Seeking Quan Am : Blog
Supplementary material, photographs, outtakes, and commentary
Hearing a War Story
At the end of The Audiobook, I invited listeners to “take the time to listen,” partly because Mark (co-author of Seeking Quan Am) had said, “If one talks too much about the good times, people perceive a candidate for the VFW. The one…
The Audiobook
Years ago I used a device to help me teach about good writing, although the device in question might be insulted by the term. He was a coyote who I referred to simply as Coyote. In the storytime in which Coyote existed, I…
The Old Veterans
Excerpt from Seeking Quan Am: A Dual Memoir of War and Vietnam, Susan R. Dixon and Mark M. Smith I wanted to get us to Friendship Village, the rehabilitation center on the outskirts of Hanoi, founded by an American veteran and once again…
Rare Encounter
It is March 1969 in a place west of Saigon that the men called the Tobacco Field. They also called it Ambush Valley. Civilians were rare here, so when this group of farmers walked nearby, Captain Meager (hands on hips in middle photo)…
The Panera Stranger
This was an introduction to Seeking Quan Am that I kept for a long time before going in a different direction. Mark Smith and I were sitting with a friend in a coffee shop in Ithaca, N.Y. waiting for a mechanic to repair…
The Hard-Core Hat
The men sit, brooding, waiting, exhausted. If they are told to do something, they are ready to do it, their equipment close by. Their weapons and personal belongings – is there a distinction? – are bundled into packs. For the moment their helmets…