

The “S” word.

Please don't cringe or roll your eyes at the mention of sin.

Sin is nothing more, and nothing less, than separating ourselves from God.

This estrangement is at the root of bad things like hate, discrimination, dishonesty, abuse, oppression, racism, all the "isms," - and things less dramatic, like just being so busy that we don't seem to have time to care for the people around us.

As human beings, we are always to some degree, separated from God.

But as Christians, we believe that while we don't always see God or feel God's presence or grace, and though we neglect to remember God through prayer and deed, God never forgets us - God never leaves us.

Of course, life doesn't turn into a fairyland of gum drops and lollipops the minute we remember that God loves us. We continue to live in a tough, churning world. But the knowledge that God hasn't turned a cold shoulder gives us the chance to hope and to have courage and to take steps to overcome the separation. This is grace.

This time of year, we remember the promise that God loves us so much that he sent a simple, human representative to share that grace with us.

Don’t get hung up on whether it literally happened. The truth behind the myth is valid. The story conveys God’s love in a way that we can understand.

Jesus was said to be a simple sandal wearing man, wandering through the country, like John the Baptist, peacefully challenging structures of oppression, upsetting the status quo, caring for the reviled sick and outcast, feeding the hungry, nurturing the poor in spirit with teaching and compassion – things that we should do ourselves, today.

This is more revolutionary than if Jesus were a King with a big army. This is revolutionary because it was and is done without the threat of hellfire. It is done without bombs or violence. In fact, power isn't taken from the authorities as much as it is given to those who never had it before. The power is rooted in the knowledge that nothing, nothing separates us from God.

This message of freedom and love is how Christ continues to live among us. No wonder we are excited.

And our excitement, our elation, like Mary's, moves us to throw up our arms and sing for joy.

We celebrate the birth of a savior who, because we Christians live in his name, because he lives in us, empowers us to share that freely given grace by fighting for justice, working for peace, and living as an example to others.

Our souls magnify the Lord this Christmas. And sincere Christians everywhere, despite our differences, proclaim the coming of a Savior, the triumph over sin, and the anticipation of joy.

Social Media and Technology: When Will the Madness Stop?

2009-12-18T16:45:00.005-07:00

This week I joined LinkedIn, the networking site for professional people seeking connection with other professionals. I think it’s the 21st century version of the cocktail party where you used to drink martinis and hand out business cards. It’s like Facebook, only you don’t put personal stuff on it like what your cat threw up that morning. Instead, you record your professional news and accomplishments. Rather than collecting “friends,” you cast your network for as many “connections” as possible. The more connections you have, the more successful you must be. Or something.

I only linked in when a respected adviser basically told me I had to. She said that many corporate recruiters won’t consider anyone who is not part of this version of the social networking craze. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not looking for a job right now, but in this age of shifting corporate landscapes, layoffs, reorgs, and whacked-out bosses, one can’t be too prepared.

What troubles me is the growing necessity to either be a part of these social networks or be left out of society all together.

Facebook is fun, but I was shocked to discover a whole world of electronic communicating, even among people I see every day, that I didn’t know about. I’d evidently missed volumes of important electronic conversation. And pictures.

So far, LinkedIn is not fun. I have absolutely no idea what I’m supposed to do. I filled in some of the basics of my profile but other than connecting with people I already know, it’s a pretty sad compilation of dull information.

I’m starting to feel kind of whiney and oppositional about technology. I just don’t want to incorporate any more into my life.

I was the last person in the entire world to get a cell phone, and that was only because my mother insisted that I wouldn’t be safe without it. This is the same woman who let me and my sister drive across Nebraska to school in a car with no heater in the middle of winter, but that’s neither here nor there. That first cell phone didn’t work anywhere except in the 303 area code, and subsequent improved phones and plans didn’t work in such places as the inside of my condo, and anywhere I visited in Nebraska or Wyoming.

I was also the last person (in about 2002) to get cable TV, and at first I only got the old fashioned analog kind. I joked at the time that I was being dragged kicking and screaming into the 1980s.

I got a nice CD player only after everyone else started getting ipods, and I only got my first ipod this year when a coworker upgraded to a fancy new one, giving me his old one. Now I have all these CDs gathering dust where my vinyl LPs and cassette tapes used to be.

I have VHS tapes in my bookcase but nothing to play them on. I have these holes in my walls where my old landline phones used to be. I can’t figure out how to change the password on my wireless router. I only know how to utilize about 10 percent of the buttons on the four remote controls I use for watching television.

I haven’t even mentioned the many other virtual worlds I belong to. Netflix not only allows me to select the movies I want to view, it enables me to see what my friends and family are viewing. I’m not sure I want them to see everything I’m watching. And then there are the dating web sites. ‘Nuf said about that.

Is this all too much, too fast, or am I only getting old? No need to answer. Just let me shuffle through my dotage in peaceful ignorance.

Except I still have to figure out how to link to enough connections so I don’t look like a professional failure.

(If you want to leave a comment and are having trouble, try entering your name and leaving the URL portion blank. If that doesn’t work, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s technology, after all.)