advice

Ann Seymour — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:18:52 -0800

If at firsat you don't succeed, skydiving's not for you.

He's Not My Type But I Love Him Anyway

Ann Seymour — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:06:18 -0700

OK, I'm not drawn to needy man-children who have just taken an emotional beating from true-loves and certainly can't turn to their dysfuncational families for help. I prefer boys with the courage of adults, like Edgar Sawtelle, to vice-versa. And Woody Allen's so mastered dysfuncational families, where to you go from there? To Jonathan Tropper, the poet of the pained male - that's where. He's so ...

Excerpts from "I've Always Loved You", a true story of ww2 in the Pacific

Ann Seymour — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:31:45 -0700

December 7, 1941, Cayucos, Central California I didn’t understand. I was only four. Unaware that my life was reversing, like the tide before me, I played on the beach. The sun brightened the cloudless sky, turning it a silvered winter blue, perfect for Sunday, Daddy’s day off. As he and Mom raced to the sea, the foam slapped against the shore. One strap of her bathing suit slipped. In ...

Thoughts on Elizabeth and Michael Norman's "Tears in the Darkness"

Ann Seymour — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 15:19:25 -0700

Everyone who has read "Tears in the Darkness" by Michael Norman calls it the best of the best, and I agree. Here is what I know about the events that led to the horriffic Bataan Death March. On Pearl Harbor day, church bells pealed from cupolas in Manila, the sounds cresting, suspended, and six-inch long monkeys went swinging from lily to lily as if the flowers were trees. In ...

A Woman Climbs Mt. Everest

Ann Seymour — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 19:13:35 -0700

Open letter to Sue Cobb, author of THE EDGE OF EVEREST, (Stackpole Books, 1989)Am breathless, though @ sea level. Your book absolutely stunned me. In your straightforward way, you brought me right to your side on the mountain and let me peek into your soul. Often I would reread a paragraph, page, scene, and I rarely do that. Even though I knew you were alive, I found the descent excruciating, ...

Stats from index of "I've Always Loved You," a true story of ww2 in the Pacific

Ann Seymour — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:21:34 -0700

On October 25, 1945: UN Charter signed. MacArthur orders all military statues in Japan destroyed, so naval officers cut Yamamoto's in half and threw it into a lake. However, they made a chart of where it sank, and later men dredged up the head and shoulders. Liberated American POWs are forced to sign confidentiality documents drawn up by the Army stating they would not tell what happened in the ...

The Day Daddy Went to War

Ann Seymour — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 17:11:32 -0700

On a strangely sunny December day, I rode on Daddy's shoulders as he walked along the sand, heading for the sea. He had strong, gentle hands and wavy hair that shone with a blue iridescence when the sun hit it as only black hair can. He had olive skin, chalk-blue eyes in which a light of hope always shone, and a basso musical voice that made words sound like songs. "You have such a ...

My Husband's Stroke

Ann Seymour — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:17:26 -0700

One morning my husband, Bob, woke up, said, "I think I'll make a pot of coffee," went downstairs and had a stroke. The kind neurosurgeons like himself call "the bull's eye." His middle cerebral artery in the dominant hemisphere was hit. I called 9-1-1, held him and reassured him, and at the hospital the doctor told me his right side would probably remain paralyzed ...