My Little Town -- Easy Decisions 20120919: Regular Blog or Time Well Spent
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...
View ArticleAmazing Open Letter to Romney
I am off today - preparing some remarks about the Voter Rights Caucus I attended at the DNC last week for the Monroe Democrat Club's monthly meeting.So I was browsing the intertubes and found this...
View ArticleThe Kindness of Beavers
I have a sometime neighbor I'll call Jack. It's not his real name, but short for Jackass, which is an accurate description of him. He lives in Seattle, but has a cabin along the creek in our canyon in...
View ArticleFighting the scourge of Nice Girl Guilt
Bit of a personal rant and realization...I unfriended her on Facebook today. She is a friend that runs in the same social circles (I’ve known her for years), with some of the same interests. She has...
View ArticleMy Little Town 20120926: School Lunch
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...
View ArticleMy Little Town 20121003: The Things We Did for Fun
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...
View ArticleMy Little Town 20121024: The Day I Met Allen Ginsberg
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...
View ArticleIt's Time I Owned Up
I have a confessionI'm a 47%er "welfare queen." Well, I'm not on welfare per se, just food stamps. What's even worse though is - I'm on food stamps for the third time! Talk about a serial moocher!...
View ArticleTo the 16-Year-Old Who Knocked on My Door, Asking That I Vote for Obama
You looked so young when I opened the door, a clipboard tucked against your side and your cheeks flushed, smiling expectantly.I assumed at first that you were seeking donations for the high school...
View ArticleDear Max: A Letter To Max Cleland From Hill 471 Khe Sanh
Dear Max:Well, here I am, Hill 471 in Khe Sanh. I came here because I love and admire you and since I was touring Vietnam I figured what the hell, I'll head up to Khe Sanh and find Hill 471 and stand...
View ArticleSurprise; Your Grandson is a Girl!
Five days after my fifteen-year-old daughter Alice reveals herself as, well HERself, and two days after she breaks the news to her father and brother, we have the following conversation.“So who should...
View ArticleThe Trans-Man In My Pocket
Alice has been be-bopping near the kitchen window for nearly an hour when William Carlos arrives. It is ten days after her revelation, the one in which she told us that she was in fact SHE. That same...
View ArticleMy apolitical mom just became an advocate!
Well she used to be apolitical. Growing up in southern California, Mom was never into politics. All us kids had a fairly liberal point of view but political discussions were never encouraged. Never...
View ArticleMy Little Town 20121031: Halloween in the Day
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...
View ArticleMy Little Town 20121107: Voting Then and Now
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...
View ArticleRomney Lost Because of My Dad
No, my dad is not Barack Obama, David Plouffe, or even the guy who filmed the 47% video.But Romney lost because of my dad and voters like him. Today, I have read the predictable Republican tripe about...
View ArticleThe Nature of the Beast: My Sean Hannity Adventure
Back in the early 90's, before his apotheosis as a Fox News superstar, Hannity was a second string Right Wing shock jock toiling in the Atlanta market. In the run up to the ill fated Atlanta Olympics,...
View ArticleMy Little Town 20121114: When Dad Blew off His Leg
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...
View ArticleWhat's behind that smile: dental care and insurance
As I follow the debates about Obamacare: about rising health care costs, about insurance, about coverage and denials and debt, I've often found myself drawn into the side questions and stories about...
View ArticleOMG, Marvin K Redpost IS a Girl!
In the early weeks of our daughter's gender transition, I experience a series of “Ah Ha!” moments. In each instance, I immediately stop whatever I'm doing and rush to her for confirmation. A few days...
View ArticleMy Little Town 20121121: More Old Words
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...
View ArticleSuper-Progressive Mommy Conquers Intimate Apparel
When my 15-year old daughter Alice revealed herself, I did what felt at the time like the most natural thing in the world … I believed her. While the child standing in front of me still looked for all...
View ArticleLenticular Animation; How My Mickey Became a Minnie
In early February of 2008, my 15-year old son Jordan revealed, first to his therapist and then to me, that in her heart and her head, she was a girl. For three days, I kept her secret but pressed her...
View ArticleMy Little Town 20121219: Christmas Trees
I apologize for not being around the past couple of weeks. I have been busy with Christmas goodie baking and some personal matters. I shipped off a box of treats to the former Mrs. Translator on...
View ArticleDefending the Poor: A Journey in Self-Actualization
Last Friday, I put on two blue socks, a white shirt, and a yellow tie in preparation for a job interview. I've done this more than two dozen times in the last two years. You see, I am a third-year law...
View ArticleConquering the Room For Ladies
Three weeks into my daughter's gender transition, we make our first public appearance as a family. In retrospect, this momentous event should have occurred at a more auspicious venue than the local Red...
View ArticlePieces of Struggle
On Saturdays, with her grandmother mostly out of the room, I tutor Guadalupe Figueroa, aged 14, at the family's kitchen table. There is a picture of the Last Supper hanging above us, with colorful...
