Sky

One of the many things I love about Colorado is the sky. I never realized how much, until I had lived elsewhere for several years running. When we got back, I was agog at the sky. No matter what season, no matter what time of day, it’s almost always wide and lively and complicated. 

I love that you can see the air currents in how the clouds form, wispy and thin or tall and tumultuous. Sometimes, a cloud sits in front of another one of a very different sort, like pictures pasted together in a collage. Sometimes they’re bright, blinding white. Sometimes, they are dark and ominous. Sometimes, they are both at once. Sometimes they’re brilliant colors, sometimes subtle hues, and sometimes you can spot faint rainbows in the middle of a cloud. Almost always, they’re beautiful.

So I decided to collect pictures of clouds with my low-tech camera phone. (Ah, the luxury of retirement: time to take the sky's portrait. Over and over again.) Here’s a sampling from the past few days, in no particular order. Look slowly. Marvel at how different they are. Be glad for how often you've wondered about that. Or wonder why you don't wonder about that more often. Then smile.

   

A short photographic ode to the Colorado sky. 

Celebrating Oldness

Recently, I encountered a Smithsonian article titled “What’s So Good about Growing Old?” This really was a question based on curiosity (“Let’s list the good things about growing old.”), not a snide commentary (“Hrumph. What could possibly be good about getting old?”). The tagline confirmed this: “Researchers are discovering some surprising advantages of aging.” My own surprise at this was telling. It made me realize how rarely I see or hear comments about how great aging is.

  

Thinking about this took me straight back to last fall, when a bunch of us, LGBT folks and allies, organized a daylong conference called “Celebrating Queer Identities.” The impetus for the event was some recent research on positive aspects of LGBT identity. Instead of asking queer people to talk about how hard their lives were, these researchers asked a different question: What’s good about your life as an LGBT person? This was really eye opening, mind altering: no one ever asked this question. Instead, most of what we hear about LGBTQ lives focuses on awful stereotypes and terrible risks. When queer folks were given an opportunity to reframe their lives in a positive way, they found lots of things to celebrate. (For more on this, check out the book that grew out of this research.) So we spent a day talking about these things. And it turned out there was a lot to talk about.

  

That event came to mind when I spotted this article on the good things about aging. The parallels seemed really rich. Old people are also subject to a whole flock of negative stereotypes: physical decline, cognitive deterioration, social isolation, inability to keep pace with a changing world—you know the list. We encounter these portrayals of us over and over—in the media, in the grocery store, and in our own heads. And it crossed my mind that we might be doing the same thing that queers so easily do. The content is different, but the process seems strikingly similar. We hear all this negative stuff about ourselves, and we take it in. We come to see ourselves as “they” portray us, as unidimensional: declining, loosing, disappearing, irrelevant, lonely, abandoned. In the process, we sell ourselves short.

I know it’s easy to dismiss the point I’m trying to make here. Aging does bring changes that seem like deficits when we compare our current selves with our younger selves. Among the folks I hang out with, the changes we most notice are physical changes, typically described in terms of decline and loss. The changes we most fear are mental or cognitive changes, especially cognitive decline and all that conjures up.

I’ve been caught in this single-minded view too, this framing of aging as loss and decline. So when I saw this article, I asked myself, Wait! What am I missing? Curious now, I took the plunge and read the article. “Even as certain mental skills decline with age,” it begins, “scientists are finding the mind gets sharper at a number of vitally important abilities.” Wow. Really? The article goes on to explore a whole litany of skills that seem to improve with age. The studies it mentions asked questions similar to the one asked of LGBTQ people in the research I mentioned earlier. Through interviews, experiments, surveys, and observations, these researchers ask the question, “What’s good about aging?” Here are a few answers they came up with.

First, in our personal lives (I’m borrowing liberally from the Smithsonian article here): 

·        Older people seemed to deal with social conflicts more effectively. They were better than younger folks at taking other people’s perspectives, thinking of a range of solutions, and suggesting compromises in situations of conflict.

