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Washington Square. On air is the audio town square for the Washington Square Review, Lansing Community College's literary journal. Writers, readers, scholars, publishing professionals, citizens of the world, gather here and chat about all things writing. Hey there. This is Melissa Ford Luckin, editor for the Washington Square Review. I'm here today with Jerry Wemple, whose piece Bus Stop will be in the Summer 24 edition of the Journal. Hey, Jerry.

Hi.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, thanks for coming by. So tell us a little bit about your piece. How did you come to write it?

Well, it's pretty new. Earlier this summer I was doing a couple of writing workshops at our town library. I was on sabbatical in the spring, so I was trying to do things in the community and other places and I was doing these workshops and I started an exercise about writing, about Play Place. And I kept coming up with this, you know, this memory I had of when I lived in Florida for a while when I was a kid from 9 to 16. And I'm like, I don't know where this is going. So eventually, as we do with drafts, you, you put it away and you bring it back out and keep tinkering with it. And this is, it's not a true story in that it's all literally true. It's based on an incident where a kid was kidnapped on his way to the bus stop in my neighborhood when I was a kid in Florida and was killed. And what I found interesting and the kind of tension that I'm trying to bring about in this story is the lack of communication that today if something horrific like that happened, there would be counseling at schools and parents would talk to you and you know, there would be police at the bus stop. Nothing. It was like people just like, okay, that happened and people just ignored it. No, no adults really talked to us about it, even school or parents. And you know, it was like, oh, that, that happened, but we're all just going to ignore it.

So did you kids talk to each other about it?

We didn't. And part of it was, I think, guilt because we were Florida, at least at that time and at least where I'd lived, there were very strict class based barriers. And this kid that this happened to, and in the story the kid is in a much different class. I mean, they're not rich people, but they're renting a house because their new house is going to be built in this new development. And the kids in this neighborhood are just, you know, they're living run down trailers and run down houses and they're, you know, you can just tell that there's a much. There's a class distinction. And so the kids at the other kids at the bus stop don't talk to this so called rich kid, even though he's probably just a little better off than they are.

Not.

Not super better off.

So you think these class distinctions were kind of unsaid, that the kids just knew what the rules were?

Yeah, a lot of it had to do with where you lived. I lived in Florida for a while. This is in the 70s, it's a long time ago. But where I lived, your neighborhood that defined you, there were kids whose parents were shrimpers and they talked and acted a certain way. And there were kids whose parent they were transplant New Yorkers or from Ohio, and they had nicer homes with, you know, swimming pools and so forth. And there were like several different breakdowns. And it was pretty stratified. It was. Yeah, there was a lot of tension, but not 100%. Like sometimes there was some overlap. Like sometimes like sports brought people together, but. And sometimes there were. There was tension too.

Do you think that that has had an impact in you over time, growing up in a kind of stratified environment like that?

Yeah, I think a lot because well, before that I lived in rural Pennsylvania and then I moved back and finished high school in rural Pennsylvania, where I was in my schools, the only person of color. Yeah. So that had a big impact on me too. And then when I moved to Florida for those years, the schools had just been desegregated only like the year before.

Oh, wow.

So it was a much, much different place and a much different world. And trying to negotiate all that along with the economic tension between people was really interesting. And so when I came back to Pennsylvania, it was interesting because there were pretty wealthy people who went to my public high school and there were pretty poor people who went to it, but. But everybody was kind of treat in that high school, which was different than the way it was in Florida.

That's quite a contrast. You mentioned that this is based on a true experience that you had that somebody did disappear and was murdered at a bus stop. And then you were mentioning that if it happened now, there certainly would be a lot of wraparound services and counseling and people would talk about it. How do you think that affected you? Living through it at the time?

You know, it was obviously a long time ago and I'm trying to remember, but there were a couple of bad things, really bad things that happened to people I knew and maybe not necessarily we're friends with. There was A girl in one of my classes, and I wasn't friends with her, but I knew who she was. And her family was kidnapped because her father was the president of a bank. And they were held hostage for a couple of days, and they. They survived, but I'm sure that was a terrible ordeal. And we were in middle school, and I remember another time in middle school. I'm not sure what happened, but another classmate, his father was essentially assassinated. He was shot in his backyard with a rifle. Like. Like. Like a sniper got him. It's also the. The seventies. So when I was a kid, I remember. I was really little, but I remember the assassination of Robert Kennedy, of Martin Luther King, and the Vietnam War is going on. I think this world's a kind of a violent place, but people, they just keep going. They just like.

Yeah, well, that's interesting, because now when people think about the 70s, they think about living free and, you know, like, caring for the earth and listening to good music. So a lot of people that didn't live through that time don't realize how tumultuous it really was.

