Tag: OPRFHS
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Memoir: Stranger in a strange land (1978-79)
“I have been a stranger in a strange land.” -Exodus 2:22” It wasn’t strange for me to feel estranged in the years leading up to becoming an actual stranger in a strange land. Yes, right there, in my neighborhood, I often felt the odd one out. At preschool, I learned the importance of engaging with…
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Memoir: Words to live by, Part 1 (1965-72)
I knew just what he meant when he said, “It’s so easy to love. The only hard thing is to be loved.”
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Memoir: Rest in peace, Brenda. You never gave yourself away (1978)
Those lyrics described the way you lived your life–with bold individuality, yet also compassion–revolutionary subversion alongside radical acceptance.
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Memoir: A lineage of male violence (1976-77)
I wake profoundly shaken by this dream, cast down by its revelation, stumbling into the sudden nightmare of day dawning, and I, a virtual parricide.
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Memoir: Early memories of dad (1966-67)
Sports were one place dad felt comfortable interacting with me. Otherwise he acted as men who came of age in the 1940s and 50s did: strong, silent, and cool. Except when it came to sports. In the presence of an athletic contest, dad re-animated. Watching a game on our black and white TV, he’d explosively…
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Memoir: Joking can be serious (1974)
Why do humans laugh? Why do they make jokes? Ask the evolutionary psychologists, and they’ll tell you that people only speak and behave to further the survival of our species. Two scientists at S.U.N.Y Binghamton assert that laughter first began among our ancestors two to four million years ago as a sort of social glue.…
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Memoir Self-reflection: Black and White thinking
As suggested elsewhere, a big part of my family’s culture was centered around the Bible-believing Plymouth Brethren. In the Austin neighborhood, on Leamington Avenue, this group of fundamentalist Christians that included my father’s grandparents established this “Gospel Hall” (photo from 2018) in the 1910s. The congregants of this fellowship ordered their lives by its weekly…
The Wikiness 