A journal of rediscovery
One day, a random conversation with a friend named Joukje—pronounced “Yaaook”—led to a discussion about birth certificates. Joukje was born on February 17, 1947 in the Netherlands, exactly a day before the birth of Princess Christina of the Netherlands. To celebrate the birth of the princess, her mother, Queen Juliana,
Cindy Davis is a retired third-grade teacher. When she began her retirement three years ago, she turned her attention more fully toward the exploration and documentation of her family genealogy. One piece of the puzzle was finding the tombstones and burial sites of her ancestors and photographing them for inclusion
Continue readingA Local Act of Conservation: Remembrance Through Digital Memorials
Thank You for Your Service, an art exhibition by Melanie Bernier, consists of hand-crafted flags that commemorate greater Boston music venues. Each flag stands for an individual music venue that is now defunct. Bernier has performed in all of these spaces. She calls them DIY spaces, i.e., community-oriented, shared spaces. Bernier is
In 1975, when I was ten years old, my parents drove my three older brothers and me down to Sandusky, Ohio, to Cedar Point Amusement Park. We lived just north of Detroit, and Sandusky was only an hour south as the crow flies. Lake Erie borders that corner between Michigan
Standing beside the breastworks on that summer evening, under the shadow of grim and silent Kennesaw, with twilight deepening into night, there were shadows on all our hearts as well, shadows that stretched beyond us and fell on hearts and hearthstones far away, shadows that rest there still and never
The obelisk rises above the trees like the uncurling index finger of something ancient reaching for the distant stars. The monument is inscribed in the faded hieroglyphs of a dead language, and at its base are four distinctly more modern black stone crabs that seem to be supporting the
The first time I finally went to a record store, I found a slightly beat up copy of Cat Stevens’ Teaser and the Firecat. My dad had always mentioned that his dad, my grandfather, had loved Cat Stevens. He died long before I was ever born, and the album got
Sometimes the retrieval of a lost personal effect can transport the memory across seas, decades, even wars. Such was the kind of effect my grandmother, Valerie Skaanning, unexpectedly received at her Connecticut residence, sometime around 1990.1 The package in the mail was from her hometown of Plymouth, England, and it
Continue readingLost & Found: Relics of a World War II Bride
These six-word stories were written in response to this photograph of a married couple living in Holland in the 1800s. Many thanks to all our contributors from the WCSU MFA program. Imagine checking for lice in that. -Kevin Hudson “It’s really her mustache I’m wearing.” -Ben
In 1961, after moving from Minnesota to New York City, a singer-songwriter named Bob Dylan was looking for a deeper perspective on America’s past. He found it at the archives of the New York Public Library. In one of the rooms on its upper floors, Dylan read through 100-year-old newspapers
Continue readingBob Dylan and Horace Purdy: Two Writers Who Teach Us about History