Nerd is my Gender
What's yours?
-
day 17 - a song that you hear often on the radio
Various NPR Theme Songs by BJ Leiderman
-
This is a tear-jerker, I’m warning you.
Army Couple Deploys To Iraq, But Only One Returns
by NPR STAFF May 27, 2011
Max and Kim Voelz served together in Iraq in the same Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit — that’s the Army’s elite bomb squad.
The couple met on Valentine’s Day in 1997 at EOD school. They married on June 12, 1999.
“We deployed in 2003. We were in the same unit. She ripped bombs apart by hand in Iraq just like I did,” Max says. “There was no being scared, no doubt, no ‘I might die’ — we never talked about that.”
One night in 2003, Max called in the location of an explosive and sent his wife to disarm it.
“That night she was at a different base and I tried to talk to her on the phone before she went — just to tell her, like, an extra, ‘Be careful.’ But she was already on her way to take care of it, so I didn’t get to,” Max says.
Kim, 27, didn’t survive that mission. Her injuries were severe. One leg was blown off and she was in a medically induced coma when Max got to the hospital.
“I talked to her the whole time she was in there,” he says. “The nurses were telling me to talk to her because they assured me that they had seen people come out of comas before and that they remembered hearing things that people said.
“I mean, what are you gonna tell your wife who’s dying? That you love her and you don’t want her to die. But I knew she was dead a long time before the doctors stopped working on her. You hold someone’s hand, and then it feels different. “
Max called her parents because he didn’t want a stranger knocking on their door in an Army uniform to break the news: “I told them that she died in my arms 10 minutes ago,” he says.
“You know, she did something that most people weren’t willing to do, and I don’t want people to think that because she was killed while she was working that she was bad at her job, or that she died because she was a girl,” Max says. “She did the same job that guys who think they’re tough do. And she did it just as good as I did, and I think I’m the best that there is.”
When the Voelzes got married they had plans to retire from the Army. Now, at 36, Max says he doesn’t have a plan. After Kim died on Dec. 13, 2003, Max was sent home. He stayed in the Army for a few more years.
“I am an Army widower. I don’t think there’s very many of us,” he says. “And when I receive a condolence letter from a high-ranking government official that says, ‘Mrs. Voelz, we’re sorry for the loss of your husband,’ it just makes it seem like nobody knows we exist.”
Audio produced for Morning Edition by Jasmyn Belcher.
(Source: NPR)
-
Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer-funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes? Yeah, me neither…
-
This story gave me a happy.
TRANSCRIPT:
As a high school teacher at Friends Seminary in New York, John Byrne has taught hundreds of students. Recently, he spoke with a former student, Samantha Liebman, about the years before he became the teacher he is today. For one thing, his classrooms were very regimented.
“I would make the kids line up before they came into class,” he says, “and then they would stand by their desks and I would say, ‘You may sit down when I sit down.’ They said, ‘Good morning, Mr. Byrne.’
“I was very strict, because I was afraid the kids would discover I was gay,” he says.
Byrne, 56, taught English, a subject that proved to be minefield for a teacher who was trying desperately to keep a secret from his students. As he recalls, “some gay scene or character would come up, and I would start to blush.”
He was always frightened, Byrne says. But then, in 1991, “I decided to march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade,” he says. “Because they refused to let the gays march, and I thought, ‘I’ve got to take a stand.’ I just wanted to be myself. So I went and marched with them.”
Back in class the day after the parade, Byrne’s 10th-grade students wanted to know how he had spent the day. Teasing their teacher, they accused him of going out and getting drunk.
“I said, ‘I was not!’” he recalls. He told them, “I was marching in the parade.”
That led to the next question: Who had Mr. Byrne marched with?
“And I said, ‘With the Irish Gay and Lesbian Organization.’ And they said, ‘Well, why were you marching with them?’ and I said, ‘Because I’m gay!’
“ And they were so kind. They saw that I was nervous, and they helped me along,” he says.
That day changed Byrne’s life, and his career. He says it made him a better teacher.
“You know, it had hurt me to live in the shadows,” he says. “And then when I came out, it freed me to teach. It made me better at helping kids who had their own particular secrets.”
And the students repaid him for his trust, as well.
“Two years later, that class that I came out to, they asked me to be their graduation speaker,” Byrne says. “And I talked to the parents about how proud they should be of their children, for having taught me and helped me through a really difficult time in my life. It was a wonderful turning point.”
