My name is Garth Tardy (Djehutydjesi) and I'm 34 years old. I was born and
raised in the wilds of Northern Maine where, its been said, distance is measured
in hours not miles. Perfectly true by the way; the nearest mall was about 3 to
hours away and I'm still not sure how many miles it was all told. My town was on
the Canadian border and most of my older relatives and most of the people in the
area were francophones. Tiring of the stunning fall foliage and scenes of moose, bear, fishers (an odd animal) and fox, I headed out to college. I went Bowdoin College which is in southern Maine, a ten minute drive from the coast. Bowdoin is one of those hideously expensive, terribly exclusive New England type schools. Needless to say I got lots of financial aid. I studied Russian and for my Junior year I studied for both semesters at Moscow State University. THAT was an education! Then I went to grad school waaaay out west at the University of Kansas. To a boy from Maine, Kansas is about the ends of the earth. I almost collapsed from the heat. I could not believe that it could be in the 80s everyday through to Halloween. My god, in Maine we designed our Halloween costumes to fit over winter coats! At KU I studied Slavic Literature and Linguistics. I also tried to convert to Russian Orthodoxy, but two days before my chrismation one of the parishioners called the priest and told him I was gay and the priest wouldn't let me join. About that time I met my partner of now 11 years, Ray, who also turned out to be from New England. So I got my Master's and left for library school.
Library school was at Indiana University in Bloomington. Bloomington was a nice town surrounded by the worst sort of rednecks you'd ever meet. We were glad to leave and return to Kansas City to look for work. I with my 2 masters and Ray with his new Ph.D. I immediately got a job at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in the cataloging department. I'm now a Library Assistant I and I catalog old LPs for the Marr Sound Archive here, a very important and well known archive as well as cataloging some music items (mostly hymnals) in our Special Collections department. Marr has something like a quarter million items that is mostly jazz, blues, country and gospel albums and supplied Ken Burn's with a great deal of his material for the Jazz series he did. I'm also currently cataloging a 100k+ item collection of American sheet music.
I live in Kansas City with Ray and two, Squeaky and Mr. Michael (sometimes called El Senor Miguel) two cockateils named Mr. Buzz and Mr. Honeydew, assorted fish and soon to come, two leopard geckos. Along the way I've seem to have gotten into tattooing and have several great pieces, especially a large backpiece thats my pride and joy.
I have no idea how I found the House by the way except to say I was a Buddhist and one day that part of me just turned off like a switch. It was very odd. Then I found the House's webpage and it clicked, I knew I was home. So maybe my Kemetic name really is true: Djehutydjesi -- Djehuty Called Me. I have since become a Shemsu-Ankh in the House, having undergone the Weshem-ib (testing of the heart) ceremony three times.
My partner Ray has also joined the House of Netjer, divined a child of Djehuty and is also a Shemsu-Ankh, with a spiritual name of AbekhDjehuty (Uniting with Djehuty). Iin August of 2002 at the 5th annual Kemetic orthodox retreat, Abekh and I were married, on the day of Aset's birth, by the Nisut (AUS).
During the 6th annual retreat I was ordained a W'ab priest on August 5th 2003. A source of great joy to me.