·        When folks in their 60s lost at a gambling game designed to cause regret, they didn't dwell on their loss or try to recoup it by taking high-cost risks.

  

·        A telephone survey of hundreds of thousands of people found that those over 50 were happier overall, experienced less anger, and felt far less stressed than younger folks.

  

·        Another study followed people for a decade and found that they became happier overall, and their emotions became less erratic as they got older. In general, negative emotions seemed to become less pronounced with age.

  

Of course, these things aren’t true for all people—or for any of us all the time. But for many folks, most of the time, there is much to be appreciated about these years. As one sociologist who studies aging put it, “We have a seriously negative stereotype of the 70s and beyond, and that stereotype is typically incorrect.”


A similar—but maybe more surprising—picture is emerging in the area lots of us worry about most: cognitive ability. It is true that research consistently finds declines in some skills: memory, processing speed, multi-tasking. But there are also areas where older folks excel … although we don’t hear much about these. For instance, a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article, "Aging Brains Create 'Scaffolds' to Shore Up Eroding Abilities," summarizes a bunch of studies that have explored ways in which our brains actually work better as we age. It looks like we older people use more parts of our brains to solve problems. Our aging brains seem to create a “scaffold” that accommodates for other losses. In the process, we also gain a broader and more flexible perspective on things. For example (again, borrowing liberally, this time from the Chronicle article):

·        Older people seem to call on more brain resources to solve problems, like using both sides of the brain to solve problems in situations where younger people mostly rely on one side.

·        Older folks are more socially adept, apparently because we can call on a stored history of social cues to navigate social situations.

·        World knowledge, the sort of thing measured by vocabulary and general knowledge, does not decrease with age. In fact, it sometimes improves. 

Maybe, this article concludes, this world knowledge gained over years explains why older people have long been respected (in some cultures more than others) for their wisdom.

All very hopeful and upbeat, you say. But what about the aches and pains? What about forgetting people’s names or my glasses, having trouble finding words when I need them? What about that sense that my thinking just isn’t as sharp? Sure, those things happen … they happen also. The risk is that we might believe that these things are all there is to say about our lives. 

Hearkening back to the queer identity event, two things really stood out for me that day. The first was how rare it is for us to think in positive terms about an identity that’s usually devalued. The parallel to aging is, again, pretty striking. How often do we hear really positive things about aging—from others or from ourselves. Is it possible that we have totally bought into the stereotypes, so much so that we can’t even believe that the good stuff is true—or that it matters? And do we contribute to the persistence of the “aging is all awful, all the time” message by not taking the time to notice when that message is flat-out wrong?

And the other thing that struck me at that earlier event was how hard it is to think in positive terms about these devalued identities. Many folks at that event could barely manage—or couldn’t manage—to stay with the positive theme of the day. Instead, they dropped with easy familiarity back into the view of their lives as framed by suffering. It seems to me that this happens with aging, too—it sure happens to me! Tell me something positive about getting older, and I’m quick with the “Yes, but …” response.

So I wonder, what would it look like if we could just stop a minute and focus on what’s good about our lives. The decreased angst. The reduced pressure and stress. The broad perspective on life that emerges from years and years on the planet. Wisdom. And, especially,  the reduced need to please everyone else. I’m reminded of Jenny Joseph’s great poem, Warning, which begins, “When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple / With a red hat that doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me …”

How can we not celebrate that?

Batman and Ted

We just spent the weekend with my partner’s niece, who arrived Thursday evening to hang out with us for a few days. We always enjoy spending time with her, and we had planned a relaxing, laid-back time with lots of good conversation, visits to some favorite haunts, a theater outing (“Jersey Boys”), and whatever else popped up. Instead, we awoke Friday to the news of the shootings at the midnight opening of “Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.” For us, like for many people, the day's trajectory turned on a dime.

