Ponderings and Musings

Steve Bronski of Bronski Beat passed away this week. He was 61 years old.

I wasn’t aware of Bronski Beat when their debut single, “Smalltown Boy”, was released in 1984. It wasn’t until I was in college in later 1986 that I discovered the band and started enjoying their albums and single releases. I instantly fell in love with their synths, and Hi-NRG music, and then started listening to their lyrics and realized this group was something special for the gay community.

A few elements of “Smalltown Boy” has always held some truth for me. As a Gen-X gay man I consider myself quite lucky; my parents were mostly fine with my homosexuality and I’ve always felt love and acceptance at home. Both of my parents were awesome in many ways, including dealing with their only son being gay. I’ve been blessed, many of my age and to this day are not nearly as lucky.

The video for “Smalltown Boy” has a couple of scenes that I can relate to, mostly around where Jimmy Somerville is encouraged by his gay friends to approach another young man and profess his interest in him and the results of the interaction turning less than positive. Even though it’s been over 35 years I still have a hard time with that similar moment in my past. A couple of gay friends encouraged me to approach someone that I knew was gay and muster up the courage to show an interest in him and it didn’t turn out well. I wasn’t hurt physically too much and there was thankfully no gang or police or anything involved as shown in the music video situation, but it was still a lot for me to handle that I handled alone and got through it. The biggest hurt I felt was the betrayal from what I believed to be friends that understood me because they were like me. They really weren’t like me, they just shared the attraction to the same sex. It was good to leave them behind.

The messages in the music by Bronski Beat was important during the 1980s, in addition to just being good music. RIP Steve Bronski. Thank you for doing your part to help life for LGBTQ+ folks a little bit easier and more importantly, thank you for your music.

The last gasps of the 20th century were an interesting time. Political turmoil was ramping up, though nothing close to the likes of the idiocy we have today. 9/11 hadn’t happened yet. Television was still in standard definition, if you wanted email you most likely were using a dial-up modem or a very slow data line, our cell phones were analog and not smart. Web 1.0 had done its thing and we were getting ready for Web 2.0, whatever that was going to be. We still had to know things, content on the Internet was a bit more honest, and things weren’t quite as “in your face”. We had hope for the 21st century.

Once in a while I take a listen to this live performance of Joni Mitchell’s “Help Me”, covered by k.d. lang in a slightly slower but more sultry way. The clothes, the vibe, the honesty … all seems to be part of that last gasp of the 20th century. I have always looked forward to the future, but lately I’ve been wondering about the past.

In fourth grade I was the only student in Room 202 to be selected for the new “Enrichment” program at our elementary school. Funded by the local BOCES*, “Enrichment” gave select students considered “gifted” the opportunity for educational pursuits outside the traditional classroom paradigm. As described in a newspaper article from back in the day…

“… this program is aimed at meeting some of the special education needs of the school’s more gifted students. One of the more pressing of these needs is that of providing stimulation for the “gifted” child to pursue his or her school learning experiences beyond the limits of the regular classroom curriculum. … Placement is made on the basis of scores achieved on a (locally developed battery of tests. Exceptional social, intellectual, psycho-motor and creative development are among the personal attributes which the tests are designed to identify”.

The Pulaski Democrat, May 2, 1979.

I remember my mom going to the school for a parents’ meeting to discuss the new program, having concerns of me being the only one in Room 202 that was eligible, and ultimately telling me I would be participating in this new program. I can vividly remember my participation in grades four and five, by grade six the funding disappeared and we no longer attended “Enrichment”. The program kept me sane as a student, especially in fifth grade. It was that year that a normally second grade teacher taught fifth grade for the first time and the school decided to mix things up when it came to deciding who would be in what classes. This fifth grade class contained many of that year’s instigators, and it was decided to put five or six of the smarter kids in the class to provide balance for the classroom experience. The experiment was ultimately a failure, I learned what it was like to be bullied for being somewhat intelligent and very different, professional psychologists were brought in to help get the class under control, and it was the very first time I had seen a teacher walk into a closet and shut the door behind her. That was in Room 209, and luckily, the “Enrichment” room was across the hall in Room 210 and the teacher would encourage those of us in the program to go across the hall when things were getting crazy.

