Category Archives: family

Christianity, expatriate life, family, History, Writing

Thinking Back

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Will this be the title of my autobiography? Stay tuned.

My current read is a large autobiography. How large? Let’s just say I’m on page 448 and am not quite 3/4 of the way through it. So it’s going to be a while before I finish it and post a review.

So what to blog about today? I’ve been slowly putting together material for my own autobiography. Not because my life is notable enough for the world to care, but perhaps someone in the family will. My plans are to write it and leave it behind, at least as reasonably completed electronic files if not printed on paper.

This is surprisingly more difficult than I expected. What are the things I should put in it? How to organize it? What to title it? What style to write in—very formal or casual stories? Do I analyze my life or just report it? How long to make it?

As to titles, I’ve thought of these possibles:

  • The Journey Was A Joy
  • Stories, Secrets, Legends, and Lies
  • Tales Of A Vagabond

My current thinking is that I’ll use the third of these, but I’m still thinking about it.

One thing I’m also wondering about is how much emphasis to put on transitions as opposed to everyday living. The important transitions I could easily focus on are:

  • Death of my mother in 1965, when I was 13
  • Off to college in 1970
  • Relocation from New England to Kansas City upon graduation in 1974
  • Marriage in 1976
  • Birth of our children in 1979 and 1981
  • Move to Saudi Arabia in 1981
  • Move to Asheboro, NC in 1984
  • Move to Kuwait in 1988
  • Iraq invades Kuwait 1990
  • Move to NW Arkansas in 1991
  • Retirement 2019
  • Move to Lake Jackson, TX in 2026

The listing of these transitions show why Tales of a Vagabond is one of the titles I’m considering and the one I’m currently favoring.

The transition I’m thinking about most currently is my move to Kansas City. This made no sense. I had four job offers I was considering. Three were in Boston and one in Kansas City. Surprisingly, the KC one was for the most money despite the much lower cost of living compared to Boston. But if I worked in Boston, I could have lived at home in Rhode Island and taken the commuter rail to Boston. What to do, what to do? I took the job in KC. When my last semester was over, I loaded up my 1966 Plymouth Valiant with 3-speed on column, well-used snow tires in the rear trying to get some last little use out of them, and headed west.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

So I’m now wondering, 52 years after the event, why I did it. I guess I needed a complete break, a change in surroundings. I was taking baby steps in my new spiritual life, and I needed my physical life to also be new to allow those baby steps to quickly transition to the start of spiritual maturity. That’s my current analysis.

Well, back to writing. Currently working on the next volume in The Forest Throne series.

 

Decumulation, family, memories, Stars and Stripes

An Artifact Passed On

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Mauldin published this even while the Italian campaign was ongoing.

What do you keep, what do you discard, what do you find a new home for?

Those were the hard decisions we were faced with—are still faced with—as we downsized and moved from Arkansas to Texas. Many of the artifacts I’m thinking of came from our parents and grandparents, and a few a bit older than that. It seems wrong to throw them out, but who will want them when we pass on? From a sense of nostalgia and history, will anyone really look at them again? From a sense of storage space, who has enough to handle five generations of artifacts?

Mauldin’s cartoon portrayal of Dad at a linotype machine may add some value to this artifact.

I’ve been earnestly dealing with this since at least 2020. The first things to go were Dad’s tools. What boy doesn’t want his dad’s tools? My brother and I split the tools (he took the vast volume of hardware) after Dad died in 1997. Twenty years of having them clog up my garage and never using them convinced me to get rid of most of them—though not the offset box wrenches. In fact, dealing with them and realizing that Dad never got rid of anything, leaving us a house full of treasures and junk to deal with, gave me a negative example that I’m trying not to leave to my kids. When I hit the grave, I hope to have one chair, one small table, one bed, one dinner place setting, three changes of clothes, and enough books to keep me interested according to the condition I’m in at the time.

Mauldin had a way of showing the G.I.’s story in his cartoons.

One artifact from my dad had me stumped for a while. It’s a book Dad sent home from Italy during WW2: Mud, Mules, and Mountains, a book of war cartoons by Bill Mauldin. I know I’ve written about him and Dad before. Both Bill and my dad were assigned to the Stars and Stripes, Dad as a typesetter, Bill as the famous cartoonist. Dad told me Bill often had him (Dad) pose for him as he (Bill) drew his cartoons, not to depict the man necessarily but to get the body posture correct.