This is the story of two movies we saw over the days that followed. There are so many contrasts here, so many paradoxes and “messages,” that I’m sort of at a loss as to how to explore them all—or any of them. But I feel compelled to talk about them, hoping something will emerge that gives me some perspective on all this. Some life lesson. We’ll see …

We had no particular plans for Friday, the day we awoke to news of the murders in Aurora. So we talked. About the shootings, about the yearning to understand the “why” and the consequent rush to “explanations”—encapsulated, simplistic, easily transmitted packets of supposed understanding that would make the senseless appear to make sense. We talked about the futility of pre-dicting and the easy satisfaction of retro-dicting. We talked about how fashioning an answer to the “why” allows us to believe that somehow the world is really under control. To believe that if we just knew why people do these things, surely we could stop such acts in the future. We want to believe this even though history shows that we cannot, that these acts are not predictable. Our desperate wish to make sense of it all points beneath the surface: it is precisely its senselessness that is so terrifying. We talked, too, about terrorism in the broad sense—not Al Qaeda, but hometown terrorism whose effect is to leave us terrorized—terrified and paralyzed.

Trying to create something positive from this impossibly difficult day, one of us floated the idea of a movie ... and then suggested, and we all quickly agreed, that we should go see “Batman.” We talked about two reasons to do this (and as we revisited it through the weekend, the three of us placed different emphases on these reasons). One reason was that we needed to refuse the urge to cower, to be terrorized. If we avoid all the places and things that might put us in danger, we would be totally paralyzed—and the “terrorists” would have succeeded. We would be giving over our personal and collective power to the few folks whose goals are most antithetical to our goal—living expansive lives. The other reason was that the movie industry in general and individual theaters, both already ailing (our local theater has sparse attendance on a good day), would suffer from this terrorist-initiated fear. And their losses would be magnified by lost employment when jobs are already uncommonly scarce.

So, we went to “Batman.” And we were glad, all weekend, that we had done that. It was a pretty good movie (remember, this is from someone who is definitely not a movie critic or even a Fandango “fan”), and I would have been glad to have seen it anyhow. Going under these circumstances also made it feel empowering—to us moviegoers, that is, and therefore not to the fear mongers. The film carries a redemptive message that was a nice counter to the awful events that greeted this same film at shortly after midnight on this same day. 

What a convoluted, twisted, complex, confusing knot of meanings: terror and senselessness, empowerment and refusal of fear, redemption and helplessness, determination to do evil and determination not to be paralyzed by evil. It makes my head spin.

The next couple of days moved along gently, as we let Aurora subside to an occasional conversation. We spent many lovely hours together cruising the Pearl Street Mall, eating, shopping, visiting a coffee shop, eating, talking about life’s ups and downs, eating, seeing some sights (without going sightseeing), eating. Sunday afternoon, we decided to take in another movie to chill out for a bit—which is to say, both to get out of the 90°+ heat and to relax for a bit. We couldn’t find much of interest, this being the summer blockbuster bonanza season, but from the promo and the fans’ recommendations, “Ted” looked good for the sort of light, mindless entertainment that fit our energy level. Bad, very bad choice. I have never found a movie so relentlessly offensive. In the space of a couple of hours, this film managed to weave in, quite seamlessly, sexism, racism, homophobia, classism, abelism, ageism, sizeism, religious and ethnic bigotry, and flat-out gratuitous scatological “humor.” It put to shame every movie of this “men behaving badly” genre I’ve ever seen. Why did we stay? Good question. Each of us was thinking she would walk out if she were alone … we should have talked about this then and saved ourselves the misery and the time that this thing exacted. I guess the teddy bear was cute … sometimes. Any other merits? Maybe a faint glimmering of some lessons: don’t behave like a total jerk and your life and relationships will be more satisfying. Keeping a Teddy bear from your childhood is sweet, but it does not excuse all things. Thin gruel for 2 hours.

It’s all so ironic. The film that was so closely associated with terrorizing cruelty, that was billed as an action movie complete with explosives, car crashes, and really bad people became a truly positive moment in the weekend. The one that we expected to be light, funny, and escapist was the greatest downer I’ve encountered in a while. So what life lessons am I to glean from this?

