Blue in Appalachia
Waiting in line at my local hardware store, a man I sort of recognized but didn’t really know kindly informed
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Hello. My name is Jørn Earl Otte. Don’t worry if you can’t pronounce it correctly — neither can I. My first name sounds like “Yawn” except when it doesn’t, and my last name was said “Ahht” until it wasn’t. I’m the son of a Danish immigrant father and an Appalachian-Greek mother, raised sometimes by them and often by my grandparents. I write. Some of it is pretty good. Despite suffering from Bipolar Disorder, PTSD, and other neurodivergencies, I’ve been with the same loving spouse for more than 27 years, and together we have two grown children who, I must say, are exceptionally bright and surprisingly well adjusted. Got my BFA from Goddard College and MFA from Lesley University. I believe in friendship, hugs, true political activism, and in challenging our white, cis, heteropatriarchal late-stage capitalist nightmare. I also believe in hygge and flødeboller. Denmark is my spiritual home, but I live and work in Beckley, West Virginia, a neglected corner of the Divided States of America.
Waiting in line at my local hardware store, a man I sort of recognized but didn’t really know kindly informed
Blue in Appalachia Read Post »