It’s Coming

 “How I Became A Lesbian (and other stories)” is a captivating journey spanning the gamut of human experience. It blends autobiography into romance — and poetry, too –  that caresses the reader’s mind. From a powerful opening depicting resilience in the face of adversity to the realization of love in one’s twilight years, each chapter feels like attending one’s own symphony.

A vivid depiction of success at Carnegie Hall Annex, a command piano performance for Louis Armstrong, and the Hollywood fast lane as a deejay at K-POT – L.A.’s pirate radio station – provide readers with a backstage pass to a life filled with triumphs and challenges. Loika’s storytelling prowess transports us to these significant moments, allowing us to remember each of our own encounters.

Poetic interludes throughout the memoir/love story add a layer of introspection and artistry. These reflective pauses create a rhythm, turning it into a meditation on the human experience.

Most importantly, it serves as an original departure from conventional narratives in the exploration of romance in the twilight years. An honest and tender portrayal challenges societal norms and celebrates the enduring power of love at every stage of life.

It’s at the publishers. Stay tuned!

Merry Christmas!

To my friends and supporters, I salute you. Accordingly, I have something nice to share this Christmas. It’s as nice as reaching out to a stranger and giving him a toke.

That particular gesture was part and parcel of a South Florida Pink Floyd concert, which is chronicled in my book currently under review at a well-regarded publishing company. The book’s title is How I Became a Lesbian (and other stories), and it’s dedicated to Alice. After she passed, she guided my quest.

Alice and I believed in the power of cannabis; that’s why we went West. I felt intimidated whenever gendarmes appeared in my rear-view mirror back East, Not anymore out here! Paranoid behavior went out the window.

Speaking of cannabis, what were its effects? Rather than inhibit our talents, it enhanced them. Here’s proof.

I finished editing my full-length book, filled with the kind of writing that used to appear in the Bucks County Herald. The entire work now is being reviewed by an enthusiastic, well-known book publisher. Even though Alice was my inspiration, readers on this website convinced me I wasn’t tilting at windmills.

In appreciation, I present a photo taken from an Oregon greenhouse in 2021.

It’s legal to grow your own in Oregon.

The taller plants are known as “sativa,” and the smaller ones, “indica.”

“Sativa” promotes activity and can distract you. It’s great for artists pursuing creative outlets but only when combined with self-discipline.

“Indica” is used for slowing you down, meditating or even sleeping.

“Hybrid” marijuana combines the two kinds above — in different proportions and strengths. Everything else is mumbo-jumbo to confuse the consumer.

A relevant caveat No cannabis or CBD products are known to cure the body; they only serve as an adjunct to medically prescribed practice.

So there you are: A quick primer on cannabis.

Merry Christmas!

A Blast from the Past

If I were to die tomorrow, I would like to be remembered as a man of peace, perhaps stupidly so. That’s why I joined the Quakers.

I once revered Judaism as reflecting wisdom from the ancients, and I sought favor from its followers. The vengeance being wrought no longer reflects that noble idea.

In my memoir/love story is an original poem written during the Vietnam War. There is no time like the present to realize it is relevant again.

Where have all the flowers gone?

“Yes, Sing On”©

Unsettled leaves of night float by
Falling from treetops in anguished cry,
Meadowlarks scream for all their worth
Trumpeting the end of this gray-green Earth,
And yes, sing on,
Oh God, sing on,
The days of discovery have found no one.

I wandered through heaven to find myself,
Encountered instead a harmless elf,
A figure of speech he seemed to me
And out of his mouth flew a bumblebee,
And yes, sing on,
Oh God, sing on,
The days of discovery have found no one.

The weather report calls for mushroom clouds,
Peyote prisms in a nuclear crowd,
While butterflies argue with tsetse flies,
Isn’t it funny how time goes by?
And yes, sing on,
Oh God, sing on,
The days of discovery have found no one.

Longview Standouts

After moving to Longview, I found ample opportunity to patronize the area’s eateries. Most of them are forgettable, but a few stand out. It’s only right they be recognized:

Top dog for dinner: Parker’s Steakhouse, Castle Rock, at the I-5 Mt. St. Helens Way exit. Owner/chef Tony Parker pulled up stakes from Longview 10 years ago to a larger facility adjacent to the I-5 turnoff for Mt. St. Helens. Some people may opt for family dining in a large dining room, but I prefer to dine in the restaurant’s ornate bar. Top-end entries at low-end prices enables Kim Stiles (shown above) to serve the best prime rib around.