Maybe it’s simply the reminder that life isn’t as simple—ever—as the superficial versions of it would have us believe. Cruel, maniacal deeds cannot be encapsulated in sound bites or simple reiterations of stereotypes about “loner,” “odd,”misunderstood people whose acts we could have predicted if only we’d paid attention. Super-hero stories about men who wear black capes and masks with pointy ears aren’t necessarily silly or superficial. Confronting fear and acting anyway is empowering. The range of things that people find funny is extremely wide.

I don’t want to sound too preachy here. OK, maybe I do. Maybe I want to sound like an idealist on the one hand—“Refusing to be paralyzed by senseless acts is empowering”—and a cranky old woman on the other—“Making fun of other people (presumably to point out one’s own elevated status) is actually not funny.” But there is it, there I am. A cranky old woman with some hope that we can lead large, respectful lives even in the face of terror.

By the way, “Batman” had some genuinely funny lines. Just in case you thought cranky old women don’t get to have a good laugh.

George and Diego: an allegory

Recently, I wrote about the death of a tortoise named Lonesome George. George was over 100 years old and was the very last of his species, one of several threatened tortoise species on the Galapagos Islands. George represented a cautionary tale: humans are capable of pushing species to the brink of extinction—and they are capable of recognizing that they have to change their ways if species are to survive.

In George’s case, people realized this too late. George spent his last years at the Charles Darwin Research Station in the Galapagos, where folks tried to encourage him to breed so that his genes could be saved. But to no avail. George died without leaving any offspring. With him died the species of tortoise native to Pinta Island.

But at the same research facility, another story—one with a very different outcome—is playing out. A relative of George, a tortoise from Española Island named Diego, also represents a species that was close to extinction (Chelonoidis hoodensis, for those who are curious). But in this case, Diego and his mates have produced a multitude of offspring.

Diego chows down

Diego, who is also over 100 years old, had originally been shipped to a zoo in the US, but was returned to the Galapagos in 1975 as part of an effort to protect and re-establish the Galapagos’ unique organisms. There, he and the few other remaining members of his particular species were given space of their own and an opportunity to reproduce. Which they did, big time. In all, somewhere close to 1800 offspring of this group have been born at the research station and returned to Española. The species is now well established as a wild population on Española.

Reading about Diego, I realized that in my preoccupation with George’s sad story, I hadn’t even considered that there are also success stories (and there are many) in the Galapagos. It’s not that I had dismissed Diego—I hadn’t even wondered if there was a Diego. Of course, George’s story has a certain dramatic appeal. Tragic stories help programs like the research station gather media attention, funding, and public interest. Remember it was George, hero of the sad story, who was selected to be the logo for the research center, not Diego.

Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, this sounded very familiar … paying attention to horror stories, honoring tragic figures, and missing success stories. Then I got what it was.

Several years ago, my partner and I did a research project with LGBT youth in Salt Lake City. Among the many things we learned from that project was a lesson reminiscent of George and Diego. It has to do with a similar preoccupation with horror and tragedy—only this time, in the lives of some LGBT youth—and a parallel disregard for the positive, happy, empowered lives that many LGBT youths lead.

The familiarity itching in the back of my mind as I thought about Diego was this tunnel vision thing: Just as I focused my attention on George and never considered Diego, we focus our collective attention on the misery of LGBT youth and never consider the possibilities for joy in LGBT life.

Please note: I am not saying that the risk and the mistreatment don’t exist or should be ignored. They, like George’s really unfortunate experience, must of course command our attention and our change efforts. But at the same time, how unfortunate it is that we grant so little attention to the Diegos in the Galapagos story—and to the wonderfully resilient LGBT people, adults and youth alike, who make happy, satisfied, productive … and even ordinary lives for themselves.

Think about it: If we only heard George’s story, we would be left believing that all Galapagos tortoises are doomed. It is only by knowing about—and celebrating—Diego’s story that we get a full picture of the future of these historic creatures. They are the victims of mistreatment and they are amazingly successful in their persistent survival. We need to keep that in mind about LGBT folks—especially youth—too. We/they are at risk for mistreatment and they are inspiringly resilient, courageous, and empowered … and flawed, frightened, ordinary, just like other folks are.

