It’s that time again: Banned Books Week. Here – in no particular order – are a score of the banned books I’ve read and written about on this blog over the past seven years. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway As is customary around this house at the end of each month, I checked to see if the book had ever been banned. It makes sense that the Italian fascist state wasn’t crazy about it. But parts of the…
Please don’t think for a second that we’ve run out of family stories. It’s just that Farmer Gary has this “Bubba” story he’s been wanting to tell in the worst way. (You may notice I just set up the old gag Abraham Lincoln used for describing his dancing abilities. “I wanted to dance with Mary in the worst way – and I did.” Although with Gary’s accent, maybe it should be “wurst way”?) This audio clip is a tiny bit…
In a search for Irish ancestors on Dad’s side of the family … … I got sidetracked. After a career of staying on course, working with a focus on specific results, it’s kind of fun to skip around on the various ancestry sites, in search of family stories. Even, that is, if they are stories from other families. Here’s where we are: We have a story from Le Nouvelliste newspaper in Trois-Rivières, Quebec. Dated 30 May 1964, this article is…
As the calendar rolls into the tenth month of the year, the trees in our backyard are just beginning to turn golden and orange. And so, I went looking for a poem from Mom. She wrote this in 1950, early in her junior year at St. Joseph College in Hartford. Ever-Green Follow me, Sunberry,Mine is the rootThat steps into oceansWith one white foot. I hold a moonstone:A boon for the childWho sings in the jungleAnd never grows wild. Here is…
Another September has come and gone – and with it, four more books. Book 1: Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre This is one wild tale – and it’s a true story: Still a year away from D-Day, the masterminds at Britain’s MI5 were determined to dream up a scheme to convince Hitler that the Allies had changed their plans regarding Italy. The team – including future Bondsman Ian Fleming – came up with a plan that was so detailed and…
Did you know that in the 1930 U.S. Census, if you were a nun living in a convent, you were referred to as an “Inmate”? And so, Sister Reinilda Wigger, 36, was listed as an inmate. Her occupation was listed as “Embroiderer.” A decade later, the Census upgraded its nomenclature to include Sister as an option for the relation column. For occupation, Sister Reinilda was listed as a Housekeeper. At this point, the phrase Cleanliness is Next to Godliness comes…
Ever since I first laid eyes on this wedding photo from 1926, I’ve wondered: Who is that second couple? A newspaper article detailing my paternal grandparents’ wedding revealed the happy couple’s attendants were Mr. & Mrs. Haag. But who were the Haags? They’re not part of our family tree, but they were there for Grandma and Grandpa on a very important day. It may well be that a newspaper ad Grandpa designed for his workplace provides an important first clue….
One hundred years ago, Grandpa Vayo was counting down the days until he married. He’d already moved to Paducah, Kentucky, and started his new job in advertising. He even authored a daily poetry column, Songs of Life, in The Paducah Sun newspaper. I wonder if he warned Grandma (his betrothed, Lucie Plante) how often her new surname would be misspelled and mispronounced. After all, “Vayo” rhymes with “mayo.” Sometimes, the condiment won out: This poem of Grandpa’s caught my eye…
When my sister-in-law told me she had a boyfriend, I was taken aback. Linda quickly assured me, though, that her admirer was a hard-headed, well … rock. My brother Harry good-naturedly explained further: A few years ago I wrote a story inspired by Linda’s dalliances. She passed on your request for the story, & I’m happy to oblige. Although it’s fiction, the rock itself & the conflict between whimsical hikers & the humorless land trust is real. As you can…
Thanks to my second-cousin Mark, I just came upon a dozen or more poems Grandpa Vayo wrote shortly after he relocated to Paducah in 1926. He was the new Advertising Manager at the J.A. Rudy & Sons department store. Grandpa must have been so lonely! Paducah, Kentucky, is far away from Brewer, Maine. And this was a century ago. It was months before Grandma traveled all those miles to marry him on Thanksgiving Day. A poet, musician, and artist, Grandpa…