"...[W]hen it's presented with a little more care for one's own privacy, the personal aspects of blogging can help other people really understand your philosophy -- the underlying worldview that unites your stances on, say, gun control, Bruce Springsteen, and race relations in Milwaukee. Blogs help show that politics isn't -- or shouldn't be -- some disconnected policy preferences; political beliefs should flow from underlying ethical and ultimately metaphysical beliefs that you live with all day long. (Or try to, anyway.)..."
In any case, most "bloggers" would have begun their sites with their life story. I needed time to make mine seem interesting.
Washington DC, 2000
My name (as if you didn't catch it by now) is David Alexander. I am a nearly-48-year-old graphic designer working for the Federal government. I live alone in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from what is politely referred to as "the Nation's capital." I have a teenaged son, Paul, from a previous marriage. He lives with his mother, farther out in the hopelessly middle-class Virginia suburb known as Fairfax County.
My roots in the southwest quadrant of Ohio date back over a century and a half, at least five generations. The majority of my ancestors came from the Alsace-Lorraine region of what was sometimes Germany, but what is now France.
I was born in Cleveland, Ohio, just three days after Christmas, and the worst time of the year to have a birthday. My parents have always sent me a card, if no one else did, and if only out of guilt.
When I was still in the cradle, we moved to a village just east of Cincinnati (and closer to our "kin and ken") known as Milford, where I lived until I moved to DC in 1980. The oldest of four -- boy, girl, boy, girl, in that order -- I attended Catholic grade school and high school. From there, I earned a Bachelor of Science in Design from the University of Cincinnati. After two years of various studio assignments, I got the big break from my rich uncle. (Sam. Maybe you know him.) I have been on his payroll every since.
I am the only member of my immediate family to have left the Cincinnati area. I sign all my letters home, "Your long lost son..."
Along the way, I learned to play both the guitar and the banjo (the latter in the old-time mountain style; I don't do bluegrass), and can fake my way through several other instruments laying around the house. I've also been known to sing. In addition, I have been an avid folkdancer for nearly a quarter century. My latest passion is zydeco, which is the music and dance of the Creole people of southwest Louisiana.
At 11, I became an altar boy; at 17, an Eagle Scout; at 35, a purple belt in karate. I still claim all three titles.
Finally, I read too much for my own good, which was enough to make me think I should never have an unpublished thought -- hence the presence of this site you are reading now.
Following this entry, things can only get better.
(Apologies to John Prine, from whose lyrics the title of this entry originates.)
