Confessions of a Human Nerve Ending

A Burkean Analysis                 Act:     Just off the bridge that crosses I-25, Clear Channel’s electrical billboard cycles through 4 (?) advertisements in span of thirty seconds (?).   Visible from I-25 north bound it is visible to over 1.5 million cars per day .                   Scene:   As parts of the country still struggle to recover from the Great Recession, many scholars are noticing a downward trend in the number of births.   As indicated by this trend birth rates begin declining in 2008.   The billboard has a number of telling details:   a young white girl and a motto:   “Not what to think/How to think” that suggests a very specific audience. Agent:   Eleven years after the Great Recession, exclusive private schools are advertising to keep their enrollment co...

                Fact is that Mike started working in the center where I work as Melissa.   As Melissa she presented as a woman, occasionally wore dresses or skirts (professional attire) and talked as if she was comfortable in her body (biologically woman).                 I enjoyed talking with her.   She was smart, cynical, a Star Wars fan, and well versed in nerd culture.   That made her easy to work with even though I was not her direct supervisor.   At the time, she reported to someone who was at the same level as I was but since we were a large center it meant that at times I was a shift supervisor and had to interact with all employees, direct reports or otherwise, as a boss.   And in that role she didn’t present any problems.   Sure every request was greeted with a snide response or sarcastic questioning, but it really didn’t b...

Background:         I don’t talk about it much, but for a brief period during high school, I called myself “Born Again.”   One of the benefits was that it was a safe space where I felt like I belonged.   And with that, one summer Sunday evening, the memories of being molested by a man who worked for my father some six years before came back.   Overwhelming me, I cried and tried to explain what had happened to my youth group leader.   The sudden on-rush of shame and confusion was really overwhelming, and I struggled to understand it.   In my memory, I felt I’d done something wrong.                 I hadn’t.   I’d been tricked, coerced into letting this man do things that no one, up to that time, had done.   I was only twelve and a late bloomer, but somehow the fact that it happened was my fault (or so I thought).   And in youth ...

Looking for the Easy Fix About a year ago, I embarked on a project to broaden my perspectives, to venture out of my ideological bubble to see if I could find some commonality with people who look like me, come from similar backgrounds as me, and yet don’t agree with me on many issues.   Over the course of this experiment, I did indeed find many ideas that resonated with me, added nuance to my own thoughts as well as reinforced some of my core beliefs.   While I noticed that many of the names and faces that appeared on my Youtube feed were indeed similar to the faces as documented by the NY Times , I also found people who challenged those faces and questioned those assumptions head-on.   And I wanted to challenge many of the assumptions head-on too.   I wanted to create a space in my head for dialogue and by understanding where others were coming from hoped that I could add a bit of civil discourse in my little corner of virtual space.     ...

Tribes My tribe came from struggling labor Depression South Eastern Illinois Just before the southern hills start To roll toward the coal country --Ed Dorn                 In 2018, after finishing my graduate degree a year before, I found myself with needing more than my job to occupy my time.   And like I had many years before, found myself drawn back into playing World of Warcraft (WOW). In the time since I’d left the game in 2011, a lot had changed.   While still at the level I was when I left, they’d added three expansions, and were working on releasing another one that was released six months later.   While my wife’s attitude toward my sitting and playing a video game as opposed to doing something creative was still there, I jumped back in and moved through the expansions to get to where the heart of the gameplay really was:   the highest levels.   Some of my feeling...