Groups and meetings

I’ve mentioned before that we often held group meetings at Athol Women’s Retreat. When I told the therapist I was seeing at the Yale Health Plan that I was leaving and moving to the Adirondacks, she told me I didn’t have to leave New Haven to be a lesbian. “You can stay here,” she said, [...]

Cincinnati, Spring 1975

After a week in Chicago with my brother, his wife and son, I flew to Cincinnati for a week with Betty, the woman I’d met at the retreat. It’s difficult to write about that week, because to this day I don’t understand why she wanted me to visit. I still had my right hand in [...]

Spring thaw

Spring began to creep into the Adirondacks in late March with snow melting. All winter the local vet had tied flies in his office in anticipation of spring fishing, and the time had finally come. Not far from the retreat, the upper reaches of the Hudson River thawed and turned into a mass of foam [...]

Winter 1975

The signs were always there, but I ignored them. It wasn’t what I wanted to see. In October 1974, after Sara and I had moved in together in the cabin at AWR, I took a picture of her sitting on the steps. Her short blonde hair was curly and unkempt and she was wearing blue [...]

Christmas in the Adirondacks

Christmas morning, 1974, was cold, but clear. It would be one of the balmiest days of our winter in the Adirondacks, but we had no idea what January, February, and March could bring. When the temperature dipped to -40⁰ at night, it would be difficult to remember that Christmas Eve, it had been 15⁰, and [...]

Pool

Pool. As Harold Hill said, it starts with P and that rhymes with T and that stands for trouble. I love shooting pool. When we moved to Birmingham in 1960, our neighbors had a non-regulation small pool table on which they let me learn to play. One daughter was two years older than me, one [...]

The sisters’ visit

During the winter of 1974/75, we sometimes had very sparse weekends at the Athol Women’s Retreat when few women visited. On such a weekend, four women came to stay, and I’ve never forgotten them. They arrived in one car, two sisters, the girlfriend of one of them, and the sisters’ brother’s widow. All were white, [...]

Comings and goings

Early in the fall two women join the collective, bringing our numbers to nine adults and eight children. I found it comforting to outnumber the children who were bright enough and motivated enough to ask for an equal vote, although they never did. I just liked that even if they had asked, we would still [...]

B.O.C.E.S.

It takes a lot of work to take care of a main house, an eight room annex, five cabins and a barn. We weren’t really trained for the necessary maintenance tasks, but New York State had BOCES. I think it stands for Board of Continuing Education Services. Something along that line.  It was a confederation [...]

Cooking, Cleaning and Ruth

The kitchen at Athol Women’s Retreat was a warm and boisterous place. Whatever problems arose in other parts of the house seemed to dissipate in the kitchen. We had two large gas stoves, the old fashioned type each with six burners on top, counter tops galore, a huge pantry, and a stainless steel topped table. [...]