About

I was born and raised in rural North Carolina.

My fondest childhood memory is of playing in the dense, acrid, poison fog that was belched out by the county mosquito control truck during its daily dusk-time trip down our dirt road.

The cry of “Smokey! Smokey!” would fly up and down Nine Foot Road once the first faint sound of the pest control truck’s generator was detected in the distance. Trailer screen doors would slam open and kids would pour into the street for ten minutes of gleeful, giddy, mad dashing around in the thick white clouds of DDT. We would smash into each other with full force in the blinding swirls and just scream and laugh hysterically, pick ourselves up and start running again. Parents had not a whit of concern about their children playing directly behind the spewing pipes of a pest control truck. In fact, NOT being allowed to play in the poison fog was often held out as potential punishment for misbehavior.

I think this explains a lot about me.

Commenting Rules

Even the most idle and “jokey” threats of physical harm to any person or property are completely unacceptable on JMG. Also strongly discouraged are expressed wishes of physical harm to others by any means, including natural ones. Please remain aware that JMG comments are often scoured by the enemies of civil equality who look for any opportunity to republish ill-considered reactions to the news reported here.

We sometimes see more than 50,000 – 100,000 comments per month and I cannot personally read but a fraction of them. Therefore I must rely on the JMG community to stay self-policing and notify me by email should any comment concern you. Be advised that in many cases these comments are posted by drive-by trolls in order to grab triumphant screen-shots for use elsewhere. You’ve been remarkably great about observing these very few commenting rules and I thank you for that.

NOTE: My political columns can be found at PrideLife.com and elsewhere. My Pride Magazine columns and interviews (Rachel Maddow, Dan Savage, etc) can be found on the physical magazine curation site Issuu.com.

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