Books. I have a troubled relationship with books. Over the years I have downsized more than once and have discarded at least half of my books. The only difficulty this caused was a complaint from a cousin that I had thrown out all of my Nevil Shute books and they were now out of print. […]
Category Archive for 'Memoirs'
Early Memories of 44 Elm Street
Posted in Memoirs, Uncategorized on May 26th, 2019
Christmas 2018 Dear Tim and Piper Piper asked me what I remembered of the time when my children were young. Sadly, the answer is not very much. I do remember teaching them to read. Meg and Amanda learned from Dick and Jane, which was still available. By the time Tim came along, Dick and Jane […]
Hunting the Quina with the Jaguar Hunters (Mark and Cristina, Easter 1984)
Posted in Memoirs on Feb 10th, 2017
(All pictures from internet) I was in Brazil to meet Cristina’s family with a second objective to collect plants potentially useful against tropical diseases. In Paraiso do Norte, my friend and guide Joachim Cardoso (known as “José Cigano” as his wife was Romano) told stories of jaguar hunters who used to come by their farm […]
Lithuanian Immigrants
Posted in Memoirs on Sep 12th, 2015
Robert’s maternal grandfather, Abraham Epstein Justman, emigrated from Tavrig, Lithuania in 1883 or 1884. We have no direct account of his experience but we do know that he became a peddler after he arrived in America. Later he had saved enough to buy a horse and cart so that he could sell fruit in Chicago. […]
Sailing on the Broads
Posted in Memoirs on Jun 21st, 2015
The water laps gently at the sides of the boat. The sun is still feeble on this early April day in the Norfolk Broads. There is no wind, so we are propelling the boat by walking up the broad, wooden decks to the bow, plunging our pole into the shallow water and then walking back […]
Letter from Keith Warren 11/17/1918
Posted in Memoirs on Dec 18th, 2011
Somewhere in Ca Belle France Six dys apres la guerre. Dearest folks, C’est finit. Guerre finit. Vive la France. Vive les Etats Unis. Vives les Allies. The Big Day came very unexpectedly and dramatically. It was not until one hour before the end of hostilities that I knew that the armistice had been signed and […]
Trips with mother often had a surreal quality, and I sometimes thought that a demon danced in front of her offering up comic possibilities. In Athens the elastic in her bloomers broke, and they fell just as she entered the Parthenon. In Vienna, she left a jeweler with a diamond bracelet on her wrist. Not […]
Cornwall 1983
Posted in Memoirs on Jul 6th, 2008
Such a beautiful summer should not be forgotten. From July 7, when we arrived in the midst of a London heat wave with Knightsbridge looking like a scene from Gandhi, until the end of August when we left, there was not even a small cloud. We arrived at the Hotel Cadogan where they had, of […]
THE BOSTON TRAVELLER
Posted in Memoirs on Apr 21st, 2008
T’Garney, T’Garney, T’Garney (Some of it rhymes, some of it scans, but keep your eye on the meter.) THE BOSTON TRAVELLER Or West Newton’s Law (Force = MA) In eighteen-ninety-seven Henry Adams thought he saw The world turned faster and was more complex, But it was a poor deduction for a man of his acumen. […]
Mississippi Mud
Posted in Memoirs on Oct 13th, 2007
When, at the end of time, all the decades are counted and all the music written, the l920’s will—to the sound of ‘My Baby Just Cares for Me’—be remembered as the decade of no regrets, My baby don’t care for rings Or other exotic things My baby just cares for me . . . Freud […]