What I Believe, Part I: How I Got Here
At every turn, new and challenging ideas confronted me, and I argued with every single one of them.
Read moreCategory Archives: Personal Narrative
Unemployable: My Final Résumé
I feel like I’ve earned the right to say a few words on my way out the door.
Read moreEpistle to the Exiles
…the path is narrow, the lights dim, and the voices of those walking it are subdued.
Read moreDía de los Muertos, Día de los Vivos
I reflect periodically on the fact that if my sister hadn’t contracted a rare, brutal cancer, I almost certainly wouldn’t be here.
Read moreMy New Year’s Resolution (It Isn’t What You Think)
No more stories about how horrible a pol or billionaire is.
Read moreMy Fuzzy Life
I sometimes have almost no idea what the heck is going on.
Read moreBlack Friday Memo: Unthankful
Most of my friends are a thousand miles away.
Read moreResting Bitch Face
Let’s begin with an unhappy admission: I am not a pretty man.
Read more19th Century Day
I was born 22,314 days ago. 22,314 days before that it was still the 19th century.
Read moreWhat Would Grandmother’s Job Be?
What would my grandmother’s career have been if she’d had the educational opportunities I did.
Read moreAncestry DNA Results and My Mystery Grandmother
Fascinating. To me, anyway… I just got the results back on my Ancestry DNA test.* I suppose mine are like everybody’s: they confirmed a lot of what I already knew and also threw a couple little curves at me. A slight preface: My family has always been working folks and while official records exist, our oral history was longer on
Read moreWatching the Wheels
NOTE: I penned this a few months ago but never posted it. I’m now in deep enough to see some of the warts, and COVID certainly does northing to make you feel secure. But I was right. And that feels really good. _____ Finally, I’m off the merry-go-round. “Surely you’re not happy now you no longer play the game…” A
Read moreFrom Norris to winterSmith: A Long Quest for Identity
One of the first things my parents did when I was born was saddle me with the wrong name: Norris Gilmer Smith, Jr.
Read moreEpitaph
I can’t decide what to have them put on my tombstone. Advice? 1: He was a simple country boy. 2: The world ends not with a bang Not even a whimper But with ellipses… 3: He was a blind man playing tag with ninjas in the dark
Read moreJane is gone
My mother could be … difficult.
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lullaby pit 