Think about what our tunnel vision, our preoccupation with misery can say to LGBT youths about their lives, their hopes for the future. If queer youths only hear one side of this story, their view of the possibilities for their lives can only be impoverished.

I think we’ll do queer youth a valuable service if we teach them about Diego’s story so that they don’t think George’s story is the only future they can expect. And I mean that figuratively as well as literally. This is an allegory, after all. 

Glorious GALA … and “Praises,” this time

Over the past several days, I’ve spent many hours listening to and hanging out among LGBTQ choruses. The quadrennial GALA Festival (GALA: Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses) was in Denver this year. It basically … no, it totally … took over the Denver Performing Arts Center for several days. The 6,000+ LGBTQ singers and their supporters, fans, and groupies were there from all around the US, from Canada and Europe, even from New Zealand and Australia. It was a marvelous experience of immersion in queer culture.

I don’t sing in a chorus myself (mercifully, for all involved), but having this huge event right in my backyard was too good to pass up. Still, since I’m not deeply into choral music, I planned to see a few of my very favorite choruses and a couple I’d heard a lot about, and then call it good. But I ended up moving with my partner from one concert to another for days. Many of these events were multiple-chorus happenings, inspiring for the range of music the different groups performed, the variation in their membership, size, style, the themes of their programs … and on and on. Others featured individual choruses, giving each one an extended block of time to share their music.

Out of the many, here are some I saw, a few personal highlights to give you a hint of what this experience was like.

·        As most unexpected, I’d have to count the choruses from Juneau (whom I heard) and from New Zealand/Australia (whom I did not). These folks must have seriously wanted to be at GALA to have mustered the energy and the capital to get themselves here. I also loved one of the songs by the Juneau Pride Chorus, which went something like this:

“I will believe the truth about myself … no matter how beautiful it may be.”

·        As most mouth-dropping amazing, I’d count two performances. One was a commissioned work performed by Sound Circle (what a surprise!). It was a sort of high-energy, high-speed body percussion piece called, improbably but appropriately, “Clangor, Clammer, Clapperclaw.” The crisp precision of the performers’ movements and their voices was just stunning. I was holding my breath, incredulous that none of them ever missed a beat, even by a hair, ever. The other amazing piece was a spoken-word performance called “Bully to the Brink” performed by Dreams of Hope, a Pittsburgh youth group. The frankness and strength of their declaration that they also—we, also—have participated in bullying was really powerful.

·        As most richly, enwrappingly beautiful, I’d name Resonance’s multi-piece concert and Sound Circle’s paean to desert canyons, “Path of Beauty: Singing the Grand Canyon.” I realize I seem seriously biased here, singling out two Boulder women’s choruses, but it’s hard not to be in awe of the wonderful music being created right here in our own town. And to prove I wasn’t alone in my appreciation, Resonance got a spontaneous, enthusiastic ovation in the lobby of the performance hall as they came out from backstage. MUSE, a long-standing (29 years!) women’s chorus from Cincinnati, was also really impressive. This chorus includes a range of ages and identities, and their music covers the gamut from serious social justice pieces to a playful ode to the wonders of caffeine. A joy to watch and to hear.

And then, on the level of profoundly, personally moving, I sank into a familiar (though always unique), deep, warm, round peace listening to Sound Circle perform “Praises for the World.” I’ve written about this piece before—and probably will again. Its foundation is a chant, with other vocal and instrumental music and some spoken word layered over it at intervals through the piece. For me, it’s a meditation. It speaks to a part of me that I rarely encounter. In fact, listening to “Praises” this time persuaded me to resume my long-neglected meditation practice. I don’t expect to reach the place that “Praises” leads me very often, but moving in that direction can only be healing.

(At the end of this GALA blog, I’ll say something more about this particular experience. But first, I’ll bid GALA farewell.)

