Meet Patch Blogger Kennesaw Taylor

Do you read the blogs on your local Patch? Blogging is fun, easy, free and open to everyone. In May, we are going to take some time to get to know our local bloggers. This week we are featuring Kennesaw Taylor, whose blogs may be found on the Barrow, Oconee, and Athens Patches, among others.

Taylor's blogs center on what he sees, average people and the stuff that annoys us.

“I try to make fun of anything that’s too slow to get out of the way, and then I make fun of its mother too,” Taylor said in an e-mail questionnaire. He says he has tried to steer clear of politicians, but they make such good targets that can be hard.  

About his educational background Taylor explains: “My first book, 'Informally Educated,' chronicles my lack of education. When I started at Boddie Middle School, in Milledgeville Georgia, in the mid-seventies, they could not figure out what grade I was supposed to be in. We had no school transcripts, and I had attended at least fifteen different schools, sometimes three in one year. They simply put me in the grade my age required. That was the last school I would attend."

"My stepfather was killed in front of us, in our kitchen that year, and we were removed from school for our protection. I would never attend high school. I was always a reader and in my ignorance I always dreamed of being a writer. Later when I joined the military, my test scores qualified me to attend school in Chicago to be a Stationary Engineer, I graduated. After getting out of the military, I took the GED and the SAT in the same month, scoring high enough to attend any college of my choosing. After only two quarters, I dropped out for economic reasons."

Taylor wrote his first book at 49 and then started publishing a humor column in his local paper. His columns appear in a dozen papers, and his work is expanding on the web.

Taylor speaks against domestic violence and child abuse and for the importance of education. His biggest rewards are the testimonies of the differences he is making on these issues.

Taylor has five published works, and three which are scheduled to be finished in 2012.

“Success to me, is not a monetary thing, it’s knowing that I have lived through my trials and helped others through theirs," Taylor writes. "I am happy I was too dense to know my limitations; I encourage people daily to ignore their own limitations and to reach for whatever stars they see in their mind. Schools continue to say; ‘Think outside the box,’ as they are busy stuffing you into one.”

Taylor's favorite quotation:

“It seems to be a law of nature, inflexible and inexorable, that those who will not risk cannot win." -- John Paul Jones.

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