I hate it when a cherished friend up and quits me. Thankfully it hasn’t happened but a couple of times in my life, but boy, oh boy have those break-ups hurt. I’m not talking about romances. I’m talking about the kind of friend I considered an intimate. Somebody I could talk to about any given subject matter. Somebody I did talk to about any given subject matter, a lot. Only to arise one day and to discover, seemingly overnight, that the... Read more
Raise your hand if you remember this song from your youth: It could be argued now, I suppose, that The Beatles were more than just poets – they were a prophetic bunch. I can’t speak for the Brits, but here in America we are facing a full-blown Loneliness Epidemic. A recent report from the Barna Group reveals that despite all our ability to connect technologically, Americans are more isolated, and more lonely than ever. “As a nation, we are embracing... Read more
We rented a car in France. Several friends had urged us to make the drive along the Normandy coast ourselves, rather than to rely on a tour bus. That made the most sense, anyway, because I was conducting research for the sequel to Mother of Rain and needed to get to St.-Mere-Eglise, the village the 505th Parachute InfantryDivision helped liberate on D-Day. Before we could leave Bayeux for Arromanches, where we were starting our self-prescribed course, we needed... Read more
We walked into Patriot Stadium on Wednesday afternoon, Tim and me, Charlie and Ann. It was one of those white-hot summer days. The kind that blisters uncovered heads and causes a person to squint to see two feet away. We planned a quick visit, lunch then a bit of Patriot’s training camp practice before heading off to Boston’s Logan International, where Tim and I were due to fly home after a month away. We weren’t the only ones who took... Read more
It’s that time, of course, when we must take leave and say our good-byes. For now. Good-byes are my least favorite part of this journey we call life. I like hellos so much better. But this trip did not fly by, and I am not leaving with any sense of “I wish I had.” I’m glad we began and ended our trip to Europe here at the Art Factory. Because they have lived in Europe for decades now, Rick and... Read more
One of the things that surprised me the most about the trip to Normandy was the number of Germans paying tribute at the American war memorials at Omaha Beach and the American Cemetery. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the stories of war we tell, and the mythology of war we cling to. What do the Germans tell their children when they visit these memorials dedicated to American troops? When those old enough to remember the fathers and... Read more
I have been in France for the past week, and in Germany the week before that, so I’ve had little time for paying attention to the news. It’s not that I have purposely avoided the news. It’s just that with so much beauty and history to consume, it’s difficult to find the time for news. If this were the US, I would at least listen to NPR in the car as I travel, but I tried finding the BBC in... Read more
It’s a funny business, this creative process. Sometimes I know exactly where a notion to write something comes from, and other times it seems to spring up from something beyond. Consider Zebulon for instance. He’s one of the main characters in my forthcoming novel, Mother of Rain. I really didn’t have much to go by when I began writing Zeb. No photos. No maps. No idea really who Zeb was until he began speaking. It’s not like I sat around... Read more
Whenever people ask how I became a writer I tell them Vietnam made me a writer. I have met people who don’t get it, the way my identity as a writer, as a person, is so intricately shaped by war. The Vietnam war of all things. I was nearly 40 before I found a way to break through the agonizing silence I had experienced as the remains of that war. Writing taught me how to move beyond the hurt, to... Read more
Never once when I was growing up, not even when I was a young adult, did I ever think about, or dare to imagine that I would come to Paris one day. A day trip to Atlanta, only eighty miles up the road, seemed exotic to me then. We never made trips to Atlanta to go shopping the way some of my classmates did. I’d never heard of places called Portland or Seattle or Jardin du Luxembourg. Although I was... Read more
Karen Spears Zacharias
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