Category: Death and Loss

Goodbye, Scratchy

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Tonight my heart is heavy. At 12:40 pm this afternoon, we said our final goodbyes to Scratchy the Tuxedo Cat, who we were privileged to have as a fur baby for almost 15 years, and boy, was he was loved hard. He led a good life right to the very end.

He was a wanderer, a free spirit, an escape artist, a skilled stalker, and a seasoned sofa-lounger. Scratchy made full use of his nine lives (plus a few extra), having endured such anomolies as losing a top front fang, having a chunk of his ear ripped off in a cat fight, and surviving a bullet shot to the head by an angry, senile man who at one time was our distant neighbor.

Throughout his life Scratchy was bestowed honors such as Continue reading →

One Year Ago Today: The ‘Very Fine’ Stranger Beside You

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Found this in today’s social media archives, from one year ago today. Author unknown, but incredibly on point.

Aug. 16, 2017

You know what worries me? It’s not that a group of racist idiots lit some tiki torches and decided to have a rally.

I worry that on Monday they’ll go back to their job in human resources and decide who gets hired and who gets fired.

They’ll put their uniform back on and “serve and protect.”

They’ll sit on a jury and decide the fate of a young person of color.

They’ll teach in a kindergarten class. Continue reading →

If I Hear The Circular Argument “Guns Don’t Kill People; People Kill People” One More Time, I’m Going To Get Sick

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Originally published at Medium

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’all. Please stop debating whether guns kill people, or people kill people. The two are not mutually exclusive. Here’s the reality: People with guns kill people. We can’t just simply separate the two. The fact that this debate is still going on is like banging your head against the wall. Will common sense ever filter into this discussion? Your fellow Americans are grieving in overwhelming proportions of unimaginable pain, which most of us — God willing — may never know. Do we really need to argue semantics and philosophy here?  Continue reading →

Thoughts And Prayers Are Meaningless Without Action

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Sunday, November 5th at 11:20 a.m., a deranged white man donning all black, a ballistic vest, and an assault rifle casually walked into the First Baptist Church in small town Sutherland Springs, TX. There, he opened fire on the unsuspecting congregation as they were waiting for the Sunday sermon to begin. Devin Kelley managed to kill 26 people between the ages of 5 and 72, and he injured 20 more. With this act of domestic terrorism, we now have the largest mass shooting in the history of both the state of Texas, and in a place of worship. 

As details emerged throughout the day on Monday Nov. 6th, we learned that Kelley was 26 and twice married.Though a motive wasn’t yet named for his actions at that time, Kelley reportedly had a domestic situation with his mother-in-law, a member of First Baptist Church. He had previously served in the air force before being court-martialed in 2012 on one count of assaulting his wife, and another count of assault on their young child. Continue reading →

Today’s Bizarre White House Press Briefing, Annotated

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Today’s White House press briefing opened with Sarah Huckabee Sanders reading another reverent letter from a kid to Trump (which always sound more like something written by a Trump staffer than a kid), and things just went downhill from there.

Seven-year-old MacKenzie, of Dalton, Georgia was today’s enthusiastic Trump supporter. “I think you’re awesome,” she wrote, “in fact, I voted for you in my school election.”  Continue reading →

My Child Is “They,” And It’s Society, Not Language, That Needs Fixing

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Originally published on Medium

Before anyone asks, no, I’m not some sort of new age, millennial, hipster chic parent living in a commune, attempting to raise genderless, nameless offspring who will one day grow up and decide these things independent of their father and me. We learned all three of our kids’ sexes via ultrasound and we planned accordingly. I dressed my boys in blue, my girl in pink.

I’d always hoped to have a child of each gender. And God, in only God’s divine way, was brilliant enough to give me one of each: a cisgender male born in 2000 named Jack, a cisgender female born in 2002 named Kate, and a few years later, when my third and last child was born, well, God threw all caution to the wind and decided to confuse everyone and Continue reading →

Free Speech and Hate Speech and The First Amendment, Oh My!

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Lots of arguments are going around about the First Amendment. While most people don’t generally agree with it, they will still assert that white supremacists & neo-nazis have as much of a right to the First Amendment protections as everyone else. But I’m thinking hate speech from groups like the KKK should not be protected under the category of free speech. How does that make sense in 2017? After the Charlottesville tragedy? Ultimately though, it’s the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision.

Currently, the First Amendment names the following as being not protected, or beyond the scope of what’s considered Continue reading →

Charlottesville: What Trump Said By Not Saying Anything

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Also published at HuffPost

On August 12th, 2017, an act of domestic terrorism propelled by racists and white nationalists occurred in Charlottesville, Virginia. I’m calling it domestic terrorism propelled by racists and white nationalists (or white supremacists), because it’s time (for white people, in particular) to name this for what it is. And while it may be legal for white supremacists to express their alt-right, morally repugnant views, it is absolutely unacceptable to do so in this day and age. It’s far beyond time for all Americans (but most especially white Americans) to use our privilege, our platforms, and our collective, rhetorical power to denounce racism, and to say that it is absolutely unacceptable for anyone to be a white supremacist, or neo-Nazi, or alt-right member in 2017 America. We cannot afford the normalization of this.  Continue reading →

Today, I Grieve

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Tuesday, April 11, 2017. This morning I was the invited guest lecturer for an NC State Abnormal Psychology undergraduate class from 8:30-9:45 am. It has been on my calendar for months, and I was looking forward to it very much. An old friend I went to college with is working on her Ph.D. and teaching classes at NCSU. She asked me to present on the topic of gender identity. Overall it went well. Especially considering the circumstances.

Also, this morning, we lost our fur baby Athena. At approximately 9:35 am, while I was doing my lecture, she was Continue reading →