Bill gave Dad a copy of this book in Italy and signed it. But it wasn’t a simple signature. It was a quick pencil drawing of a man at a linotype machine, as Dad would typically have been. The inscription was to “Tod” rather than “Todd” (though there might be a part of a second “d” there), and Mauldin signed his name. Dad mailed the book to his parents in Rhode Island rather than carry it through a war zone. My grandparents opened the envelope, perhaps read the book, returned it to the envelope, and put it away for safekeeping.

Thus it sat until I found it some time between 1997 and 2022. When I donated copies of the Stars and Stripes to the University of Rhode Island library, I kept the book, believing it to be something special. Recently I read it (mostly pictures), showed it to my daughter (who knew her grandfather), and made the decision that it’s something I shouldn’t keep.

In thinking about how to “dispose” of it, I decided to send it to my nephew, Chris, who still lives in RI. I have a number of photographs to send him, and this will easily go in the larger envelope. Chris is as interested in family history as I am, and he and his boys will enjoy having it. Other family in the area will enjoy getting to see it.

I hope, if Chris ever decides he doesn’t want it, he sends it to the URI library to add to the Norman Todd Stars and Stripes collection. But once it’s his, the choice is his. The gift from me comes with no strings attached.

Is the book valuable? Copies are on sale for $25-30 on Amazon and Ebay. Possibly the pictorial signature adds to the value. I mean, how many people have an original and unique Bill Mauldin cartoon? But, again, that decision now rests with the receiver of the gift.

Thanks, Dad and Bill for passing down this memory to us, and to Oscar and Lilly for preserving it. You done good.

 

family, home improvements, letters, miscellaneous, reading, technology woes, The Forest Throne

Random Thoughts Part “n”

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Three collections of letters moved from to-do to done—or maybe not.

Having recently given up reading two books (which I will report on later), I have only random thoughts on my mind upon which to build this post. Here goes.

  • We are having a workman come today to make repairs to the screens on our screened-in patio. One screen panel is completely loose, two others appear to be at the point of coming loose, two have slight tears in then, one needs some caulking, one door has a closer that needs replacing, and the other door is sagging, leaving a gap. A few years back I would have attempted these repairs myself, but no longer. This workman will also be converting our tub-shower into a walk-in shower. We aren’t quite ready to do that yet, but might be in a day or two.
  • I may finally replace my 10-year-old laptop with a new one. I’ve been putting this off for as long as possible. Our oldest grandson needs a powerful one for his first term of college, and I’m hoping we can get a better price on a two-computer order. I may scoot up to Best Buy today and see what this will set me back.
  • I spent a good part of last week getting caught up on my checkbook and the family budget. Yes, I still balance my checkbook and keep a budget. I have a little more to do on these, which I think I can finish today. At that point I’ll be ready to…
  • start some new writing. It will almost certainly be Vol 3 of The Forest Throne series. Though possibly I’ll work on another piece first before I get into that. New creative writing will feel good after a long time working on Bible studies and editing collections of letters.
  • Also hoping for some good reading time this week. I began a new book yesterday, and it looks like it will be a good read.
  • This morning I spent a fair amount of time on computer file organization, making good progress. Ready to scan some photos and save them for posterity.
  • Other than that, the main thing I have to do is deal with an IRS letter that says I did my taxes incorrectly and they owe me money. That should be top of my list but I’m having trouble dealing with it.

In reading, I’m working on about three things. One of these is the Carlyle Letters Online. I found a good quote in a letter Thomas wrote to his wife, Jane:

…I really wish you could find an eligible house somewhere out under the quiet sky,…

8 April 1846, TC to JWC, par 3A.

Thomas was in the last week or two of shepherding the 2nd edition of his book on Oliver Cromwell through the editing and printing process. And he was sick of it. He needed a break and wanted his wife to find them a house away from London, “somewhere out under the quiet sky.” As the rest of the letter makes plain, it could be for the summer or for good. Carlyle was finally making money and probably no longer needed to be in London to be near the publishers.

I can so relate to this. I just finished editing and publishing the third collection of letters in a row. It’s taken me over a year, actually the better part of two or three years. Copies of the last two arrived today. I immediately thumbed through the two books, looking for layout errors, then read the Introduction of each. What did I find. An error in each book! In the first couple of pages. In one book I used the word “prosperity” when I mean “posterity”. In the other I have “thin” where I meant to type “think”. Am I really that bad of a writer/editor?