Guido Smith tends a fully stocked bar.

And if Kim isn’t around, you may spot Parker’s outlandishly handsome bartender, Guido Smith – yes, Smith – who knows finesse rarely seen in these parts.

Honorable mention: The Office 842 on Washington Way, a franchised outlet from Portland. If you want a specialty drink or an inventive late-night appetizer, this is a hip spot. It’s pricey, though.

The parking lot is always full at Longview’s Pancake House.

Top dog for breakfast: Longview’s Pancake House, a locally owned institution on California Way that’s jam-packed till 1:30 pm.

Sarah and Cheyenne share pleasantries while waiting for breakfast orders to be served piping hot.

What caught my eye are the waitresses. None of them wants to quit; they thrive by working at a brisk pace. The pleasant camaraderie attracts regulars and newcomers alike, and the food – especially the Navy bean soup – ain’t bad, either.

Teri’s Restaurant offers a relaxed meal until 8 pm on Tuesdays-Saturdays with occasional music on weekend nights.

Top dog for occasional live music: Teri’s Restaurant. When Tony Parker moved north from West Longview, Teri Weir took over and engaged a host of local musicians to entertain diners in the Old-West-themed saloon and bar. And when the second floor is open, the fun is contagious. A roomy elevator gives everybody access, including misbehaving couples.

Burmese Pythons in Washington State

While strolling around Lake Sacajawea two days ago, I came across a sight to be feared: a Burmese Python. Its handler, named Franklin, sat comfortably in the grass, showing no trepidation as the snake slithered all around his body.

That’s a real change from idyllic ambience at the Japanese Garden.

Developers of Lake Sacajawea added a Japanese garden.

What’s out of order? Aren’t Burmese pythons the scourge of Florida’s Everglades? This female is 12½ feet long and growing every day. And already in Longview, Washington, according to Franklin, there’s one snake larger.

Egad! I didn’t bother to tell Franklin how many eggs this female expels. That’s because he told me the name he’s given this snake:

Fluffy.

Nearing the Finish Line

When I started my memoir/love story, I was numb from loss. Yet I was given a mission.

The love of my life, Alice McCormick, had me promise “to write” ONE DAY before she left this planet. I was not about to let her down.

Then the Aphasia Network stepped in to comfort my loss. Sixty-three days after discovering Alice’s lifeless body, I was invited into a grief session on Zoom but paired with two naive, early-year students. With nothing else to talk about, I sought their input to determine a politically correct way to identify a racial epithet that neighbors and my grandfather used in the 1950s.

The two of them had no clue. They hit the PANIC button. Then they disappeared into the comforting arms of a supervisor who condemned my speech.

Welcome to cancel culture, and the scourge of it. I am anything BUT a racist; yet that word was hurled later at me. Is it because I emerged from that world and wanted to report on it? Do we choose to ignore how much African Americans have evolved since their squalid beginnings?

It makes me wonder what qualifies as history.

I learned about discrimination firsthand in Princeton, New Jersey, because I could not travel with much-whiter boys to perform in 1950s Ohio. That kind of stupidity never fails to enrage me, but I persevere.

I’m running on the fumes. Maybe reviving my Go Fund Me account would help.

No matter what, I’m writing the last two chapters. They’re about Alice.

My Amazon love

Remembering N-town

Sixty-three days after Alice McCormick passed away in 2020, the Aphasia Network planned its annual couples’ retreat. Because of Covid, they made it a “virtual event.” Aware of Alice’s demise, I was summarily invited as a “surviving widower.”

I accepted the invitation. It would have been stupid to refuse.

Both Alice and I loved the stroke survivors we met and several students-in-training, and I wanted to commiserate with them again. I suspected that seeing them on Zoom might help console me, but the virtual mass communication felt pretty empty.

In one of the sessions, two unfamiliar women in their 20s were chosen randomly to be my student counselors, and I determined I wasn’t going to cry for them. Instead, I looked for something else to focus on, so in desperation I grabbed hold of a page containing proposed chapter titles for my upcoming book. After a few strange-sounding niceties, I pointed to the proposed chapter titles. Chapter 4 stood out.

