Tomorrow morning, June 14, 2019, I set off on a journey that began in New York the early winter of 1947. Questions from a lecture by my friend, Professor Mark Christensen haunt me as I pack my suitcase and map my route: What is my state of mind before I leave? Am I on a …
NEW RELEASE: CHICKENHOUSE CHRONICLES, BOOK II, “PAWNS”
A few years before my mother died I began interviewing her and making notes. After her death in January 2010 I discovered a treasure trove; 200 years of our family history locked in the chickenhouse—about seventy feet from where we had visited in the old farmhouse. Over the next eight years I studied and catalogued …
WWII Veterans and PTSD
I recently read Thomas Childers Soldier From The War Returning (2009) in which he explores the lives of three Second World War veterans and their families. The book documents a part of our collective past—an inconvenient truth—that has been airbrushed from our national memory. Yet millions of Baby Boomers grew up in the shadow of …
70 Years ago, A Few Months After Victory over Japan
My grandmother’s diary entry: 11-18-1945: Walked through Central Park—a telegram from John Curry saying he had arrived in San Francisco from Tokyo and was leaving for New York on Friday. This picture, taken two years before I was born, jumped out at me perhaps because of the date. My mother Barbara, oldest brother Chris, about …
Remembering My Brother, Randy
It’s sad how we so often let everyday events obscure our past. I received an email message from one of my brother’s crewmates that April 26 was the 37th anniversary of Randolph Leonard Affield’s death in a plane crash, bodies lost at sea. I knew that but had forgotten. In our family of nine children …
My Mother’s PTSD
I’ve prayed so much that her life would straighten itself out – the more I think of it the more I feel it is possible her war experience unconsciously to her was eating out her vitals – how tragic life is for the world. Henry O. Philips, January 23, 1943 Written by my grandfather, a …
Chickenhouse Chronicles—-Genesis
A few months after my mother, Barbara, died in 2010 I discovered a time capsule—including my grandparent’s urns— locked in the chickenhouse on our old homestead in northern Minnesota. (I stopped calling her Mom the spring of 1962. In 1960 she had been committed to Fergus Falls State Hospital—we children had been sent to foster …
First Thanksgiving Rememberance 1937 Thanksgiving Celebration, Brussels, Belgium
After my mother died in 2010 I discovered this church service bulletin tucked in a mouse-stained scrapbook, locked in the Chickenhouse on our old family homestead in northern Minnesota, USA. Holland played an important part in the first pilgrims–Separatists from England’s religious persecution. Apparently those roots were still celebrated in 1937. Are they still celebrated …
Thank You to the Community
Patti and I are humbled at the success of Muddy Jungle Rivers. In September we were able to increase our year-to-date contribution to $1,000 to the Bemidji Community Food Shelf, a share of book sales—our way of saying thank you. Since Patti and I returned from the Mobile Riverine Force Reunion in Indianapolis life has …
1930s International Traveler Advice
Here is a four page excerpt from the front matter of my grandmother’s diary titled, “My Trip Abroad.”