about the scribbler

I was born in Tennessee, the great-great-grandson of John W Carroll, whose grandson was Burns, whose daughter was Martha Sue, my mother. John W was a Confederate Captain in a mounted regiment. He was wild. My grandfather, I’m told, wore a grin that gave away his mischief. My mother does the same. Father came from MI, the son of a union man, whose wife’s father ran a farm. There is a painting of that farm screen printed on glass, hanging in my parents house. They grew corn, had goats. I don’t even know all of my splintered American history. I don’t know if my people, like me, could sit a whole day in a rocking chair to read a book straight through or or spend days on end walking over mountains or if they ever attempted to cook ratatouille or if they ever wrote a blog or took pictures. Somehow, I wound up a bit quieter than some of the colorful people in my family history. Somehow, I wound up having disproportionately long legs. I am connected to my people, fragmented and different as we are. And, no matter how confused my conglomerate identity, it is an identity. It is my identity. I punch keys on a macbook computer and share a few projects with the world wide web from my home in Chicago Illinois, this a small chapter in a longer story.