BARREL OF MONKEYS: "GENESIS" in Reverse


I consider myself a Democrat. Been called a Socialist. Definitely a bleeding heart liberal.


As a child from a traditional southern family, playing Barrel of Monkeys on the floor, church every Sunday, doing well in public school, learning a trade; in every sense privileged .........


Comfortable in middle age, an avid news reader, on learning the tragic story of a full grown chimpanzee destroying the face of a woman who offered a toy, only trying to help it's owner coax her surrogate child back into his cage......


Today being confrontational, ribald, offensive, restless, rebellious.......


How did I get here from there?


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"You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train."


I find myself becoming involved with politics; obsessive/compulsive actually. I want to debate the issues. I volunteer my unsolicited opinions just to force the discussions. I don't censor my opinions to spare feelings or avoid hostilities. I expect the same of others.

It's almost as if I'm looking for a fight.

Right or wrong, spoken or unspoken, opinions are not just collections of idle thoughts. They have consequences. They are windows to one's soul.

Conceived naturally; born hearing impaired; raised the youngest member of a traditional rural southern Methodist family as segregation was ending; admission to veterinary school when women for the first time outnumbered male students, blacks noticeably underrepresented; discovering my sexual identity halfway through vet school; on leaving behind the comforts of family and home, drawn to the gay ghetto of the cities; the building of a career, the politics of veterinary medicine, in a profession overwhelmingly conservative.........

By conventional standards, I am not a success story. To my peers, nothing to brag about, career or relationship wise. I am, however, financially secure enough to live a comfortable "quiet" lifestyle. But, to be quiet would require pretending, I didn't see it, I didn't hear it, I didn't have something I needed to say; where injustice doesn't concern me, I don't get involved.

Quoting my mother, who's quoting someone else, who's probably quoting someone else.......


"How do you know where I'm going if you don't know where I've been?"


This blog is my

  "attempt"
                             
                                                                                             
                                                                                             
                                                at humility.




"One thing I like about the Digital age: having the dictionary at my fingertips, how easy it is to look up unfamiliar words as I go along reading." "At least....... until, I played my first game of SCRABBLE on the internet. Wow! I had no idea you could spell so many words with seven letters every time." "Now I feel pressured to catch up!"