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LGBT Senior’s Weekly Writing Prompt: Character Speed Dating
Build a Character in Five Minutes
Most of you know I write fiction, and I conduct writing workshops in addition to journaling. Here’s a fun way to explore character creation.
Characters don’t arrive fully formed. They show up in fragments — a gesture, a habit, a thing they always say. Answer these five questions about a person who just appeared in your mind. Write the first thing that comes:
• What does this person do first thing in the morning?
• What are they afraid of that they’ve never told anyone?
• What do they keep in their pockets or their bag?
• What do they want more than anything right now?
• What one sentence do they say so often that people who love them could finish it for them?
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LGBT Senior’s April eBook and Audiobook Giveaway: One Thing Or Another – Life, Aging, and the Absurdities of It All (Second Edition)
Welcome to the Second Edition of One Thing or Another, a collection of humor columns that takes a look at life, aging, and the absurdities of it all. It’s been a few years since the first edition, and even more since they were written. The Big Six-Oh is now the Big Six-Seven, and life is just as absurd as it was the first go-round.
From our culture’s refusal to use the word ‘old,’ to the sometimes comical consequences of aging in body and mind, if not always in spirit, you’re sure to enjoy this skewed look at life’s foibles for the ages. Collected from the author’s personal columns, these short essays will make you chuckle, recognize yourself, and sometimes grimace at the not-always-funny price we pay for simply staying alive.
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LGBT Senior’s Health Beat: SilverSneakers and the Power of Free Fitness on YouTube
LGBTSr’s Health Beat
If you’re 65 or older and looking for a safe, fun way to stay active, SilverSneakers might already be available to you, and you might not even know it. For my husband and I, we weren’t eligible a couple years ago when the local gym only offered it through Medicare Advantage plans (something we would never have). But recently it was offered through our Humana supplemental plan, so we joined. It’s great. Free gym membership in exchange for being a senior. Not my first choice as a tradeoff, but since I can’t get any younger I’ll take it.
SilverSneakers is a fitness and lifestyle program designed for older adults, and it’s available at no cost through select Medicare Advantage and some supplemental plans. That means if you have the right coverage, you could be joining live online classes or streaming workouts entirely for free.
Best of all? You don’t need a Medicare plan to get started. SilverSneakers has a YouTube channel with nearly 800 videos covering strength training, cardio, balance, and flexibility — one of the most generous free fitness resources online for older adults.
The workouts are led by instructors who understand aging bodies, and modifications are always offered so you can move at the level that’s right for you. Many use only a chair and light hand weights. Whether you’re a longtime gym-goer or just getting back on your feet, there’s something here for you.
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The Twist Podcast 324: Venal Virtue Signaling, Gardening Goodness, and an Interview with Alexandra Paul
This week Mark and Rick reveal fun facts about cloning, the benefits of gardening, and cringey virtue signaling. After that we soak up some wisdom from Jo, following Rick’s interview with actor and activist Alexandra Paul.
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LGBT Senior Presents News on the Positive Side, by Cora Berke
News On the Positive Side– by Cora Berke
“It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.” – Eleanor Roosevelt.
At any given moment we can have our fill of bad news, whether we are doom scrolling, watching our favorite news channel, listening to a podcast, or picking up a newspaper. Yet, if we look for the positive, we can find it in people who strive to make the world a better place.
International Transgender Day of Visibility was recently celebrated worldwide on March 31. It was created in 2009 by Rachel Crandall-Crocker, a psychotherapist and transgender activist from Michigan. She previously founded Transgender Michigan in 1997 for her local community and wanted to create a broader holiday for transgenders worldwide, in addition to the established solemn Transgender Day of Remembrance.
In a 2021 interview, Crocker told reporter Samantha Allen of Them,” I thought about creating the International Transgender Day of Visibility for a number of years. I was upset that the only day that we had was Transgender Day of Remembrance, because I tend to get really depressed on that day. I wanted a day when, rather than talking about those who passed away, we could talk about those of us who were alive. And I wanted a day that would bring together trans people from all over the world.” Now in its seventeenth year, it is celebrated throughout the world.
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The Twist Podcast Android News Edition: Science, Politics, Entertainment and Culture Small Plates
If you’ve been listening to The Twist Podcast for any length of time, you know that Mark and Rick have opinions about things. Science, politics, food, entertainment, and the general state of the world as it lurches forward into whatever this era is going to be called when historians get around to naming it.
So we did what any reasonable pair of podcasters would do: we cloned ourselves.
