Amazon Trail (76 Articles with 204,860 total views)
"The Amazon Trail," a column about gay life in the U.S., has been appearing in gay publications since 1986.
July, 2021
The Amazon Trail: Standing On My Own Two Feet
Since childhood, I have been looking forward to growing old enough to know pretty much which end is up in life, to reaching Social Security age in order to write full-time, and to tackle mature subjects in my work. I find it strange that just when I've reached something like that balance, I've lost my relatively reliable physical balance.
June, 2021
The Amazon Trail: Notes from a Homebody
It's finally here. The end of total lockdown. Am I ready? Absolutely not. I like my burrow. I don't wanna play with others.
May, 2021
The Amazon Trail: How to Write a Book
I'm not giving away any secrets here. Not saying it's simple or that anyone can do it if they send $25.00 to Post Office Box 1,2,3. Nope, it's a personal journey and every story has a story. Here's mine, about the writing of my newly released novel, Accidental Desperados.
April, 2021
The Amazon Trail: Old Stuff
I spend too much time and space collecting die-cast toy vehicles, especially Matchbox, a few Dinkys and other locally hard-to-find brands. I'm no expert, am not a vehicle fanatic, I drive a seventeen-year-old Toyota, but the allure of these tiny replicas of vans, utility trucks, and homely cars, many bunged up and from garage sales, most covered with months of dust, bring me a ridiculous amount of pleasure.
March, 2021
The Amazon Trail: Covid 19 Pioneer
Now that President Biden and Vice President Harris are in office, I've been able to have my first Covid 19 vaccine shot. It was no big deal. I went to our county fairgrounds expecting to be injected through my car window, the way I was tested. I thank my lucky stars the test was negative. I'm grateful to the medical profession that persisted in making tests and vaccines available despite the disinformation and profiteering of our former leaders.
February, 2021
The Amazon Trail: All Along the Watchtower
Oh, hell, what can I say at a time like this? Did we think they'd simply go away?
January, 2021
The Amazon Trail: But...
The year 2020 wasn't a total bust except for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who should not have died or have been permanently harmed by Covid 19. In the U.S., many lay those deaths and disablements at the hands of the greedy, power hungry 2020 administration and its followers.
December, 2020
The Amazon Trail: Rats Fleeing a Sinking Ship
I've heard the idiom "like rats fleeing a sinking ship" often lately, and while the metaphor is apt for what's going on in the United States, at our house it's even more befitting.
November, 2020
The Amazon Trail: One Dog at a Time
I can't save our democracy, but I can do a little good in the world. We are adopting a dog who needs a home.
October, 2020
The Amazon Trail: Nah, We Ain't No Sissies
I have been resting. A strange activity for me, but I had no choice. I was so worn out, I remember promising myself that I would never hurry again as long as I lived. The first two of six weeks I mostly slept, or lay unmoving beside my sweetheart. Awake, I read thrillers, and when those books didn't ease my mental and emotional exhaustion, in desperation I read Ann Rule, the master of true crime.
May, 2020
Phyllis Lyon: A Giant
"We lost a giant today," tweeted California State Sen. Scott Weiner, who is chairman of the LGBTQ caucus. A giant is exactly what the ninety-five-year-old Phyllis Lyon was, along with her partner Del Martin, who died at age eighty-seven in 2008.
April, 2020
The Amazon Trail: Mick's Potato Fertilizer
When I asked for advice about growing potatoes, our friend Mary wrote, "Here is what Mick does: blood meal, green sand, or wood ash, bone meal, a handful of each above item for each potato you plant, mix in wheel barrel with dirt and some peat moss, and steer poop. Love M&M."
March, 2020
The Amazon Trail: Please Understand How Much Danger We Are In
My sailor friend e-mailed me last night. She had just gotten home from her women's group where they discussed the fears engendered by the state of our nation. Only they didn't use the term state of our nation, they used the word "coup."
