Are you writing letters to the editor?

Are you writing letters to the editor?

Writing a letter to the editor of your local newspaper is a great way to get an alternative message in front of a mainstream audience. Progressives and radicals need to do a better job of using this tool. While I do write letters from time to time, I know I could do so more often.

"How to write a letter to the editor."

1. Connect your issue (LGBT rights, reproductive rights, environmental issues, etc.) to a specific item in the paper. If you are writing about something not covered in that paper, try to make the lack of coverage the connection.


2. Have a clear message. A letter to the editor is not the place to do an exegesis.
   
3. Be concise; limit yourself to 200 words. Short, powerful messages are much more likely to get published.


4. Proofread and edit your own letter as well as having a friend offer feedback. Regardless, the letter will probably be edited before it is published, but the better you can make it, the more likely it is to make it into the paper.


5. Most newspapers have a limit on how often they will publish a letter from you. So, once one of your letters is published, take a couple of months off from submitting letters to that paper.
   

So get out your pens, and start writing.

Recipe for greater happiness with all your relationships.

1) Remove the following myths from your relationship life: a) There is one soulmate out there for you; b) Relationships should always be equal; c) Sex and romance always go together; d) Relationships exist in the world.

2) Acknowledge the following truths: a) You are already always in relationships of various kinds; b) These relationships happen in the world, but exist inside you; c) Whatever you think you are looking for in a relationship will actually appear completely different when it shows up; d) Everyone else is just as messed up in their relationship process as you are.

3) Apply the basic success formula to relationships: a) Do more of what works; b) Do less of what doesn't work; c) Experiment with new things.

4) Feel your feelings and choose your actions. Do not use your emotional response as an excuse for your actions; they are separate things.

Father

After my father died, I started to have dreams about him or just with him in them. The first dream I had was blood and horrific. My father was in a bathtub and creatures of some sort were draining his body of blood into the bathtub. The dream was especially challenging because my father did not died a bloody death. He had a massive heart attack while he was cutting down some pussy willow branches. I had just turned 23.


When my father was a teenager, my grandfather was a railroad engineer. It was the depression. While my grandfather was lucky to be employed, he wasn’t so good about making sure his pay made it back to his family. Often my grandfather’s pay was poured into liquor or other amusements in the towns he found himself in. My father took on what Adult Children of Alcoholics theories call the ‘hero’ role. Besides hunting, fishing, and selling their own blueberries back to the Shakers at the Shaker Village near his home, he took on any odd jobs a young teen could find to help his mother take care of his two younger brothers. One day he heard about a train wreck in town. A boxcar with can goods had turned over into the river. My father got his gunnysack and headed for the river. He dived in and began loading his sack with cans until he couldn’t carry any more. He took those cans home and started over. He kept going until he was runoff by the authorities. Years later, my uncle told me that there were many times in that next year when difference between eating and going hungry was to open some of the mystery cans. In those days, labels on cans were glued on. Being submerged in the river had loosened the labels, and all of the cans my father brought home had lost their labels along the way.


Later dreams of my father were never bloody. He mostly appears in my dreams as he did in my life – a larger than life figure that makes me feel safe and loved. Often when I am on a cusp of a new adventure, I will have a dream of my father. Usually these dreams involve reliving some beautiful memory of my childhood – going to the woods on an adventure, swimming in the ocean together, or being side by side at the workbench in the basement. When I was five, we cut down some maple trees in the backyard to make room for the pool. My father took the trunk of one of the maples and made a stool for me to stand on next to him at the workbench, so I could reach the top. That was just the first time I remember him finding a way to lift me up. But, I know I am always standing on his shoulders. And, when he comes to me in a dream, I feel lifted up again.

Two years ago... yet still very true

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will." -- Fredrick Douglas

The Buddha taught all life is suffering. There is only change. Permanence is an illusion. And, the Buddha was, at least partially, right. There is always suffering, but there is also joy, and laughter, and ecstacy, and bliss, and playfulness, and fun.

I am a collector of people in my way. I carry a village in my bag. Sometimes the village inspires me, supports me, and lifts my steps as I walk into tomorrow. Sometimes the bag is heavy and pulls me down. Some days it would be easier to put down the bag. Sometimes I lose a day (a week, a month, a year, a decade) staring into the bag and wondering why I am still here to carry it.

