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Lee Lynch’s Amazon Trail: What Is Lesbian Literature?
Photo by Sue Hardesty The Amazon Trail: What Is Lesbian Literature?
By Lee Lynch“… when teachers, editors, agents and awards administrators, among others, hold mainstream writing as the standard, and all but ignore books with an exclusively lesbian focus, they lead us away from serious, in depth examination of our lesbian selves.”
It’s nice that some non-gay writers include us in their stories. I’m thinking of Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder detective novels in which he has an amusing lesbian friend who is a dog groomer. Very respectful and matter-of-fact that she’s a dyke. But that doesn’t make the novels lesbian any more than the presence of Robert B. Parker’s gay male bartender and strongman in his Spenser series makes the books gay male.
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Lee Lynch’s Amazon Trail: What Is Lesbian Literature?
Photo by Sue Hardesty The Amazon Trail: What Is Lesbian Literature?
By Lee Lynch“… when teachers, editors, agents and awards administrators, among others, hold mainstream writing as the standard, and all but ignore books with an exclusively lesbian focus, they lead us away from serious, in depth examination of our lesbian selves.”
It’s nice that some non-gay writers include us in their stories. I’m thinking of Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder detective novels in which he has an amusing lesbian friend who is a dog groomer. Very respectful and matter-of-fact that she’s a dyke. But that doesn’t make the novels lesbian any more than the presence of Robert B. Parker’s gay male bartender and strongman in his Spenser series makes the books gay male.
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Guest Column: Healthy Digestion in Times of Stress, by Cathy McNease, Herbalist
By Cathy McNease, HerbalistIt is a familiar problem: stressful events occur and our digestion goes to hell. For some it means loss of appetite, other will resort to binges on comfort foods. Diarrhea, constipation, bloating and indigestion are other common reactions to stress. I fall prey to all of these as well and over the decades have figured a few things out to help. First, minimize stress as much as you can. Second, don’t allow the stress to send you off the rails in your food choices.
If we can minimize the increase in stress hormones being produced, that is a step in the right direction.
Maintaining an anti-inflammatory diet, as much as possible, is a good start. The following tips will reduce cortisol and adrenaline, which increase in stress. Limit as much as you can these foods:
added sugars, processed foods, dairy products, gluten, too much meat, and refined oils. Rely more on non-starchy vegetables. Also watch your intake of coffee and alcohol.
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Lee Lynch’s Amazon Trail: Not a Creature Was Stirring, Not Even a Mouse
Photo by Sue Hardesty By Lee Lynch
The Amazon Trail“Not a Creature Was Stirring, Not Even a Mouse.”
That was true when we brought home our Christmas tree back in 2009 and a poor dead mouse fell onto our living room floor. We’ve made do with a little artificial tree ever since. But this year we’re going all Santa Claus and supporting the local 4H Club which is selling trees at the fairgrounds.
Christmas is such a multi-featured concept. As an atheist, I celebrate for the sake of lighting the darkness. As a feminist, I’m aware of the pre-Christian pagan winter rituals that make sense to me: Yule logs. The tree itself. Gifting one another. Celebrations to liven up the doldrums of winter.
Here in our community, the clubhouse is already decorated, thanks to volunteers who might be teens—not seniors—with their mirthful high energy. Some years a local choral group in red bow ties comes to serenade our holiday potluck. Not everyone is up to decorating, but if they have an extra fifteen dollars they’ll hire a handyperson to string outdoor lights. Every year there’s a light show as we walk our mile of roads, calling out good wishes, and swaddled, like our neighbors, in layers that protect us from the ocean winds.
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Lee Lynch’s Amazon Trail: Going to the Doctor’s
Photo by Sue Hardesty The Amazon Trail: Going to the Doctor’s
By Lee Lynch“Visiting the doctor doesn’t have to be all gloom and doom,” said my sweetheart. “We can make it fun.”
Remember the all-powerful, usually white male doctors of childhood? From the waiting room you could hear kids scream. Vaccines were terrifying. You had to undress. Sometimes my mother would take me for a milkshake afterward, yet, to this day, my blood pressure is higher (and I always weigh more) in the examining room.
I was seeing a hand surgeon for a left thumb brace to balance the one I wear on the right. I have Eaton stage III thumb CMC arthritis bilaterally, etc., blah, blah, blah, blah. Which means arthritis with a capital “A.”
As with most things in our rural area, the surgeon is located a bit over an hour from our home, but, oh, the hills and valleys we pass! Someday, we agreed, we would explore them. It’s hard to pry us from our cozy nest on weekends, but until my sweetheart is hired for a so-far elusive new job, she’s free. A lightbulb went on for her: why not explore those hills and valleys on the way to the doctor’s?
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One Thing or Another: Cruise Control (All Aboard!)
It’s always One Thing or Another… a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.By Mark McNease
“There’s something very depressurizing about boarding a cruise ship. The daily, mundane, pressures of life that bear on you the rest of the time are suddenly lifted, falling away like a jacket let slip from your shoulders.”
