What this blog is all about.

I'm Kyle Henderson, teacher, communication professional, performer. "Rings true to me" is my chance to ruminate, iterate, and occasionally fulminate on topics that strike my fancy: public moral debates, music, movies, pop culture, whatever.

I'm an editor at UW-Madison and an instructor at Madison College (formerly Madison Area Technical College). I recently earned a master's degree in communication at UW-Whitewater—an experience that was thrilling, humbling, and exhausting, as I was already "of a certain age" when I undertook the project. The UW-Whitewater curriculum wasn't what I expected, which turned out to be a good thing. It was less about creative output than about communication theory—kind of a social science approach. As a result, I was introduced to—and imbibed deeply—Walter Fisher's narrative paradigm. His sweeping communication theory rings true to me (Fisher's phrase). Hence the name of my blog.

I'm also and always a musician. I spent the '80s playing bass and singing in the pop group The Producers, and I currently sing in my own band, Kyle Henderson's Blue Eyed Soul. I've fallen in love with the music of Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, Gladys Knight. It's a music unabashedly passionate, irresistibly authentic, un-self-consciously devoid of irony. It's heart all in. Maybe that's why I like it at this stage of my life. Of course, the killer grooves and amazing voices don't hurt!

"Rings true to me" flowed naturally from surprising events. Like a lot of people my age, I found in Facebook something of real value: reconnecting with old friends and participating in one-to-many and many-to-many communication heretofore prevented by geography. I began sharing links and posting on a variety of topics—especially on the debates dominating our public lives over the last couple of years. Because I have an eclectic set of friends spanning America's current narrative landscape—from very conservative evangelical Christians to very progressive Madison liberals—my posts and attendant assertions garnered lengthy conversations with multiple points of view passionately and articulately represented.

Wow. This was cool. Having grown up in a house of two teachers, this continual debate was reminiscent of the way conversation worked in the house of my youth. Facebook nicely facilitated a big dinner party where politics, religion, and any other deeply held and thus controversial topic were on the table. So I found myself invested. This blog is an extension of that unintended happening.

Enjoy!