…fatigue, brain fog, balance problems. But all that didn’t start until a few hours after I got up. In that little window of time I got some stuff done around the house, working off a long term project of downsizing, sorting, filing. I’m really not seeing the benefit from the new medication the neurologist was telling me I’d see. There is some, but it’s disappointing. I have a follow-up appointment with him first week in August. We’ll talk.

I dropped off a bunch of stuff with the Greensburg Historical Society last Thursday, but there is more I need to uncover here. Plus, I am gathering stuff to donate to Goodwill. The sad truth is selling, or even giving away stuff is difficult. There is a “Buy Nothing Hampden” page here I’ve had some success with in the past, but lately no bites. I took a bunch of things to recycling knowing that at least some of it can become something new and not just end up in a landfill. The stuff I take to Goodwill can find another home. But I need energy to do all this and Parkinson’s, plus old age too I’m sure, leaves me with very little.

I’ve been thinking it over and I suppose this diagnosis of Parkinson’s seems sudden to most of my friends. Pretty sure not to my brother in California, who has seen me struggling at his house with fatigue and balance and memory. My co-workers and project leads have seen me struggle to get words out when I suddenly can’t put a sentence together, because brain and mouth momentarily stop cooperating. More distressingly is a loss of mental focus that I was hoping the meds would improve. But since most of my socializing these days is online, most of my friends and classmates wouldn’t have seen any of this building for the past couple years. And it’s been a gradual thing, punctuated by a few sudden episodes of fail.

I’m really not in a bad way now, and probably won’t be for quite some time; just not the fully functional me I used to be, even accounting for age. It’s mostly subtle…until for a brief few moments it isn’t. If the diagnosis seems sudden to you, rest assured it is not to me, or to anyone who has had my physical presence for more then a day or two; something is a bit off with Bruce.

I am grateful for the diagnosis because it gave me clarity, Finally, as to what was happening to me, and something to take the measure of, and try to manage.

But there is so much more I need to do. I have artwork I want to get out. It’s going to be harder than I’d anticipated, and I’m not going to get everything done I want to.

Please Stand By…

…particularly, the girls.

Memories. Something that delights me no end is being able to share my photography with my classmates at reunions and online. Because my camera was a constant companion at school, I have tons of photographs of daily life at Woodward back in ’70-’72. It’s fun to reminisce with my classmates over them. But now and then I’ve had some unpleasant surprises.

I could be a clueless little dweeb at times. Probably most of the time at that age, but even now at age 72. I don’t think I was stupid, but it really keeps surprising me how much of what was going on around me back then kept going right past me or right over my head. Put it down to being a gay boy, plus being raised by a single divorced Baptist woman. Some subjects you just didn’t get anywhere near in that sort of household. Especially sex.

A Coming Out Story – Episode 12, “Dinner Table Danger Zone”

Now we’re all grown up, and I’ll be happily reviewing some of my Woodward photos with a classmate, and they’ll off-handedly tell me what was going on behind the scenes in this or that photo…and it throws me for a loop. Who was dating who. Who had sex with who. What? WhAT??? Laugh if you like, but I just assumed none of us were really having sex at our age, that it was just a lot of talk. I never took it seriously. I was clueless. Also gay. And a Baptist. So if there were signals a straight kid would have picked up on, little gay me was oblivious to them.

And to a lot more.

So…before one past reunion…not the most recent one… I’m arranging some of my photos with a couple of my female classmates here in the art room at Casa del Garrett. We’re selecting photos for a photo CD we want to sell to the classmates to support the costs of the reunion. We were looking at some photography I did of some of the teachers and students in the Activity Clubs for the yearbook, when I start hearing from them about which teachers in my photos were having sex with which of the other girls in my photos.

I was stunned. But it wasn’t just baseless gossip I was hearing then, because later on one of the teachers they were pointing to in my photographs was arrested and jailed for it. I never heard if the other one they kept pointing out in my photography ever did or not.

And even more than the accusations I was hearing, the casual offhanded way they told me about it stunned me even more; like it was some sort of common knowledge, among the girls back then. Because back then, among themselves, the girls talked to each about things they’d never feel comfortable talking to the boys about. I think in that moment they were comfortable talking about it to me because by then I was out to all my classmates. I don’t think they would have said anything to me about it if I was straight.

