Tag Archives: Wisconsin

Rainbow Scare

“The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.” — Maya Angelou

“If the Supreme Court can reverse Roe, it can reverse anything” — Mary Ziegler

Earlier in June, I began to consider a topic for my next blog post. I often begin my writing process with research, reading online, frequently the subject is politics, culture wars, and/or the news of the day. I also reflect on my lived experience and things that pique my curiosity.

I decided on Rainbow Scare and soon after read an opinion piece by Allison Hope. I also became alarmed when the leak occurred earlier in May of the draft Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade and its potential impact overturning settled law. It raised the possibility that the gains we made in the last decades could be undone. We’d essentially go back in time. We could lose reproductive rights, both access to abortions and contraceptives, and for women, the ability to make decisions about what happens to our bodies, plus our LGBTQ+ community may have our marriages nullified and our relationships criminalized. Oh, my! Continue reading

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Road Forward: A Recovery Journey

Finding the Light in the Darkness

“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” – Desmond Tutu

Note: This article was originally written for and published in the March/April issue of Our Lives magazine, a look at the impact of the isolation of the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic and a Wisconsin winter on our LGBTQ+ community. I drafted it in February. A link to the March/April issue of Our Lives follows the article.  

Continue reading

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Within these Walls: Moving Stories

Stories of Home

For my blog, Mixed Metaphors, Oh My! I’ve written numerous reminiscences and essays — over a dozen — about moving and home, and sadly, homelessness too. I probably have a book, or at least a collection of stories.

This fall during the pandemic, I wrote and submitted two stories in response to the theme, Within these Walls: Stories of Home for Forward Theater Co.’s (FTC) sixth Monologue Festival. I’ve submitted to five of the six monologue festivals, links to the monologues at the end of this story. For one of my submissions, I received my favorite rejection letter as a writer for the Someone’s Gotta Do It! Monologue Festival, for my submission Maria from the Sewing Room (and Gloria from the Lay-Up Department), which wasn’t selected, but made the semifinals out of 300 submissions. Continue reading

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Within these Walls: Oral History

Stories of Home 

As a writer, I write for different reasons. I journal to maintain a record of my life, to examine my life, reflect on the past, and look ahead to the future. As a reminiscence writer, I capture the stories of my lived experience and those of my family, friends, and loved ones. As an activist-essayist, I comment on the culture and politics of current events in hopes of galvanizing change.

I sometimes submit my work for consideration for the stage, screen, or publication. For me, those are the most challenging experiences as a writer. In addition to telling a story, I let go of control of whether it’s performed, viewed, or read by the target audience. I make myself vulnerable to the readers, producers, publishers and selection committees. My ego is in play. Continue reading

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Random Topics V

Sealioning, Chukars, Pandemic Fatigue  

As I write, it’s Sunday morning. The temperature is 40 degrees (feels like 34) — raining with the possibility of snow today — the first of the season — as we prepare for the l-o-n-g, dark, and cold Midwestern fall and winter ahead. COVID-19 cases in my home state of Wisconsin are surging; we are hot spot, logging an infection rate just under 25%. Trump campaigned here Saturday in Janesville, risking the lives of the citizens he was elected to protect. It’s an increasingly dystopian time, 15 days away from the election. Will our lives be mentally, physically, and spiritually restored, or how many more of us die? Continue reading

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A Solitary Life: Living Independently

“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.” ― Gabriel García Márquez

“Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.” — Oscar Wilde

Today is the 4th of July, the Independence Day Holiday. Yesterday, I began reflecting on the meaning of the day, which celebrates the independence of a nation following a revolution and the freedom of its people from an oppressive government. Of dire concern — we are living through what may be judged as another oppressive government — our own — as our elected leaders dismantle democracy and favor the corporate aristocracy and dominant white culture. We are not truly free and independent until we are all free and equal under the law. Continue reading

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dispatch from the Hideout: What Was, What Will Be

“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood…back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time…” — Thomas Wolfe

On the Friday before the Memorial Day Holiday weekend, I reminisced about holidays past. Years ago, a group of friends nicknamed, ‘The Orphans,’ would plan an annual camping trip to Peninsula State Park in Fish Creek in Door County, Wisconsin. We dubbed these one of the ‘The Orphan Holidays.’ From a vignette from my memoir in the works, Perfectly Flawed.  Continue reading

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dispatch from the Hideout: Skin Hunger

“Touch is the first language we speak.” — Stephen Gaskin

“Touch has a memory.” — John Keats 

As I continue to chronicle my COVID-19 journey in this seventh in a series of dispatches from the hideout, I’m faced with identifying my fundamental needs as I socially distance. I’m reminded by op-ed pieces that more precisely — we’re physically distancing — that we can still reach out and interact with each other virtually — or at a safe distance of six feet in small groups of people.

Though I’ve started to work at my new job at an LGBTQ+ community center, it remains closed to the public which it serves. A small group of staff, including part-time advocates like myself, provide services and plan for an uncertain future, aka, the new normal. I’m grateful for the opportunity to work and to collaborate with others again, especially since I’ve spent, for the most part, the past almost 10 weeks, physically alone. Continue reading

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Dispatch from the Hideout: Stirred Crazy

For this next installment of Dispatch from the Hideout, I originally planned on writing about how I became stir crazy as I sheltered-in-place and stayed-at-home alone. Instead, following Trump’s LIBERATE Tweets which fueled demonstrations by his supporters in a number of states, I’ve changed the focus to an opinion piece, Stirred Crazy.

Stir Crazy

One benefit from the pandemic experience is I’ve learned that I’m able to thrive on my own, while still desiring social, physical, emotional, and spiritual connection with others, including loved ones and a larger community. Continue reading

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Remembering Jane

Jane Rowe 3/25/1932 -10/19/2017 

Jane was many things to many people. To me, she was a friend, the mother of a friend, Michele, the spouse or partner of friends, Carol, Bea, and Elthea, a mentor, a member of a fellowship we shared, and my first sponsor in that fellowship. Together with other women we founded a peer support recovery center WISH (Women in Support and Healing) which continued to sponsor meetings after the doors closed. I had the privilege of recording Jane’s oral history interview for the University of Wisconsin – Madison Libraries Oral History Program, LGBT Community, 1960s-Present. Continue reading

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,