Oh, yeah, it was. It was a kind of crazy. I remember, especially when I was in Pennsylvania, guys getting drafted and coming back from Vietnam and being very. And I was little, I was like, you know, less than 10 years old, like 8, 9, 7 years old, and being very disheartened, sitting around talking with their parents or their, you know, the. The neighbors who were the elders and just like, talking down what was happening and what happened to them. And then the war kept going on and on, and I'm like, I'm getting closer to the draft age. I missed it by several years, but it was essentially something that was going on all my life up until, you know, I became, you know, a teenager. And so it wasn't out of the possibility. Realm of possibility that it would continue.

Right. So you grew up wondering, you know, when is it going to be my turn to go, and what will it be like?

Yeah, so it was. Yeah, so there was lots of crazy stuff going on in the 70s, people. Yeah. It wasn't like, hey, let's all eat granola and have a good time.

Right, right, for sure. Because now in the media, you see a lot of 70s imagery, and it all looks kind of like easygoing and joyful, and it just wasn't that way.

Yeah, I mean, it wasn't always horrific, but there were a lot of. I mean, a lot of crazy things going on.

Yeah. Very different. So you did not get drafted. You went to college. Talk a Little bit about that, because I know you went to undergrad and then your MFA were fairly close together.

Yeah, well, actually, what happened is I went back to Pennsylvania after spending several years in Florida, and I finished high school there. And then I went to college for a couple of. I wasn't ready for it. I didn't really have a family background of people going to college. And so after two years, I dropped out, and I eventually joined the Navy. So I did go into the military and stayed in the Navy for seven years and then eventually finished my undergrad degree and was starting to write a little bit more seriously and starting to publish some. I was working as a newspaper reporter, and I decided to go into the MFA program at University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

What do you think it was about the writing that intrigued you?

I'm one of those people who always loved to write. I love to read. I started reading when I was really young. My mom taught me how to read before I went to school. I didn't go to kindergarten, so before I was in first grade, I knew how to read, and I liked reading. And then I'm like, well, let's try to write something. And so I was always just tinkering around with that. Even in high school, I was working for the town newspaper covering sports, even though I'm not a huge sports person. But I was like, yeah, this is a chance to get paid to write. I'll do this. And so. So I was always interested in that. And. But eventually I realized I didn't really like being a newspaper reporter because I didn't like going and asking people about their loved one getting shot to death and how they feel about it or covering a lot of horrific things. And so I, like. I want to try this MFA thing. So I did.

Okay, I do want to talk more about your MFA and also your teaching experience. But before we move too far away from your piece, Bus stop, I have a book club question for you. So the formatting of the piece is without paragraph indentation. So it's written as one big paragraph. Talk about that. How did you make that decision?

Well, I'm. I'm thinking that it's kind of like just this. This memory that flows in, and you can. You sort of feel the narrator weaving this narrative back and forth and going from one, jumping from one little detail to the next, until finally it's starting to make sense in. In his head. And so that's what that was. The kind of the feeling I was trying to get out of it is just that you can see that it's very imagistic and very jumping detail and trying to sew all these little details and create this little portrait and jumping back. Like for example, this kid called Big Eared Scotty appears. But then later you find out, oh, Big Eared Scotty not only gets picked on at the bus stop, he gets picked on at home. You know, like these kids lives aren't all that great.

Your response makes me think about how keeping it all together kind of tucks it all in as one experience the way that someone would with a memory.

Right?

Yeah. And as though when they're recounting it to someone else, it would get peppered with these other memories because they all kind of merged together to support the response at the end, which is how the kids handled it.

Yeah, it's just chunk of memory download. I'm like, zoom here. This is everything I can kind of remember about this incident.

Yep. When you did the first draft, was it in the same shape or did you have paragraph indentations Again?

I think in the first draft I was mostly writing under a time limit because we were in this exercise and I was just working with the people in the group and writing almost bullet statements and, and fragments and trying to flesh out as much as I could and realizing, well, this is not going to be a true story. I'm like, I know I'm mixing up details here, so what can I do to make it a better story? I guess, like, you know, if it's going to be fiction, what can I do to make it engaging and try to get a sense of South Florida during those times? Because South Florida is a very different place than if you're in the north at all. And it's just its own place. And I'm trying to capture that a little bit.

Do you think there's something other than what you were talking about earlier that makes South Florida its own place?

Well, I think there's a legacy of like, people are getting paid back for the bad things they did. That sounds like a weird thing to say, but where I lived in South Florida, it was once pristine Everglades. A company came in, bought 120 square miles and leveled it. It was. You can look up this town, Cape Carl, and they just leveled it and put in roads and canals and just destroyed the environment. And that's not the only place that happened. The Everglades is just. Was basically ruined. And it's like there's this, you know, there's got to be some kind of karma there eventually, right? That there's just You've done so much damage and so much disregard to a place that, that it becomes hostile.

And these were people from like, the outside. Not necessarily, you know.

