Atypical Transgender Late Bloomer

So I live in America. The county, the town I live in are places with a lot of support for Donald Trump. A lot of guns, a lot of g^d, not a lot of acceptance of the Other. And yet, every individual I've met is a nice person. Haven't met any ugly people. If you're pulled over on the side of the road, they stop and offer help. They will pull your car out of the ditch. They'll help you in any way you can. So the stereotype of a Trump supporter doesn't stand examination. There's two radio stations I can sometimes get. One is NPR, the other is a local AM station that features Rush and his cohort. Not a lot of middle ground. When I talk with locals, they're reasonable people. You would like to have them as neighbors. You'd like to have them as the family your child married into. There's a lot of respect for Veterans and for the local fire company's volunteers. When the Buttons pop up - topics such as guns, religion, taxes, diversity, discriminatio...

Visited the Cumberland, MD Pride Festival (btw, kudos on their very attractive logo). Wore my kilt in the spirit of the day. It was wonderful weather. Good event. Not a parade as much as a festival, booths and vendors and entertainment on a small stage. It was a great event. My first pride celebration.

I've been relatively homeless for a while. Living in a tent in a commercial campground, $40/week. It's a nice campground, predominately tents not RV-campers, mostly people on vacation. I think I'm passing as One of Them, and not the bum of the campground. Summertime and The Living is Easy, the song says, and I've learned the truth of it: I wouldn't want to do this in the winter. When it rains I'm dry, when it gets chilly I'm warm; things could be worse. 61-year-old me is not thriving living and sleeping in a tent, though. I've become very used to more comfort. What I've read about succeeding at homelessness is that you need a place to stash your gear, somewhere it's not going to be stolen. So my vehicle serves that role, and I guess I'm living in a tent and my car. I have the use of a two-room tent that my friends Pam and Bill have loaned me. It's designed to be wheelchair accessible, it's a Eureka tent, so there's an entry spa...

Today I got something I've been wanting for a long, long time. The priest who abused me, Father Eugene Arnaud, has been publicly listed by the Diocese of Brooklyn as having been credibly accused. If you want to see it, click here and then do Ctrl/F or Search for Arnaud. One of the things that complicated my early web searches for where he went and what his status was, is that 100 years ago there was a significant architect and also a significant priest with the same name, so they filled the search results. But with the Diocesan listing, a US/English search on "Eugene Arnaud" returns results for the listing, which wasn't there a year ago. This is what I wanted. I wanted him publicly named and accused, even if he's dead.

I have a part-time job at a bicycle shop. There was a bike waiting for me, it's rear end was thrown out of rig by a car hitting it when it was parked. So I trued the rear wheel, which is becoming a semi-skill of mine; at least the other folks at the shop are no longer sighing as I approach the truing stand. I trued it up, lubed some lubey stuff, inflated the tire, put in on the bike and the wheel was rubbing the frame. But the wheel was good and the frame was bent and so I reached for the tool we use to adjust that. Tools are amazing. As I held this gizmo, which has a lot of adjustment points and when used correctly is just a flying dervish of adjustment, and I could not comprehend the sequence of actions to be taken. The boss looked at me and said, You feeling all right? And I said no, and signed off for the shift. The boss is a very decent man, and so he's talking with me about needing to get this check, and calling a mutual friend a nurse for advise, and he followed up an...

I was visiting at the house I used to live in. There were hedges to be trimming and gutters to be cleaned. Fortunarely, the Hedge Squad appeared and took care of that. I spend part of the evening cleaning the easy half of the gutters. The next morning, before the sun had heated things up, I turned to the harder half of the gutters and it went pretty well. There's a second level of my house where cleaning the gutters means sitting over the edge of the roof with your calves dangling over open space and it went real well. I was uncharacteristically feeling pretty strong. Then I took an old wheelbarrow out and put air in the tires. Brought it back the the residence, than grabbed the empty recycling bin and brought it inside. Click, Click, Click, things were coming off my list of tasks. I felt a nostalgia like I was back to being my own self, getting things done, moving on to next tasks without intermediate naps. My last task was to write some code for a client survey, which is an e...

Reparations are in the news lately; specifically, reparations paid to descendents of slaves by the owners and institutions that profit off the slavery (for instance, Georgetown University ). Some people say there is no case for Reparations. All the people who participated in slavery are dead and buried. Although your ancestors may have owned slaves, you certainly didn't. America fought a civil war to abolish slavery; that should be enough. We've had a black President; that should prove we're post-slavery. This is the Mitch McConnell school of thought. Others say: the two-caste racial system implemented to make slavery work outlives actual slavery. They say, the school-to-jail pipeline substitutes prison labor for slave labor. They say, the Civil Rights Act only took effect in the 1960's. Redlining persisted until the 60's. Racial disparities in income and education are still obvious. The wounds haven't healed. Children who are fifth-generation post-slavery...

It's been five months since my spouse and I separated. I've come to use the term, ' estranged spouse ' because I feel the need for a name. For financial reasons - for starters, health insurance, pensions, and survivor benefits - it seems more just to perma-separate rather than divorce. We've had advice on this. Parts of it are terrible. It's been difficult personally. My life feels empty. I feel shame at this failure. It's been hard for my kids (ages 24 and 28). I moved out of town, to a place where I could live much cheaper. The isolation of this small town is a negative for me, compared to what I think I'd experience in the city. Parts of it are healthier than where I was pre-split. I feel more like myself. I feel less stress. My use of "as-needed" drugs is significantly reduced. We talk cordially. We discuss money, the kids, the logistics: cars, houses, etc.

I can handle the loneliness of being the guy living in a tent. I think I can. I do feel the impact of it, though. It's the isolation from people that gets to me more. Just the absence of conversation. No watercooler conversations, no shop talk, none of the social lubrication that (I've learned) means so much. People leave you alone. Generally I've considered that a kindness. Carried to a consistent ongoing policy, it leaves a void. I am so grateful to the few folks that I have the privilege of calling friends, that I can drop in on for conversation - politics, conversation, the President. I wish I could be in the local book club, to have something to discuss and ruminate over, but it's women only. The few people I speak with transactionally - checkout staff, or wait staff - they're working and doing their job, but their few extra words mean so much to me and I am grateful for their graciousness.