But I’m so sick of these books, I don’t know if I have the mental strength or stamina to make the changes, let alone read the entire books looking for other needed corrections. I really want to move on to something else. I could see myself in the house somewhere under a quiet sky, reading and writing, a little bit of editing and publishing.

But I don’t really expect that to happen. There are still photographs and papers to sort through, pictures to hang. Driver licenses to get and cars to see to maintenance on.

So onward and perhaps upward.

 

 

expatriate life, family, home improvements, letters, self-publishing

Some Projects Completed

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Transcribed in 2020-2022 and published in 2022, this was my first collection of letters to publish. Now it’s my fourth to be revised and finally completed.

Back on April 3 this year, I posted about what things I wanted to accomplish over the next months, or more likely a year.  A few times since then I’ve reported about progress toward the items I mentioned in that post. Such as getting my income taxes done and in on time.

The list was ambitious. It included not only things I was working on at the time, but also writing projects for once I completed other things. As I look back at that post and list, it’s hard to see myself ever getting all those things done. But it’s time to look back and see how I’ve done in the last few months.

The thing that prompted this was completing, yesterday afternoon, a significant revision to the book of letters from our years living in Kuwait. This included: adding recently found letters; adding in Lynda’s diary from the time she was working in Kuwait as a Red Cross nurse after the Gulf War; and, at the suggestion of our children, adding a bunch more photos to it. All of that took a lot of time, especially with interruptions. But Wednesday I added the last of the photos and began the re-pagination check, yesterday I completed the check. I found I had four blank pages where they weren’t supposed to be, so went scrambling and added more.

I adjusted the cover and uploaded everything. In checking the book online, I discovered some formatting was still off. I spent the better part of two to three hours fine-tuning the formatting and pagination. Finally it was done around lunch time. Amazon’s bot review declared all good, so I ordered my author copy. ‘Twill be here in about ten days.

So what’s next? That April 3 post included grandiose plans of new books to be written. Maybe I will shift to those. But first, I need to find locations on closet and garage shelfs for the things I got out to work on the three books of letters. And I need desperately to catch up on the family budget to see where we stand financially. I’m sure we’re in good shape, but I need to know. And I need to get back to the never-ending job of unpacking and organizing following our move.

I declare the next few days, or maybe a week, as maintenance time. Stowing, budgeting, unpacking, minor household improvements. These shall fill my time until I get to a stopping point and feel released to do some writing. This includes some organization of computer files, which I discovered in finalizing the Kuwait letters book are woefully discombobulated. Hopefully I’ll also be able to up my reading.

books, family, letters, memories, self-publishing

The World War 2 Letters of Wayne Cheney

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The Pacific was Wayne’s war theatre.

Last week, actually around June 13, I finished my latest book project. It is The World War 2 Letters of Wayne B. Cheney. He was Lynda’s dad—my father-in-law, of sorts. He and Lynda’s mom divorced long before I came into the family.

Like many soldiers, Wayne wrote letters home, and received many in return, both from family members, townsfolks, and other armed forces personnel. He wasn’t able to keep most of the incoming letters, given how his base kept changing in the South Pacific. But his parents kept most of the ones he wrote home. When Wayne died in 1996, we brought those letters to our house. There they sat in a green plastic bin, moved from Bentonville to Bella Vista in 2002.

It was about this time last year that I decided the time had come to do something with them. I decided to transcribe them, put them into book form for easier reading by family members, then donate the letters themselves to some worthy institution.

From a Kansas town to an island=hopping war. See the world from the nose of a B-24.

Wayne enlisted in the fall of 1942 at age 18. He was hoping to get on the ground crew in the Army Air Forces, but instead found himself in school to become an air gunner. He was assigned at nose gunner in B-24 Liberators and saw action in the South Pacific. He was either based on or participated in bombing missions over some of the famous islands in the war history, such as Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Truk, Tarawa. His time there was over when the war had moved on to Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

In addition to the letters, Wayne wrote a war diary. He transcribed parts of this over the years, but only the parts dealing with actual combat. He mixed that with later explanations of what his modern impressions were about what was going on in 1942-1945. I did a full transcription of the diary, interspersing the entries with the letters.