(Source: NPR)
-
Ew, a MALE Nurse!
98% of the time, NPR meets my standards for excellence in journalism. But sometimes, I really want to take back some of my $5/month donation (yeah, I’m so generous, I know).
This morning I was listening to the amazing story of a man who survived a lung transplant for over 2 decades, when this came up:
“I remember waking up from the surgery being on the vent [a ventilator], and seeing this absolutely beautiful brunette nurse,” Howell says. “She held my hand her entire shift.”
As he recovered, Howell drifted in and out of consciousness. And the next time he woke up, the hospital shifts had changed.
Then, he recalls, “a male nurse came in — this big burly dude,” as his mother laughs. “And I was not happy at all.”
Howell could not yet speak, as the ventilator helped him breathe. But he had a pen and paper.
“I just was writing notes like, ‘Get him the heck out of here,’ and ‘I don’t want this guy. Get me the girl back,’” he says.
“Lots of cursing,” Nan [his mother] remembers. “Lots of cursing.”
“Lots of cursing,” Howell agrees. “And my dad was tearing up the notes, because he was scared the male nurse would find the notes and kill me. So he spent his time intercepting my hate notes.”
They laugh it up and continue on as if they didn’t just perpetuate several harmful stereotypes:
- A “nurse” is female. A “male nurse” is male. A “female nurse” is redundant.
- Beautiful people are nurturing. Burly people are violent.
- The appropriate reaction to acts of discrimination by friends and family is to laugh along with them, not call them out on it.
I get that the purpose of Story Corps is to share the human experience. This is a sad reminder that the human experience comes with the bad as well as the good.
Edit: I still love NPR and think they’re awesome, even if they do get my goat sometimes. :)
Bonus vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzAAYGLXhpc
-
As a survivor of reparative therapy, I find it completely unconscionable that you [NPR] would run this story [about “curing the gay”] as if there were two equal opposing viewpoints. There are not. Reparative therapy left me with nothing but self-loathing and a desperate desire to end my life. By irresponsibly presenting this story as you did, you only encourage parents to force their teenagers into this destructive therapy and give false hope to those who have been brain-washed into thinking they are inherently evil. I have heard of people who swear that they had rid themselves completely of cancer through the healing powers of crystals. Why don’t you present a report on how Doctors should give people the option of forgoing care and chemotherapy for “Crystal Therapy”? Give the crystal believer equal credence to the medical doctors in your report.
from comments on NPR’s story “Can Therapy Help Change Sexual Orientation?”
The original title of this post is “The Jury’s Still Out”. At least they had the good sense to change it, but that doesn’t change the mockery of science this post required to be published in the first place.
-
Evangelicals Question The Existence Of Adam And Eve
“There’s nothing to be scared of here,” Venema says. “There is nothing to be alarmed about. It’s actually an opportunity to have an increasingly accurate understanding of the world — and from a Christian perspective, that’s an increasingly accurate understanding of how God brought us into existence.”
“When you ignore science, you end up with egg on your face,” Giberson says. “The Catholic Church has had an awful lot of egg on its face for centuries because of Galileo. And Protestants would do very well to look at that and to learn from it.”
I’m hoping this is the rise of a new Christianity, one that is pro-science and pro-reality and pro-truth.
-
Interactive Map of Poisoned Places
About this map
To begin exploring how air pollution may affect your community, use this interactive map of more than 17,000 facilities that have emitted hazardous chemicals into the air. Color-coded dots and scores of one to five smoke stacks are based on an EPA method of assessing potential health risk in airborne toxins from a given facility. More smoke stack icons signify higher potential risks to human health. Zoom in to your neighborhood by clicking on the map or use the search box to find the area you’re looking for.
I drive past so many of these dots every day!
-
The ads aired in Charleston, S.C., on a TV station run by Rita Littles Scott. “We did not know it was Stephen Colbert for a while,” she says of the power behind the ads. On the contrary, she says, the ads fit right in. And she says no one has called to complain about them. “In fact, we’ve not received any phone calls except from the media.
-
A Mom Becomes A Man, And A Family Sticks Together
This spring, Les and Scott GrantSmith will mark their 25th wedding anniversary. The couple raised two daughters along the way. But 15 years ago, they hit a crisis that nearly shattered their family. Les was keeping a secret, and that became a problem. But they solved it as a family, in a way that kept them together and happy.
