Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: When I'm Sixty-Four

Monday, January 26, 2015

When I'm Sixty-Four

When I get older losing my hair
Many years from now
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?
If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door?
Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I'm sixty-four?
Beatles

Our pioneers are blazing the trail once again, this time in senior centers and nursing homes.

Seniors in the LGBTQ community need not grow old alone
Participants discuss the future of the senior programming at the LGBTQ Center in Las Vegas on Dec. 11, 2014.
Los Vegas Sun
By Jackie Valley
Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015

When 64-year-old Gary Payne retired as a nurse, he encountered a problem many seniors face: boredom.

But as a gay man — he recently married his partner of 37 years — Payne said he didn’t feel entirely comfortable at Southern Nevada’s many senior centers. Most are filled predominantly with straight retirees.
“You feel like you’re the only person who is different,” Payne said.

The Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada hopes to reach people like Payne with new senior programming. Called ACT III, short for “aging communities together,” the programming aims to provide a safe haven for people 50 and older who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual or two-spirit, as well as their allies, said Holly Reese, senior and transgender programs manager for the Center.

Here in Connecticut the senior centers are stepping in to the gap, three towns have gotten together to hold events for LGBT seniors. I went to the first event which was a coffee house and there were about 20 – 25 people who came to listen to the music and to socialize with others. For one gay couple it was the first time that they went out, they are shut-ins, they thought the coffee house was fabulous.

When I go to the photo club at my town’s senior center, I feel a little awkward even though they have treated me very well and have used proper pronouns.

“The younger generation takes for granted sometimes a lot of things the older generation has had to fight and spill their blood to get,” Reese said.

And we are still fighting for.

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Quotes

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person… People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist
James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

"The point is that there are always obstacles, whether they seem insurmountable or merely bothersome. The question is not how difficult the path, but whether in your heart, you wish to undertake the journey."
Zandru's Forge

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its got to
Be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to
Be carefully
Taught
You've got to be taught
To be
Afraid
Of people
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade

South Pacific
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rogers

Monday, January 26, 2015

When I'm Sixty-Four

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