Memoirs · Volume 1 of 4

The Full Arc

I Do Not Have What the Buddhists Call a Resting Life

From rural Kentucky to the oldest private military college, from political field campaigns that unseated incumbents to bankruptcy and back, from Norwich to SMRF to a Jacksonville restaurant to The Amanuensis. The whole arc, finally on the page, written by someone who never figured out how to put it down.

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Memoirs · Volume 2 of 4

Tall Poppied

Memoirs of the Most Intelligent Poor

What the literature on cross-class friendships predicts: a poor person befriended by a richer person rises. What actually happens, often, when the poor person is competent enough to threaten the richer one: the relationship reverses gravity. The friendship that was supposed to lift you leaves you lower than it found you.

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Memoirs · Volume 3 of 4

Tall Poppied: The Coveted Rule of Kindness Culture

The Coveted Rule of Kindness Culture

After abject poverty has destroyed you, the next gate is composure. Kindness culture asks survivors to be perfect through every cut and gash that follows. This is what that gate looks like from inside, and why the people best-suited to leadership are the ones it filters out.

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Memoirs · Volume 4 of 4

One of the Good Ones

Being a "good brown one" in a Hyper-Racist Community

You grow up brown in a community that is happy to assure you it does not see you that way, until the moment something happens, and then it sees only that. This is the memoir of being conditionally accepted by people who needed someone to point at when they were accused of racism: I was the good one.

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The Full Arc

Volumes in this Series