Tag Archives: family

November 4, 2025 · 3:04 am

The Beyer Brand

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This is a logo-doodle…wouldn’t that make an excellent name for an alien science fiction character?   Logodoodle, Prince of the Black Hole Kingdom.

I have been so obsessed with all the terrible details of the new orange monkey that has taken over our government that I completely forgot about an idea I had for a logo using my family name.  That is, until I began doodling while binging on Penny Dreadful on Netflix.  (Gawd, I have to talk about that show in a post too… horribly wonderful stuff!)  Yes the name-plate art you see above, not inspired by Trump’s gold letter fetish, no, not at all, is merely a doodle.  No rulers were used.  I eyeballed everything and let it flow.  I do admit to going over the pencil drawing in ink and editing at that point.

My family name, you see, is a very old and common German name.  Beyer means “a man from Bavaria” or auf Deutsch, “ein Mann aus Bayern”.  We were originally peasant farmers, but achieved nobility and a coat of arms in the middle ages.  I know this because in 1990 I was invited the to world-wide Beyer family reunion in Munich due to the genealogical research Uncle Skip did into the family name.  They sent me a book and I paid for the book, but did not attend.  (On a teacher’s salary?  Are you kidding me?)

But I was thinking about my brand.  It does have a meaning, and it does stand for something.  I underlined the illuminated letters of the name with a broken sword.  My ancestors were once warlike.  My great uncle died in the US Navy during World War II.   My dad was in the Navy during the Korean Conflict.  But having been a school teacher for so many years, I am dedicated to the belief that conflict is best resolved through wit and negotiation.  I would sooner be killed than have to shoot at another human being.  Of course, that part of the Beyer brand only applies to me.  Both my son the Marine, and my brother the retired Texas prison guard, are gun nuts.  And they are both very good shots.  I don’t recommend getting into serious arguments with them.

My family name also stands for farming and farmer’s values.  We were once stewards of the land.  Both my mother and my father grew up on farms.  I was raised in a small farm town less than five miles from the Aldrich family farms of my grandparents and uncles.  I have worked on farms.  I have shoveled cow poop… a unique thing to look upon as a badge of honor.  My octogenarian parents are living now in my grandparents’ farm house on land that has been in my family for more than 100 years.

My family name also stands for service.  I am not the only teacher in the clan.  My mother and two of my cousins are long-time registered nurses and all have seen the craziness of the ER.  (And I don’t mean by watching the television show with Clooney in it.)  I have a brother who was a prison guard and a sister who is a county health inspector.  We put the welfare of others before our own.  Our success in life has been measured by the success of the communities we serve.

While it is true that I could never make money off the Beyer brand the way gold-letter-using Mr. Trump has, I think it is safe to say, “My brand is priceless.”

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October 31, 2025 · 1:25 am

Morning on the New Farm

First of all, it is not new. The farmhouse was built by my great grandfather, Friend Aldrich. That was in the 1880’s. The farm down the road and to the right is Great Uncle Ira Clarke Aldrich’s farm, my grandfather’s brother. This is the road in front of the very house where my Great Grandfather lived, and my Grandfather after him, and my Mother after that.

It is new now only in that it has been transferred again to the next generation. Me, my sister Nancy, and my sister Mary are now the co-owners. My brother has been bought out, and we will probably never see him again. We don’t really know why. But he did not want a farm to worry about. He needed the money for reasons unexplained to the rest of us.

So, although I am not there, it is now my farm. 33% of it.

Me in grade school. 6th Grade?
My sister Nancy will live on the farm and manage it.
My sister Mary also lives in Iowa.

The story of the family farm now belonging to us worked out much easier than expected. The traumatic drama we thought was happening didn’t happen. And everyone is satisfied with the outcome.

And then I had a coronary incident in May of 2025. My blood-pressure medicine sapped too much of the potassium and magnesium from my system, causing my heart rate to slow to 37 beats per minute and nearly resulting in deadly heart failure due to arrhythmia. I had to have a pacemaker installed to control my heartbeat. I also had to give up driving, and living in the Dallas suburbs became a difficult matter with all the pollution, pollen, traffic, Texas drivers, and Texas politics. I needed the farm life and quiet of Iowa once more.

So, now I am living in Iowa once again. I sleep in what had been my parents’ bedroom. I have seen the ghost of my grandfather’s black cat, Midnight, and possibly the ghost of my grandfather’s mother… or some unknown old lady from the 1800s. I can breathe better here. Life is easier and slower here. And while I am separated from my wife until she is ready to retire from teaching in Texas, I have a better chance of living long enough for her to also be retired.

