The Republic of T.

The dual murder of Roxanne Ellis and Michelle Abdill is one of the stories I had in mind when I started this project. I think it’s because it happened not long after I moved to Washington, D.C. I was working at the Human Rights Campaign then, and my job was actually to support the state campaign to defeat Measure 19 in Oregon and Idaho. I think that’s why I was so deeply affected by the murders of Ellis and Abdill a year after the Oregon measure was defeated. It’s hard to believe that more than 10 years later we’re still debating hate crimes legislation.

I’d blocked out or forgotten many of the details, but researching their story brought them all back to me. I think it impacted me in a different way this time. When I read that Ellis met with her killer at 11:00 a.m. and spend most of what would be her last day with him, I felt I knew what she would be thinking about as she sat there in handcuffs with a man who was demanding money, and whom she probably guess would very likely kill her and probably posed a danger to her family: her partner, her daughter, and her granddaughter. He left her call her family at some point, to explain her absence long from the office, and again to lure Abdill He asked her if she and Abdill were lesbians, and she said yes. In later interviews, the killer revealed that he knew Ellis and Abdill had been together for 12 years, that she was 54 years old, and that she had a granddaughter. I imagine she told him about her life in hopes of humanizing herself to him, and saving her life, probably not realizing that doing so probably sealed her fate.

And the killer? He told so many different stories that it’s difficult to know what to believe. At first, he said that their “lifestyle” was “sick,” and that knowing they were lesbians made it “easier” to kill them. Then he confessed to murdering a friend in California, who was said to have been bisexual, and whom he claims made a pass at him after night of partying. (Gay panic defense, anyone?) He said he liked bisexual women, but had “no compassion” for lesbians or gay/bisexual men. Then he said that he invented the anti-gay motive, and that his real intention was to rob the couple. But he left behind their purses, money, wallets, credit cards, jewelry and cell phones at the scene. So, was it a robbery? A hate crime? Or a little from column A and a little from column B?

Technorati Tags: anti-gay violence, crime, culture, current events, gay, gay rights, hate crimes, homophobia, politics

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This morning I had one of those mornings when I look around and ask myself “What the hell am I doing here?” I was invited to take part in the Maria Leavey Breakfast series, which gets blogger types around the table with various and sundry political types. I wasn’t able to break bread with Grover, but this morning I got some face time with Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. (Who, by the way, looks fabulous in person.) It wasn’t until I stepped off the elevator in the Capitol and started looking for the room number of the meeting that I realized it was the door with “Office of the Speaker” emblazoned above it in gold letters.

That was when I asked myself what the hell I was doing there? Since when do I rate an hour or more of the Speaker’s time? Did somebody make a mistake with the guest list? Did they check my pageviews and traffic stats? Then again, if I now find I’m offered a place at the table, I might as well take a seat. Well, For what it’s worth, I got in, got a seat, and got to ask a question. The audio and transcript aren’t up yet, and I’ll link to it when it’s available, I think my question actually threw Pelosi off for a minute. (Just a minute, though. She quickly got back on message.)

I wasn’t sure I was going to ask a question at all. In settings like this, I tend to do more listening than talking, and need time to go off an analyze things later. But after hearing Nancy’s remarks, I knew I had to ask a question if I got a chance. What kind of a blogger, gay dad, and Rainbow Families board member would I be if I didn’t?

Technorati Tags: blogs, civil unions, culture, current events, family, gay marriage, gay rights, marriage, politics

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I’d heard earlier that it was a possibility, and last night I got confirmation that my Wikipedia article on Niza Morris — part of the Hate Crimes on Wikipedia project — was included in the “Did you know…” section on Wikipedia’s front page. (Second from the bottom.) I’m not sure how long it will be up, so I grabbed a snapshot.

Definitely more to come. Unfortunately, it will be a while before I run out. In fact, another article about a lesbian couple will go up today.