February, 2020
Bath Door Balks at Booting Hostage; Hostage Trapped for NINETY-MINUTES; Suspect Subdued with Electrical Weapon
A woman in a remote town in Oregon suffered a harrowing ninety minutes before her rescue by three brave public servants.
January, 2020
All I Want for the Holidays Is a Left Earbud
Not really. My greatest wishes would be for world peace, a year of pain-free good health for all my family, friends, and neighbors, and a brand-new president and Senate Majority Leader.
December, 2019
The Amazon Trail: "The Terminator"
This week I went to the movies. It's been a long time since I've said that. Do people even say "the movies" anymore?
November, 2019
The Amazon Trail: Damned if I Know
Damned if I know whether or not all the rabble rousing of the last sixty years has done us a lick of good. I thought the issue of our rights was pretty much settled, but on October eighth, 2019, Stanford Law School professor Pamela Karlan argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that gay employees are already protected from job discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights of 1964 federal civil rights law.
October, 2019
The Amazon Trail: Global Warning
I used to encourage LGBTQ (aka Q) people to write by telling them, "We need to make sure they can't burn all the books." While the burning and banning of books persists in a limited way, now it's entirely possible to delete every single book.
In terms of personal preference, I read electronic books. With a couple of swipes, I increase the fonts for easier reading. Despite arthritis, I can hold the heaviest of tomes. Health insurance should cover these miracle devices.
September, 2019
The Amazon Trail: The Good Things in Life
As disheartened as I am about all that is going on in our country and our planet, there are times when I have to appreciate the good things in life. They are often about ice cream.
July, 2019
The Amazon Trail: A Good Start to a Proud Summer
The Police Commissioner of the City of New York apologized on June 6, 2019 for the most publicized raid of a gay bar in the history of the world. Thank you, sir, but fifty years later? And how many raids before that one? How many lgbtq careers ruined, bodies battered, families destroyed? How? Many? Suicides? Still, it was a great gesture and more cause for celebration. It was a good start to summer, to this season of pride.
June, 2019
The Amazon Trail: Generating
I was sitting on the catio, watching the birds do their aerial mating dances, the bees and their flowers coming into bloom, thinking about regeneration and queer families.
May, 2019
The Amazon Trail: Femmes and Their Gadgets
It's a shame, the things they don't teach us at Butch School. In the Femme Gadgets class, I learned the basics of eyelash brushes and powdering noses and hoop, stud, drop, climber, and jacket earrings. The femme who has been cutting my hair for about twenty years was today appropriately made up and earring-ed, her own hair mostly blue with a complementary green streak along the part. She obviously has great fun with her various girly tools.
April, 2019
The Amazon Trail: What Is Lesbian Literature?
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.
March, 2019
The Amazon Trail: Wasted Years
February, 2019
The Amazon Trail: How to Celebrate Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day is one of those do-it-yourself celebrations. There are no parades or feasts or family gatherings. When I was single, I could always count on a card from my mother and, needless to say, would send one to her. Commerce has no respect for the single, however, and for a month every year, the U.S turns red and pink.
January, 2019
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.
December, 2018
The Amazon Trail: Going to the Doctor's
"Visiting the doctor doesn't have to be all gloom and doom," said my sweetheart. "We can make it fun."
November, 2018
The Amazon Trail: Witch Spittle
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.
October, 2018
The Amazon Trail: There Is No Place Like Home
I was recently contemplating my shoes, which, along with clothes and boxes of books, are the only closeted things in our home.
September, 2018
The Amazon Trail: "What?"
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.
July, 2018
Amazon Trail: Remember Summer?
I mean serious summer. When the season was all fireflies and sandcastles, ice cream trucks and taking the train to visit relatives for two whole weeks. It was hours of reading, amusement parks, and hitting tennis balls against the apartment building next door for hours. It was the public swimming pool and cool sheets for sunburns and the ice cream truck. It was freedom.
