Showing posts with label World War I. Show all posts
Showing posts with label World War I. Show all posts
Thursday, August 21, 2025

Alfred Joyce Kilmer on "Trees"

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I salute the turkey oak tree in my backyard. It's a tough little oak. I was looking out the sliding glass door a few weeks ago and saw...
Sunday, February 16, 2025

Remembering Paul Fussell’s great book on the Not-So-Great European War of 1914-1918

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I subscribe to the New York Times Online. Because I now live in East Coast Florida, I could also have the print copy delivered. But I alread...
Sunday, January 26, 2025

The ballad of Baba the Thin Man and the Good Ship Cameronia

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My sister sent me a packet of stuff she cleaned out of her attic. In it, I found a printout from The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundati...
Sunday, November 19, 2023

Orderly disorderly orderly

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Jerry Lewis played a hospital orderly in “The Disorderly Orderly.” In it, he’s a bumbling idiot with a heart of gold, a type he’s played bef...
Friday, June 23, 2023

Sallie Kincaid finds her inner moonshiner in Jeanette Wells' "Hang the Moon"

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I participate in the Historical Fiction Book Lovers site on Facebook. I have discovered some real gems set in the 1920s suggested by members...
Wednesday, December 07, 2022

Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932, captures the city between the wars

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I’ve always been fascinated with Paris in the 1920s and 30s. The inter-war period. The tensions of those years add pizzaz to any book. So ma...
Thursday, November 10, 2022

Grandma and Grandpa were in France on November 11, 1918, when the guns grew silent

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World War 1’s Meuse-Argonne offensive began on Sept. 26, 1918, and halted with the announcement of the Armistice on Nov. 11. It was the larg...
Monday, November 07, 2022

"All Quiet on the Western Front" not the remake we expected

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Some negative reviews have come in for Netflix's remake of  "All Quiet on the Western Front." They all say the same thing, tha...
Friday, November 20, 2020

Agnes McDermott: The open road in an open car

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A recommendation letter written on official stationery from United States Post-Office No. 18859, Mason, Ohio: July 27, 1914 To Whom It M...
Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Message for the Commander, France, 1918

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A remembrance for what once was called Armistice Day and now Veteran’s Day. My paternal grandfather, Raymond Arthur Shay, enlisted in the ...
Thursday, April 23, 2020

In the COVID-19 era, what happens in Vegas does not stay in Vegas

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For my novel set in 1919 Denver, I've conducted research on World War I, women's suffrage, Prohibition, transportation, and the Flu ...
Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Where's Herbert Hoover when we need him?

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In times like these, we need a guy like Herbert Hoover. Hoover has long been a joke for his poor performance in reacting to the Great Depr...
Friday, March 27, 2020

Hunkered down, somewhere in Wyoming, part 3

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I've used three video-conferencing apps in the past week. Before that, I had used exactly no video-conferencing apps. Didn't need to...
Sunday, February 23, 2020

When all else fails, the arts help make sense of the senseless

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Every so often, I pick up a book that I can't put down. "The Winter Soldier" by Daniel Mason is one of them. I hadn't hear...
Saturday, February 08, 2020

Can't wait to see how this book ends

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I am coming to the end of a first draft of a novel set in 1919 Denver. I wasn't around then so I've done a lot of research to get a ...
Friday, January 04, 2019

What it was like to be in England "The Summer Before the War"

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The war was World War I or The Great War, as it was known before there was a second installment to worldwide slaughter. In the village of Ry...