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October 23, 2025 · 1:11 am

Warming to New Home Hearths

I have returned to the scene of my youth and childhood. I am now living in the farmhouse, which was once the home of my grandparents and great-grandparents before them. The farmplace has been in the family for over a hundred years.

It takes a lot of getting used to stuff that I have not been exposed to in a very long time. Living in Texas since 1981, I am not weather-proofed for Autumn in Iowa. It is already the kind of cold that is actually winter cold in Texas. Harvest is finishing up. There’s a lot of dust and ragweed pollen in the air to reignite allergies of olden days. I haven’t seen any ring-necked pheasants, but I have seen deer wandering through the cornfield stubble. Those are Autumn images I used to live for because they herald the coming of Thanksgiving and Christmas. Of course, Halloween comes first. These are things that, as a Jehovah’s Witness, I wasn’t supposed to think about from 1995 to 2014. I can think about them now.

I am living in the house my parents and grandparents lived in before me with the older of my two sisters. My wife, not divorced from me but separated from me by a job she’s not ready to retire from for four more years, remains in Texas in possession of her strict Biblical faith. The Witnesses are good people, but being away from them is liberating since I am a Christian Existentialist, and being considered an atheist by their measure can be daunting.

Of course, President Pumpkinhead has killed off the soybean and corn markets with his beloved tariffs, and we may face losing all our farm income… and eventually the farmhouse. He is using AI jet planes to poop on protesters in his TikTok imaginaries. And he is also firing all special education teachers, drilling for more toxic oil, and working hard to kill off the biosphere. So, the end of the world is coming soon. At least Edgar Cayce predicted that once the Builder had brought destruction to the government and country, the Mender would arise and lead the population to heal and reunify in a hatred-removing campaign for love and renewal.

Who knows where it goes from here? But we shall see who decides and what we can choose to happen next.

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September 7, 2025 · 12:45 am

There Are No Stranger Things Than Kids

I am planning to re-watch all eight hours of Netflix’s Stranger Things.  I can’t help it.  I really seriously love that show.  And the reason is the kids in the series.  Yes, it was set in the 80’s, a decade I long to return to, but I wasn’t a kid myself in the 80’s.  That was my first decade as a teacher.  The thing is… I taught each and every one of the kids in that series.  I admit, they had different names and lived in different bodies, but they were the same faces, the same personalities.

And it is not so much the characters the kids inhabit in the show, though they were obviously cast as themselves.  It is the real-life screwiness that Jimmy Fallon brings out with the silly string that I recognize.

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Finn Wolfhard’s character, Michael, is basically me.  The dreamer determined to make the fantastic become true.  And when they played Dungeons and Dragons in the basement, he was the Dungeon Master.  That was me.  The teller of the stories, the maker of the meaning.  He’s the one who creates the Demogorgon adventure that eerily comes to life.  He is also the one who finds and befriends the mysterious Eleven.  He is the driving force that leads them all to the inevitable conclusion of the adventure.

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And while I never met anyone quite like the mysterious Eleven, Millie Bobby Brown is definitely no stranger to me.  She is bubbly, outgoing, and utterly charming.  She can channel Nikki Minaj.  I must’ve taught at least five different versions of Millie in three different schools when I was a teacher.

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She makes the weird and otherworldly character of Eleven become believable through the sheer force of a natural talent for empathy and understanding.  She is a highly intelligent girl with a knack for making things work.

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I have also taught about four different incarnations of the Dustin character’s actor, Gaten Matarazzo.  The goofy but courageous kid with a broad sense of humor and a focus on food is a very common type of junior high kid.  And while he isn’t usually a leader in the classroom, he’s the one you turn to when you need help getting the group to choose the right path.

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I swear to you, I know all these kids, even though I have never met them.  You see, when you are a teacher for long enough, everyone in the world comes in through your door.  You have to get to know them and learn to at least like them if not love them.  You do the thing for long enough, and you learn that there are a limited number of different faces and personalities that God distributes over time and circumstance to many different people.  It is possible to get to know nearly all of them.  And there are no Stranger Things than kids.

 

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August 27, 2025 · 12:24 am

Anita Jones, the Little Red-Haired Girl

Anita Jones is a character in several of my books, but she also represents a girl from my own childhood who was as much of a regret for me as she was for poor old Charlie Brown.

