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Enter Stage Left
“While there is a lower class, I am in it, while there is a criminal element, I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”
— Eugene V. Debs
Hello, and welcome to my blog! I’m setting this up until I can get a more permanent home established, but I wanted to give some background to help put past and future posts in context.
I grew up in a small city in Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Michigan, a very blue-collar area dominated by the manufacturing and tavern industry. My family was deep into both, having had parents who served as elected officials in their unions. All of them at some point tended, managed and/or owned a bar.
I went to good public schools during the ’80s and had a lot of encouraging teachers. Pretty typical of the time, I was into Star Wars, Transformers, GI JOE, pro wrestling, Atari, and MTV. Despite all that, I still read young adult versions of writings by Twain, Poe, Melville, and pretty much anything with a story to tell, especially comic books. By the end of the decade, I was a solid B student because I was playing Dungeons and Dragons multiple nights a week, working at a movie theater, watching movies for free when I wasn’t working, playing hours of Nintendo, and reading/writing as much fantasy and sci-fi as I could.