Typed in was a profane version of the N-word bandied about by white people in the 1950s describing the slum community close to downtown Miami. I knew if I ignored the epithets I heard about N-town, my book would be a fraud. Therefore, I tiptoed uncertainly. (I was denied a plum opportunity early in life because my skin color was too dark. Now that my childhood color has dissipated, I look like any old white man. But memories don’t disappear, so vivid moments from the past were relived in my head before currently residing in my manuscript.)

I read the objectionable word aloud and posed a follow-up question to the two students: “Do you think that’s appropriate?” I read the word again. “Is there another way to describe this?” Since these were university students, I wanted their input. We could work together to find acceptable terminology, right?

Wrong!

All of sudden, their live images disappeared, a blank wall took their place and a supervisor appeared forthwith on my computer monitor castigating me for saying and repeating an offensive word. Perhaps I was stupid. Or Pollyannaish. Or something. Nevertheless, my grief losing Alice was magnified.

This conundrum occurred three years ago. I’m a writer, not a coward, right? So afterward, while struggling to rewrite the harsh chapter title, I came up with a politically correct replacement: “N-town with three syllables.” And today, Chapter 4 has been completely written, rewritten and edited to conform to modern-day sensibilities.

Meanwhile, Portland’s Aphasia Network has risen from the dead. A gathering of old friends and adversaries is looming for a renewed camping experience June 9-11, this time in person at the familiar Methodist facility north of the fishing town of Garibaldi on the Pacific Coast. That’s fine with me. However, in anticipation of revisiting treasured memories, I’m being dragged through mud from the past. Former close friends in the group no longer communicate with me, and I suspect I’m being ostracized.

The Aphasia Network coordinates its camping weekends with Pacific University. This year’s event may be its last, so memories of our interactions are important. I also want to refresh the participants’ memories of Alice. But I don’t want any hint of a scandalous character assassination.

Historically, Pacific University once participated in eradicating Indian cultures, seizing their children to create strict boarding schools to “civilize” the “savages.” The infamous Carlisle School in Pennsylvania is an apt comparison. And Pacific originated in a state whose intent was to be lilywhite, threatening black people to leave its boundaries or face the sting of 39 lashes from a bullwhip in retribution.

Much of the state’s discredited liberal policies stem from an overreaction to its racist past. And that hasn’t changed much. Portland is still the whitest big city in the United States. That’s a fact.

Almost in tears three years ago, I related the hue and cry from my sorry interaction with students to my cousin, Margaret Johnston. She advised, “You will have to find a way to truly describe Oregonians – so open-minded but so un-worldly. So quick to judge and ostracize, while all the time touting to be fiercely liberal. But only as long as you think and act as they see fit.”

Margaret was “right on.” She now lives in Arizona.

In their book, The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt reveal three false mantras guiding college students today: “Strive to avoid unpleasant experiences at all costs,” “always trust your emotions over reason” and “the world is a black-and-white battle between good people and bad people. There is no middle ground.” With all the money students commit to attending college, the university experience now panders to students and avoids controversy. Period.

Meanwhile, my three-year-plus writer’s narrative is transitioning to the day I met Alice. I remember how on September 24, 2010, Alice draped her long, sinewy arm around me inside Andre’s, a subterranean wine-and-cheese bar inside the Doylestown (PA) Marketplace, and cooed loudly in my ear, “Oh, here you are, dear. I’ve been looking all over for you.”

That’s when I was smitten. And I had it bad. It took 67 years to finally meet the girl I was made to love.

So I’m trying to avoid stupid distractions. Alice sometimes comes alive in my head, and I trust she will guide me.

At least, I hope she will, because this shit is getting old.

Three-year progress report

The gazebo appearing above was Alice McCormick’s pride and joy.

Ever since her passing three years ago, I’ve been working on the book she wanted me to write. It’s called How I Became a Lesbian (and other stories).”

Chapters 1-17 are complete. Chapter 18 finishes up life in Bucks County before Alice. It will include prime concerts, Grandfather Many Crows, meditation at Pebble Hill, Danawa Buchanan and revisiting the American Boychoir in Princeton.

I’m now 80 years old. Once I finish #18, I’m able – finally – to write about Alice.

That’s the latest. I’m preparing to look for an agent and see if a professional is suitably intrigued. Soon after that happens, I anticipate this website will be overhauled.

a personal view