Category: Memoir
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X. A Few Tributes (con’d)
In subsequent letters, I tried not to be judgmental about the misadventures Satsuki reported. I offered sympathy and advice without specific promises of help. Usually, I wrote her on the same nights I penned a batch of other letters to friends and acquaintances. On some of those nights, I was admittedly maudlin from a few…
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X. A Few Tributes (intro.)
Introduction: It would be a better world in which final farewells could be bitter-sweetly ceremonial as in the Scots-Irish ballad, ‘The Parting Glass’: But since it fell into my lotThat I should rise and you should notI’ll gently rise and softly callGood night and joy be to you all But they very seldom are. As one…
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U. A Few Close Calls (con’d)
She introduced herself as Betty, a nurse, back on vacation from Hamburg where she lived with her German boyfriend. From the barstool beside over the following hour, Betty spoke of growing up in the tightknit ‘coloured’ neighbourhood of Arcadia, in then Salisbury, Rhodesia. She said she had hardly recognized her home in returning for her…
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O. A Few Collages (con’d)
In September 1985, when my wife brought our infant daughter home from the hospital in Harare, I held her for a long time on my lap, gazing into her dark brown eyes. ‘Who will she look like, grown up?’ I wondered. ‘What will her personality be like?’ What will her voice sound like?’ In pangs…
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O. A Few Collages (intro.)
Introduction: A couple of years ago, I posted ‘A few Snapshots’. They were a selection of family vignettes hoped to be of interest to anonymous readers. Their primary intended audience, though, was my grown children. As I stated in the introduction to that posting: ‘Although historical accuracy is always aimed for–– I apologize for any perceived mismatches…
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S. A Few Pinches of Native Soil (con’d)
A Kentucky-born friend and I have joked about the commonalities of our respective boyhood territories. In growing up, we both found ourselves at odds with ole timey religion, country music and conservative ‘values’… Outside of Acadia, the Canadian Maritimes–– like southern Appalachia–– retains a dominant Scots-English-Irish population. There is considerable evidence that rural Maritimers are…
Coprolites in Amber (etc.) 