Technorati Tags: anti-gay violence, current events, gay bashing, homophobia, politics, wikipedia

Just when I was starting to get discouraged about the Hate Crimes on Wikipedia project, I saw this post from David at Ex-Gay Watch about this video from CitizenLink, which is Focus on the Family’s political pie-hole. Like I’ve said before, documenting hate crimes for Wikipedia turned out to be more emotionally challenging than I imagined. It means, usually, spending a few days tracking down sources, reading article after article about the crime, and then putting all the details together into coherent, comprehensive articles.

So, after doing the above for several hate crime stories and having several more yet to do, watching this video essentially mocking the very idea of hate crimes —essentially reducing the crimes and victims to jokes — felt something like a punch in the stomach, followed by amused laughter. The abject meanness of it is obvious, but I think David sums up pretty nicely what we’re seeing here.

Technorati Tags: anti-gay violence, civil rights, culture, current events, gay bashing, politics, race, religion

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I guess it was inevitable when I started this project that I would come across cases that would make me think about how easily, as a gay man, I could have found myself in the victims’ shoes. I think back to when I was a single gay man, and how any of the men I met up with back then could have killed me after coming back to my place or taking me to theirs. Alone, in a room with no other witnesses to say what happened. It’s a motif that runs through several of the stories I find myself immersed in during the course of this project; those few minutes when the victim and perpetrator disappear into a haze, and only one emerges to tall the tale.

In cases like that of Richie Phillps, the story is one of the victim attacking the killer, and thus “bringing it on himself,” as the defense attorney essentially put it during the trial for Phillips’ murder. And in some states like Kentucky where Phllips’ was murdered in 2005 ? his body folded in a suitcase and tossed into a lake ? laws called “stand-your-ground” laws come very close to codifying what’s known as the “gay panic” defense. In Phillips’ case, that may have worked to the benefit of his killer, Joseph Cottrell, who becomes eligible for parole this year ? 2 1/2 years after his manslaughter conviction for a murder his own relatives testified was planned and and motivated by the sexual orientation of the victim.

Depending, of course, on who you think is the victim. Or who the jury thinks is the victim.
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I was bruised and battered I couldn’t tell what I felt
I was unrecognizable to myself
I saw my reflection in a window I didn’t know my own face
oh brother are you gonna leave me wastin’ away
on the streets of Philadelphia

~ Bruce Springsteen, “Philadelphia”

I kept hearing those lyrics over the last couple of days as I felt like I was walking the streets of Philadelphia with Nizah Morris. Just a short distance, really, from Juniper and Chancellor streets to 16th and Walnut streets, before she disappeared into a few lost minutes that nobody who knows anything about is talking about. And at the end of that short journey — half a mile, just to end up three miles from home — she was gone, and nobody seemed to know why. And after two days, I don’t know why myself. But I do know that her story illustrates one of the reasons why one aspect of the hate crimes bill is needed.

Given how local law enforcement handled Nizah’s death, I can only imagine that the possibility of federal involvement or intervention might have lifted the haze that seems to cover the details of this case: police logs that don’t match their own accounts, police reports that were never filed; Morris lying unidentified in the hospital for 64 hours, when at least one of the three police involved knew her from past arrests, and one witness identified her to one of the officers involved; a detective who informs Morris’ mother of her death with by saying “He’s dead”; a medical examiner rules Morris’ death a homicide, but the police department assesses it as accidental until the second opinion they sought confirms the M.E.’s findings; a recording of a 911 call (one of two) edited down to 6 minutes when transmissions between the police officers involved really went on for 49 minutes; still no transcript of the call released; and an investigation that leads precisely nowhere.

But don’t take it from me. Talk a walk with Nizah for yourself.

Technorati Tags: culture, current events, gay bashing, gay rights, gender, hate crimes, homophobia, politics

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Via Crooks & Liars.

Fox attacks blogs. Blogs …. blog back. I’ve never been attacked by Bill O”Reilly personally (probably he just doesn’t know I exist), but if people are taking on Fox over its distortions, I’m down.

