There are 27,178 people in the U.S. named David Johnson.
(See here.)
I am this one.
David, for my great great grandfather Lyons, farmer, carpenter and soldier in the 7th Iowa Infantry during the Civil War. Injured unloading supplies for the campaign approaching Atlanta, he afterward rousted himself from the hospital to accompany General Sherman on his March to the Sea. Mustered out at the end of the war, he qualified for invalid pay, his injury and a microbe he picked up outside Resaca, Georgia plaguing him the rest of this days.
Keith for my grandfather, Keith Monroe Lyons, refugee from the Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans Home, eventually a gas and water meter reader, but ultimately, the paterfamilias for our extended family as I grew up. He was a man of infinite kindness and humor, adored by myself and each of my five siblings. He is the subject of The Book of the Makar, and the lyric poem, For My Grandfather. I intend to write his life in more detail elsewhere. It smacks of the epic. With Lincoln, Keats and Shakespeare, he occupies my pantheon of heroes who came from nowhere, and in my life anyway, are now everywhere.
Johnson, having been sired by Thomas Riley Johnson, Jr. of Omaha, Nebraska, the son of a Sand Hills cowboy, refugee from the Omaha Home for Boys, and eventually a proud millwright and master of many skills. At the tender age of 17, he took for his bride my mother, Donna Lee Lyons. Afflicted by the long goodbye of Alzheimer’s, he is finally gone after a number of difficult years. But our lives are not about their ends. There is much to tell about this man, about the woman who led him through life, and who mourns for him now. Elsewhere.
I reside in Edmonds, Washington. I made all this stuff, Or rather, all this stuff is the consequence of me intersecting with my life. I have no hobbies. Only passions. I am human enough to wish that some of the offerings on this site are agreeable to someone besides myself. However, as Blake said, The apple tree does not ask the beech how he shall grow . . .” This is how I have grown.
The Publishing Company Name – Louder Than a Lie
It is taken from the lyrics of a song, Bucks in the Bank. The song is more cynical than my habitual take on the world, a kind of Tom Lehrer homage. My publishing company – more appropriately styled an archive – hopes to take a contrasting point of view – most of the time.