Persona Non Grata

Today, I’m formally launching my new website: Midnight Deadline: Stories From Everywhere.

I’m also premiering my blog, Persona Non Grata.

The phrase refers to all kinds of unwanted outliers, like the uninvited party guest who lingers on the fringes. The outsider looking in.

That’s me. I’ve always been considered something of an anomaly, an oddity, the exception to the rule. 

Unfortunate news.

In 26 years at the LA Times, I never had a desk in the main office. Instead, I worked from bureaus, one-man affairs in distant counties and states, even other countries.

If the newspaper’s home office was the sun, I inhabited some distant Tritonian moon.

Somewhere out there.

Many people like to make a distinction between the written and spoken Glionna – the first striving to reveal some sort of wisdom; the other, well, you never knew what's going to come out of his mouth. He's like that offensive comedian who still really wants you to like him.

But I have some redeeming leftist qualities. I revel in society’s outliers, people who prefer their own company. I like subcultures and wide-open spaces — like the Navajo reservation, where a place and a people proudly exist a world apart. 

I like drag queens and gender-benders who tell it like it is, and I don’t really give a damn which bathroom they use. I’d bake a wedding cake for a gay couple any day.

I revel in the poor man who barges into a rich man’s party. 

If given the choice, I’ll take freedom over power every single time.

In my years, I’ve announced my arrival in redneck bars with spiky hair, thin-black tie and a lapel full of Circle Jerks buttons. I once got kissed on the cheek by a man in a San Francisco bar and thanked him for his candor. 

I like reinventing myself at parties where I don’t know a soul.

I choose my friends for their faults, knowing mine are Mississippi River-wide. 

My favorite characters insist on going their own way, despite the cost.

I’ve walked through a Wyoming mall with Sissy Goodwin, a middle-aged man with a Fred-Flintstone, five-o’clock shadow who’s compelled to wear pink bows and plaid skirts. Sissy is punk-rock in a country-and-western culture, bravely ignoring the cat-calls of all those good old boys in Stetsons and cowboy boots.

I’ve slept on the ground with Aboriginal boxers in the Australian Outback — untamed men who follow their own moral code, expressing themselves with the blunt force of their fists, the ever-articulate world be damned.

I’ve walked into a maximum security prison with John Thomas, a Venice Beach poet who taught a writing class for murderers, felons he called friends. John refused to judge any man by a single event in his life, and that made sense to me.

Over the years, I’ve had the privilege to profile so many outliers. 

Beautiful dissidents. 

Originals.

There's photographer Lincoln Clarkes, whose camera gave dignity to drug-addicted street walkers in Vancouver's rough downtown east side.

And Craig Anderson, a former Navy seaman who became an objector to the Vietnam War and now longs to inspire a new protest generation.

And Cadillac, the Las Vegas barber who learned about life's harshest cuts as a former inmate trimming hair on death row in Georgia.

Many mavericks are gone now, and I salute them.

Like Coval Russell, a 92-year-old spark plug known as Pops, who wanted to stay behind bars for a relatively minor offense because inmates respected him there. He preferred jail to being old and alone in America.

And David Glascock, a gay activist in LA who established a system to protect drag queens from physical attacks behind bars.

Finally, there's Dolores Westfall, who in her late 70s drove her aging RV nationwide, working low-wage jobs to pay the bills. I once asked Dolores if she was lonely out there by herself. She said she’d only been lonely when there was a man in her life.

These posts are dedicated to all these outlanders.

The cover shot before a prison sign has meaning.

In my youth, I hitchhiked cross-country with my long hair and cowcatcher beard, backpack and cardboard destination sign.

I never blamed the families or single women who passed me by, casting a wary glance in my direction, as I stood there on the freeway onramp.

I was the unknown, someone to be feared. 

A persona non grata.

What they didn’t know was that I was really as harmless as a house cat.

Given the chance, I would have told some stories, tried to amuse them, helped melt away the miles.

And so today, with this new blog, I’m here again with my road sign.

Every Tuesday, I'll post the latest rumination on the Persona Non Grata blog.

On Thursdays, the blog will feature a new episode of my online narrative nonfiction story of Ernie Feld, a Jewish pastry chef who took on the world with little more than a rolling pin and a bad attitude.

It's called "The Baker: A Bittersweet Life."

While you're at it, don't forget to subscribe to have my journalism and blog posts delivered right to your email. The sign-up boxes are all over my site.

So, pull over. Pick me up. 

Let’s go for a ride.