I can be dragged into despair unspoken, grief unfinished, a past incomplete, the path not taken, the people now gone.

If I look up and look around, my life is brilliant. I am surrounded by love, friends, connection, meaning, mission, purpose. But, the other truth is also that my life is filled with loneliness, missed opportunities, lost love, disappointment, and grief.

Which will I hold up as my lens through which I see the world - my sorrow or my joy?

Perhaps, I am trying to hold the contradiction - to reject the either/or and embrace the both/and. Or, even better to live in a world where many multiple truths are happening all at once.

Where am I right now in my life? I've awoken from a slumber - a soma-induced period of comfort, thinking my battles where in the past, and the struggle had passed me by. And, so I feel awake, energized, ready to re-enter the struggle - and the universe provides opportunities and I am reminded of the sweetness of the process. I re-enter the struggle - and I know I am once again awake. But, being awake also means feeling all of the pain, and while it is the pain that woke me, it also feels like at some moments it may overwhelm me. I feel myself living on an edge. Teetering. And, desperately trying to build new support systems into my life - and feeling too deeply the lost of any of these new connections.

What is next? I act as if I am awake for good. But, I have not captured the taste of the future yet. Perhaps because I am savoring the present; perhaps because I fear I will find the future difficult to digest. And, there is also the option of returning to sleep - to finding some remnant of the life I was brought up to live, but that seems even more unlikely than falling into an inescapeable despair.

Water from another time

Water from another time…


What is the story that you tell yourself about your own life? What is your narrative? Does your story create your Self or does your Self create your story?

Kurt Lewin said that each time we act (think, speak, move, etc.), we are creating that act in that moment. He calls this contemporaneous causation. There can be no decisions for all time. According to Lewin, you are not an out-going person; you are a person who has chosen to be out-going at numerous instances in the past. Your future choices are yet undecided. Our choices are determined by all of the factors that surround and infuse us – historical/political situation, friendship groups, work place, financial considerations, physical surroundings, sexual desires, hungers, etc. He calls all of these factors together the “LifeSpace”. One of the most powerful factors in our LifeSpace is our past choices and how we frame them. Because if we frame our life up until now as good, positive, successful, promoting growth – well, then, our past choices must have been good as well. So, to make a new choice negates our self-concept. So, we make the same choice that we always make (not even considering it as a choice). The good news is you can make new choices; the bad news is the effort required can be enormous.


Old water pumps needed to be primed to operate. Without some water left over from the previous pumping, the pump will not work. Our lives require some water from another time as well. We use our stories of the past to validate our present and to aid us in making new choices. We tell the stories that match who we want to become and forget the ones that don’t. A friend has described many of my stories as having this theme, “There is some situation where some people didn’t think Steve belonged, but Steve shows them that he has a right to be in that situation more than most” - basically, a tale of rejection to acceptance. What am I telling myself? Where do I want to be accepted? Why is this the water I bring from another time to recreate myself here and now? A statement from another friend that I was ‘quite the social butterfly.’ And, I guess between dates and parties and , I can see what she meant. But, from my perspective I spend much more time alone that I have in the past. (Not lonely, but alone.)

In Israel I met a Holocaust survivor, the only Jew from her small village to survive the war. The mutual friend that introduced us told me, “She carries the people from that village with her wherever she goes.” How could she ever be lonely? Some days, I feel my own village embracing me. Grandparents, uncles, aunts, parents, friends, brothers/lovers - so many are gone, but always with me. They are my water from another time.

A bird in the house is a death in the family.

There were no birds in the house I grew up in. By this I don't just mean live birds, but also images of birds. No partridge in a pear tree; no landscapes with pheasants in the background; no wallpaper with ducks on a pond. As far as I know it originated with my grandmother. Grammy would say, "A bird in the house is a death in the family." Once my parents ordered a sofa. The swatch of upholstery fabric they saw in the story didn't have a bird on it, but, when the sofa was delivered, there was a bird on the edge of the pattern. My parents sent the sofa back. My family was serious about their superstitions.

My parents bought the house I grew up in when my father got back from the war. The front porch wrapped around the side of the house. Every spring my dad would put up floor to ceiling screens that created a screened in porch. Every fall he would take them down. As soon as I was old enough to help, it was one of my favorite chores to help him with. Once the screens were up, there were three doors between the street and the house – the screen door we had just put up, the normal screen door, and the front door.

