Tag: family

In its October 2014 issue, the magazine Woman’s Day strayed outside its usual comfort zone with an article about a Christian mother learning to accept and support her transgender son.  In The Son God Gave Me, Gina Kentopp tells Barry Yeoman about her coming to terms with her son’s identity and the process of its formation and the changes she had to go through herself.

When my second child, Kyle, was born in 1994, and the nurse told me I had given birth to a daughter, I was thrilled. I already had a son, Alex, and now, I thought, a baby girl. During the first year of Kyle’s life, I dressed him in every frilly outfit I could.

I use the pronoun “he” when talking about Kyle, because I now understand that he has always been male-his inner soul, when he was born, didn’t match his body.

Those of you that read this regular series know that I am from Hackett, Arkansas, just a mile or so from the Oklahoma border, and just about 10 miles south of the Arkansas River.  It was a rural sort of place that did not particularly appreciate education, and just zoom onto my previous posts to understand a bit about it.

Several folks who follow this regular series, my Pique the Geek one, and my Popular Culture one know that I often use obsolete or archaic spellings for certain, common words.  This is intentional.

Perhaps it is no longer standard English to use these old words, but neither is it incorrect to do so.  I do so partly out of respect whence came I (“whence” is “from where” in a single word, so if you say “from whence” it is sort of like saying “from from where”, sort like folks calling MSDSs “Material Data Safety Sheet Sheets” when they say “MSDS sheets”), but I am not being completely honest.

Another reason that I use them is to try to grab the attention of my readers.  I find it interesting to read pieces from contributors who are sort of off the beaten track.  I do not know if it works well for me or not.  I do believe that my readers realize that I do this not out of ignorance for standard English, but sort of in protest of the conformity to it.

Am I an nonconformist?  As Gibbs would say, “Ya think!?”

Following is a list of words that I often use that are not standard, but not incorrect, and then some recollections that I have for some of the old talk that NEVER was really correct.  This is quite subjective, but here we go.

I originally was going to write about the new Dark Shadows motion picture, but circumstances have intervened.  It turns out that my dear friend’s mum’s twin brother died either late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, alone except for his little dog.  My friend called me around 9:30 Thursday morning to go next door and try to comfort her mum, and I was honored to do so.

Her mum was a basket case.  She and her brother were Christmas Day babies, 65 years ago Christmas past.  I have a brother, but not a twin, and my brother and I are separated by 14 years.  She and her brother were separated by fewer than 14 minutes, so they grew up together.

I did comfort her, and she cried in my arms.  I could not do much except to try to let her know that I really care, and she appreciated that.  Now for the culture part.

Hello, all.  This is sort of an irregular blog for me.  Except about myself, I rarely talk about other family members to protect their privacy.  However, this has been on national news, so their privacy is not very protected already.

Everyone is familiar with violence, at least on the news.  This piece affects me personally, and even though I watched some of the news feed in real time, it was after the medics had already left with the victims.

At some personal risk to my anonymity, I am proud to promote a project from my eldest son, Joe.  (No, his last name is not Lemming).  He is a drummer in the Minneapolis area, and plays in several bands and in the studio with several other projects.  In other words, he’s “in demand”.  He is the eldest of my two drummer sons.  Imagine what dinner table conversations were like in my home!  Joe, please stop tapping and pass the butter.  Ryan, please stop smacking that glass with your pen.  

In my head it was always “Oh gawd please make it stop!!!!!!!!!!!!!.”  Of course, the payoff is when you get to see them come in to their own, and not on your dining room table.  My wife is a vocalist and I am a sax player, so I guess we’re at fault anyway.  

The current band Joe’s promoting is called Kill to Kill, and it’s so unusual I thought you people would get a kick out of it. It’s a punk trio, with bass, baritone guitar and drums only.  The singer reminds me of no one – I think this act is completely unique.  Follow me below the fold for video.  

Welcome to the Dog’s on going letter writing campaign for torture accountability. Most Monday’s we write to the decision makers in the nation in order to prod them in the right direction on the issue of torture. How it works is the Dog provides the letter and the links and you provide the action by either cutting and pasting the letter or writing your own.

“Originally posted at Squarestate.net“

Crossposted–with minor edits–from Street Prophets, in the belief that this extraordinary ‘ordinary man’ deserves wider recognition, and in the hope that my brief and incomplete account of his life will prove to be of interest.

He wasn’t wealthy, or powerful, or famous. (Though he did leave his mark on one city’s landscape; more on that below). He was merely an exemplar of that ‘Greatest Generation’ we’ve learned to revere and respect. And he was my father.

Born in Bismarck, North Dakota in 1922, he was a true son of the West. His father was a jack-of-all-trades: mechanic, fireman, cowboy, lumberjack (a man who left his parents’ home–and their harsh evangelical faith–as a teenager, never setting foot in a church again–though he carried a pocket New Testament with him for the rest of his life). His mother was the daughter of immigrants who left the German empire as that country became increasingly rigid and militaristic under the second Wilhelm.

The family wandered throughout several western states before finally landing on the Oregon Coast at the beginning of the hard years of the Depression. At one point they lived on a houseboat and were so poor that the only food they had was what they could catch off the side of the boat.

Dad graduated from high school, joined the Air Force in 1942, and served in the South Pacific; like many veterans, he spoke little of his wartime experiences, except to say that ‘we did the right thing.’

I'm revisiting a previous piece of writing from August of last year. Today is my oldest sister's birthday – Jackie would have been 71 years old, born September 28, 1936. Midst of the Great Depression, midpoint between the Great Crash of 1929 and the final year of WWII, 1945.

In reading through this again, I realize that I wrote it as if I knew her. But really, how can a much younger sister, only a teenager so many years ago, know a sibling who is in their middle thirties? I write with a great deal of supposition as I carry the anecdotal memories of the other parts of my family forward. Most of all these last few years, I listened to the sometimes faulty, often biased, almost always self-focused stories of my other sister, Sharon. I heard her side of things, and sometimes her perspective filled in gaps in the hollows of the family legends initially created for me by my mother. Sometimes Sharon's words served to underline the inequalities of family dynamics. A family organic pulses in that way –  the web that connects us as family is either nourished or fermented by how each of us share memories or opinions with each other.