Oh, yeah, there were people who. From the north, who. Land speculators. You can read about them. There's lots of articles about the, the Florida landscape games of starting in the late 1800s, but through the 60s where people came in, bought land, developed it, but in a. Not in an environmentally friendly way. And a lot of these places failed. But people came down from the north because they wanted to escape, you know, the bad weather of the north and thought that Florida would be a Shangri La.

So the northern part of Florida was culturally different. They didn't have this.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Once you get down and, and again, this is. I'm talking about a long time ago. So obviously things have changed, but I know that there's still this distinction between Orlando north and like, south. We were 125 miles south of Tampa, so we were pretty far south. There weren't too many towns below the area that we lived in. A couple, but not too many.

That's interesting. We could talk about that for a while because I know in Florida has a lot of politics involved with the environment and such. But let's talk about your mfa. What were you expecting when you went into that and what did you come out with?

Wow. Yeah, well, I, I was really kind of lucky. I went, I applied to several places and for some reason I would talk to other people. I was in Massachusetts and so people knew a lot about the UMass program. And James Tate, who had just won the Pulitzer Prize, so he was there and I was like, wow, that's pretty good. And John Edgar Weidman, who had just won the. The novelist who had just won the MacArthur Foundation Genius Award, he was there and a couple other really good people. So I'm like, ah, I'll go. And then right after I accepted there, the University of Alaska at Fairbanks called me and said, oh, we want you to come up here. Because I thought it would be a big adventure to go into the middle of the interior.

Yes, it would have.

But luckily because of different circumstances, I took the UMass one and I had a really. I really liked that area of western Massachusetts. I had already been living in eastern Massachusetts for about eight or nine years. And so I really liked western Massachusetts and I learned a lot. Aga Shahid Ali was there and Darryl Wire as well as Jim Tate. So I got to take workshops with all of them. Natasha Trethewey, who later became The Pulit Laureate of the United States and won the Pulitzer Prize was there while I was there. And I had, I think at least one workshop with her and some other really interesting people. Matthew Sabruder, who's kind of a nationally known name in poetry, he was there and I know I had workshops with him. So it was like a really charged atmosphere and I learned a lot about poetry writing. And for some reason, I'm not really sure why I, I figured this out. I started taking composition theory courses and teaching in the comp program because Peter Elbow, who was a really big name in composition theory at the time, was there at UMass. And that's really what got me my first job was not I was okay as a poet, but they were like, oh, you know, composition theory too. And so that's what got me that job.

Yes, everyone has to write an essay, but not everyone has to write a poem. Well, talk a little bit about what it was like when you first started teaching because you came out of your experience mostly going in as a poet, but you came out kind of half composition, half poetry, or maybe a quarter composition, whichever part it was. So what was that like to be teaching composition when you'd been basking in the awesomeness of poetry?

It was fun. I. Even as an undergraduate, there's a good composition teacher training program at UMass. They, they have a Ph.D. program in that, but some MFA students take some courses and, and teach in that program as well. So I was pretty well prepared. And I. The first three years I was not where I am now. I was at a different small school in, in the western part of Pennsylvania and I kind of liked it. It's a, it's a lot of work, but it's place where you can see a lot of growth in one semester. If you are a dedicated teacher and you can get your students to do the things that they need to do. You'll see this kind of like, not with everybody, but with like the majority. You'll see this light go on and you'll see that they have gained much more confidence in their writing. So that, so it's very rewarding. It's also a very time consuming work. But yeah, it's, it's kind of fun. I still enjoy doing it. I' teaching a couple of classes in the fall.

So you have been teaching composition for quite a while. And then after teaching some composition, you also started teaching creative writing, right?

Well, I've always done both.

Oh, okay. Can you talk a little bit about changes that you've seen either in Composition classrooms or in creative writing classrooms.

I, you know, students just live in a. Like I started at this school in 1999. I started at the other school in 1996. And the Internet was like kind of new.

Yeah.

And people didn't carry cell phones. It's just a whole different world. And so you can't expect people to be the same. And students too. So I have to adapt to them. Right. It's not like they don't have to adapt to me because I'm, They're. They're who they are.

Right.

So I, so I'm always trying to, I'm not one of those people who's always teaching the same thing for 10 years. I try to switch it up all the time. One of the things in the last few years is even in my composition classes is I integrate graphic novels because I understand that if I bring a 250 page book about the Holocaust into my class, everybody's going to drop my class and nobody's going to learn anything. But if I bring Mouse by Art Spiegelman into that class and they can see the visual clues and start to understand, oh, this is pretty complex what's going on here. And then they have to write a research paper on some aspect. And it could be like, for example, I had a student who is on the spectrum and she last semester wrote about Asperger the, the Nazi doctor who the Asperger syndrome was named after. And she's like, this is me and I want to find out who this person was and why he did the things he did. And so that was like kind of an empowering assignment for her to, to, to take charge of that and, and find out more about this person. So, so I kind of like, oh, well, they get a lot out of the graphic novels and they understand the visual clues because we live in a visual world. So they can start to see visual clues as well as the writing and then they have to translate it and figure it out.

