Insane Earthlings

Oh, say can you see With perspective and light How profoundly we failed At the morning’s first gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars Gave the slaveholders’ right O’er the oppressed while we watched Via Facebook live streaming? And the bullets’ blue glare Lives vanishing in air Gave proof by the night That our flag was still there Oh, say will that star spangled banner yet wave O’er equality All free and all brave? Copyright filed 9/25/2016

I'm just imagining a scene. I'm sitting in my car in front of my house reading a book and waiting for my daughter to get home. I may or may not have a gun in my car. It would make no difference. The police would wave as they drove by. I'm white and in a middle class neighborhood. They are here for crime prevention, not crime fighting. But if I let my imagination go a little further, I can see some other scenarios. Let's say I suffered lingering effects from a traumatic brain  injury. I had just taken my medicine that makes me a little despondent. Some police drive by on their way to serve a warrant on someone that lives up the street. They think that I seem strange. They think that I might have a gun. They call for back-up. As back-up arrives, my wife walks out of the door and yells to the police that I have a TBI and had just taken my medication. I can clearly see in my mind just how one officer would fall back and respectfully approach my wife. He would ask for more i...

Thomas was never on time for work. There were days when he would call in to say he was running late, and then never actually make it in. And as time went on, there were days when he did not call or show up for work at all. I was the Director of Manufacturing at the medical device plant where Thomas was employed. I know what you are thinking. And believe me, everyone who worked at the company was thinking the same thing.  Thomas should be fired.  But none of us wanted to do it. His absenteeism became chronic. He started making up excuses for why he was late or why he had missed the last day or three days. Or the last two weeks. There were times that he missed work for so long that we assumed he had quit. Then he would show up with some cockamamie story about why he had not been able to make it or get in touch. We should have fired him by every reasonable and objective measure. But we didn’t. Thomas was a nice guy. I know that sounds lame. He was nic...

It was my second Christmas. I was not even two years old. I don’t remember it of course, but there is the photo . My father, a news photographer, took thousands of pictures of me and my siblings over the years. There are a lot of great photos of the four of us. But this photo taken of us posing with our gifts around the perfectly decorated Christmas tree is special. It’s iconic. It documents a defining moment in our lives as three brothers and one sister. It would be our only Christmas in a town that none of us were born in. The one year that my father sought the greener grass of the New York Times owned newspaper in Chattanooga. A year idealized in my mind by the recounted stories my parents and siblings shared about our year living atop a mountain. The year my older siblings would sit, barefoot, in the open windows of the local church on Sundays. The windows that they would hop out of when the sermon was finished. And then they would dash to our little homestead, carefree and ha...