June, 2018
Amazon Trail: A Poem and a Plant
The day was typical for the Pacific Northwest. The brightening sky had stopped sputtering its fine dewdrops for the moment, the wind had blown itself out, and the development where I live came to life. People took advantage of the disappearing dreariness to walk their dogs, scurry to our centrally located mailboxes, or meet their step goals.
May, 2018
The Amazon Trail: The Terlet
When I objected, starting around the age of four or five, to commercials on the radio, I had no idea what the future of marketing would hold for us all. Why, I asked, was "The Lone Ranger" interrupted to sell Silvercup Bread? Was it because of his silver bullets? Well, yes, it was considered a terrific marketing tie-in. I hated ads then and I hate them now when the once open internet has become a mammoth shopping mall for which we pay with our privacy.
April, 2018
The Six-Foot Table Solution
Yes, we can solve all our problems with six-foot tables, even world peace.
March, 2018
The Amazon Trail: My Daily Last Straw
What exactly is the last straw? I thought it was the presidential buffoon's goading of North Korea, but I was wrong. Our government is suddenly so feeble, so twisted up in procedure, infighting, and tripping over its own all-too-often dropped pants, it can no longer protect its citizens from nuclear war. At least, that's what it looks like to this baffled constituent.
February, 2018
The Amazon Trail: Zipline Vegas
She's going on a zipline in Las Vegas. That's what my sweetheart announced this morning. It gets worse. She said the zipline goes over city streets and buildings-and here I was envisioning a sweet pastoral zip across raging river rapids and sharp rocks. Now I only have to worry about her colliding with concrete, metal, and glass. Head first. Seems you have options; she plans zip to belly down, like a diving bird, a Peregrine falcon perhaps, which can reach speeds up to 200 mph.
January, 2018
The Amazon Trail: Regrets, I Have a Few
Luncheonette. Darn it all, I just found the word I was looking for back in 2007 when I set a scene in a coffee shop in New York. It wasn't a coffee shop, it was a luncheonette. In that era, you could use the term coffee shop, but a reader might picture a Greenwich Village or a North Beach San Francisco dive that served espresso to long-haired women and men in berets. In my novel Beggar of Love, I wanted to evoke elbows on the counter, ham sandwiches and steaming cups of joe.
December, 2017
The Amazon Trail: Dorky Dykes
I suppose I'm at my dorkiest about my stuffed animals. I have my first teddy bear, Buzz. I have the two cats Carol from Connecticut sent: Elga Wasserman (after my first attorney) and the appealingly homely Samo. Of course, I've kept the last one my mother gave me, a high femme rabbit in an extraordinary Easter bonnet who I may finally name. I'm thinking: Karin Kallmaker.
November, 2017
The Amazon Trail: Friends and Other Wonders
We've spent the past few days galivanting up and down the Oregon Coast with friends visiting from the U.K. Two months ago, we were doing the same with a couple up from Palm Springs. Last year it was my family from Massachusetts, the year before, my sweetheart's sister from New Jersey, and in two weeks, long-time friends from the southern part of the state will join us, gasping for sea air after a summer surrounded by wildfires.
October, 2017
The Amazon Trail: Happy Hours
One day, out of the blue, I received an email from well-respected writer Renee Bess. In her thoughtful, elegant style, she asked if I would be interested in working together to produce an anthology about the role gay bars have played in our lives.
September, 2017
The Amazon Trail: The Eclipse Is Coming! The Eclipse Is Coming!
In North America, the total eclipse of the sun starts here. It's Woodstock for everyone. Local and state governments are doing their best to avert chaos. Everyone in law enforcement and emergency services will be either on duty or on standby, many sleeping where they're stationed because it's projected that traffic will be at or near a standstill. The national park up the road, which might normally see 400 to 500 visitors at a time, is expecting 2,000 to 5,000 all at once. They'll be limiting the number of vehicles allowed in to protect the fragile natural treasure and its wildlife.
