JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #7
You can feel removed from the tumult convulsing the country in this small Arizona town, nestled in a valley between the Santa Rita and Patagonia mountains, about 60 miles southeast of Tucson and 18 miles north of the Mexican border. No hordes of protestors surging...JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #6
Today, June 4, 2020, is my and Leslie’s 32d anniversary, and we spent part of it, unromantically, at a demonstration protesting the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis. Considering that Patagonia, Arizona, has 913 residents and that...JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #5
THE GLORY The Falcon 9 rocket rose with agonizing slowness from its launchpad at Cape Canaveral, then rapidly gained speed — cleaving the air like a giant spear trailing a pillar of flame. Within minutes, with two astronauts on board, it hurtled through the last...MEMORIAL DAY 2020
TO MY FALLEN BROTHERS: LCPL CARROLL FANKHAUSER, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 8/24/65 PFC ROBERT FERNANDEZ, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 6/20/65 CPL BRIAN GAUTHIER, 1st Battalion, 3d Marines. 7/11/65 LCPL REYNALDO GUZMAN, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines. 1/25/66 1STLT WALTER...JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #4
May 18 — This weekend, we attended – if that’s the right word — a virtual memorial service for our friend Karen Wessel Marcus, who died of Covid19 two weeks ago. It was streamed live from St. James Episcopal in Scarsdale, N.Y., Karen’s...JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #3
May 13, 2020 We have been more or less sheltering in place at our winter home in Patagonia, Arizona, for the past two and a half months. I use the qualifying term “more or less” because in this sparsely populated region there is ample room to go hiking,...JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #2
I have to begin with an apology and a correction. In my last post, I misreported the date of Karen Wessel Marcus’s death as Sunday, May 3. It was actually Monday, May 4. During this pandemic, the days have lost their distinctiveness. Half the time, I don’t know if its...JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR #1
JOURNAL OF A PLAGUE YEAR This will be the first of periodic blogs I plan to post during the pandemic of 2019-2020. May 6, 2020 — Karen Wessel Marcus, my wife, Leslie’s, best friend since sixth grade, died of the Coronavirus Sunday night at 9:16 p.m. Eastern time. Her...VIDEO INTERVIEWS: MY WRITING INSPIRATIONS, THE VIETNAM WAR, AND SERENDIPITY
These short interview videos cover a series of topics, ranging from my thoughts on writing and journalism to looking back at my first book, Rumor of War and the war that inspired it.
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