Category Archives: Stories

Are Boys The Problem?

Posted on by Henry

A reddit thread has been living rent free in my brain and scattering its gross leftovers all over the couch of my cortex.

Last week, while I was prepping my post about Some Desperate Glory, I read a post on r/newparents from a first time mother wrestling with her cognitive dissonance around having a son. She described herself as a feminist who no longer believed that all men were bad (she cited her husband as a good example), but who still struggled to reconcile her fear, animosity, and resentment towards most men with the idea of raising a young boy. She said (I paraphrase) she was trying to understand how to raise a young boy to be a good man with positive models rather than negative ones. She asked for help and advice.

I was immediately awash with thoughts, with so many ideas that I wanted to share. I wanted to lend my perspective as someone socialized male, as a camp counselor working with teens, and as a new father. Yet as I read on through other’s replies, I despaired.

The post has since been deleted. I’m not surprised that the post was deleted. I’m not happy about it either. I’m caught between wishing I’d replied faster and being glad that I didn’t stick my neck out. You might be able to guess why, but let me explain.

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Settling in, 6/26/25

Posted on by Henry

I live amidst a sea of boxes. At least Alex has a comfy spot on the sofa (when she isn’t yowling in the middle of the night). Surely someday soon I will have the capacity to tell you more about books and games and stories. If anybody suggests that you should move while you have an infant, laugh in their face. If you must move while you have an infant, you have my deepest sympathies.

Moving! 6/19/25

Posted on by Henry

Good morning! Here is a sweet little roll of a cat.

I’m moving again. I hope I’ll be back to longer posts here soon—maybe even next week!—but I won’t make any promises. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy your Juneteenth.

Alex the cat, 6/13/25

Posted on by Henry

The busy-ness will continue until morale improves. Or maybe that’s until baby gets much older? Either way, I missed my usual post here yesterday and I’m here to offer you a cat.

I did read Stuart Gibbs’ first FunJungle book in the last week, Belly Up. It’s great. It is a neat distillation of the noir-ish detective story reinterpreted for a middle grade novel, and set in a zoo. There’s a whole series of these books, and I’m itching for a go at the next one. Maybe when I’m more awake and have more time I’ll give you more in depth thoughts, but now the baby is waking and I must feed him.

05/01/25

Posted on by Henry

This time I finally have two posts in the works. Maybe next week I’ll have enough time to finish one of them and post that instead of pictures of Alex. Until then, I hope you’re able to enjoy some good spring (or fall, you do you) weather.

belated 04/24/25

Posted on by Henry

I’m afraid we have a changeling. That, or Alex the cat has hidden our baby.

She’s not supposed to be in the bassinet. She knows this. She’s a cat, so she sleeps there anyway.

4/17/25

Posted on by Henry

I’ve just finished Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh. It is excellent. It is more than a little painful, especially right now. It is also lovely and full of hope. I hope to talk more about it here at some point.

For now our political crises continue to worsen, books like Some Desperate Glory feel more relevant, and I have a baby to take care of. I’m not yet such a professional papa that I can care for my child and get lots of work done at the same time (or much work at all). Please continue to enjoy pictures of Alex.

Gibby’s homecoming

Posted on by Henry

Little does this cat know, but she’s about to have a new baby to keep her company. He’s coming home today!

Maybe I’ll have something else for you next week. Maybe I’ll be trapped in a fog of sleep deprivation, unable to escape. We will see.

Baby!

Posted on by Henry

I have a baby. The baby is not Alex, you’ll have to enjoy seeing Alex instead.

Posts in the near future may be less long-winded, coherent, or have a significantly higher cat content.

Real life intrudes, and art by Nate Powell

Posted on by Henry

This week’s post has been delayed by hospital visits. I might have more for you on that topic next week. For now, I wanted to call your attention to About Face, a comic by Nate Powell about symbols, identity, and the normalization of the language of force. It’s an excellent piece, though perhaps not an uplifting one. It does, however, make me wonder whether Nate Powell would be interested in working with me on Ironsides.

Powell also made the March series (book 1, book 2, book 3), creating the art for the late Representative John Lewis‘s nonfiction work about the American civil rights movement. I haven’t yet picked those up, but I’m really looking forward to reading them. I think you might like them too.