A steely gray New Year’s Day. 2025. The landscape outside my little house on the hill is void of color. A black and white photo still processioning days later. Fondly, I remembered how I once would dodge and burn developing images in a RISD darkroom…
A cold virus or possibly the flu has kept me quite close to home the past few days. Annoyed by the inconvenience of illness I have had to slow down after a very busy number of weeks and months. I do appreciate the time to reflect on the “what next” and settle into winter in Vermont. Read some books. Work on the one I am writing and of course, painting…
A small stack of yellowed letters loosely tied with a thin dark cord lies next to my laptop. My great grandmother must have collected and saved them, yet they travelled to my parent’s home with my grandfather’s belongings. Handwritten letters in pencil from my maternal grandfather to my great grandmother. Elizabeth. My namesake. One or two random letters also tucked in and those were written in ink. Cursive on lined paper. A nostalgic form of communication…
My grandfather employed two different letterheads. No rhyme or reason just availability I would imagine. Standard issue pads of paper displaying the following:
YMCA
Army and Navy
Young Men’s Christian Association
“With the Colors”
Knights of Columbus
War Activities
The few pages I have read were filled with homesickness, financial struggles and inquiries about the younger family members. In between the exquisite lines of content, I discovered an impatient ambition. WWI was nearing an end, and the Spanish flu was in play, yet he mentioned only the war and nothing of the pandemic. At least as far as I have unearthed…
He was first enlisted in the Navy back in 1918. A want to protect and defend. Initially stationed in Newport, RI. An eagerness to serve his country. The letters span from July 1918 to February 1919. While only a brief period of his life I have embraced this treasure trove. A glimpse into the life of a man that I only knew through images.
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”—Soren Kierkegaard
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