A whole bunch of people are signing up to fight back.

Technorati Tags: blogs, current events, media, politics, television, web

I knew it. So, last week I griped about the whole working-at-home-vs.-working-around-people thing. And during my travels in search of wireless internet access and the proximity of other people, I’d started to develop a sneaking suspicion that — with more and more people working from locations other than an office — some institutions that offer the lure of wifi also wield a stick to make sure the “road warriors” among us don’t adopt their space as a semi-permanent office space.

Maybe I’m being paranoid. I mean, there are the obvious, reasonable measures that most places take, like logging you off their wifi after you’ve been there a certain amount of time (that’s if it’s free wifi). I can understand wanting to open up a table for a new paying customer when I finished my latte/frappucino/chai tea a couple of hours ago. But I swear there are some more subtle strategies employed. Like the lack of electrical outlets. And electrical outlet is an invitation for someone like me to sit and stay a while, after all. And if there is an outlet available, more than half the time the seat or table nearest it is occupied by someone who’s not using the outlet.

That’s not a problem. After all, people can sit where they want. But I swear there have been times when I’ve seen people sit by the outlets all day. They’re there when I make my first pass, and they’re still there if I pass by a few hours later. I’d swear that the store owners are paying people to sit those outlets, but I know if doesn’t make much sense. But they are taking out the comfy chairs.

Technorati Tags: books, business, culture, current events, life, work, web

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One of the things I hadn’t taken into consideration upon launching the project to record anti-LGBT hate crimes on Wikipedia was that it would mean living with each of these stories as I research them and try to gather as many fact as possible. (Communicating them as dispassionately as possible was another challenge.) It means reading the details of the crimes over and over again, learning about the lives victims and perpetrators along the way, to the point where their lives collide, watching that collision over and over again, and then spending more time shifting through the wreckage.

That’s what it felt like as I put together the next two stories. Once again, it wasn’t until I finished both that I realized the connection between them. Arthur “J.R.” Warren and Paul Broussard were both killed on July 4th, ten years apart. Both were killed by multiple attackers; strangers in Broussard’s case, and acquaintances in Warren’s case. Both suffered brutal beatings — including being kicked with steel-toed boots — that ended their lives. Warren pleaded with his killers to take him home. Broussard raised one hand as lay bleeding on the sidewalk, as if pleading with his killers for help or mercy even as they rifled his pockets for souvenirs. Broussard’s killers drove away cheering and high-fiving each other as he lay dying. Warren’s killers were watching Independence Day fireworks with their families the same day that Warren’s body was found. Both deaths sparked protests and vigils.

In the debate over the current hate crimes bill, posted in full at Box Turtle Bulletin, maybe the opposition can answer some questions regarding stories like Warren’s and Broussard’s.

Technorati Tags: anti-gay violence, crime, current events, gay bashing, gay rights, hate crimes, politics, religion, wikipedia

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I won’t launch into another extended take on the presidents psyche (since I’ve done that before).You can make what you will of Bush’s response to a reporter at a news conference after accepting the Walter Reed Commission report. And not just any reporter, but one who suffered near fatal injuries in Iraq. Via All Spin Zone.

Today, Bush held a quick news conference after accepting the Walter Reed Commission report, and ABC newsie Bob Woodruff was in the press gallery. In prepared remarks, Bush recognized Woodruff’s personal journey back from near-fatal injuries that he suffered in Iraq:

I also want to recognize Bob Woodruff here. He is a — he himself was wounded, severely wounded, and went through the system, to a certain extent. And we welcome you back, and we’re glad you’re with us. And we would hope that any wounded soldier, any person in uniform would receive the kind of care and the ability to return to work, just like you have done. And so we’re glad you’re with us, Bob. Congratulations on the will to recover…

That would have been fine, had Woodruff not had the temerity to actually ask a question.

When Woodruff asked Bush whether the government was moving fast enough to help families, the president declined to answer.