And I was stunned listening to all that. And even more…at the offhanded way they were telling me, as they looked at my photos of a couple of our teachers, the one who later got arrested and the one that, to my knowledge did not, surrounded by the other kids in one of the Activity Clubs, and they’re pointing and telling me He had sex with that girl…and that one…and that one…

Why am I bringing this up now? Oh…no particular reason…

The smoke from those Canadian wildfires is reaching down here to Greensburg, and so I’m told, back home in Baltimore. If anything it’s worse today than yesterday. Oh and I’m going home now to temperatures in a high 90s. It was like this a few years ago, during first retirement, when I bopped out to California and the heat past the Rockies was brutal. I don’t remember it being like this when I was a kid. Hot during the summer, yes, and disgustingly humid. But not like this.

I’m in Greensburg Pennsylvania presently, the ancestral home of my mom’s side of my gene threads. I used to post these travelogs often here on my blog in real time, but I don’t anymore because thieves and burglars might be listening in and see an opportunity to break into my house and steal things; and never mind I always have neighbors and security cameras watching and my alarms set. It’s the world we live in now. But I’m getting tired of that, and I think I’m going to post about my travels here more often.

I’m here in Greensburg to drop some family history I inherited after mom passed away. Family bibles with birthdates, death dates, and marriages recorded in them, and lots and Lots of old family photos and random artifacts. I’ve given it all to the Greensburg Historical Society. I still have family living in the area I suppose, but I’m completely estranged from them because of how mean they were to my mom. The only person I’m still close to on that side is mom’s cousin, who stood by her all throughout her life and whatever the family drama was. But like mom, she doesn’t live here anymore, and hasn’t for decades.

As I type these words I suddenly realize that, like mom, and her mom, mom’s cousin never had any interest in returning to Greensburg after they left, long, long ago. Mom took me here often when I was a kid for visits, but in retrospect that was mostly for her mom’s benefit, to visit old friends and the one son she still had living nearby. We would stay with a distant relative, whose relationship to mom’s family I’m still uncertain of. I still have fond memories of those visits, but that was before the family drama really started touching me.

When I came to the Greensburg Historical Society the other day to drop things off, they gave me the tour of their collection so far. The people working here are very nice folks, history nerds, and so friendly it did my heart good because my feelings toward this place are mixed now at best. I’m writing this to my blog just to put this one more little message in a bottle out here for you because the collection of German artifacts they have surprised me, and then made my heart ache in a different way from the ache I expected to have being here. I always knew in the back of my mind the German influence here in central Pennsylvania, but seeing it all collected together and representing a significant part of the history of this place startled me.

There was a magnificent old bible, one of those big heavy embossed leather bibles with heavy metal clasps to close it, well preserved in a glass display case, and it was in German. There were school books in German, travel books, written histories of Pennsylvania and Westmoreland County. Stories of the people who came here, made a life here, in the language of their homeland. The folks who work here said they’d brought a translator in to help with cataloging all that. And I immediately  thought of you, and wished you were there with me just then, because you could have looked all that over and told them things about it that maybe they didn’t know. And I began aching for a life I never had a chance to have, and which probably one you wouldn’t have wanted with me anyway.  The old dream that will never completely die, but that becomes something to just acknowledge, like getting old.

I’m letting go of all that family history now because the Parkinson’s diagnosis leaves me with a new perspective. You always kept telling me toward the end of it, that I needed to let go of the past. Live in the present you said, using the word as a double entendre.  I wouldn’t exactly call Parkinson’s a present, but it works well enough as a mile marker. I can let go of a lot of stuff I’ve carried with me since mom died, because I was never much a part of it anyway, and I am going to need to carefully manage the energy I have left to me. I’m sure at some point the people in my family here became aware that mom’s son by the father they all despised is gay, but they’d have kept me at arms length anyway because I was his son and the sins of the father will always convey to the son if he’s the only convenient target.

Mom loved me, I’ve never doubted that, but she’s gone now and my connection to the others was tenuous at best because that was how they wanted it ultimately, and I came to accept it. The life of the only child teaches him how to rely on himself. The only one who took an interest in me was the one who left Greensburg for California and he never went back either. How I’ve wished I could have grown up closer to him. But then I would never have met you.

The trick in letting go of things is knowing what parts of that life you lived made you the person you are, what you need to honor and respect, for better or worse, and what was just the back story, not your story.

