The Family is Doomed

A footnote to yesterday's post on separating blog life and private life.  I started reading White Like Me in anticipation of Tim Wise's visit to Anchorage September 13, 14, 15. In the preface he quotes Polish poet Czelslaw Milosz,

"When a writer is born into a family, the family is doomed."

 He goes on,

I hope Milosz exaggerated, but in any event, I should now warn my family members, to whom I did not provide any of this material as I was writing it, before you go any further:  what follows will not always be easy to digest.  Some of it, in fact, will be painful, and not because I am trying to hurt you, but because I am trying to tell the truth, and the truth is sometimes unpleasant.  If it is any consolation, the parts that will make you uncomfortable were as difficult for me to write as they will be for you to read.  But they were necessary to this story, my story, and the larger story of what whiteness means.

Fortunately my ego is such that I don't think there's anything I could write that would be important enough to risk damaging relationships with my family members by writing something about any of them without their approval or at least consent.


A footnote to the another recent post which mentioned that Kenny G tickets in Anchorage started at $84 ($80 discounted).  In today's Anchorage Daily News they are down to $50.  I'd like to think this reflects well on the taste of Anchorage folks, but it's possible that this price was always the Ticketmaster price and I just found other, more expensive, ticket sites.    If so, that should be a warning to be careful when booking tickets on line.