About DD

The Name

It’s a made-up term combining the branches of my heritage.

I always thought Jimmy Smits was one of us, but I just checked: Jimmy’s Dutchorican. (Don't fear: I’ll survive this cruel development.[1])

Given the Dutchicano community’s lack of Star Wars cast members[2] to lead the census’s targeted outreach, it’s perhaps no surprise that there’s rarely a box for us to check.

This Space

When I develop content for a professional project, I ask myself: “To what end does this idea (and later, this word) use the visitor’s finite attention?”

The answers fend off the inevitable stream of topics that don’t advance a consciously chosen, carefully shaped, clearly named purpose.[3] 

Dutchicano Diary is the custom-built home for less-formal stories, memories, and opinions. I gather these items here for two reasons: because I enjoy sharing ideas, perspectives, experiences, and moments of joy; and because I often learn something valuable when others help me see these things from new angles.

So here you’ll find opinions and reflections on topics I care about, like justice, government, politics and policy, language and words, the international parallel parking hall of fame, other miscellany I find interesting, and dogs. Especially dogs.

On the Political Stuff

I’ll ground the opinions I post here in facts gleaned from the most reliable fact-gathering mechanism humanity has yet created: fact-checked journalism conducted by people with personal and professional commitments to the truth. (Relying on other sources for information seems to me a head-in-the-sand strategy for being manipulated and for destroying the shared fabric that holds societies together.)

I’ll also attempt to share opinions and arguments based on sound reasoning.

I welcome your reactions, including your civil, respectful disagreement. I truly appreciate when others point out what I've missed.

If you’re inclined to spew bile, please do that elsewhere. Please also consider alternatives, like taking a walk. (Or a pottery class, etc.) If you decline those suggestions, I may point out the likelihood that your words force any respectable ancestors you may have to do the post-mortem, subterranean, rotisserie boogie.

New Posts

I post here weekly. This may change based on the joys and demands of life and of the seasonal fermentation projects bubbling around the homestead.

__________

1 Yeah, cruel! How would you describe a scenario in which you grow up with the foundational certainty that Jimmy Smits (yes: Jimmy Smits of LA Law!) shares your exact (and unusual) ethnocultural makeup. Then, on what you must admit to yourself is the brink of your golden years, Wikipedia waves smelling salts under your nose and informs you that Jimmy Smits, (who has always been basically your other brother and who also appeared in Old Gringo AND The Get Down!) is suddenly, like, a distant cousin at best. Cruel!

2 Jimmy appeared in not one but two SW movies. (Sadly, neither was among the actually watchable SW movies. Paradoxically, those films were made before the SW universe discovered the existence of people of color not named Lando Calrissian.)

3 As it did during the development of the professional website to which Dutchicano Diary serves as sore thumb. (Also helpful in that cause was my wifeperson’s forehead-slappingly sound advice to stop, in the name of Michelle Obama, carpeting the place with eff-bombs, words in non-English languages, and undeniably hilarious jokes that have earned me the nickname 12.)