My friend Tom and I have talked about the “lobster effect” of religious upbringing. Initially the environment feels pretty good, safe and protective. Then eventually things heat up until self-doubt and self-hate come to a boiling point. Then, like a lobster in the pot, you are a goner. I think of my early days in…
Next Monday, March 7, my friend Tom and I will again be blogging about a common topic. Since I am about a quarter century Tom’s senior, we have different perspectives on many issues but have been frequently surprised that we have come to many of the same conclusions. Tandem writing has been intellectually stimulating to…
Try as I might, I cannot end a week of writing posts about sex without voicing my thoughts about this week’s public apology by the Land’s End Corporation to its customers and supposed customers from the so-called religious right. Last week I wrote about apologies and what passes for apologies. I wrote that some people are…
And that’s why birds do it, bees do it Even educated fleas do it — Cole Porter, 1928 Recently I was asked a question that, in various forms and various contexts, comes up from time to time. It goes something like, “Do you believe that gay men are having more risky sex as treatments for…
I vividly recall the summer that I nagged my mother endlessly to let me have a lemonade stand. I know I was under 8 years old, but I don’t recall exactly how old. We lived in a safe neighborhood where people looked out for each other and anyone’s children. Because everyone was poor or working…
A couple of weeks ago I titled a blog post Sorry, Not Sorry and the statistics for readership shot up. I am not sure it was the title that caused the spike or my fetching photographs or pithy comments, but I will hazard a guess that at least a few readers were snagged by the…
My blog posts are sometimes started days before they are scheduled for online publication. This week as I am writing in concert with my friend Tom whose posts appear at One Whole Life, my writing is particularly organized. We have quite consciously outlined what we will include in each day’s posts, not so much to…
In the early-1980s, baby boomers were looking good. At 35, we were running, pumping iron, and discovering organic. We were taking over in so many ways. Unlike the 1950s and 1960s, when we were crowding into overflow barracks in beyond-capacity schools, in our 30’s we were getting into supervisory roles and management positions that surpassed…
The day after I went to a Patti LaBelle performance last month, I woke with an acute awareness of having lost something. The concert itself was a thing of joy for us die-hard Patti fans. Ms. LaBelle brought it for over 90 minutes. There were people in the audience of roughly 3,000 who had seen…
When we get real with ourselves and tell the truth about what is going on, we are left with a dilemma from which many cower. We have to stare down our perceived powerlessness. So common is our “but who am I to do that?” that the question frequently does not even get vocalized. Our failures…
Creating Community for Everyone 