“Declined to answer”? That makes it sound like he said “no comment” or just did the “smile-and-nod-and-not-answer-the-question” routine. But that’s not the case.

Technorati Tags: bush, civil liberties, current events, iraq, media, politics, war on terror

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Watching the debate over religion in public life in America over the past week has been a little like watching a Three Stooges routine. One stooge smack the other, who then turns to retaliate but ends up poking the third stood in the eye when the first one ducks. All very amusing, or it would be if — as a non-Christian in America — I weren’t standing somewhere between one stooge and the other.

Reading about religion in the news and in the blogosphere lately has been kind of like that. At least part of the time I’ve been watching the various stooges, smack, kick, poke and run into one another, which is apparently what they get up to when they’re not attacking some other victim. It becomes a kind of visual riff on the “who’s on first” routine. It’s amusing up to a point, usually because some intra-stooge dispute distracts them from their original target. But the mayhem usually turns back the “non-stooge.”

I was reminded of that, and thus stifled a chuckle when, so soon after Chuck Colson pooh-poohed paganism, Cal Thomas declared that Hillary Clinton is not a “true Christian.” (A phrase I don’t run into much except at Landover Baptist Church or when I pay a visit to Betty Bowers. So sometimes I forget people actually mean it when they make that distinction). I knew what was coming when Cal questioned Hillary’s Christianity. Of course, the audience always does, and that’s what makes it funny because the stooge never sees it coming. He just swings away.

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I’m going to have to start a “What’s the Matter With People?!” file for stories like this one. There was the mob who killed a man in Texas, after he got of a car to stop them from killing the driver, who had just hit a child and then actually stopped to see if the child was alright. Then there were the people who stepped over a woman as she bled to death, in order to make their convenience store purchases. But not before stopping to snap a photo on a cell phone. And, most recently there was the woman who responded to news of a brutal crime in her neighborhood with “So a lady was raped. Big deal.”

A man who drowned trying to save his two sons trapped in a rip current could have been helped by tourists passing by from a parasailing trip, according to a captain who jumped in to save the boys.

Police say 38-year-old Renald Charles of Fruitland died Sunday while attempting to rescue his sons, 10 and 13. The boys and their father were spotted by Michael Andrew, owner of a 31-foot boat that was taking tourists to shore from a parasailing trip.

Andrew and one of his crew members jumped in, but the tourists videotaped the drowning instead of helping Charles, Andrew told The (Salisbury) Daily Times.

“I mean, c’mon, who are these people?” Andrew said

The boys survived. And maybe, if they’re lucky, those tourists will be nice enough to give them video that contains the last glimpse of their father. That is, of course, after they’ve copied and uploaded them to the web.

But I’m reaching a point at which I’m inclined to not to be too hard on the tourists, and the people in the stories above. They are, after all, just swimming with the cultural current.

Technorati Tags: bush, culture, current events, economics, empathy, money, politics

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So the Senate vote on hate crimes has been put on hold after Senate Majority leader Harry Reid withdrew the defense authorization bill to which the hate crimes amendment was going to be added, after the Democrats failed to break a Republican filibuster over another amendment calling for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. That’s disappointing for a number of reasons, mainly because now the Dems will have to find another vehicle for the amendment, and I have my doubts they can find one that the president will be as pressured to sign as a defense authorization.

For further background, HRC’s Back Story blog links to a history of hate crimes legislation related to LGBT people, Box Turtle Bulletin posts the text of the bill and details religious right propaganda against it, Cross and Flame over at Street Prophets debunked that propaganda a while back, and yours truly tried to explain how hate crimes legislation gives state law enforcement more resources and empowers federal government to act when state officials can’t or won’t. Also, the House introduced a resolution mourning David Ritcheson’s death, which I mentioned earlier.