August, 2017
Amazon Trail: You Know You're Not a Femme
You know you're not a femme when all you do before you leave the house is change your shoes, grab your vest and give the dog a treat. Okay, maybe you put on your baseball cap, but you already know whether it's an Ace Hardware or Yankees or Xena hat day.
July, 2017
The Amazon Trail: A Tenth Anniversary at Sea
We had every intention of being homebodies this year. No travel at all, just a year to save our pennies and get grounded. It's been delicious. After several months of staying in our little coastal home, my mind is sharper, my sleep schedule is approaching normal, and I've got a good start on my next book.
June, 2017
The Amazon Trail: A Lesbian Elder's Warning
A friend of many decades, who currently depends on federal assistance for affordable housing, sent me her concerns about the current direction of our government. As a lesbian, a feminist, a woman, a senior with disabilities, and a progressive activist, she feels especially vulnerable right now. She needed anonymity, but gave me permission to share her insight.
May, 2017
The Amazon Trail: A Lesbian High School Student
Thanks to author Nell Stark-which seems to be something I say at least once a year-I was privileged recently to answer some questions for a lesbian high school student who was writing a paper about 1960's gay activists. Below are the young woman's questions and my attempts to answer. I am very fortunate to be able to reach across generations.
March, 2017
The Amazon Trail: Love Song
The only one likely to get any treats this Valentine's Day is the cat. As my sweetheart said, now that we're getting old and fat, we need to think of new ways to celebrate loving occasions. So, we treated ourselves to an iRobot Roomba 650. More expensive than a red heart full of chocolates, but oh, so rewarding, so low calorie.
February, 2017
The Amazon Trail: The Mightiest of Books
As an adult, I've had no interest in children's books. I left them behind half a century ago. Or did I? Chicken Little, for example, has been a powerful influence in my life. I was a nervous child-that hasn't changed-and the Little Golden Book didn't help. First my mother read it to me, then I read and re-read it on my own. I didn't have many books then, which might help to explain why visitors never see walls in the home my sweetheart and I share. The walls are covered by bookcases
January, 2017
The Amazon Trail: Our Neighbor's Cat's Nephew
After the doom and gloom of our fall-and boy did moods around here fall-I've noticed, with the approach of the holidays, an unusually earnest air of festivity around town. People crave more light in winter; this year our neighborhood seems to be going all out on bright decorations. Homes that have never boasted more than a wreath in past years have strung up a sunrise of red and green and white and yellow-and purple-bulbs. And all the wreaths wear big red ribbons.
December, 2016
The Amazon Trail: Our Only Hope
The calamity of this election has confirmed an unimaginably deep disturbance in our society. As always, the progress we have made brought along with it a tailspin of backlash. In the endless cycle of history, there is no choice but to press on immediately and cohesively toward our goal of an inclusive society.
November, 2016
The Amazon Trail: Me and My Pin
"I thought I was the only one," the stranger said in a low voice. It wasn't 1957, or even 1977. It was last week, at the grand opening of a supermarket in town
October, 2016
Call for Submissions: Short Fiction, Non-Fiction/Essay, Poetry for Happy Hours: Our Lives in the Gay Bars
You are invited to create a piece of work that explores the role the gay bar's culture has played in your life or in the lives of LGBTQI people in general. Your work may be either fiction or non-fiction/essay/memoir. It can be prose or poetry. Your work must be original and not previously published. Please note that we are not looking for erotica at this time.
The Amazon Trail: Affectional Preference
Hey, world, big news! Gay people are more than our sexuality.
September, 2016
The Amazon Trail: Game of Throne
Game of Throne is what my sweetheart calls the nightly battle between our cat and me over Big Blue.
August, 2016
The Amazon Trail: Freedom Clothes
So here I am, trying on men's dress pants for the Golden Crown Literary Society Awards ceremony, and I keep thinking of the photos of our people in Orlando. They dressed up too in their best freedom clothes, also anticipating an evening of togetherness. I'm grateful to be alive and able to gather with other gay women, while I can barely take in how many of us were killed, wounded, traumatized and experienced losses because of our gender preferences.
