Welcome to Super Friends

   This is still my son Whit's blog. It was interrupted by his suicide at USP Terre Haute. If you are visiting here for the first time, I hope you will take the time to read his actual blog, and be witness to what he experienced. He'll make you laugh, and he'll make you cry. The entries begin in the folder named "2008" (see "Archive" at right). Click on the arrow to show "November" and "December," and then on the month to open all entries for that month. Scroll down to the bottom and read up to follow them in chronological order. Repeat for 2009.

  I welcome contact and comments. You can write me directly at jeff.transtech@gmail.com. And if you'd like a PDF file of the blog - which is simpler to read than the full online version and which you can keep for reading over again or passing along - just let me know.

In 2014 I commissioned the script for a play, Blogging Behind Bars, which got produced for the 2014 Cincinnati Fringe Festival, where it won the Audience Pick of the Fringe award. One of the performances was video recorded and can be seen here. The dialog is heavily based on word-for-word excerpts from his blog and interviews with people from his life; some scenes actually happened, others are imagined but true to the people involved and the circumstances. Run time is almost exactly one hour. 

  And finally, consider ordering the book "Super Friends" from Amazon. I published it, but it's really Whit's and my book. It contains Whit's full blog along with letters he and I wrote to each other during the five months he was blogging, interleaved with the blog entries. Also some background chapters and a lot of additional material. I donate all proceeds from sales of the book to Prison Writers, an organization that publishes (online) writing by inmates around the country in both the federal and state systems. They have also been gracious enough to publish a number of Whit's blog pieces.

Jeff Smith

   Whoever you are from Kilwinning (or near), I hope you visit again! Scotland is close to our hearts, so much so that I placed a memorial plaque on a wee plot I purchased in his memory in Glencoe Wood (Duror, along Loch Linnhe). 

Remembering

It was 10 years ago today that Whit left us.

We've all experienced grief, or will, and it's different for us all. None of us does it perfectly; what an implausible concept that is. One of my own imperfections is that I experience something that would ordinarily be felt - by me, at least - as a 100% gratifying, exhilarating thing of beauty and admiration. And then the appreciation is immediately compromised, diminished by the thought that Whit will never be able to share in it, knowing how much he would have appreciated it as well. It happens all the time, though I'm getting modestly better at experiencing my definition of beauty in nature,  music or whatever, without letting what's not overwhelm what is.

Below is a link to nothing more than a contemporary bluegrass song by a band that's stretching and enhancing the definition. If you don't like bluegrass as much as I do, that's absolutely fine, totally not the point. I just appreciate the newness, the freshness, the absolute pinnacle of musicianship that's represented here, I could watch the video 50 times, and I wish Whit could see it too. I KNOW he would love it. It just hurts knowing everything he will never have gotten to experience. And I know I'm not the only one. I can't have thoughts like this, especially in the month of his death, without the feeling of sorrow over Esme Kenney, whose death at 13 preceded Whit's by just a few weeks. I remember attending her memorial service and not comprehending how Lisa and Tom were even able to stand, much less interact with people. A few weeks later it was my turn, and I had to do it myself, even if I didn't understand how. Still don't. Guess it's a bit like Mark Twain wrote on the one year anniversary of receiving - from across the ocean - the news of his daughter Susy's death at 24, the same age as Whit: "It is one of the great mysteries of our nature, that a man, all unprepared, can receive a thunder-stroke like that and live. There is but one reasonable explanation of it. The intellect is stunned by the shock and but gropingly gathers the meaning of the words. The power to realize their full import is mercifully lacking." That last part comes later, and lasts.

Anyway, here's the video, for what it's worth. Perfect, it's even a prison song!

Jeff Smith, Whit's Dad

Blogging Behind Bars

If you're interested in seeing the play based on this, Whit's blog (see below), I had one of the performances video recorded and have DVDs available at no charge. Let me know and I'll send you one.
It's also viewable online at Vimeo. Contact me or leave a comment for the link.