In the weeks leading up to that day back in 1997, Les was certain of two things: She was a mother who loved her daughters — and she was also transgender, the term for someone born in a body of the wrong sex.
Les grew depressed and withdrawn, terrified that revealing her need to live her life as a man would mean losing Scott and their daughters, Thea and Amanda.
Weeks passed in which the couple barely spoke. Finally, Scott confronted his wife, just two days before Thanksgiving.
Not long ago, the two of them sat down to recall the conversation that followed.
“I said, ‘What’s going on?’ ” Scott recalls. “And then you said, ‘I can’t tell you. Because if I do, you’ll leave me and take the children and I’ll never see them again.’ And I said, ‘You’d probably better tell me then. Because you can’t … you can’t leave it hanging like that.’ “
“You can’t leave it like that,” Les agrees. “So, that’s when I told you.”
“First thing I remember is that you, you said that you were in the wrong body, that you should be a man,” Scott says.
“And if it had seemed to me that I was going to lose you, and I was going to lose the kids, I would have said, ‘OK. I’m not transitioning.’ But you told me that we’ll work it out.”
“Early the next week, you were on the computer and you were researching all of the surgeries …”
“Surgeries …” Les says.
“The hormones,” Scott says.
“Hormones,” Les echoes.
“And I just freaked out,” Scott says. “It finally occurred to me to ask the question, should I stay or should I go?”
He sums up his immediate response to that question: “Well, I won’t be better off. Les won’t be better off. And the kids won’t be better off.”
The couple had met in college; they got married in 1987. And with Les’ secret now in the open, they decided to stay together. In 1997, Les began hormone treatments as part of the process of beginning to live life as a man.
“Amanda was 7 at this point, and I explained to her where this was going,” Les says. “And she burst into tears and threw herself onto my lap. And she says, ‘Oh, please, don’t change into a man. If you have to change into anything, couldn’t it be a cat?’ “
Laughing, he adds, “And that was not a question I had prepared myself to answer. I mean, I was kinda stunned.”
“So right around that time, you had started transitioning and we just kinda fell out of holding hands when we were walking along the street,” Scott says.
“Spontaneous affection — we couldn’t do it comfortably anymore,” Les says.
“A lot of it was me,” Scott says. “Because it became clear that I would be perceived as gay. But I realized that I didn’t fall in love with a couple of body pieces. I decided this is the person.”
“And I was still the same person,” Les says.
“More so. More like the fun person I remembered from 30-odd years ago,” Scott says, “than before the transition.”
Les tells his husband, “Right … right. I mean … it’s just been amazing to watch you. You stuck with it. You persisted. And, every year my respect for you grows and grows.”
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you,” Scott says.
His transition from a woman to a man was also the main topic when Les GrantSmith sat down for a StoryCorps interview with his daughters, Thea, 23, and Amanda, 19. In particular, they talked about the early days, and how they all coped with the change.
“Do you remember the conversation where I told you I was transitioning?” Les asks.
“Yeah. I was really worried about you not wanting to be my mother anymore,” says Thea, who was 10 at the time. “So, it was pretty intense.”
Les says he never stopped considering himself the girls’ mother. And they still think of Les as their mom.
“Did you guys ever feel like maybe it was your fault, that, something that you guys had done?” he asks.
“You made that pretty dang clear — that it had nothing to do with us,” Amanda says.
Then she asks Les a question of her own: “What were you most concerned about when you told us?”
“Well, you know, girls learn how to be women from their mothers,” Les says. “And I was terrified that I was gonna totally screw you up. And that you wouldn’t be comfortable in your own skin. And my only defense against that in my mind was to go, ‘They’ll see love’ — and have that be what makes a relationship work.”
“So … this is a little scary for me to ask,” Thea says. “Were you ever prepared to not see us again?”
“No,” Les says. “That was never — ever — an option. If it had looked like Dad couldn’t have handled it and if it was really freaking you out, it was always my promise I would stop.”
Thea says that she remembers the talks she had with Scott about the process as well — and how he told her that it wouldn’t help anyone if he abandoned Les, or fought his transition into living as a man.
“He got over anything that was in him that told him that this was wrong, or that he couldn’t do it, or that it would be too hard,” Thea says. “He thought of me and Amanda and you. And, he made the right decision.”
(Source: NPR)
Genderqueer with a touch of happy humanism.