Actually, the letters are not exciting stuff. Subject to forward base censorship (and occasionally running afoul of the censors), he couldn’t write a lot about what he was doing in the war effort. So there was lots about doing laundry, rigging something in his barracks, who he received letters from, talk about what must be happening on Kansas farms.

This book is not a commercial project, and I doubt anyone except immediate family members will be interested. Maybe someday a great-grandkid will ask about what their ancestor did in that war they covered in history class and someone will pull a copy of the book off the shelf. But should anyone else be interested in this small piece of WW2 history, it’s available on Amazon.

Fair warning: I have not yet received my proof copy, so I haven’t been able to go through an actual book to make sure the photos and print came out okay. That’s because I had the proof copy sent to the wrong address. Still waiting for it to be forwarded.

 

family, letters, miscellaneous

Hitting the Wall

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That’s what happened to me yesterday. I hit the wall. By 9 a.m., I felt like I couldn’t do another thing. Yet, I had done very little except for Monday morning stock market work. I couldn’t work family finances, at which I’m falling desperately behind, couldn’t work on my three letter projects, couldn’t work on post-move organization. I did manage to get my wife to her cardiology test appointment. I also managed to get a long message chain done with a newly found cousin on Lynda’s side.

Today has been somewhat better. But here is it not quite 4 in the afternoon and I’m out of steam. I guess I’ll try to read for a while.

family, moving

Being Lazy Today

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The mirror over the piano was tricky to hang, but the guys did a good job on it.

Yes, taking it easy today. Remembering, though, our service personnel who died while serving. No one in my immediate family did. Lynda had a great-uncle killed in the first day of fighting on Guadalcanal in WW2.

We just finished a busy three or four days. Our oldest grandchild, Ephraim, graduated from high school. The ceremony was Saturday evening. Uncomfortable stadium seating, lots of walking, some rain. But the accomplishment was excellent and I’m glad I was able to witness the event.

Also on Saturday, our son Charles and his husband came in for the graduation (also for a birthday in Mario’s family) and became our first overnight visitors since moving here. We went to the furniture store on Saturday and, with their help, finalized the purchase of living room furniture. It will arrive on Thursday.

We bought this grouping on our trip to Greece in 1988.

On Sunday, as Lynda and I skipped church to be with Charles & Mario, and to hang pictures. Or I should say I found pictures stuffed in packing boxes in closets and they hung them. I have no artistic sensibilities and Lynda has no energy. So I got the pictures out, fetched and handed tools, and they found good places and did the hanging. We concentrated on the living room and breakfast nook. With furniture selected, we knew what spaces we had to fill.

Once the furniture arrives, with the walls decorated in the room we use the most, it will seem less like camping out and more like home. There’s still a lot of pictures to hang, but we had done all we could and they are for other rooms that can wait another day.

Cloth items bought in China in 1983 on the left; our kids’ graduation photos on the right.

And this relatively small amount of exertion over a couple of days has worn me out. I expect to do relatively little today. Maybe some household budgeting. Maybe get through 20 or 30 pages in my current read. Re-stow a few boxes and photos; prepare other boxes to go out next recycling day. Empty one box of table games to put in closet spaces no longer occupied by wall hangings. Perhaps work a little on my three books of letters projects. Maybe write a letter. And watch some TV.

Try to come to Tuesday rested up, ready for regular routines with a smidgeon of helping a friend out with transportation to a couple of things.

 

family, stock market, Writing

Getting Things Done, Version N+1

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It’s a mess for a while, but it will all come together fairly quickly.

Retirement sure is a busy time. As much as I have to do, I wonder how I survived 45 years in the working world (not including 8 years pre-college graduation). But I did, and am now—surviving, that is.

By saying “surviving” I’m not implying a lack of enjoyment. I have plenty of enjoyment times: my noon reading time on the covered, screened patio, evening TV time, before bed reading time, morning devotions, church activities, frequent times with our daughter’s family. Yes, in the midst of my self-imposed busyness, I have plenty of time for enjoyment.

Take this last week, for instance.