Anita Jones, of course, is not her real name. You can’t even look at the picture and tell by what she looks like who I am secretly portraying. But the thing is, she was definitely real to me. And I would still be horrified to have her find out how I really felt about her.

She was not my first crush. I mooned over the beautiful Alicia Stewart (also not a real name) from second grade through sixth grade. But Anita was always right there. Often right behind me and to my left whenever I turned around on the playground. Not looking me in the eye, but probably looking at me until I began to turn. I know I looked at her whenever she wore dresses or shorts. She had beautiful peach-colored legs.

There was a time when, in Music class, the boys were forced to ask a girl to be a dance partner in the square dancing lessons that Miss Malik was giving us. My best friend Mark had asked Alicia to dance with him, so my number one choice was already taken. And when it was my turn, Anita looked at me with those wonderful brown eyes and heart-shaped face. And I… was too embarrassed to pick her. Then everyone would know how I really felt about her. So, I picked my cousin instead. My heart was lodged in my left shoe for three days after the look I saw on her face. Not my cousin’s face. The brown eyes and heart shape.

Then later, when I was on the high school bus to Belmond, Mickey Schmidt (we never called him Michael because I was Michael) made a joke that embarrassed me.

“Have you ever been caught masturbating in the bathtub?”

“No,” I told him, in disgust. Anita was in the seat across the aisle listening.

“It’s a good place to do it in, then, ain’t it.”

I turned as red as any maple leaf ever managed in late fall. She was smiling at me.

“I would’ve liked to have seen that,” she said. “I bet you even have a lot of hair down there.”

I would’ve laughed if I hadn’t been so embarrassed that my head might’ve caught fire.

But thinking about that humiliating moment on the bus later, I realized that she had actually been brave enough to admit she was thinking about my genitals. I had never asked her on a date or sat beside her in Art Class as I should have. My life might’ve been very different if I had. Even if I had asked her to dance.

But somewhere in the Multiverse, a parallel me is probably married to a parallel Anita. And I bless them for what might’ve been. At least, it’s lovely to think so now.

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August 23, 2025 · 12:17 am

Dog Writes

This is a repost of a classic bit… A post written by my dog using her tongue to lick-type. I offer this now nostalgically because she left us behind for dog heaven a year ago.

Jade Monster1

Okay, like, my name is Jade Beyer.   I know I look like a dog, but my family lets me be a people sometimes.  They let me eat enough people food from their table to turn into one of them.  You know, like, all fat and unhealthy and some stuff.  So, since Mickey is being lazy today, he said I could write his blog for him.   It won’t be very long because it is taking forever to pick out the right keys with my nose.  And my nose is bif… I mean big enough to hit the wrong key sometimes.  So I have to edif caretully and ofren.

My family does a lot of funny stuff I can tell about.  Like how they pee.  They go in my extra drinking places.  You know, the white things with the extra funky tasting water.  Why are you not laughing about that?  Don’t you get it?  The house is full of carpets where they could pee and mark their territory with their scents.  But they would rather just pee where I drink.  I don’t get it.  And why is Mickey yelling at me that I can’t write about that?  I just did, didn’t I?

But besides that I can tell you about my Momma.  Mickey is my Momma.  Why do I say that even though Mickey is a man?  Well, when I was a wee little puppy and my family found me in the street, Mickey was the first one to pick me up and hold me.  He was the first one to feed me.  He says I must have “imprinted” on him as baby animals sometimes do.  And that’s why he’s my Momma.  I love him best.  Even when he is grumpy and mad at me.  I chew up a lot of his stuff because it smells like him and I love him so very much.

I am writing this today because Mickey is busy shaving off his face fur.  He found some old pictures of himself for yesterday’s post, and it made him wonder if he could look anything like that again.  I tried to chew the old pictures so I could love them even better, but he just got mad at me and swatted me on the ears.  He said I could show you the old pictures, and not eat them.  So here they are before the temptation gets to me;

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Wasn’t he a goofy-looking kid?  I like him better with glasses.  I tasted his glasses once, but not the ones in the picture, the ones he is wearing now.  His face doesn’t look anything like the third grade pictures any more.  I would very much like to lick that little-boy face with the same tongue I use to lick my own butt, but Mickey says he’s glad I can’t because that kid was dumb enough to let a dog lick his face.  Apparently when people get older, you just can’t lick them as much.  It just makes them grumpy.

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August 20, 2025 · 12:08 am

Being Old Enough to Know Better…

I am the man from the Setting Sun,

Come to the future to deliver the past.