There were lots of other, equally wonderful performances that I missed because overlapping events—and downright fatigue—kept me from going to them all. Still, I got to enjoy a lot of music and a few workshops, and came away with a new appreciation for choral music as an embodiment of queer culture at its most lively. My partner is really interested in queer culture as one of the ways we build resilience in the face of a sometimes insensitive (or worse) world—and also celebrate queer identity in all its magnificent forms. Submerged in GALA, I really “got” what she means.

For one brief moment of insanity, I even considered singing with a chorus so I could be more in the middle of it all instead of on the fringes. I quickly got over that particular idea, but I sure loved soaking up the community that was carried on the buzz that filled DPAC.

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Epilogue

Thoughts on “Praises for the World,” this time

As often happens when we experience something really moving and complex several times, this time, I heard parts of “Praises” at a level I hadn’t before. Two of the poems read over the underlying chant felt especially meaningful to me this time. Of course, these are very different when read in print than when heard spoken aloud by someone whose voice is a musical instrument. Given that caveat, here they are, with a few reflections. 

Morning Poem
Every morning the world is created. Under the orange sticks of the sun the heaped ashes of the night turn into leaves again and fasten themselves to the high branches and the ponds appear like black cloth on which are painted islands of summer lilies. If it is your nature to be happy you will swim away along the soft trails for hours, your imagination alighting everywhere. And if your spirit carries within it		the thorn that is heavier than lead --- if it's all you can do to keep on trudging --- there is still somewhere deep within you a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what it wanted --- each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered lavishly, every morning, whether or not you have ever dared to be happy, whether or not you have ever dared to pray. -- in Dream Work by Mary Oliver (1986)
Five A.M. in the Pinewoods
I'd seen their hoofprints in the deep needles and knew they ended the long night under the pines, walking like two mute and beautiful women toward the deeper woods, so I got up in the dark and went there. They came slowly down the hill and looked at me sitting under the blue trees, shyly they stepped closer and stared from under their thick lashes and even nibbled some damp tassels of weeds. This is not a poem about a dream, though it could be.	This is a poem about the world that is ours, or could be. Finally one of them — I swear it! — would have come to my arms. But the other stamped sharp hoof in the pine needles like the tap of sanity, and they went off together through the trees. When I woke I was alone, I was thinking: so this is how you swim inward, so this is how you flow outward, so this is how you pray. --- in House of Light by Mary Oliver (1992)

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And here is what I (especially) heard, or rather, what I felt, listening to these poems, this time:

“ … each pond with its blazing lilies

is a prayer heard and answered

lavishly, 

every morning, 

whether or not …

you have ever dared to pray.”

 … and …

“ … shyly
they stepped
closer and stared
from under their thick lashes …

one of them — I swear it! —

would have come to my arms.
But the other
stamped sharp hoof in the
pine needles like

the tap of sanity…

I was thinking …
so this is how you pray.

It’s at this level, this sunk root-deep in nature level, where I can understand prayer. As a simple, visceral, cellular, joyful, wonder-laced experience of the cosmic marvel of existence. 

Another spoken-word part of “Praises” is a short quotation from the Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, who wrote, “The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.” I once attended a retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh, and I remember hearing him say something like this: “I was looking out my window this morning as I ate my cereal, thinking, ‘those men in the field are harvesting grain like that I’m eating. Soon, that grain will become a lesson.’” 

This is how I can understand prayer … a deer’s curiosity, the “golden sticks of the sun,” wheat becoming a lesson. That’s what I brought away from “Praises for the World.” This time.

Bucket lists and donuts

Not long ago, someone at a party invited everyone to share what was on their “bucket list.” Personally, I didn’t have such a list, although I quickly tried to think of a few things I could put on it if it were a required assignment.

(In case you missed it, the notion of a “bucket list” comes from a 2007 movie by that name starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson as two old men approaching the end of their days. One explains to the other that the “bucket list” is all the things you’d like to do before you die.)

This experience set me to thinking. Bucket lists seem to be all the rage these days. I just did a quick Google search, and over 15 million entries for “bucket list” popped up. Lots of these were in the “ideas for bucket lists” category, so it seems like folks are hunting for things they might put on their lists. Given their popularity, I started wondering why I had neither a list nor a burning desire to create one. I felt like maybe I was somehow remiss for not having completed this task.