In the meantime, I’ve decided to proceed with a project I had in mind before I heard the news that there would be not vote on hate crimes this week and probably not until later this year. Earlier thisi week I posted a round-up of recent anti-gay hate crimes, similar to a longer hate crimes round-up I posted in May. After I published that earlier post in May, a commenter suggested that I make sure all the cases I covered in my post were also updated on Wikipedia. I’ve been pretty regular user of Wikipedia as a reference, but had never contributed more than a few edits to correct an error or two, until now.

My experience has always been that our stories are one of the most powerful asset we have in striving for justice. People understand stories about real people just like themselves. They can imagine those stories happening to them of to people they love. And even if they aren’t sure how they feel about homosexuality or same-sex marriage, when they hear stories of injustice and violence against us and our families, it offends their sense of morality. Whatever else they’re not sure of, they know “that’s not right.” And that’s the first step towards convincing them to help us do something about it.

So, if adding a few stories to Wikipedia can help, I’m wiling to make the effort, and to research and add other stories that people send me concerning hate crimes against LGBT people.

Technorati Tags: anti-gay violence, crime, current events, gay, gay bashing, gay rights, hate crimes, homophobia, politics, web, wikipedia

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Update: I decided to bump this up after I got wind of the Ms. Magazine letter to the editor campaign regarding the Post column on Hillary’s décolletage.

You gotta be freakin’ kidding me. It’s bad enough that when a woman runs for office we hear as much or more about her wardrobe and hair than her policy proposals, and more than we’d hear about any male candidate. (John Edwards being the exception in the hair department.) But since when is it news that Hillary Clinton has breasts?

She was talking on the Senate floor about the burdensome cost of higher education. She was wearing a rose-colored blazer over a black top. The neckline sat low on her chest and had a subtle V-shape. The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn’t an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was. Undeniable.

It was startling to see that small acknowledgment of sexuality and femininity peeking out of the conservative — aesthetically speaking — environment of Congress. After all, it wasn’t until the early ’90s that women were even allowed to wear pants on the Senate floor. It was even more surprising to note that it was coming from Clinton, someone who has been so publicly ambivalent about style, image and the burdens of both.

…With Clinton, there was the sense that you were catching a surreptitious glimpse at something private. You were intruding — being a voyeur. Showing cleavage is a request to be engaged in a particular way. It doesn’t necessarily mean that a woman is asking to be objectified, but it does suggest a certain confidence and physical ease. It means that a woman is content being perceived as a sexual person in addition to being seen as someone who is intelligent, authoritative, witty and whatever else might define her personality. It also means that she feels that all those other characteristics are so apparent and undeniable, that they will not be overshadowed.

First the right-wing obsession with Bill Clinton’s penis, and now this. If I hadn’t read the byline, I might have assumed WaPo had hired Kenneth Starr as a political columnist. Can you blame me? This reads a lot like his work.

Admittedly, I’m not exactly a “breast man,” but does anyone besides me not really care? WaPo, I expected better of you. But since you’ve chosen this route, in the interest of equal treatment I await your columnists’ musings on whether John Edwards has a nice ass and the size of Obama’s… Oh, never mind.

Technorati Tags: 2008 election, current events, gender, politics, sexuality

I kept filing away the stuff I read, sometimes chuckling, sometimes shaking my head, and knowing I wanted to write about it. But then I thought maybe most of it wasn’t news anymore, and maybe I should move on to something else. Then, last night I watched the video of Tammy Faye Messner (nee’ Bakker), on Larry King last night. The last I’d seen of her was on her son’s show, One Punk Under God. I knew her cancer had recurred and was untreatable, and I knew what that meant. When I saw the Larry King Video, I thought to myself, “Days. She’s got days.” Sure enough, this evening I heard the news that Tammy Faye is dead.

