I haven't been able to get these words out of my head today: We cannot live our lives constantly looking back, listening back, lest we be turned to pillars of longing and regret, but to live without listening at all is to live deaf to the fullness of the music. — Frederick Buechner, The Sacred … Continue reading Listening Back
memory
Polio Summer
In the United States, the 1952 polio epidemic would be the worst outbreak in the nation's history, and is credited with heightening parents’ fears of the disease and focusing public awareness on the need for a vaccine.[20] Of the 57,628 cases reported that year 3,145 died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis. — … Continue reading Polio Summer
The Sisters’ Story
Enter a room with four elderly women--all in their nineties--in various stages of infirmity and alertness. They are sisters, and all of them grew up with my mother in a small town in north Mississippi. This means they were all born within a few years of 1920. They were girls during the Great Depression, young … Continue reading The Sisters’ Story
Gerry Wilson 