A Not So Boring Life

RUMINATIONS ON MASCULINITY AND A LONG-AGO TIME AND GALAXY It may sound a bit strange now, and most probably open to a few jokes, but in the late 1970s I became involved with the National Movement of Changing Men , or as we simply called it in Pittsburgh – Changing Men .  The movement was begun by pro-feminist males who were engaged with feminist women and interested in supporting feminist ideas. One of the tenets of the movement was to recognize the dominance of male power and privilege and through a critical lens begin to challenge the notion of “traditional masculinity” and the dominant model of manhood by working with one another.  An interesting element of the movement is that it later began to branch off in other directions and themes, with some groups of men proclaiming that they were the oppressed ones in society and at a disadvantage in things like divorce and child custody. I became involved with the feminist side of the movement through my acquaintance with Bob, a retired

BE PREPARED! Different from many boys of my generation, I didn’t have much of a scouting experience.  I think my parents must of made me join one cub scout troupe when I was pretty young, because I have this memory of having to march down the main street of Danville during a Halloween parade, dressed along with the rest of my troupe in handmade skunk costumes, carrying signs that said “I’m a Little Stinker,”  I often think that was NOT what the Brits had in mind when they founded the Boy Scouts in 1908. There was also that time when I got to go along on a Scout camping trip at a nearby lake. We pitched a long rectangular canvas tent and after a day of activities that I don´t remember at the moment (other than the fact that someone laced the toilet paper in a camp outhouse with itching powder), had a dinner of campfire roasted hot dogs.  There might have been some beans in there somewhere, but who can remember that long ago? After dinner we sliced some gigantic watermel

Another entry from the letters written from Nicaragua in 1984: In the mornings, the sun rises to the day’s activities that began in the fading darkness of the early dawn.  The night’s chill is burned off quickly in a rising cloud of haze.  The noise, so very much a part of life here in Nicaragua, remains constant through the morning:  cows lowing, dogs barking, children shouting, chickens clucking and pigs squealing – not necessarily in that order or volume. I am now at the rural farming cooperative “La Quinta”, officially with the name of “German Pomares Ordoñez” – the name of a Sandinista commander who died fighting against the Somoza dictatorship.  The cooperative is located about a half hour truck ride from the city of Estelí, travelling more or less east along a winding mountain road.  I began living and working at the cooperative around August 5 th , after a short and complicated trip to the Costa Rica border in order to renew my visa for another three months.   At the m

The following is the first of a series of "to the world" letters written while on a prolonged experience in Nicaragua in 1984, done as part of an independent university internship.  I would click these letter out on a battered portable manual typewriter and send them up to my sister Rose in the U.S., who would copy and send them out to a network of friends, students and professors.  Put into context, they represent an intense and important part of both my life and the history of Nicaragua during that time. I’m sitting in the living room of my house at about six-thirty in the evening on Sunday the 29 th of April, 1984.  I started to sit down about two hours ago to type this letter, but alas, the gringo’s typewriter is a very popular item in this house. I’m living now in an Esteli neighborhood called “Jose Santos Zelaya”.  The neighborhood is named after a famous Nicaraguan leader which, coincidentally, is also the name of the son of my Nicaraguan host “mother”, who