Yeah. I teach composition as well and I also love it and I love reinventing my teaching and my topics pretty much every year. And like you said, because you have to meet the students where they are and that makes it constantly a challenge, which is also interesting. And I have often thought about using graphic novels and now you've just inspired me to go ahead and do it. I've used like Picto essays and those are often researched base and I think that, I think that's really inspiring to think about whatever you can pull in that you're excited to buy and if you're excited, then they're probably also going to be excited and also thinking about, you know, what it is that they, the toolkit that they come in with and helping them build on that, you know. What kind of stuff are you working on yourself right now?

Well, I just, I published a book last fall and then I've just been working on some, trying to work on some non fiction because one of the interesting things that I could. This would be a whole thing in itself. But I only recently, like in, like right before the pandemic started, I was able to find out who my biological father was. My family kept that a secret from me for many years, but kind of the shorthand is my birth mother put me up for adoption and sort of arranged for her childless older sister to raise me as her own. And it was all to be a secret, but it wasn't really a secret. Eventually, you know, things always come out and. But one of the interesting things was my father was obviously black, but they're not, They're Pennsylvania mostly Pennsylvania German, few other things, but. But mostly that. And so I was raised within this family, kind of looking different, even though I was biologically part of the family, but not told that I was until like I was, I found out as a teenager. And so it was like all complexity. But I've been researching both lines of my family and I'm able to go back into like, into the 16 on my German side, into the 1600s and even farther, but I can't read the language. Like some of it's in German, some of those in French, but with those relatives. And then I've been able to find one African American relative who is listed on in the 1780 census as a free mulatto. Right. So one of his parents was, or somebody in his family was white, and he's listed as free in Virginia, in Tidewater, Virginia, in 1780. And then I look at the subsequent generations and they are, they go back and forth between mixed race and, and black, depending on who's taking the census. But they're always listed as free. So there's this whole line of people who remain free in the south up until the end of slavery. And I'm like, this is kind of interesting. So I want to research those folks and, and others. But it's really hard if people were enslaved, it's, it's pretty hard to find out more information about them, but. So I'm fortunate that there's this line of free people that I can sort of. Because the, the guy that his Name was Dempsey Reed, the guy who was born in 1780. And it looks like he owned property that he had an estate, like maybe some kind of store or something or a mill where people owed him money when he died. So the state, because there's this kind of probate document from the courts that is online and so you can see where different people owe him money and so forth. And I'm like, this is. He must have been an interesting person. So I'm. That's the project I want to research. I'm at the research part now, but I want to write more about those folks.

That sounds fascinating and emotionally like challenging and rewarding for you, I would think, to be finding out more about yourself.

Yeah, I mean, it's. For a long time there was this big unknown. Like I, you know, sort of knew, obviously knew that my father was African American and. But I didn't really know that. That's all I knew. And I, you know, so. But we have this thing called science and you can, you know, put your saliva in a tube and send it away for not much money and they'll tell you a little bit more. And luckily after it took a while, maybe two years, but I got a match and the woman turned out to be my cousin. And then she's like, oh, let me talk to you, some of my aunties and find out. And then I found out.

Wow.

Wow, that's really awesome. So if I know you have a website so people want to keep in touch with you online, they can find you there. And they also have an Instagram. You have an Instagram?

Yes.

Okay, cool.

And I'm on Facebook just with my name.

All right. So they could look for you there and kind of keep an eye out for more to hear more about your family story and what you do with it.

Okay. Yes.

Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining me today. It's been really great talking to you.

Yes, thanks very much for having me.

Thanks for stopping by the audio Town square of the Washington Square Review. Until next time, this has been the Washington Square on air from Lansing Community College. To find out more about our writers, community and literary journal, visit lcc. Edu wsl Writing is messy, but do it Anyway.

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Hey there, this is Dadalion and I want to invite you to join me for a show called behind the Connection. It dives into what's happening behind the scenes here at LCC Connect. Also provides you early introductions to new podcasts, some of the Connect initiatives that we are putting forth, and of course, insights into the concept of building the voices, vibes and vision of LCC Connect. Find out more about it at our website. It's lccconnect.org.

23 million small businesses are open for business in the United States, providing more than half of all American jobs.

What helps these small businesses thrive?

A location where people need its services. The availability of good transportation, a a well trained labor force and a healthy infrastructure. An attractive streetscape and comfort and safety for pedestrians. Good planning connects small businesses to the customers they need, fostering the competition that helps healthy businesses grow. Whether you own a small business, work at a small business, or bought from a small business, and that's just about all of us make the connection. Learn more@planning.org that's planning.org a message from this station and the American Planning Association. Founded in 1957, LCC has addressed the needs of Michigan industries through education for more than 65 years. Anchored by the downtown campus located in the heart of Lansing, LCC serves Mid Michigan communities with additional campuses in Delta Township and East Lansing. The college offers more than 200 degree and certificate programs and is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. Those interested in learning more about LCC may visit lcc. Edu youbelong LCC Connect, Voices, Vibes, Vision.