Then, to stir the pot even more, I recently heard an old NPR interview with Nora Ephron, a screenwriter (“You’ve Got Mail,” “When Harry Met Sally,” “Julie and Julia,” “Sleepless in Seattle”), humorist, feminist, and all-around amazing woman who died last month. The interview was from maybe 15 years ago, before Nora had (or knew she had) the leukemia that would take her life. She had written about growing old (I Feel Bad about My Neck), and Terri Gross was talking with her about that topic. Nora said something like this (I’m paraphrasing, but it’s close): “The time I have left is finite. For instance, I have a limited number of meals left. So if a friend says, ‘Let’s go to lunch at x,’ and it’s not a good place, I say, ‘No, let’s not!’” Nora continued: “We all know donuts aren’t healthy. But life is a crapshoot. You could be hit by a bus tomorrow and die. I’m saying, you should have the donut! I’m coming down on the side of the donut!”

“Donuts … bucket lists,” I thought. “What would be my donut, what’s on my bucket list? What am I missing?” My answer: Honestly, nothing I can think of.

Instead of making a wish list for the future, I found myself musing about how full my life has already been. I ended up thinking not about what I still want but about what I’ve already had. For most of my life, I’ve had the great good fortune to be able to do most of things I really wanted to do. I’m just not left with a bunch of unsatisfied yearnings. Maybe to demonstrate this to myself, I made a list of the things I’ve done and those I’m doing now. It was an eye-opening experience. I recommend it highly.

But having thought about this, I wondered, despite all that, should I have bucket list for the future, a box of donuts yet to eat? Knowing that I’m easily captured by the word “should,” I took this question seriously. And then I realized that the very act of taking it so seriously—as if it were an obligation, a requirement—could be a trap. Given my particular obsession with completing assignments, I could easily come to believe that something is wrong with not having such existential longings. It struck me that this fascination with bucket lists and donuts could make me lose sight of the life I have, thinking that the assignment is to imagine a life I could wish for.

Of course, this isn’t an either/or proposition. Bucket lists seem to me a grand strategy. They can help us identify things that we have denied ourselves, positive things that are possible if we just grant ourselves permission and take the initiative to go after them. But it seems like they can also suggest that happiness can only be found somewhere out there, in the exotic and the remote—even if, in fact, we have a rich life right here. Allowing, of course, for the everyday feelings of disappointment and dissatisfaction that we all experience. And keeping open the possibility of spotting something we do want to experience before we kick the bucket.

It strikes me that the difference between a bucket list and Nora Ephron’s donut may lie in the spontaneity of the donut. I like the idea of being open to things that come along, coming down on the side of the donut. But I’m not so sure about formalizing a “To Do” list for the future.

After this mental exercise, I’m feeling more settled about the bucket list thing. I’m hugely grateful for all the experiences I’ve had, and I’m not yearning for anything in particular before I die. This is not to say that I won’t be on the lookout for that donut. But I feel no obligation to create a list, despite the fact that Google has 15 million entries telling me that it’s an assignment.

After the rain: 3 good things

Around these parts (to invoke a Westernism), we've been whimpering about the heat, the smoke, and the dry, dry air that fosters fires, destroys crops, and sucks the moisture from your throat and eyes. We love to say that heat (or cold) is much more bearable here because it's "a dry heat" (or cold). But the truth is, we've been hankerin', as they say in these parts, for some rain. Finally, it came, and the results are wonderful.

1. Remnants of rain clouds fill the evening sky

2.  You can see the mountains, which had vanished in the haze and smoke

3.  The creek's rising. 

Compare that with the picture at the same spot a few days ago.

I recently read that Colorado may get its “monsoon” season this year after all. It seems that the global weather forecast is shifting from the current La Niña to an El Niño pattern, which means wetter weather here. I imagine that’s music to the ears of firefighters and farmers—not to mention those of us with dry eyes and scratchy throats. 