This came across my Facebook news stream yesterday, from user Alex Bernard in the “Dune” group…

J.R.R. Tolkien famously disliked Frank Herbert’s Dune “with some intensity”. He never wrote a detailed critique, but literary historians and scholars attribute his feelings to fundamental clashes in their worldviews, moral frameworks, and storytelling philosophies.

I’ll just leave this with two of his bullet points, because they’re really all that needs to be said:

• Moral Ambiguity vs. Objective Good: Tolkien championed stories where characters fought for objective, uncompromised good—even when faced with impossible odds, like Frodo’s quest. In contrast, Dune operates in gray areas. Its protagonist, Paul Atreides, embraces a consequentialist mindset, choosing “lesser evils” to secure power, which Tolkien would have found deeply troubling.

• Pessimism and Power: Tolkien’s concept of “consolation” involved a eucatastrophe (a miraculous, happy ending) and hope. Dune is a bleak, tragic universe where absolute power corrupts, and the ultimate outcome is inherently dystopian and complex.

That last is basically Herbert the man right there. Let me add Herbert was also a homophobe. But of course these things tend to be bundled together, springing from the core of a rotten soul. And where you really see it isn’t in the Dune novels, but in Soul Catcher; a book I have hated passionately ever since I finished it, threw it across the room and tore it to bits. When I learned later that Herbert had a gay son it occurred to me that the book was an exercise in vicariously tormenting and murdering Bruce. (Herbert detested his gay activist son Bruce, who struggled with drugs his adult life…which wouldn’t have had anything to do with how Herbert would, among other things, hook his sons up to a lie detector when they misbehaved) But it can also be seen as a purer horror story than the Dune novels. Herbert is on record as saying the character of Paul Atreides was meant to be a warning, not a hero, and you can suppose the character of Charles Hobuhet is also in that vein; a warning about men who assume they are favored by the gods. But Herbert is too cute by half here. See how many people miss what Herbert claims is is point about Paul. He knew what he was doing. He wasn’t calling out his god’s right hands; he’s admiring them from afar. And like your usual moral runt, he dresses it up in various disguises and self serving excuses, so he doesn’t have to see the creep in the bathroom mirror.

I’ve read there is some sort of effort towards turning the book into a movie, but the people working on it, with the support of Herbert’s family it seems, were trying to rewrite the end to be more “politically correct” (their own words). I can appreciate why, since the book is so thoroughly disgusting in its total indifference to child murder. But the essential problem with the book isn’t that the thirteen year old boy is murdered at the very end, only moments from when he might have been rescued. The core problem is it is yet another crazy murdering Injun Joe figure created by a white man with zero understanding and sympathy for native Americans, a moral indifference for cultural appropriation, and bitter resentment over having a gay son. Native Americans just don’t need more of that sort of thing dumped on them, and I’ll bet Bruce didn’t much like seeing himself vicariously tormented and killed by his own father. I don’t see how you make that “politically correct”. So I hear, Herbert lost his only native American friend when he showed him a draft of the story. Of course it didn’t discourage him from getting it published.

Decency versus vulgarity.

Tolkien almost certainly disliked Dune “with some intensity” because he had Herbert’s number. They could not have been more different men.

I really needed to get some more cat food, in case Walter comes for a visit (he didn’t last night). And cookies. But talking even a short walk is risky in this heat, and especially for someone my age. I decided to wait until after sundown and the temperature dropped to at least 95. One of the perks of living where I do is there is a really good Giant Food store that’s not more than a 10-15 minute walk from my front door.

Out on the front porch it was still like an oven but not so intense that I didn’t think I could manage it. So I grabbed a small canvas shopping bag and headed out. All I needed was a few cans of cat food to tide me over until I could drive out to Cockeysville and the Pet Smart there. So I wouldn’t be carrying a lot back home.

What I hadn’t figured into this was that the intense heat of the last couple days had really baked the pavements and everything else in my environment, such that even if the sun wasn’t bearing down on me and the sky was getting dark, the heat was rising up at me from the ground all around me.

But I made it. I have food (and cookies). Probably not venturing out again until Monday when this heat wave is supposedly scheduled to end.

When the temperature gets into the triple digits the Mercedes gets its cover on until the temperature gets a little more reasonable. This is how it looked the first day of the heat wave yesterday. Oh…and the wildflowers I planted last spring. More about those later.

