In the summer of 1973, I had just finished the fifth grade, we moved to a large brick home on Vernon Terrace. It the nicest home we’d ever lived in that was ours, very similar to our quarters at Fort Belvoir, an Army base on the Potomac River, not far from Mount Vernon. In the front yard of Vernon Terrace were a cherry tree that put out blossoms like those around the Tidal Basin near the Jefferson Memorial, a Norway spruce, and a little driveway that descended into a basement garage that no car could fit in. In the back yard grew a large oak tree, whose leaves and acorns I raked up every fall. We soon fenced in the a backyard the so the Irish Setter, Holly, and the German Shepherd, Kraut, could run around. Continue Reading
Tag Archives: memoir
Why Bother?
I had always wanted an adventurous life….It took a long time to realize that I was the only one who was going to make an adventurous life happen to me. So I did the things I wanted to do, and wrote about them, books and magazine stories. Richard Bach I’m going to write something that… Continue Reading
Sans frontières
“The more primitive a man is, the better he believes himself to be…Doubt and tolerance are the characteristics of civilised man.” — Marill to Kern, in Prague East Berlin In January, 1984, one of the few places you could cross into East Berlin was at the Friedrichstrasse station, a transfer point for the U– and… Continue Reading
Radiohead
On Thursday, November 30, American Public Media (APM) emailed all subscribers that today was the final newsletter edition of “The Writer’s Almanac” – the program would no longer be distributed by APM, which was terminating all contracts with Garrison Keillor and his private media companies after allegations of inappropriate behavior. Continue Reading
Lullaby for a Narcoleptic
It started with The Washington Post. Elementary school mornings, and for all the rest of his school days until he left for university, over a breakfast of eggs and mint tea with sugar added, he started with the comics, then leafed through the A section to the editorials pages to look at the political cartoon… Continue Reading
The Sailing Classroom – Mahina Tiare III
Note – I came across this piece when cleaning up some old directories. I wrote it in 2004 and submitted it to at least one sailing magazine, but it was rejected. The sailing trip was in May, 2003. Think of a school and what comes to mind? Open, airy kindergartens with lots of space for kids… Continue Reading