Welcome to a Psycho delicious conversation on mental health issues and trends from two local mental health professionals in the greater Lansing area. I'm Michael Stratton, lmsw and I'm Morgan.

Bowen, dnp, pmhnp and we're here to provide you with a deep dive into the human experience of consciousness and beyond. Our aim is to be educational and entertaining. So just kick back and open your ears and your minds.

Hey, I'm Mike Stratton.

And I'm Morgan Bowen and we are.

Sleep deprived because of the storms last night. I am as we record this as and we're recording this really bad storm last night. Yeah, bad storm. I'm supposed to say my name. I'm Dadalion Lowry. That's Right. Dadalion is our producer. He's sitting in with us. So when I press buttons.

And respond.

Well, we all press buttons.

That's true.

But you do the official button pressing subject.

It's not a metaphor. It's an actual literal. It's a literal thing.

It's a literal versus a metaphoric.

There have been a lot of extreme weather events in the mid Michigan area, the Lansing area, in the last however many years. Do you feel that? I mean, you know.

You know, I'm gonna say this. I was working with a police officer once, and it was a full moon. And I said, oh, boy, it's a full moon. I bet you're not looking forward to this. And the officer said, you know what? It's not the full moon. It's the change in the barometric pressure. That's when people go wild, and that's when they get an increase in domestic calls and violence and all kinds of stuff like that. And I thought, that's interesting. So I tried to track that in terms of just moodiness or whatever when there's big barometric changes like there was last night. My mom worked at the hospital as a nurse's aide for many, many years, and she said every time full moon was around, it did happen. Well, that happens, too.

I was an ER nurse for many. Well, several years. And so, yes, the full moons. We would always be.

Experience that.

Yep.

And believe it or not, that's not even our topic today.

No.

So there's something background. I was trying to give you a good segue because I was throwing in family there.

So.

We are. Today we're going to be exploring ancestry and culture and identity. And this was thanks to a listener. Her name is Mercy. She was interested in talking about this. And I said, sure, that sounds like a great one. So we're delving into. We're now at a portion of our podcasting careers where we're talking about stuff we don't know anything about.

And applying it to our. Or applying our knowledge and experience.

Morgan, I heard that you were into ancestry.

I am, I am. I caught the bug.

I am, too. So let's talk about your family first. Let's.

So my father's family. You're talking about ethnicity and background.

Bowen family.

Right. The Bowen family. Yes. Is from the Great Lakes area going back to the early 1800s and came from the British Isles, Wales, UK, Northern Ireland as well. So moved into the Toronto area and then came down to actually Cleveland and then into Michigan. So very UK oriented over there. Northern European. And then My mom's side is primarily Scandinavian and Northern Irish. Scottish.

Okay. Did you do the whole drool test? I did.

Where you do the.

Was it 23andMe or was it Ancestry.com?

I did Ancestry.

I did Ancestry also. Have you found relatives that you didn't know you had, like, third cousins?

Yeah, I have.

Have you been in contact with anyone?

I have not been in contact with any of them. I do look at their. Because I do have an Ancestry.com profile. So I look at their information to see if it matches up, but I haven't contacted anybody. I'm not opposed to it. I just haven't. I haven't done it.

Well, the other thought that comes to my mind. And you went through psychological master's programs, that kind of thing. Did you ever do a genogram? Do you know what a genogram is?

Yes.

Yeah. So a genogram to the listeners, it's doing your family tree, but from a psychological perspective, where you're studying what personality traits there are and relationships people have with each other, that kind of thing. What did you find out from yours?

Well, actually, when I did it, because I came from a nursing background, it was more related to medical history, so cancer and heart disease, diabetes, you know, major chronic illnesses, things like that. But in doing ancestry.com with more of just, I guess, my occupation and mental health, there's patterns, especially in my dad's family, of, well, there's definitely alcoholism on both sides. So there's that substance use, primarily alcoholism, as far as I can understand. But there's also a pattern with my dad of having children young, having one child young, 19, 20, and then having a relationship that then breaks up and then having a second marriage or a second relationship later with more kids, so four or five more kids. So there tends to be this pattern of a young child or, I'm sorry, a child when he's a young age. My dad went through this, as did his grandfather and his grandfather. And then the grandparent takes care of the child a lot of times.

Oh, that's interesting.

So I have reflected on how that has impacted the dynamic of several generations of my family.

Yeah. Yeah. That is interesting. Well, both those things that you mentioned, both noticing the different addictive traits. I've got that in my family, too, on both sides. Then the childbearing kind of thing. It's interesting because I've met your brothers, and your oldest brother is definitely different than the three younger.