In the 44 years my parents lived in that house, a real bird made it through those three doors only once.

As usual we got the screens up from the cellar the first Saturday after my birthday. This ritual was a harbinger of spring. I had moved into my first post-college apartment in January, but still came home to help out with the bigger chores. I had no way of knowing it would be the last time I would help put those big screens up. Two weeks after we put the screens up, my father had a massive, fatal heart attack.

It rained the entire week leading up to my father's funeral, but the day of the funeral the sun finally came out. As was our custom, all the extended family and good friends came back to the house after the cemetery. As one of the last guests was arriving, a bird flew into the house. My sisters, my mother, and I went into a panic. After all those years, Grammy (by then more than a decade gone) was right, "A bird in the house is a death in the family."

Beauty

Why are we attracted to someone else? Physical, personality, power, humor, accidents of location, shared interests, chemistry - these all may play a role. Today, I am thinking about physical attraction. Physical attraction is tricky. We can say someone is attractive and mean that they meet the dominant standard for beauty in our (sub)culture. Or, we can say someone is attractive and mean that we are attracted to them. And, often these two things are not the same. For some people they are even mutually exclusive. Being a fat gay man, I experience this very personally. Within gay male culture, slim or muscular are the body types that are considered attractive. (Just look at the ads in any magazine marketed to gay men.) So, the men who find me attractive are deviating from the standard of beauty for their culture.


When I first came out, I was not aware of the fact that there were any men who would find my body attractive. I mostly had sex with friends – men who were attracted to my non-physical aspects (my personality, my sense of humor, etc.) and who enjoyed the activities we were doing together. (Basically, when you are a 17, 18, or 19 male, sex is good, no matter where you find it.) As I got a little older, I realized that while I did not meet the standard for attractiveness in gay culture, there was a subset of gay men (chasers) who were attracted to my body. My early 20s were filled with these men. At first, I had a hard time accepting my own attractiveness in the eyes of chasers, and my lack of attractiveness within gay male culture at large. I had a very unhealthy coping mechanism when I first came to this awareness. I only dated chasers who were very attractive (meaning they met and usually exceeded the standard of beauty within gay male culture.) Some of these men had nicknames among my friends like ‘the model’ (who actually was a model) or ‘the most beautiful black man in Boston’ (a title he was given before I started dating him) or ‘the movie star’ (who was not a movie star, but did look like one). This would not have been so bad, except I also rejected chasers who I personally found attractive, but who did not meet the dominant gay male standard of beauty. I was not following my own measure; I was being pushed by the pressure of my subculture’s norms. I used these men I dated to validate myself - my own attractiveness. Eventually, I grew out of this phase.


The two long-term relationships of my adult life were with men I found very attractive. One of them was very attractive from a gay standard of beauty and one did not necessarily fit that standard. In my 40s, I am examining this issue of physical attraction again. From a 40-something place, it seems much more about person-specific issues than any sort of type – the texture of the skin, the shape of the nose, etc. – these things seem to be more important than the body as a whole. And, energy – that indefinable aspect of physical chemistry - seems to trump everything. I recently went on a date with a man, who was very close to my imagined physical ideal. Unfortunately, when we actually met, I felt no attraction. I could admire his body from an aesthetic perspective, but, after talking with him for just a few minutes, the energy just wasn’t there. That chemistry seems to be the essential component, I guess I just have to learn not to expect that energy with any particular type of man - and celebrate it where I find it.

The Coming Out Phenomenon…

"We have made great strides in defeating homophobia in the last 30 years. The single biggest reason, obviously, is that people have come out. -- Barney Frank (2004)

Coming out is a constant, moment-to-moment choice for folks who are not hetero-normative. We can be honest about our lives, or we can lie by omission or commission. The reason it is not a choice for hetero-normative folks is because they do not censor themselves on the basis of their gender, gender identity, sexual arrangements, affectional connections, or object of desire.

Examples: 1) A heterosexual teenage boy experiences his attraction to females as normal and supported by his community. He never has to limit his expression of his attractions because the object of his desire is female. (He may limit these expressions for other reasons, but not because the object is female.) A gay male teen would be coming out if he were equally honest about his attractions.