I was sad when I heard the news. I guess because Messner had been a part of my life since I was a little black gay boy growing up in Georgia during the Reagan era, flipping the channel and inevitably stopping on PTL. It was a big difference from the jowl-shaking and finger-wagging of Jerry Falwell gloating over AIDS, and a world away from Jimmy Swaggart waving a Bible over his head and yelling “Don’t tell me about the constitution of the United States of America. This is the Constitution of the United States! The holy word of God!” Having been raised Baptist, as well as having taught Sunday School, I knew what that meant, and that Swaggart was likely a strict constructionalist when it came to that “constitution.”

Some people are still trying to write that “constitution or make the one we currently have more closely resemble the one they prefer. When Chuck Colson said Paganism isn’t a “real religion,” and questioned whether it should be recognized by the government as such (and thus treated as equal to any other faith), it piqued my interest. Kip questioned just what “court tests for religion” would consist of, and I wondered just a legal definition of religion would consist of. So I went looking.

Technorati Tags: bush, constitution, current events, politics, religion, supreme court

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To borrow a line from Martha Reeves, “Come and get ‘em, come and get ‘em. And take them away.

Seriously though, don’t you have some memories you could do without? C’mon. Something you wish had never happened? Something you’d like to forget? Maybe something you’d erase if you could? What would you erase if you could?

I’ve asked these questions before, back when I reviewed Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, and I’m still asking them. I guess that’s because of my own ADD-related memory problems, which can be pretty disruptive in terms of working, living my everyday life, etc. Without treatment that is. On the one hand, there are days when I’d give almost anything for something that would improve my memory to the some level of normalcy. (I don’t know what a normal level of functioning is, memory-wise. The treatment I’m using now helps some, but there’s no “curing” ADD. Thus, speaking of memory-related movies, I felt a special affinity with the main character in Memento

.

Ironically, on the other hand, there are some pre-treatment ADD-related memories I wouldn’t mind getting shed of. Humiliations. Dismal failures. Lost jobs. Lost relationships. Depression. That why Spotless Mind appealed to me. And, despite the possibility that losing those memories might mean losing part of myself, the idea of a drug that wipes out bad memories sounds pretty tempting.

Technorati Tags: adhd, current events, life, medicine, science

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I came across this while doing research for a project I’m working on. Apparently scientists are tracing the roots of empathy, and have come across some people who are apparently empathically enhanced.

When people say “I feel your pain,” they do not mean it literally, but certain people really do feel something that appears to be an extreme form of empathy, British researchers said.

They said watching someone being touched triggers the same part of the brain as actual touch, and this connection helps explain how we understand what other people are feeling.

People who experience a tactile sense of touch when they see another person being touched — something called mirror-touch synesthesia — was first studied in 2005 in one person.

But researchers at University College London have now studied 10 people with the same condition.

… One of the mirror-touch subjects in the study said the experience is all she has ever known.



“It is — to me at least — a perfectly normal response to seeing touch or pain inflicted on another person,” she said in a statement.



The researchers are studying this empathy connection further and trying to determine how prevalent mirror-touch synesthesia is.

“It does appear to be more common than we first thought,” Banissy said.

Perfectly normal experience? That kind of made me wonder about something.

Technorati Tags: culture, current events, empathy, science

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I’ve got a couple of actual blog posts planned for today, but right now all I got is a bunch of stuff, none of which is worth an entire post, but that I can’t resist commenting on anyway.

First, I love ya, Keith. When it comes to “Straight Guys I Love,” you’re right up there with Jon Stewart. OK? But this time I think you’re asking way to much of the president. I mean fight a war? You know and I know he’s got no experience. For that matter, neither do a lot of his supporters in the administration or in Congress. And his youngest supporters aren’t interested in the job.

Oh, and 60% of Military.Com readers area ready to quit the job too.

Tucker, you’re next. Unlike Keith, I’m completely over you. My advice: pipe down and uncross your legs already. Trust me, nobody much wants it anyway.

Amy, goodness knows I love ya. I mean, those first coupla lines in “Back to Black” were enough to do it for me. But, sugar, it’s time to go to rehab. I mean go, go, go.

