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- Finding My Place
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- Judah Bruce Leblang
"Finding My Place" is a 'This American Life" style piece, the story of a turning point in the author's life, the ties of family that bind and sometime unwind, and the humor and hope that come when one rises out of a period of depression and moves toward hope.
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Piece Description
"Finding My Place" is a 'This American Life" style piece, the story of a turning point in the author's life, the ties of family that bind and sometime unwind, and the humor and hope that come when one rises out of a period of depression and moves toward hope.
Broadcast History
None
Transcript
Finding My Place
By Judah Leblang/2004
Word count: 2995
Judah31@hotmail.com
The last time I saw him, I was standing in the foyer of his white white house, just outside Fort Lauderdale. My brother Doug looked thinner than usual, his red brown mustache flecked with gray, his lanky frame curving in on itself. “Ulcers,” he said—the doctors had been treating him for back pain—the medicine had triggered internal bleeding, and he’d been rushed to the emergency room. I was relieved to see him walking around like the older brother I remembered, though I felt no closer to him than to a distant cousin.
My weekend in South Beach was a grand experiment, my first solo trip since I’d slid into a deep depression in the spring of that year. Now, two months later, I was traveling again, venturing out from the safety net of my best friend’s house in Jacksonville, heading for the neon lights of...
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Joseph Dougherty
Posted on December 28, 2006 at 12:59 PM | Permalink
Review of Finding My Place
Judah Bruce Leblang is both unselfconscious and without self-pity as he tells of a slice of his life thickened and weighed down by the internal slow-motion that is depression and its echoes. Visiting strange places gives him courage and there?s more than a little detachment in hearing him talk about his own life as if it were being observed from a not quite comfortable distance. His voice adds richness to what would otherwise be an austere description of a life where connections are either unavailable, misunderstood or consciously avoided, leaving us with the image of a man who dismisses his brother?s suburban life while at the same time envying the structure it provides. Operating at its own deliberate pace, the piece is almost antiseptic in its presentation and as such would need to be carefully placed and supported by appropriate programing on either side.