What does that even mean, that silly little two-line poem I wrote twenty years ago?  Am I not old enough to know better than to create a snippet loaded with goofy contradictions?  Apparently not.  But I am old enough to deliver the past.  I have been around long enough that I remember when President Kennedy was assassinated.  I saw Neil Armstrong take that “small step for man” on the surface of the moon.  I have learned a number of lessons from the past.  And as a writer, I can deliver those lessons in the form of stories.  I was born in a different century.  I have been around for more than half of one… approaching two thirds.  I have collected all kinds of wonderful things in my goofy old brain.  And make no doubt about it, with six incurable diseases and being a cancer survivor since 1983, my Sun is about the set.  So, I have a mission, to open the eyes of people who are too foolish to avoid listening to what I have to say, or to read what I have written.

I saw The Sound of Music starring Julie Andrews in the Cecil Theater in Mason City, Iowa in 1965 when I was not yet ten years old.  I heard the song My Favorite Things for the very first time on the old black and white Motorola TV set in the clip I posted at the start of this post.  Kukla, Fran, and Ollie was a puppet show I never missed on Saturdays if I could help it.  In a world before video games and computers and even color TV, kids still had priorities.  And my world was definitely a world of imagination.

Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Moose

Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Moose

Fess Parker as Davy Crockett, and then as Daniel Boone

Fess Parker as Davy Crockett, and then as Daniel Boone

Paul Winchell with Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff

Paul Winchell with Jerry Mahoney and Knucklehead Smiff

                                                                              So, what kind of knucklehead must I be to think younger folks would want to know about any of this stuff from the time of dinosaurs and black-and-white TV?  I write books that are basically genre-breakers and about way too many different things to make sense to adults.  As a result, I classify myself as a Young Adult novelist, a writer for children… but not the beginning reader kind, or the early chapter-book kind… the kind like Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Light in the Forest, or Dicey’s Song.  I write books about what it was like to be a kid in the past… the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s… last century.  And I have some knowledge and expertise in this area because I was one of those teachers during that time period that got to know the kids in my classes.  I made the horrifying mistake of actually talking to kids, asking them about their lives, and listening to their answers.  I talked about all manner of things with all manner of kids… brilliant things and stupid things… with dumb kids, smart kids, smelly kids, charming kids, and the kids everybody else hated.  You know… I did all the stupid mistakes that teachers who have no earthly idea how to do discipline would do, and got those kids to learn to behave at least halfway like human beings by being somebody they trusted and respected and… on rare occasions… believed.  Right now I am working on Snow Babies.  It is set in 1984.  And I hope to be good enough of a Sunset Man to be able to deliver it to the future.

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August 18, 2025 · 12:17 am

Mickey Mouse Club Music

Today’s essay was inspired by Annette Funicello’s Facebook page.  I was marveling at how a teen idol and Disney child star could have such a large following and leave such large footprints on social media when she is not only all grown out of her child-stardom, but is actually quite dead.   I, however, who am technically still alive, work very very hard at this author-self-promotion-thingy, and I hardly make any headway at all in the ocean of the internet.  So, I did what I always do when faced with the imponderables of this writing life.  I drew a picture.  I drew Annette naked.  Well, that’s not entirely accurate either.  I put clothes on her because, well, young-adult-genre authors don’t always have to think like a teenager.

annette

You see, I am not mad at Annette.  And my hormones no longer control the other things that once made me deeply regret the fact that Disney never let Annette appear in movies in a bikini, even in the movies that were not Disney movies.  When you’re twelve, there are different priorities than when you are 68.  Hormones don’t do all of my thinking any more… at least, that’s what I tell my wife.

And part of what I still love most about Annette is the music.  The Mickey Mouse Club was always about talented kids.  They could sing and dance and play the drums, and they were as easily professional quality as many of the adults… and cuter to boot.  Talented children have been a significant portion of my life.  As an English teacher in middle school, I taught kids that were Annette’s MMC age.  I taught them how to write and how to read, and occasionally I had to find other talents to promote and help those kids become winners in the great game of life.  And, it may be cruel to say it bluntly, but some kids are downright ugly.  Not merely ugly in terms of what they looked like, but how they acted and how they thought and how they felt about things.  Racism runs deeply through children who’ve been taught thoroughly by parents before the teacher even meets them.  Sometimes you have to dig around really deeply in the black pits of their personalities to find something bright and shiny enough to put the spotlight on.   But it is always worth it.  ALL CHILDREN HAVE TREASURE BURIED INSIDE THEM.  And it deeply hurts that too many adults in every community can’t be bothered to dig for it.