July, 2016
The Amazon Trail: Searching for Old Dyke Tales
The only information I had on old gay people when I came out was that we were doomed to be alone and thus miserable. Oh, and lesbians would have leathery skin while gay men would become pitiful predators.
June, 2016
The Amazon Trail: Emily Dickinson's Desk
How do gay writers celebrate the end of a book, a poem, a story? I don't know about Sarah Orne Jewett, Langston Hughes, Willa Cather, or Allen Ginsberg, but after that brief moment of relief, before the serious editorial worrying begins, after my sweetheart takes me for a long walk on the beach and a romantic dinner with a view, I clean my desk.
May, 2016
The Amazon Trail: Gender Buttons
Where do little kids get their urgent need to know my gender? Is it intrinsic, some part of survival of the species? Parents should at least teach them that their question is rude. But no, the parents are as unsettled by what they perceive to be gender non-conformance as their children. That leads to bullying, even at home. "Darling, you're a pretty little girl! Wouldn't you rather play with your dollies?" Well, no. I had not the slightest interest in dolls. Dressing them up? Pretending they were living infants? Bor-ing.
April, 2016
The Amazon Trail: Cheeseburger Pie
The threat of atomic war overshadowed my generation. On May 8, 1945, Winston Churchill announced VE Day, the end of World War II in Europe. On September 2, 1945, after horrendous destruction, Japan formally surrendered, ending the war throughout the rest of the world. I was born September 9, 1945 into a world free of war and ready for freedom and prosperity.
March, 2016
The Amazon Trail: Airing the Lesbian Laundry
My sweetheart and I don't pay much attention to roles in our marriage. For one thing, she's the more able-bodied spouse and taller. It's not likely to be me at the top of our six foot ladder, heaving storage boxes onto the garage rafters. And when U.P.S. brings the "some assembly required" contraptions to our door? I usually hand my sweetheart the box cutter and the screwdriver and, when she finishes, the oohs and ahs.
February, 2016
The Amazon Trail: Aargh! Just Aargh.
In our town we have a small, out of the way thrift store, dark and not heavily patronized except by people who are very down and out. The owner— and who knows her story—sells what she can, but is always willing to help out the homeless with clothing or outdoor equipment that they need to survive in this wet environment where there are beaches for sleeping and woods for encampments, soup kitchens for food, tourists for panhandling, the library for web access.
January, 2016
The Amazon Trail: Festive Flamingos
We always have something, perhaps just one thing, in common with others. That thought struck me as one of our neighbors invited us to stop by and see his Christmas flamingos. Who would have guessed that this perfectly straight guy, married to a woman, always puttering in his workroom, not only collected flamingo paraphernalia, but had a collection extensive enough to sort seasonally. He'd seen the neon flamingo in our window, though, and our three front yard flamingos (two pink, one brown), and maybe the flamingo crossing sign hanging in our garage. In any case, and unexpectedly, we have the amazing pink birds in common.
November, 2015
The Amazon Trail: Gen Future
One reason I've been writing all these years has to do with helping us feel good about ourselves. I'd like to think the cultural work that's proliferated from the latter half of the twentieth century through today has contributed to building our strength so we could accomplish all we have. If the pendulum of history swings against us like a wrecking ball from the future, we'll need the writing, the photographs, the women's music—to stay strong, to be queer strong, just as we need it now.
October, 2015
The Amazon Trail: Lesbian Vacations
Right this minute, friends are traveling through France. I am excited for them—the vacation of a lifetime. They post photos of their adventures on Facebook so I'm following them across France: Paris, Cassis, Marseilles, geocaching in Aix-en-Provence!