View ArticleEscape From The Penis Palace
(March 2008) It's been a month since Alice unzipped her Boy Suit and from Day One, she's been nagging me about Estrogen. After double-checking that estrogen wasn't the new underground drug high, I...
View Article"Two North" - A Christmas Story
This is a repost"Two North" is a story about one Christmas when my mom was spending time on the psychiatric ward of our town's hospital after trying to commit suicide to escape a physically-abusive...
View ArticleI couldn't celebrate Christmas this year
I haven't really been able to celebrate Christmas this year. Or last year. Or the year before that. The year before that was my father's last Christmas. He spent it in a hospital bed that had been...
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My Grandmother has brain cancer
Yesterday I went to visit her in the Hospital. I wept, and I'm not a man to be brought to tears easily, but I wept as I looked at the mother of my father sleeping in a hospital bed. She is all...
View ArticleBaseball Cards
When I was a young boy, growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta in the early 80s, I visited the local sports card store with an obsessively. Often, I just stood and gawked at the expensive, rare cards...
View ArticleMore Adventures Of The Phoneman
I stopped working for a moment, lit a cigarette and thought to myself, “How did I get here?" How did I come to be standing in a muddy ditch, chin deep in thorn bushes wiping mouse piss off my hands?...
View ArticleBecause A Girl Needs Support
(April 2008) Six weeks after my daughter Alice unzips her Boy Suit, I manage to schedule us a lunch date with the facilitator of the local transgender support group held in our town's tiny (and now...
View ArticleMy Little Town 20130109: Not on Sunday!
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...
View ArticleBroken Promises of GOOD Mental Health Care
(2008) In early May, four months after fifteen-year-old Jordan became Alice I get a panicked phone call from her therapist twenty minutes before I'm scheduled to pick her up. I leave work and drive...
View ArticleThis Is Becoming A Habit
(May 2008)After a breakdown in her therapist's office, my sixteen year-old daughter Alice ends up at Sutter Psychiatric on a 72-hour hold for the third time in a year and a half. It's mid-afternoon the...
View ArticleMy Dad is Dying
Back in November, I wrote a post about my father. This is a follow up.My Dad is dying.There is no sugarcoating it. No “nice” way to say something so horrible. You try to avoid the d-word, to pretend...
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Pride, Pirates And Men In Fancy Frocks
In June of 2008, we celebrated my daughter Alice's 16th birthday at the Santa Cruz Pride Parade. We'd enjoyed the parade from the sidelines for years, but until four months ago, Alice was still hidden...
View ArticleGetting prepared for the future
which of course means there will be a future, which is always good news!Sometime in the next few days Leaves will leave the hospital and return to our home. But it will not be the same, certainly in...
View ArticleThe Honey And Vinegar of Pronouns
High on the list of things I wish I could explain to people about children like mine, is the importance of pronouns. In general, we don't think about them all that much, but for those like my daughter...
View ArticlePride And Shame
In September of 2008, my 16 year-old daughter Alice shoves her way onto the planning committee for Modesto's 3rd annual LGBT Pride Festival. She takes to carrying around a notebook into which she...
View ArticleI Was Just Elected Vice Chair of my County Democratic Party
I have never been a politician. I've always run other peoples' campaigns, or vaccinated the elderly, or looked for ways to treat substance abuse, or dragged groups of young leaders with me to Netroots...
View ArticleRace, Rape and Empowerment
Last night, I had a dream about Howard Street.When I was growing up in Chicago's East Rogers Park, Howard Street was the edge of the known universe. That was where the neighborhood changed and white...
View ArticleDating in Memphis (An Ongoing Saga)
As someone recently thrust, kicking if not screaming, into the ranks of relationship-challenged singles, the subject of dating is timely for me. Having never actively dated in Memphis, where I now...
View ArticleI Will Be Me
Should I be tall, Or can I be short? Should I be vegan, Or can I eat pork?Should I be thin, Or can I be thick? Should I stay single, Or say “yes” to Nick?Should I color my hair, Maybe blue, brown or...
View ArticleThe Two Men I Love
Is it their smile, their voice, their touch? They both give me so very much. I cannot imagine my life without either one. I am most definitely in love with two men and I'll openly admit it. Daily they...
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My sisters fifth last Christmas.
A desert ChristmasI'm not usually a Big fan of the holiday seasons.I'm not sure why. I think having an un-fun, and unfriendly dad took all the fun of out Christmas and out of almost everything, life...
View ArticleDonald Trump is my father (metaphorically).
(First diary, please be kind.)My father is Donald Trump.Metaphorically, of course — to my knowledge, we share no DNA. But like Donald Trump, my dad, is a middle-aged white man who “doesn’t hate black...
View ArticleMusic Wins! A Personal Black History Month Story
It’s a bitterly cold Thursday in Texas, folks – tons of people without power, water, and/or internet; classes at local schools are canceled; sheets of ice covering all the roads, which were already...
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