This past March, a few of my joints started kvetching about missing their naps. I’d been ranging around in my woods and garden, doing early spring mulching &etc. I turned 69 at the end of last year and suddenly realized I might end up watching my flowerbeds go to the weeds, as my father did his garden during his late 80s. By the time I arrived in Madison, Wisconsin at my childhood home every July, it was hours daily to bring Dad’s beds back to presentable status. The gardens I created and nurtured in Kingston were larger by several magnitudes, thus, realistic thinking took root.
Considering I’ve been spat at, yelled at, scolded, shunned and ignored in my 9 years living in Ulster County town, Kingston, New York, I started scouting out small houses on small plots in cities north of me. The thought of a fresh start glimmered on the horizon.
Now that I’m gone from there, having found exactly the little house to buy at a good price and remodel with the money from the Kingston sale, while slowly planting the 50 odd dahlias, roses, wildflowers, daylilies, nasturtiums and marigolds (there’s more but this article would become too long) I surprise myself with an immediate sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, relief and optimism.
There was one part of one afternoon when I felt that emptiness for the topic of leaving my estranged older son in the town he lives in since college, but that was it. I sent his childhood artwork to his address and kept only the best artifacts, then sent his younger brother a comparable box to his father’s co-op apartment address in Brooklyn. I felt they should have their first grade stories, their little sculptures, their grade reports. I kept the homemade Mother’s Day cards and the best specimens. I threw away or deposited under flowerbed mulch the artwork that didn’t make the cut.
The owl stone my excellent mover schlepped here from the Sculpture Garden at the Kingston place now guards the dahlias and calla lilies in front of the house. I’ve got to get a better solar light to show it off at night. The granite block she sits on was here, randomly left in the back yard, a match made in heaven. I need to mulch this garden. The weather’s been a bit dry.
I’ve written Buffett and Good Works letters, explaining the plights of trans widows as well as the fact that many of these women live in or around Kingston, often stuck in this untenable marriage to a suddenly full time crossdresser because of young children and finances. I probably left my return address off, fearing their staffers would come and spray paint nonsense on my house.
Peter Buffett is responsible for the firing of one of the Black leaders of the town, Tyrone Wilson, from his show at Buffet-funded Radio Kingston. He’d been talking honestly about the careless speech references to various ethnic groups he’d heard in his Bronx childhood, ruminating about some now forgotten phrase from his high school football years. Maybe a Black lineman got benched for such a remark at the high school—the details have dimmed. Tyrone knows everybody.
As it happens, my son was involved in the “struggle session” Kingston Democratic Party politicos put Mr. Wilson through earlier, after a self-admitted bipolar polarizing figure, Callie Jayne, had spied on his family Facebook page. She made herself busy finding a post of Tyrone’s to his own NYC relatives when a niece was startled by a crossdressing male in a public women’s bathroom there. Ms. Jayne, who claims to be non-binary now, despite being mother of two daughters, called my son to report that Tyrone had the temerity to tell his relatives that men should not be going into the ladies’ lavatories, agreeing with the patriarchs of the Wilson family that daughters need protecting. Callie Jayne found this abhorrent and offensive, despite the fact that only his family had seen it and it hadn’t “gone viral.” This is a woman who called me a “rich white lady” to my face, when soliciting funds for her now defunct charity.
This was during the shutdowns of covid, and they corralled Tyrone Wilson into meeting a bunch of them outside in Hasbrouck Park, where they took turns expounding his list of sins. When I heard about it I called up Tyrone to make a mother’s apology but of course by then my son had already refused to talk to me so I could not work on his manners and lack of tact. I wrote my son a note mentioning the Chinese Cultural revolution when children forced struggle sessions on their parents and often these ungrateful offspring got violent. Some died of their wounds.
I wonder how the participants’ recollections are affected now by the recent Supreme Court decisions supporting female only women’s and girls’ sports?
When I moved to Kingston after selling my Brooklyn co-op in 2017, the politics of the town was evenly divided and the county legislature had a slim Republican majority. The district’s representative in Congress was John Faso, a Republican.
Now, with Kingston’s reputation as a “trans-friendly” locale, there’s no avoiding the crossdresser and his boom box, dancing almost daily on Broadway in front of a bar called Tubby’s, appearing to be advertising “services,” in my humble opinion. He’s also committing sins against the art of choreoraphy. The nearby youth Hip Hop school, EEC, has trans flags all over their hallways. I went in there, asking if they might be interested in furniture I didn’t plan to take in the move, saw the flags, and launched into my assessment of this brainwashing for their fully-enrolled nursery school program, and Drew Andrew’s daughter agreed with me, implying they’d been coerced into putting them up. Drew is the tour de force hip hop teacher and choreographer, getting children of all ages out there performing under the lights at the historic theater near the no-talent crossdressing street performer’s spot by Tubby’s. His boombox is aways turned up full volume and the police apparently feel constrained from reminding him of noise laws and illegal interference with foot traffic on the sidewalk.
As I’ve mentioned in past videos on Trans Widow Ute Heggen YouTube channel, the police have been called on me a couple of times by the trans flag waving neighbors, when I campaigned against the ludicrous language of Proposal 1 two years ago. The language of “gender expression” being the core of their intended insertion into the New York State Constitution. It passed, due to the fact that the media didn’t report accurately on the likely effects of this ballot initiative.
I will finish this epistle by reporting the fact that the local NY state senator, Michelle Hinchey, would not allow her GOP opponent to even bring up the topic of sex trait medicalization of minors or detransitioners during debates in the last election cycle. This didn’t surprise me, as I’d called her office asking to speak to her as my elected official, regarding the “Gender Unicorn” being taught in school and my Piaget-informed response, and the staffer hung up on me, the elder abuse dripping from her dismissive voice.
As I’ve become more vocal, telling my story to any likely receptive traditionalists, I’ve been told by Hispanics and African Americans, “we’re not allowed to say these things.” It’s important to bring it up and let people see what they see.
Please write in the comments any similar experiences where you live. It’s super to have left the above bollocks behind. Thanks! Ute
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