2) A middle-aged heterosexual female when talking about who she dated before she married her husband would not filter out any of these men because they were male. A bisexual female when talking about who she dated before she married her husband would be coming out if she listed both the men and the women she had dated.

3) A hetero-normative person is asked what they did last night. They have would not filter the fact that they went on a date with someone of the opposite sex. If I am asked the same question, I am coming out when I answer honestly about my date with another man.

4) A bio-man is asked about his childhood. He would not filter the fact that he was labeled a boy as a child. A trans-man would be coming out if he answered honestly about his childhood when he was labeled a girl.

In the last few years, I have had the chance to get to know some young LGBT folks who say, "My sexuality and gender idenity are my private business. I dont see any reason to come out to my friends (or co-workers, or siblings, or grandparents, or co-workers, or classmates, or parents, or roommates, or anybody)." This attitude is very hard for me to get my mind around. I understand being in the closet i.e., lying about your sexualityor gender history. And, there are many instances I support lying. Examples: 1) If your fundamentalist Christian parents are paying for your college education, I completely support lying to them about your sexuality until the final bill is paid, and the diploma is in your hand. 2) If, on a dark night, you are approached by a street gang, I completely support lying to them about your sexuality or gender history.

However, it seems that the people who say, "my sexuality is my business," don't see what they are doing as lying. They are systematically shutting some people out of an important part of their lives. They are engaging in non-reciprocal relationships, because it is an extremely rare hetero-normative person who does not reveal their sexuality to you within the first 30 minutes of meeting them. (Think about how many statements begin, "My husband and I" or "My wife and I".)

I think about my week. The people I see. The activities I do. How could I talk about my life without mentioning my sexuality? I would have to censor so many activities. How would I explain my connections to the boys I had fooled around with who I saw in a week? How would I describe the time spent with the men I am dating? How would I describe my discussions with the groups of LGBT folks I spend time in? How would I describe making breakfast in bed for two? It seems impossible to me to have a real relationship with anyone without being honest about my sexuality. I come out so many times a day that it is often a surprise to me when someone doesn't already know I am gay. But, believe it or not, I still have people who assume I am heterosexual.

My worry is about the progress that LGBT folks have made over the last 30 years. We have made this progress as Congressman Barney Frank says because LGBT people have come out. If the next generation takes a stance of "my sexuality is my business," I worry that some of this progress may be lost.

Harvey Milk said it best, "Come out, come out, where ever you are!"

The psychological contract

Perhaps the most essential (or master) problem in human relations is the assumption that other people's actions or inactions have the same underlying meanings as our own. I call this the master problem because we seldom deal with this problem in our relationships. Instead, we fight about the problems that are a consequence of this master problem. For example, we argue about cleaning, or the lack of a phone call, or an unwanted touch, but don't discuss the differences in meaning that these have for us.



We come to every human interaction with a set of expectations. Even when we are attempting to be free of expectations and go with the flow, we can not help bringing our expectations with us. Typically, we have different expectations for people in different roles in our life. The co-worker, the shop clerk, the friend, the lover, and the acquaintance each elicits in us a particular set of expectations based on our history, our culture, our upbringing, and our experiences. This, in and of itself, is not the problem. The problem is that we used these expectations (our psychological contract) to interpret the actions of others. So, when a 'friend' does something that does not match our 'friend contract', we no longer consider them a friend. Or, when a lover does not do the things our contract says a lover should do, we interpret this as a problem in the relationship as opposed to a problem in our psychological contract of what it means to be in a loving relationship.



One way to manage this problem is to only interact with people who have very similar psychological contracts to us. These are the friends who do all the things we expect a friend to do; the lovers who tell us what we want to hear. The problem with this approach is two-fold. First, it greatly limits whom you can successfully have interactions with. Secondly, when the places of difference are found (because no two people share exactly the same psychological contract) the betrayal can feel much deeper because there is no language to discuss the differences in expectations. However, this is a common strategy.



A more difficult path, though I believe much more fulfilling, is to work on noticing where you are giving meaning to actions (or the absence of actions) based on your own psychological contract. And, then, checking out your assumptions, before you act on them. The goal is to attempt to understand the other person – to learn their motivations before you begin to punish. At the same time, to begin to work on noticing how other people react to your actions, realizing that they are interpreting your actions through their own psychological contract.