Yeah, he's my half brother. My dad was married to his first wife. They were 19. 19 and 2, 20. Then he had three other sons starting about nine years after that. So my oldest brother is 11 years older than I am and my oldest brother, his name is Kirk, had a son at 19 as well. So he raised him and married. So a bit of a different scenario but had children young.

So how are you most like your dad and how are you most like your different from him?

We do very similar things professionally. Both intellectual or school focused, Education focused.

He was a psychiatrist.

He was a psychiatrist. Stubborn, bull headed. I would say my dad is a bit more than me, but I have the streak. Independent, I would say very independent. I reflect on that because, you know, my dad, his parents were young and had substance use issues and were not really available for parenting at the time that he was young. And so I think he pretty much had to do it himself. So when I was young, my parents didn't have substance use issues, but they were working. We were latchkey kids. So both my parents were professional and we were kind of left on our own to figure a lot of stuff out. I mean it wasn't like we were neglected or. But we weren't necessarily guided.

You were free range.

Exactly. Free range kids. So I think that, you know, fostered independence and. Sorry, lack of supervision. So marginal. Marginal behavior.

How about your, how about your mom? How are you most like her?

Oh, that's a good question. We have very similar interests, both art, cultural types of things. Reading more, I would say liberal arts or humanities types of things. Conversationalists more relational in social development and socialization. My dad, he had friends, but few friends and close friendships. Was very focused on work. And I think my mom and I are more social and more interested in relational friendship. Part of life.

Is there one side of the family you know more about than the other side?

I know more about my dad's side partially because my dad did ancestry work himself. He's actually who I caught the bug from. I pirated his account, Ancestry account before I had my own. My grandmother's mother died. She was English from England, but she died when she was young, so she didn't necessarily know a huge amount about her until we had access to ancestry.com types of things. Then it becomes much more available. And then my grandfather on that side left home when he was 17 to join World War II and didn't seem that he was very interested in maintaining or having a lot of information about his family. He kind of detached from them for. And I'm not really sure why.

That's one of the things that's so Interesting is the mysteries. You know the mysteries. You look at your family tree, and then there's some kind of. Like, for an example, my mom's family came from Nebraska. They were Irish, so I was able to trace it back that far. But my maternal grandfather was one of five siblings, and four siblings moved out to Minnesota, and he stayed in Nebraska. And it's like, why never know, you know? No. No answer to that. How about you, Dalian? What. What do you know about your family?

Sorry. Tell us your family back. This is a pop quiz.

I mean, you know, as far as the ancestry stuff, I. I've done the ancestry.com did some research. I never did the saliva test yet. I. I will probably do that at some point. I do have interest. I wasn't able to get too far. The best I can tell you is most of my ancestry, as far as the lineage goes, is Dutch and French. And I've got some stuff going back to the British Isles somewhere. Okay. You know, and, you know, I don't want to dive into it as much as. As we are as you are, but my dad is. He's passed away. You know, that's. When you think about people you want to emulate. He is not one. Okay. Okay. He was not a. He was not somebody that was in my life much, which I am very grateful for, actually. Okay. Violent man, lots of substance abuse. So. Wow. Wow. Okay. Sorry to. Sorry. No, not at all.

Not at all.

Thank you for that. It was a part of the life. Yeah. Well, it's fascinating when people start talking about their families, and it does get personal pretty quick, especially if you're in a kind of a milieu of other people sharing. At that level, you feel like it's okay to talk about it yourself. In some ways, one of the things.

I find really interesting in my own journey is all of these patterns that exist. You can begin to see if you get into it. So, like the one I was saying with my dad's side of the family, having, you know, children young and then going on to have another family with a more settled. When they're more settled in their life, and then thinking about what the experience is like, for that, I'm gonna say rogue, kind of the oldest who doesn't have the benefit of older parents. I mean, typically older parents are more settled. They have more resources, they know more. They're just more set up to parent. And I've had that dynamic in my own family growing up and looking back through these generations, I could just imagine that that was repeated at least three or four times that I could identify. And thinking about, just why is that? Why do the Bowen men have this pattern?

Now, interestingly, there was a psychologist named Murray Bowen. Do you know Murray?

I know of.

So I actually saw him up in Traverse City and got a chance to hear him talk. But he was very much into doing those family genograms and would talk about emotional cutoffs, he thought systemically, and he thought that these patterns did repeat themselves through the generations. And to understand yourself, to be able to understand previous generations, that what you were doing was either reacting to it and absorbing it or reacting against some pattern that would have. Freud would have called it unconscious. But it's embedded in us in a genetic level.

Well, they talk generational. The idea of generational trauma is something that we talk about probably more in our current context of mental health. People who have trauma that you've gone through as a child is very impactful or has the potential of being impactful for life moving forward, that can then be re triggered or re experienced when you have your own children. And so that pattern, whether it be recreating an abusive situation or being just very cognizant of that, it, I would say, probably always informs parenting styles one way or the other. If you've gone through that.