I bought the fitted cover, among other accessories, from the dealer when I bought the car. So this is the real fit for this specific model not a generic one, down to the little pocket for the hood ornament, and also for the satellite/GPS antenna on the roof. It’s actually pretty easy to just unroll and slide on and off. But even early this morning the heat was oppressive and I was exhausted just putting this on. I was going to take an extra early morning walk but it was already too hot. I tried again this morning but it was already 92 at 7:30.

I’m maintaining the bird bath and trying to keep drinking water out there for them. and I need to clean and put fresh humming bird juice in the feeder every night this heat wave goes on because at these temperatures that sugar water will start to ferment.

Walter came for a visit…

You caught the shoelace. Or did it catch you?

…and I gave him food and fresh water, and I was hoping he’d stay indoors at least until the evening, but after about a couple hours he poked his nose in the door which is the signal I’ve always accepted from visiting street cats they want back out, so I let him out. Walter is not a feral cat. Sadly we (the neighborhood) thinks he was just abandoned when his owners moved from the apartments a couple blocks over. So he’s friendly, if a bit playful and bitey. Probably just a couple years old. He won’t stay inside which is fine with me because I don’t want anymore pets after what happened to Claudia and the calico. Still, in this heat I would have let him stay inside my air conditioned house all day. But no, he wanted back out eventually. I have to trust he has places under some of the homes here where he can nap and escape the heat. None of those single family homes across the street have basements, just crawl spaces. I know one neighbor has put a little place for him under his porch.

The heat outside yesterday and now is…just amazing. Just topping off the bird bath in my front yard is as much outside as I want to be today. Any grocery shopping I might want to do (I’m going to at least need more cat food) will have to wait until after sundown.

I have two weather stations outside on my backyard deck, plus the temperature sensor inside the AC compressor unit in the backyard. Yesterday they were all reading 103 around 2 o:clock. It’s 101 now as I write this and it’s not even noon yet.

Every now and then when it breaks 100 I step outside onto my front porch just to see how it feels. The front porch is covered and mostly but not all in the shade all day long. It feels like looking into my oven to check on something I’m baking.

Yes I’ve set the central AC to 75. Additionally I’ve installed a small window unit in my upstairs bedroom, because it is difficult to keep the second floor in this little 1950s Baltimore rowhouses cool. At night I turn the central AC up and the window unit down. This is going to be an expensive month electricity wise. But I’ve always been on board with Heinlein’s saying that you should budget for the luxuries first. I budget for the utilities first. I’ll eat cold cut sandwiches and energy bars all month if I have to.

Someone in the comments remarked that the New York Times seems to be only letting Log Cabin Republicans editorialize about Pride during Pride month. You have to remember it was decades, long after ‘gay’ became a commonly used term for ‘homosexual’ before the Times would allow it to be used that way on its pages.

I was guessing as I read that guest editorial title that its author, Matthew Vines, is a post Stonewall baby. In fact according to Google he was born in 1990. So he wouldn’t know that, as a matter of fact, yes, yes he is a queer.

That is what we were back when I was coming of age in the late 60s/early 70s, and well before then too. We used ‘gay’ to self identify, first as a bit of deep insider slang late in the 19th century, then more frequently and openly in the years after Stonewall. But to a certain subset of our neighbors, ‘queer’ is what we were and would always be. When it wasn’t one of the other dozens or so slurs for ‘homosexual’.

A Coming Out Story, What I Learned About Homosexuality. . . And Myself (Part 2)

I came of age when ‘queer’ was one of those slurs, and I will go to my grave flinching a little every time I hear it. But I appreciate the reclaiming of the word by the younger set; that defiance, that Yes We Are So What attitude. It makes things happen. Frank Kameny, bless his soul and may he rest in peace, approached gay activism by way of showing the world we were little different from anyone else. He insisted his White House marchers dressed, suits and ties for the men, dresses for the women. He said if you’re going to protest for the right to hold a job, you need to dress like you’re going to a job interview. It took a lot of guts back then. And it motivated a lot of us. But it was the drag queens, transsexuals and scruffy street kids who rioted for nearly a week in front of the Stonewall Inn set the movement on fire. We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.

Or as Harold might say: “You’re a queer and you don’t want to be, but there’s nothing you can do to change it. Not all the prayers to your God, not all the analysis you can buy, in all the years you’ve got left to live. You may one day be able to know a gay life if you want it desperately enough. But you’ll always be queer as well. Always Matthew. Always. Until the day you die.”

Get used to it.