Evening along Boulder Creek

If you're tired of super-heated days and smokey summer haze (no rhyme intended), try an evening stroll along Boulder Creek. 

I got back to my car just as a few raindrops spotted the sidewalk ... and here's what I saw next. Yesss!

      




                                    Welcome, rain!

Anderson Cooper: Coming out and being out

Anderson Cooper, one of the best-known news journalist around, just took the step that so many LGBT people have dreaded, avoided, and then dared. He came out.

But Cooper's coming out wasn’t in the old mold: “Mom, Dad, you'd better sit down. I have something to tell you. I’m gay. I can’t help it! I’m sorry! Please don’t hate me!” Or even in the more recent, more self-assured version: “I’m here. I’m queer. Get used to it.”

Instead, he joined the growing number of folks whose coming out is as matter of fact as saying “I’m blond.” Of course, Cooper is hugely privileged—a rich, white, grown man who has a great deal of control over his everyday safety and comfort (if not his workaday safety and comfort in war zones). That makes it much easier to be casual about coming out than it would be for, say, a kid living in a conservative home, a parent who worries about losing her or his kids, someone whose job might be in jeopardy. And of course being queer is in fact a much bigger issue than being blond. It comes with a load of stigma, a gauntlet of barriers to be circumvented, and terrors to be stared down. It also comes with the special joys of freedom to play with gender, to invent new forms of relationships, to build a “family of choice.” But it’s not as trivial as hair color.

Cooper gave the same reasons for not coming out earlier that many of us gave: it might hurt my career or job possibilities; I don't want to make it all about me; I want to keep a boundary between my public and my personal life. Often, all those explanations disguise realistic fear: of rejection, of danger, of unknown demons. What Cooper finally realized is that his coming out wasn't all about him. It was about all of us. It's always about all of us. About making us visible to each other and to the world. And, as feminists long ago taught us, the personal is always political. Who I am as a person both reflects and changes how the world treats me. We change the world by bringing our personal stories into the public arena.


Still, whatever it took him to get there, what’s striking about Cooper’s coming out is that he seems so totally comfortable with it—as if it were a non-issue. And by that very attitude, he helps to make it a non-issue. His explanation of his process, which he shares here with Andrew Sullivan, reminds me of a conversation my partner and I have often had about the difference between “coming out” and “being out.” The former makes an event of it, a major announcement. In the process, it makes the revelation and the identity HUGE, and therefore, hugely important, out of the ordinary, newsworthy. Being out, by contrast, involves treating LGBT identity as ordinary, everyday—let me say it, normal.

 So, for instance, I was being out when I said to the garden lady, “My partner is really sensitive to smells. Will this rose of Sharon bother her?” I was being out when I renewed our membership at Chautauqua, and the person asked who the two parties were and what their relationship was. I gave our names and said, “She’s my partner.”

It’s the same sort of comment one would easily make about a spouse or a girl/boyfriend. But LGBT folks, myself included, hesitate to do it—even when, like me, we enjoy great privilege and live in a pretty liberal environment. We hesitate for many reasons, of course. But one of them, at least for us oldies, is the feeling that you can’t say anything about your identity without having The Coming Out Conversation.

Maybe that was true back in the day. Maybe it still is for people in some circumstances. But increasingly, many of us find that just being out works fine for us. Just fine.

It seems to me that Anderson Cooper was in that same frame of mind as he described his decision to tell the world he’s gay. It's true, he could have been out sooner and avoided the need to come out. We could excoriate him for being closeted for so long, for failing to be the model he could have been. For implying by his hiding that being gay is somehow shameful, something that needs to be hidden. And we could dismiss him as just the latest in a long line of gay idols who serve to make ideal gay people acceptable without changing attitudes toward us ordinary LGBT folks.  And all of that would be legitimate.

Or we could celebrate the ease with which public coming out is now possible, how ordinary it has become. We could consider Anderson Cooper an important, highly visible, smart model for LGBT folks to watch as they consider how to come out, be out. And to other folks as they consider how to treat us down the line. I really get the former critiques, but I think I prefer the latter approach.