Annette in DLandn

I grafted a background on my picture of Annette to stress the fact that she is not naked in my picture.  She was a very public figure and a good portion of her personal treasure was that screen personality that showed through and sparkled in every role.  My favorite Annette piece is the movie Babes in Toyland, which I saw for the first time at Grandma Beyer’s house in Mason City on her color TV.  The songs from that movie still play in my dreams.

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August 12, 2025 · 12:36 am

Running Totally Free

I know this from actual childhood experience. There is nothing so freeing for the young soul as running naked in a pasture where there’s a cool creek for skinny dipping. The milk cows didn’t mind. The bull was in the barn. The water was cold, originating from an artesian well. My heart was pumping happily.

Now, much nearer my next chess game with the Grim Reaper, I am faced with freeing myself of everything once again. I have had to give up driving. My daughter now owns the car I am still paying for. I gave it to her to help her get a job despite being in her early twenties. And specifically because with 50 years of arthritis and 25 years of diabetes under my belt, I have had to give up the idea that I can safely drive a car in city traffic.

I am also planning on moving to Iowa to the family farm established by my great-grandfather on my mother’s side. I will move into the farm place with my sister, nearer to where the rest of my family has lived and died. I will be living there without my wife, who is not yet ready to retire from her teaching job. And without my daughter, who will stay in the big city to take care of her mother. We are not divorcing. I just need to be where I don’t interfere with the frenetic life of an older teacher (not older than me, just older than the other teachers). My sister is also retired and has more time to do things like getting me to doctor appointments in the middle of a workday.

I will leave all my furniture in the house near Dallas, and leave almost all of my books, my massive doll collection, my memories of raising our family in that house, and other things too sad to think about. I would be in Iowa already if I hadn’t had the heart problem in May, and the possible skin cancer problem from last week. But soon I will be there again. Spiritually naked and free. Ready for that cold dip into the coming darkness we all have to anticipate.

Don’t cry for me. I am running naked and free.

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July 30, 2025 · 12:34 am

Paranoia, part two

As I get older, I am entering the territory of having Parkinson’s Disease and possibly dementia related to that. Of course, that assessment is not from a doctor; it is my own conclusion based on evidence that may or may not be simple paranoia. Of course, paranoia is a symptom of both Parkinson’s and Parkinson s-related dementia.

Lately, I have made some paranoia-inspired decisions that negatively impacted my life. In February, I thought I was going to die from sepsis caused by a kidney infection I had after passing two small kidney stones and getting a urinary tract infection from the lovely experience. A few hours in the ER revealed that my urologist had completely healed the infection the week prior, and I was simply reacting to the burning sensation as I emptied my bladder, which was later cured by the urologist giving me pills that turned my pee blue and made the burning go away. Overreaction to a symptom that didn’t mean what I thought it meant.

In May, I had been routinely monitoring my blood pressure and got a reading of 40 for a heart rate. 40 beats a minute is possibly going to be fatal, according to my experience of listening to my mother, a registered nurse of 40-plus years, telling about her ER nurse experiences. I also didn’t feel very well. So, knowing I was probably overreacting again, I went to the ER again. Five days later, I was home from the hospital having had surgery to install a pacemaker. That time I got turned into a cyborg and discovered that I was right about something due to my paranoia. It probably saved my life.

But then, two weeks later I was back in the ER because of lightheadedness. a thing clearly listed on my doctor’s orders as a thing to go back to the ER for. This time is was only dehydration. So, again, not as bad as I thought it was.

Then, a week ago, I had a charge on my checking account that I couldn’t account for. It was supposedly Microsoft billing me for something. So, I called the number provided to ask them what it was for. Well, the number was not in service, and it was recently canceled. So, I called the bank’s online security number. My debit card was stopped, and a replacement was put in the mail. And he asked about lost checks. I told him about one of those that disappeared from the mailbox, and my checking account was closed and transferred to a new account number too. Perfect for end-of-the-month bill paying. I finally have access to money again since yesterday’s mail.

Having paranoia is a bad thing concerning things yet to come. Like dementia. But it isn’t all bad. It made me potentially head off worse things. There really are bad things that can happen from online scammers and identity thieves, though it turns out the charge was legitimate, the Microsoft folks just refuse to identify it through my Google Chrome email. And certain concerning symptoms often lead to worse outcomes than I managed to have, though the low heart rate really could have stopped my heart.

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