Sequoyah
Sequoyah's Place Web Site
Sequoyah: Who is this guy?
I'm a retired, seventy year old straight married man. I have three grown children who among them have ten children. There are at present only two great-granddaughters. I have had three--I think--careers. I was first a chemist, then an Episcopal priest (well, I am still a priest) and teacher in a public school. But I suspect that's not what Awesome Dude wants in terms of a biography.
My stories are about young people--high school students for the most part--but include the people in their lives. I write about high school students because I have lived among them for most of my life, first as a parish priest with a high school youth group with almost as many members as the parish itself, then as a high school teacher of English.
High school youth have built in drama. Not only is everything a matter of life and death to them--a zit before the prom, a father appearing in out-dated clothes, a mother blowing the horn when she comes to pick you up at school--all are life or death matters to the high school man or woman.
Then there is the fact that a high school man or woman is mostly potential and potential is dangerous. Potential is the potential to make or break a dream, to make or break relationships, to screw up as well as succeed. And high schoolers can do both. At seventy, a bad choice can bring only a few years of regret. A bad choice in high school can, literally, bring a lifetime of pain and suffering. I hope my stories serve as a warning in some cases and encouragement in others. I hope they offer a way of seeing the possible results of choices, good and bad, without risk.
Ok, more biography. I grew up in rural, rural Alabama where everything was clear-cut, religion was fundamentalist Protestant and the horizons--all of them limited. College was not only an escape from an Alabama farm, but also from the life limiting culture. After college I escaped the religion of my family and ended up an Episcopalian. I was so taken with the religious freedom I enjoyed, I went to seminary. Recently one of my seminary professor characterized me as "one of the firebrands we turned out." True, as I was deeply involved in the trenches of small town North Carolina for the Civil Rights struggles and protest of the Vietnam War.
I am pretty light to have Choctaw and Creek blood, but there's some in my veins. Guess that's enough.