This was also the time when it was starting to click even more that I liked boys in the way that I was suppose to like girls and there was one teacher that really piqued my interest, and that was the Enrichment teacher. He was in the building only a few days a week, as he also conducted the BOCES-funded program at neighboring schools. I remember him being a super-nice guy, with a big, red, bushy beard, a very pleasant demeanor, and to a fifth grade boy that was starting to like other boys, super cute. One day he came in clean shaven and I still found him super cute, it didn’t change his demeanor at all, he just looked different, and then he grew a mustache within a month. I last saw him when I was in high school, he was attending a gathering of some sort with the special education teacher and other teachers from the county. He had the big beard again, gave me a hearty hello, and shook my hand. Honestly, my heart melted again, I felt my teenage hormones kick in, and I entertained that memory of him later that night.

I was bored the other night and decided to Google the teacher’s name to see what he was up to. I don’t know why he crossed my mind, but I had remembered him being a couple years younger than my folks and that he was originally from the western part of the state.

He passed away this past December. No photo, no family mentioned, and very little other than his birth date and where that happened, the date he passed, and the funeral director handling the arrangements. No mention of spouse or children, what he was doing, where he was doing it, just that he passed and handled by a funeral parlor.

This made me a little sad.

As I grow older I sometimes wonder if we’re suppose to thank people in our past for the joy they brought to our life or apologize for something we did when we were stupid and then realized it was stupid when we were smarter. Is this suppose to be part of this thing we call life? I’m sure my Enrichment teacher was very private about his life, obviously his obituary points to this, so I share these thoughts here.

Thank you, Mr. Rayburn, for being a steadying force in a tumultuous fifth grade experience by just being there in Room 210. Thanks for being my first crush. Rest In Peace.

 *BOCES stands for Board Of Cooperative Educational Services. This is a New York State Educational program providing shared educational services for a region. When I was in school it was generally by county, since then the regions have become larger and the services more centralized.

We went to a small family gathering today. My uncle brought along a photo album with some old photos; here I am with my sister and Grandma City. I can vividly remember this photo being taken and I think I was somewhere between two and three years old.

There were several other photos that I scanned with my phone and they make me smile. It’s been a good weekend here in Central New York and it was wonderful to see some of my relatives. Tomorrow we head back home to the desert and I’m looking forward to that as well.

There are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on this blue marble we call Earth. I choose to never forget this fact. It keeps me humble. Our moment in this life is fleeting, nothing more than a flash. After the last breath, my only hope is I am remembered with a smile.

Photos taken tonight at 7:00 PM MST from four miles up Mount Lemmon with my iPhone 13 Pro laying on a steady spot. No flash, no zoom, no special equipment. Keep it simple.

In 1975 one of my favorite shows was the latter half of “The Shazam/Isis Hour”. Hyped up on Honeycomb cereal with two extra tablespoons of sugar, all smothered with raw milk from the dairy farm down the street, my sister and I watched “The Secrets of Isis”. JoAnna Cameron was the lead as Andrea Thomas who could pull out an Egyptian amulet, face the sky, and proclaim “Oh Mighty Isis!” and turn into a superhero to save the day. Many Gen-Xers can incant, “Oh Zephyr Winds which blow on high, lift me now so I can fly.”

Ms. Cameron passed away earlier this week at age 70, after suffering from a stroke. She had retired from acting in 1980, though at one point she held the Guinness Book of World Records for having appeared in the most commercials.

RIP JoAnna Cameron. Thank you for bringing many smiles and warm memories to my life.

Aging gracefully is a beautiful thing. There’s a meme going around on Twitter where we’re encouraged to post a photo if we wear glasses. I posted a photo and immediately lost three followers. I don’t usually notice my follower count, because honestly I don’t really care how many people follow my inane tweets, but the change in number caught my eye and I was a little bit surprised.

I wear glasses. My mustache is gray. I have a gut and I don’t have a six pack that anyone can see. I’m comfortable in my skin, I’m probably in what could be called my mid-50s and I know who I am.

I’m happy being me.

I don’t feel the need to color anything or pull anything tight or inject anything to smooth anything. I’ve earned the laugh lines and I’ve learned to laugh more.

I’m happy being me at 53 and I look forward to what the future brings.

Work just started a company obituary page on the corporate-wide website to do the typical obituary thing for co-workers that have passed. Many have passed recently due to “COVID-19 related complications”. Too many.

I think the biggest thing I’ve lost during the pandemic is my compassion for folks who choose to remain ignorant.

We stopped at a McDonalds on our way home from Vegas this past weekend. The self-serve kiosks were malfunctioning, no one was at the traditional registers, and their seemed to be a sense of panic from the back.

Plus, folks didn’t care if paper was strewn all over the lobby as they picked up their food.

We are not in what I would call “the golden era of American society”.