Well, when we got into this, you know, we're talking about nature versus nurture, you know, which was one of the big debates. And it is both, you know, so we got a genetic structure, but also we're affected by our environment. We're affected by the culture. Bessel van der Kolk wrote this great book called the Body Keeps the Score. And he believes, and he quotes research, that trauma does get encoded at a genetic level, and that then exposure to other traumatic situations can unlock potentialities, genetic potentials that become manifested in a person's life. And so things like substance use, things like depression, things like anxiety, just different traits of that sort depending on what's going on. And we can. And one of the things I thought we could talk about in the next section even would be the adverse childhood experiences. We can get that up on the screen and kind of go through that together. But let me talk about my family. Please do so. My family, the Stratton side. I did the whole 23andMe or not 23andMe, the ancestry.com thing. And I didn't know this. My dad would say it occasionally, but he would talk about a Nathan Stratton that we were related to. My grandfather, believe it or not, was born in 1865. Your grandfather? My grandfather was born in 1865. I never knew the guy. He died in 1933. My dad was young. He was a teenager.

How old was he when he had your father, when your father was born?

My father was born in 1917, so it was his second wife. And here's one of the weird things with ancestry, because my dad, he had a family. He had two brothers. And I started seeing all these second cousins that were female, and it's like, wait, now, wait. Where did they come from? So my grandfather, John Stratton, My grandfather had a family before he married my grandmother that never got talked about. And they were out in Colorado. He had five children with them. And I said, well, she must have died. Maybe she was widowed or something.

Or it could have been those secret families.

That's exactly what I think it was, because I looked it up, and, no, she didn't die until the 1970s. So she died 40 years after he did. So he married a much younger woman and then moved on and married another younger woman. So strange stuff. But anyway. But it goes back before that, all the way back to the Revolutionary War. So we were back in those days. So I'm a son of the revolution. Yay.

Yeah. On my dad's side. Same for us on my dad's side. Well, my dad's mother's side was back in the Carolinas during the Revolutionary War.

Yeah, Ours were from Jersey, New Jersey. But on my mother's side, I mentioned the Irish thing, what my mother knew. And this is one of those things where without things like ancestry or 23andMe and these different things is like, how far back can you go? I knew my two grandmothers. Both of them died when I was young. Didn't know either grandfather really at all. But she said that her grandfather spoke with a brogue. And so going back to, well, where did he come from? And I was actually able to trace back that he had lived in Kansas, but he had come over to the United States in 1853 at the end of the potato famine. He was 13 years old. 1853.

He was skinny.

Yeah, real skinny. Like starving to death. And when we went to why Kansas, Though, interestingly enough, and ancestry.com because that's.

Like, the middle of the country, they.

Had an answer to this, that there was a priest in New York that was scooping up these Irish immigrants and trying to get a settlement out west. And at that time, they were really trying to develop the West.

Settle the West.

Yeah. So there were a bunch of Murphys that were in Atchison, Kansas, and A bunch of Irish that were in Atchison, Kansas. But the thing that was so profound to me is that my maternal great grandmother, she came from. From Athlone, Ireland. He came from Cork, Ireland. They both came over on the same ship, so they didn't know each other until they got on that boat. And he was 13, she was 15. And I could identify the dock, the boat that came over, all of that stuff. And I got to stand on that dock, and I just. I talk about this occasionally, you know, when I give talks. You know, I stood on that dock and thought about these two teenagers that were basically starving to death that came over here. And I got a chance to stand on that dock almost 175 years later and say, hey, thank you. Thank you. We made it. We made it. We're here. Yay. Just such a powerful thing. But a lot of alcoholism, definitely. I think food was probably an issue for a long time. They lived through the Depression. They lived through the Dust Bowl. I wondered about that for myself. I'm diabetic. It's like, well, was that encoded in some way in me, a drive to eat sweet things and drink a lot of beer?

There's definitely a lot of thought about it. I'm more familiar with Native Americans and diabetes. There's a high disparity when you look at the proportionality, with the idea that, going backwards, the diet of Native Americans prior to contact was not what it is now. And so the ability to digest and to regulate glucose based on genetic history is very different. So I'm not familiar with. You would think the Irish eat all those potatoes they can regulate. That is probably a stereotype, but more than just potatoes.

Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know.

I don't know. But you look at the history of trauma, you know, of being uprooted, of moving. They moved from the Dust bowl to Michigan so that my grandfather, My maternal grandfather could get work at General Motors. He had a sister that was working at Fisher Body, and she said, there's work up here. You can come up here. And that's where my mom came up here. And my dad, who had been not orphaned, but they were living without a father. His best friend lived next door to where my mom and her family moved into, and that's how they met and got together. But just how random. I mean, the odds of them meeting and getting together. Yeah, the odds of any of us being here as infinitesimal.