Speaking of “go, go, go,” to the women nattering on and on and on about the new Harry Potter book, at the table beside me at Starbucks this morning, would you still be wild about Harry if he was black and gay? My bet is … no.

And as long as I’m being bitter, I kinda sympathize with women who fall in love with lifers — guys who ain’t probably gonna see the outside of a prison unless they manage to peek out from a pine box — but I’m not sure I’m feeling their “doing time on the outside” vibe.” After all, you can marry your man. Some of you are lining up to marry these guys. Me? I can’t marry mine, and he didn’t even kill anybody.

And speaking of marriage, you might want to check out Boi, who says the same folks who don’t want to let me get married don’t want to let you divorce either.

The funny thing is, they don’t want me to marry in this country, but if I go abroad and get married, they won’t let me get divorced either. How do ya like that? They’re so divorced from reason that the same logic that leads them to oppose my marriage would also require them to uphold it, because to let me divorce they’d first have to acknowledge the marriage. I’d almost go to Canada, come back and file for divorce just to piss them off.

And finally, I can’t wrap up without enjoying a little schadenfreude on behalf of my old home state, Georgia, which was so anxious to stick it to illegal immigrants that it ended up inadvertently sticking it to used car salesmen. Undocumented immigrants can’t get licensed, so they’re returning their cars. Boy, I’m glad people don’t think stuff like that through. It’d be a much less amusing world otherwise.

Technorati Tags: blogs, bush, celebrities, current events, gay rights, marriage, music, politics, immigration

I haven’t shared this bit of news on the blog yet, but in the past month I’ve made a transition that I’d been told was the next logical step in my career, but that I’d been resisting for almost a year. I’ve become an independent consultant. That is, I’m self-employed. Aside from farming out myself as a freelance writer, I’m primarily working as a “blogging & social media consultant”; a title I invented and started toying with around the same time.

One of the reasons I took the plunge is because Parker is getting closer to school-age, and eventually he’ll have a sibling who will also go to school. As I’ve been paying attention to the kinds of trouble some young people get themselves into, looking back on my own past, and wondering what kept me out of trouble. I think it made a huge difference that I never came home to an empty house. When I opened the door upon coming home from school, there was almost always someone there. In my case, my mom, who didn’t work outside the home. I’d been thinking about how to structure work so that I can be there most of the time when our kids get home from school. Well, I figured out how.

So far, so good. A number of interesting opportunities have already come my way (but not so many that I’m turning some away, yet) , and it helps that my former employer is one of my first clients and has been hugely helpful in sending other opportunities my way. Things look good and likely to get better. And I’ve enjoyed the independence of begin able to work at home or anywhere else that has wi-fi web access. But there’s just one drawback that’s been bugging me lately.

Technorati Tags: current events, life, work, technology, web

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I’m probably being a little paranoid here. But can you blame me? I’ve written before about being something of an introvert. People are sometimes surprised when I tell them this, because I’m an introvert who’s learned to be — or appear to be — more of an extrovert when I have to be. That’s because when you’re something of a loner, people tend to think you’re troubled or that something’s wrong, as Jonathan Rauch pointed out in his (surprisingly popular) essay “Caring for Your Introvert.”

DO YOU KNOW someone who needs hours alone every day? Who loves quiet conversations about feelings or ideas, and can give a dynamite presentation to a big audience, but seems awkward in groups and maladroit at small talk? Who has to be dragged to parties and then needs the rest of the day to recuperate? Who growls or scowls or grunts or winces when accosted with pleasantries by people who are just trying to be nice?

If so, do you tell this person he is “too serious,” or ask if he is okay? Regard him as aloof, arrogant, rude? Redouble your efforts to draw him out?

We’re fine, really. But instead of leaving us be, I’m reading that there’s now some kind of hormone spray to “cure” shyness. (The site where the article lives seems to be down. I’m not sure if that’s because of the “Digg effect” or not.

Technorati Tags: current events, life, introverts, science

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