Did you notice the above display on Google not long ago? It was Garymas.

As I took a solitary stroll that day and observed Spring arriving in Maryland, I thought of my brother recently telling me he remembered snow falling as he waited in the car with my sister while my father visited my mother and me in the hospital on the Easter Sunday of my appearance.

If on my solitary birthday stroll I felt sad at moments, it was because I wanted a time machine so I could go back and tell my parents, and myself, that it didn’t matter that the baby Gary would grow into a homosexual little boy, adolescent, young man, eventually old man. He would have a partner for most of his life, a spouse after law allowed gay marriage (unthinkable back then); the baby would grow up to be as happy in marriage as the very happiest of spouses. So Mother, Dad, self, I would say, there’s no need for all the worry, the angst, the anxiety ahead of you, the fears of shame. It’s all for nothing. Manufactured distress, a by-product of religion, a bogus God’s dirty chemicals disposed in the stream of life.

So never mind the sadness. Returning on my stroll, I sang O Little Town of Cincinnati, one of my favorite Garymas hymns.