Meet the android versions of Mark and Rick — same voices, same sensibilities, significantly less coffee dependency — and they’re here every week with The Twist Podcast: Android News Edition, your weekly roundup of everything worth knowing and a few things worth arguing about. Will we go weekly? If the interest is there and we can hire more robots.
Each week we’re covering four beats: science, politics, food trends, and entertainment. Politics, because ignoring it hasn’t been working out great for anyone. Science, because it tells you more about the world than just the news does. Food trends, because you deserve to know that beef tallow is making a comeback and tiramisu is officially everywhere. And entertainment, because even in complicated times the shows we watch and the stories we tell matter.
New episodes drop every Friday. Find us wherever you’ve always found The Twist, same feed, no new subscriptions required.
— Mark & Rick
(The originals. Probably.)
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Rick Rose Featured Essay: Taking Stock of Privilage
The following is reprinted with permission from Rick Rose Essays
Taking Stock of Privilege
There is a moment when abundance stops feeling normal and starts feeling like something worth examining. I have three toilets in a home I live in alone. I have two heated garage parking spots and one car. I have a dishwasher, an air fryer, a microwave, three electric blankets for my European feather bed and favorite chairs – one of which is a 240-hand massage chair, something most people will never sit in in a lifetime.
I have 1,800 square feet of living space, three storage closets stuffed full of things I mostly see on holidays – if I even remember to pull them out. I have two walk-in closets and a foyer closet. On a cold morning, my biggest decision is which hoodie in which color, with or without pockets. And on a hot evening, which length of short and what feel of fabric do I choose.
And yet everything that actually matters to me fits in two shoeboxes.
Letters. Notes. Photographs. Small trinkets from people I love and people who have loved me.
No brand name. No price tag. Nothing you could shop for. Just proof that I was known by someone, and that I knew them back. That is the inventory that never lies.
And somewhere between those two shoeboxes chosen from the hundred pairs of shoes I have collected is the question I think about more and more – what is the quiet weight of having too much? It’s time I let that thought lead my ways.
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LGBT Senior Announces: One Thing or Another – Life, Aging, and the Absurdities Of It All Now A Free Audiobook
OR LISTEN AT YOUR LEISURE HERE
Getting older was supposed to come with wisdom. Nobody mentioned the absurdity.
In One Thing or Another: Life, Aging and the Absurdities of It All, Mark McNease takes a clear-eyed, warmly funny look at the indignities, surprises, and occasional revelations of growing older. With the timing of a seasoned storyteller and the honesty of someone who has lived enough to laugh about it, McNease finds humor in the everyday moments most of us are too busy — or too embarrassed — to examine closely.
From the small humiliations of a body that no longer cooperates to the baffling speed of a world that keeps changing without asking permission, these columns remind us that aging is something we’re all doing together. We might as well laugh.
One Thing or Another is the perfect companion for anyone who has ever caught their reflection and thought, when did that happen?
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LGBT Senior Announcements: Cora Berke Joins LGBTSr As Contributing Writer
Cora Burke I started this website 15 years ago with several contributing writers. The amazing Stephanie Mott, trans activist and luminous soul, passed away a few years ago, and David Webb, of Dallas Voice fame, retired. It’s been a long and sometimes lonely time, and I’m thrilled to welcome Cora Burke as a contributing writer to LGTSr. – Mark
About Cora
Cora Berke has dabbled in writing since reading Nancy Drew Mysteries in 3rd Grade.
She has written for the Bucks County Herald covering municipal and school board meetings. Cora also blogged for the Bucks County Visitor’s Center and wrote a food column for Out in Jersey Magazine.
She served on the Board of FACT (Fighting AIDS Continuously Together) and volunteered over 15 years for New Hope Celebrates to preserve LGBTQ+ history.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Cora now lives in Lambertville, NJ.An avid reader, she also loves knitting and gardening.
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LGBT Senior On the Lookout: Uncloseted Media Provides LGBTQ Journalism That Doesn’t Look Away
In a media landscape where LGBTQ coverage has been shrinking for years, Uncloseted Media is doing the opposite, digging deeper, harder, truer.
Launched in 2024 by journalist and NYU professor Spencer Macnaughton, Uncloseted Media was founded on the belief that once marriage equality was won, much of the mainstream press quietly decided the story was over. It wasn’t, it isn’t, and Uncloseted Media was launched to prove that.
Uncloseted Media describes its mission plainly: providing objective, nonpartisan, rigorous, original journalism that investigates America’s anti-LGBTQ landscape and elevates everyday American heroes. No hot takes, no noise, just journalism.
