Cleft Palate Survivor, Professor, Painter, and Prose Writer

Karl Schonborn has earned a living using his voice as a public speaker, even though it once sounded nasal and snuffly as cleft-palate voices often do. Besides using his voice to narrate documentaries and interview guests on TV shows, Schonborn has lectured and spoken to thousands of students in his career as a university professor.

Schonborn’s experience of being bullied as a child motivated him to study violence of all sorts—from schoolyard incidents to international ones. He’s written four books over the years, some with recommendations about how teachers, police—and even U.N. peacekeeping troops—can more effectively deal with violence.

One might expect Schonborn, a product of the Ivy League * and a student of violence, to be one serious dude. However, his students know from painful experience that he’d like to be a stand-up comic one day…if not in this life, then in the next. With a wife and two kids and a mustache covering his upper-lip cleft palate scars, Schonborn passes for “normal” in a San Francisco suburb.

If you still don’t know enough about Schonborn… read on.

Random Facts About Karl

His 9 pound rescue dog, Monte, fights bullies—as an Anti-bully warrior—at facebook.com/CleftHeartChasingNormal
Karl’s torn between spending free time with family and friends or spending it writing or painting, two very solitary enterprises.
In his youth, he circumnavigated the world for $880—planes, trains, and mostly automobiles. Still loves to travel, but recently paid $880 to spend 2 nights in St. Petersburg, Russia. Had to pay upfront Russia would grant a visa.
He eats sticks and twigs for a long life. However, or maybe because of this, he absolutely insists on tasty, fabulous food when he breaks his cardboard n catsup diet.
He dislikes scuba diving, and would never bungee jump, or skydive either. His 7 cleft lip and palate surgeries left him with a healthy respect for life. Plus he dislikes the amenities of intensive care units.
Furthermore, he still remembers when his whole family got seasick on a catamaran on a snorkeling expedition.
He only watches news on TV (the Superbowl and World Series count as news given his warped male sensibility). Well, once in a while, a TV Special or a boffo movie. Not a snob, just too busy.

*——

Yale College Psychology, Writing
Columbia University Medical School Medicine
UPenn Sociology
UC Berkeley, UCLA, CSU Writing

A Culture Of Discrimination in the US Navy.

This site examines all manner of discrimination. Bias towards as well as against people as here and here. Steve Walsh , a military journalist, has written an important enough piece on the problem of promotions to admiral among black ranks in the US Navy, that it's worth repeating in … [Read More...]

Crime – Extremist Mass Murder – Tutorial – Proud Boys and Others Pose Threat.

My bad. I've overlooked extremist mass murder in recent posts. However, in my blog tutorial about multicide, I covered many types of mass murder in the US. And using data from the GunViolence.org Archive, I showed how many mass shootings we've had in recent years. Also, using CNN data, I … [Read More...]

Serial murderers, their killing fields, and sacred rituals. II

In my last post, I talked about killing fields where some serial killers conduct their sacred rituals.** But many killers don't have access to a remote outdoor places or even a basements or crawl spaces to do this. So they must rely on souvenirs to re-live the sense of power or the psychological … [Read More...]

Serial Murderers – their sacred killing fields and rituals. Part I.

Killing fields as Sacred Grounds. Kathleen Ramsland, a professor of forensic psychology and prolific writer, claims that many serial murderers stake out killing fields, which often become burying fields as well. They reveal their pathological need for control when they feel violated … [Read More...]

Adorable cleft-lipped boy adopts a cleft puppy—instant love.

Amid the 4 Ps confronting us Californians —pandemic, poverty, protests, and pyrotechnics* — comes a heartwarming story from Sydney Page at The Washington Post. Just what I needed, as a fellow cleft-affected person, to forget about the "plagues" which are depressing us in the San Francisco Bay … [Read More...]