September, 2015
The Amazon Trail: Dykey Dorothy and Friends
Near where I live, closeted lesbians built and installed a bench on a mostly hidden concrete path between grassy sand dunes, out of sight of any casual observer. The bench was created in the mid 1990s to pay respect to members of the group who had died.
August, 2015
The Amazon Trail: Teased To Death
I never put this in words until recently: I'm afraid of children. Crazy, right? Unnatural. Just plain dumb. About a month ago, while still digesting that news flash from my brain, I had a related revelation which was brought on by all the recent talk about bullying. Here goes: I'm afraid of children because of the incessant bullying I got as a kid. So obvious. I kinda understood it, but kinda didn't want to look at it.
July, 2015
The Amazon Trail: Worst Job Ever
No, I never switched boxcars on the Southern Pacific Railroad, I never strip mined mountaintops with pick and shovel—my worst job ever wasn't even wrapping meat in a supermarket, a job I really did.
June, 2015
The Amazon Trail: Aging Tomboy
My body is telling me to slow down, even while my mind says go, go, go.
May, 2015
The Amazon Trail: DNA: Dyke Now and Always
There are certain memories that glow unexpectedly brighter than the other million moments cataloged in my mind. Their significance demands attention, and for good reason. The accumulation of those quick seconds is the DNA that creates who I am. DNA being the acronym for Dyke Now and Always.
April, 2015
The Amazon Trail: Helicopter Wife
My sweetheart called herself a helicopter wife and I laughed. Not long ago we couldn't even marry. Now we get to legally hover.
March, 2015
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown to win 2015 Lee Lynch Classic Award
DALLAS, TX, Feb. 3, 2015 – Golden Crown Literary Society (GCLS) is pleased to announce that Rubyfruit Jungle by bestselling author Rita Mae Brown (Bantam Press) has been selected as the 2015 winner of the coveted Lee Lynch Classic Book Award. The award will be presented at the Annual GCLS Literary Awards Ceremony, July 25, 2015 in New Orleans, during the GCLS Annual Literary Conference.
The Amazon Trail: Staying Home
We are not traveling this year. Definitely, positively, no ifs ands or buts. No one can make me.
February, 2015
The Amazon Trail: Potato Chip Salad
With the new year comes the new resolve. With the new resolve came the Fitbit.
January, 2015
The Amazon Trail: Oh, No! Not the Pradas!
In the face of the racist, puritanical, self-serving, money-mad, avaricious U.S. citizens and politicians whose votes and campaigns against fairness and reason won out in the recent midterm elections, we need to keep laughing, working to retain what we have gained, and believing in miracles.
The Amazon Trail: Santa Dyke 1998
How should a dyke or a gay man celebrate the winter holidays? 'm pretty spiritual, but I'm nowhere near religious. What if I don't observe any of the holy days this time of year, but celebrate the spirit of all of them? I've had Christmas trees with Solstice lights and a menorah burning on the mantle. I've wrapped speculums in aluminum foil and hung them from a collective Solstice tree. I spent one Christmas Day crying into my Crystal Geyser over a break up, fearing the season had been ruined forever.
December, 2014
The Amazon Trail: Cheeseburgers In Paradise: Cate Culpepper 1957 - 2014
Author Cate Culpepper was friends with just about everyone in her life. Our friendship began in 2006, when we met in Olympia, Washington for a signing. In 2007 my sweetheart-to-be and I visited Cate's hotel room at the Golden Crown Literary Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Cate was wearing over-sized, faux-furred brown bear slippers, a vision I will never forget -- and never allowed her to forget.
November, 2014
The Amazon Trail: Cheetos and Chipmunks
Married life is all it's cracked up to be. For which I am very grateful since my sweetheart became my wife four years ago on 10/10/10. Next year, for our fifth anniversary, we'll have a huge party: the two of us, our cat, our dog and maybe a bag of Cheetos.
Amazon Trail
"The Amazon Trail," a column about gay life in the U.S., has been appearing in gay publications since 1986.
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