  • On Saturday, I pulled out a large box of packed photos with the intent of sorting them and finding permanent filing for them. That job is half done, and the office floor is a mess. I hope to finish today, Monday.
  • Last week I made major progress on the book of my father-in-law’s World War 2 letters and journal. As of work completed yesterday, I have only 27 letters left to proofread, a one-day task including adding them to the book file. Between 20-40 letters require comparison to the original letters, a Tuesday task. Hopefully I can get that done in a day.
  • Then I scan to text his war journal, which may not be as many pages as I thought it was. No prediction on when I will get to that, though hopefully it will be this week.
  • Now that our home in Bella Vista AR has sold, it’s time to get serious on replacing the tub/shower in our bathroom with a walk-in shower, and buying the furniture we need (chairs and a table, maybe a replacement couch). I’d like to get the ball rolling on that the week, but fear it will slide to next. I did a little scouting last week on Friday.
  • Two of the ideas for future books, which are far enough out that I can’t predict if/when I’ll ever get to them, have started to gel in my mind. I hope to have some outlines done, at least in part, by the end of the week.

So yes, life is busy. At least in part fulfilling. Oh yes, two more things I should really do this week: Catch up on mail/filing/budgeting/bill paying. And figuring out how much I have to pay the IRS in quarterly payments this year in anticipation in next year’s taxes. That’s a two or three hour, spreadsheet-driven task I’m not looking forward to but which will be very good to have behind me.

America, Bible study, books, Documenting America, family, letters, self-publishing

What’s Next?

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This will certainly be task one, making needed additions and corrections.

As I reported in my last post, my 8-volume Bible study is done. I suppose nothing is ever done for the self-published writer, because there’s always things to do (improve covers, check for formatting errors, fix the dreaded typos once found). But I can lay all that aside for a while and move on to more pressing items.

I hope I get back to this series fairly soon.

But what’s next? I’ve been thinking that through for some time and have been developing a mental to-do list. Monday evening I started writing the items down. Let me list them here. It’s a combination of revising existing works, completing long-planned works, and trying to figure out if anything that’s been keeping my brain from resting is worth pursuing. I’ll give the list as bullet points.

  • Do my income taxes. The deadline approacheth. I started on this yesterday. Looks like I owe the IRS.
  • Make additions and corrections to the book of letters from our years in Saudi Arabia. I added the recently found letters on Tuesday and re-formatted the chapter. I need to check the formatting of the entire book, then re-publish.
  • Make additions and corrections to the book of letters from our years in Kuwait. That will include adding a lot more photos.
  • Put together the book of my father-in-law’s service in WW2. This includes syncing up his war letters with his war journal, and finding enough photos to add a little spice. I started on this on Wednesday, loading the first 20-odd letters into a file. On Thursday I proofread them and made corrections. I can see that I’m going to have to do this differently.
  • Write/publish book three in The Forest Throne series, tentatively titled You Can’t Change The Past.
  • Write/publish book four in The Forest Throne series, tentatively titled Lost In Time.
  • Decide if I want to do any more books in the Documenting America series. Ideas for more books have been refusing to leave me alone, but they take a lot of research and writing.
  • Decide if I want to write a book with the tentative title Nature: The Artwork of God. That’s another thing that’s taking up brain space.
  • Get a start on a couple of essays I’d like to write and publish.

That’s enough for both short-range and medium-range planning. I’ll have to see how it goes.

 

 

books, Decumulation, family

A Week and a Day

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The view this morning from my computer desk in The Dungeon. The rest of the house looks more or less the same, probably a little worse.

That’s all we have left at our current home. Just a week and a day. Then we move to Texas.

The whole house is discombobulated now, with packed boxes, half-packed boxes, packing materials, sorted and unsorted stuff strewn everywhere. If you’ve moved anytime recently, you get it. We haven’t moved since 2002. If you’ve downsized, you get it. We up-sized in 2002 and remained in accumulation mode, rather than decumulation.

Ah, well, decumulation began in 2020, when I decided I’d had my dad’s old tools for 22 years, had done nothing with them, and that other people needed them more than I did. I found lots of buyers on Facebook Marketplace. Before long, my garage looked better. With a little help from our son on one of his trips here, we even got to the point where we could get one car in.

Then I tackled the books, and between selling and donating them, we got rid of a couple of thousand. Before long, I moved on to paper items, digitizing my genealogy files and recycling the paper. Then on to writing files, making sure I had digital copies and back-ups, and again recycling the paper. All told, I was able to get rid of about 200 3-ring binders. The last 50 will go in our estate sale, each with a few tab dividers and sheet protectors in it.

I’m not sure whether I’ll get to post again from this side of the Red River, though I’ll try. If not, I’ll be back at it at some point. Y’all be good in the meantime.