Spending time on a floating hotel was never high on my wish list. I no more imagined going on a cruise than I imagined climbing the pyramids at Machu Picchu or hiking the Appalachian Trail. I didn’t have anything against them, they were just things other people did, feature stories in travel magazines I read when I was still flying by choice and not necessity. Then I met the man I’ve spent the last twelve years with, and cruising entered my life. That can happen when we enter relationships: if you enjoy the unexpected, meet the person of your dreams.
My first cruise was just three nights over a Labor Day weekend, out to some cay and back. I didn’t just like it. I loved it. Cruising quickly became a favorite way to vacation for me. I also like spending nights in hotels for some of the same reasons: no chores, no clean up, no appointments, unless it’s a massage or a shave/facial combination. Cruising is that times twenty, with the added bonus of feeling young at fifty-nine on a ship of retirees.
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Lee Lynch’s Amazon Trail: Witch Spittle
Photo by Sue Hardesty By Lee Lynch
Oh, yes, we had fun this year decorating for Halloween. For a couple of hours, I didn’t once think about the ghouls in D.C.
We don’t get trick or treaters here, but we have a lively neighborhood of adults from 55 to 95, ourselves included, who get a kick out of holiday trappings. Our plastic Frankenstein mat screeches bloody murder when we open or close the garage door. Half the time we scare—and laugh—ourselves silly.
It had been many full moons since we last dragged out our spooky paraphernalia. My sweetheart exhumed it from the treasure chest that is our garage and instructed me to decide what should go where. Me? Organize? The prospect was scarier than an army of menacing phantoms.
I somehow coped.
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Lee Lynch’s Amazon Trail: There Is No Place Like Home
Photo by Sue Hardesty By Lee Lynch
I was recently contemplating my shoes, which, along with clothes and boxes of books, are the only closeted things in our home.
That morning I’d noticed my sweetheart had attached a magnet depicting Dorothy’s ruby shoes to our back door. Now, I’m as big a fan of The Wizard of Oz as the next gay person, but those shoes were never particularly significant to me. Which might be because, as a little kid, I read and reread the 1903 edition of The Wizard of Oz handed down to me from my considerably older brother and, perhaps, from my father before him. The inscription from Grandma and Grandpa Lynch is: “To read on train to North Dakota. March, 1939.”
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Lee Lynch’s Amazon Trail: What?
By Lee Lynch
The Amazon Trail
Photo by Sue Hardesty When I first put in the hearing aids, I felt a giant exhalation of tension. Though I knew of my relatively modest hearing loss, I was unaware what a strain it put not just on my marriage and public life, but on my mind and body.
Grandpa Lynch, a retired Railroad Engineer, had big clunky hearing aids. Grandma Lynch needed a pair, though her family said she could hear perfectly well when she wanted to. There was definitely hearing loss on my mother’s side, but her parents couldn’t have afforded hearing aids if they’d wanted them, which they didn’t any more than Grandma Lynch did.
Shame was attached to the very idea of needing such devices. Do people reject hearing aids out of pride? Vanity? Was it the stigma of disability? Maybe back then the new-fangled things weren’t very effective. Probably they were uncomfortable.
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Dave Hughes of RetireFabulously: The Adventure List: What it is and Why You Need One
By Dave Hughes, RetireFabulously.comBy now, you have almost certainly heard of the Bucket List. That’s a list of things you hope to experience before you pass away or “kick the bucket.” Perhaps you even have one.
I do. I think they are a good idea.
But while the concept of the Bucket List is good, it has its limitations. You probably think of your bucket list in grandiose terms. Your list is probably filled with big-ticket items and stretch goals, like taking a trip to Japan, visiting every national park, or jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.
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The Savvy Senior: Can a Debt Collector Take My Social Security Benefits?
By Jim MillerDear Savvy Senior,
Can my Social Security benefits be garnished if I have some outstanding debts? I just turned 62 and would like to start collecting my retirement benefits, but want to find this out before I apply.
Worried Retiree
Dear Worried,
Whether your Social Security benefits are garnishable or not depends on whom you owe. Banks and other financial creditors, for example, can’t touch your Social Security checks. But if Uncle Sam is collecting on a debt, some of your benefits are fair game. Here’s what you should know.
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Book Review: The Boys of Fairy Town, by Jim Elledge
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm Sez“The Boys of Fairy Town” by Jim Elledge
c.2018, Chicago Review Press $29.99 / $39.99 Canada
290 pagesDates, times, and old dead guys.
When you were in school, that’s all history was to you: a list of years and names to memorize and then forget, twenty minutes after Finals Week. So maybe now it’s time to find a history book that’s relevant to you – a book like “The Boys of Fairy Town” by Jim Elledge.
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The Savvy Senior: What’s the Difference Between Alzheimer’s and Dementia?
By Jim Miller
Dear Savvy Senior, What’s the difference between Alzheimer’s disease and dementia? My aunt has dementia, but they don’t know if she has Alzheimer’s disease, which is very confusing to me.
Trying To Understand
Dear Trying,
Many people use the words “Alzheimer’s disease” and “dementia” interchangeably, but they are not the same thing. In fact, you can have a form of dementia that is completely unrelated to Alzheimer’s disease. Here’s what you should know.