Do you know of any mental illness in the family? Any.

I think there's a lot of anxiety. One of my memories of my grandmother who died when I was, I think 18 or 19, was. She'd be standing there wringing her hands and just always worried, you know, if the storm last night would have just killed her. She was always wringing her hands, always worried about something bad happening. If we had a war movie on, she would be reacting like it was really happening in real time. She'd go, oh, oh, oh, oh. I'd say, grandma, this is a TV show. This isn't real. This isn't. You know, don't worry about this.

I came across in my Ancestry.com travels, I came across an article that my grandfather. So my mom's father's maternal grandfather committed suicide, completed suicide. And it was in a news article because it occurred during some type of event, like a party. And if you read old newspaper articles, there's kind of a what's happening in town? Sort of this person had a party during the party. Yeah. So somehow it happened at a gathering, and it was pretty graphic about how it occurred and what happened. What did he do, slash his own throne? What?

Wow. Yeah.

So it was very dramatic. I mean, that's a very dramatic way.

To go out of a party.

Exactly. Yes. Yeah. And it's beyond Irish. Goodbye. Yeah. So it was him. And my grandfather's mother was there, and.

This is my sister.

This is on my mom's side.

Okay.

And they were from Kansas. And this is my grandfather who left home at 17. He left home at 17 and never really talked a lot about his family. In particular his mother. My mom has told me that her father did not have a good relationship with his mother.

So we're talking about identity to some extent, too. And being gay. Do you find that in your family tree at all?

No, I want to.

Do you wonder maybe, was he gay?

Well, I mean, no.

No. No way of knowing.

I mean, there's no way of knowing. There's nothing that I would. What part of Kansas?

What part of Kansas was he from?

That, I guess. I don't know. It is. I. I would have to look back at the information. It's not a huge city. It's in the. It's in the middle of nowhere. And. And he grew up, you know, depression era and joined the military when he was underage to go to World War II. And then also something that could have.

Been a factor, too.

Yeah. Yeah. But I've always wanted to. I mean, I just would really love to find somebody that was gay in my family tree, but it's very hard to find that unless you have some sources. But Nobody in my generation even is.

So there's a picture of our family, I guess, three generations of us. There's 25 people in this picture in the backyard of my sister Gail in back of her house. And out of the 25 there, I would say 13 of us are alcoholic or addicts.

And how many are gay?

I thought you were gonna tell me about all the gay people.

Yeah, I thought that's what I was going to. 13 of us are gay.

13 of us are kind of gay, possibly gay. The other thing I was thinking when. When I was looking back at my. The patterns was, you know, my family moved a lot, especially on my dad's side, you know, and part of it was just the progression of the western frontier. You know, start in the Carolinas. The next generation, they're in Tennessee, and the next one, they're in Ohio, and the next one, they're in Illinois. And the next one, they're.

They just.

It's just a lot of moving, moving, moving, moving. Looking for what's the next, you know, either a better job or a better life. And that particular side of my family was my grandmother on my dad's side, and she moved to Detroit during the war to work in factories because her dad died, they had a farm and things went under. And so there's a lot of what else is out there. If this isn't working, what's next? Versus I think of like a New England family where they have resources and they were English and had money and they settle in New England and. And they stay there for, you know, these are the Yankees, New Englanders.

Anybody who lives here is an immigrant, unless you're a Native American. So that encoded piece of looking for the next thing, it's always there. A psycho. Delicious conversation is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is no substitute for therapy and should not be treated as such. If you feel a need for real therapy, you should consider consult your local provider, Google Therapy, or therapists in your area. Check with community mental Health or a suicide hotline if you are feeling suicidal.

Mike and Morgan welcome your questions, feedback or dilemmas. Feel free to send us an email at a psychodelicious conversationmail.com that is a psychodelicious P S Y C H O D E E L I C I o u s conversationmail.com the views expressed.

On this podcast are solely the opinions of Mike Stratton and Morgan Bowen and do not reflect the views or opinions of any site broadcasting this podcast. Replication of this podcast without written permission is strictly prohibited. Featuring the faculty, staff, students and others that helped to make Lansing's premier college what it is today. LCC Connect Mid Michigan's connection to Lansing Community College to find out more about our featured program or to listen on demand, Visit us@lccconnect.org LCC Connect Voices vibes Vision.

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Thank you for listening to LCC Connect. I'm Paul Schwartz and I host a show called the Safety Plan. The Safety the Safety Plan is about the latest cyber scams and how to avoid them. You can catch the Safety Plan here on LCC Connect or listen anytime@lccconnect.org My mother was always very active and independent.

And she was familiar with her neighborhood.

But one day she stopped at the.

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It's important for you to talk to someone about it.

I felt so much better after my.

Son told me, mom will figure it out.

When something feels different, it could be Alzheimer's.

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