Seeking Quan Am : Blog

Supplementary material, photographs, outtakes, and commentary


Advent 2023

As soon as we arrived in St. Petersburg, Florida, in the early 60s, my parents went “church shopping,” visiting Methodist churches one after another. Things went awry every time. One church didn’t have a Sunday School. The minister at another told newcomers to…

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Still, the journey

The last three times I have traveled it was to Vietnam. I prepared in all the usual ways—passport, suitcase organization, contingency plans—and I used Rosetta Stone and/or Duolingo to study the language. I had no illusions that I would be able to speak…

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The POW-MIA Metaphor

My writing group, The Pen and the Sword, considers topics related to any war, but the Vietnam War in particular. Our theme at the moment is After War—the ways in which cultures, communities, individuals leave war behind and transition to peace time. We…

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WHY WRITE A MEMOIR

I enlisted in the Army at the height of the Vietnam War—1967. I came from a southern family with a strong military background and felt that serving the country was the right thing to do in a time of need. Because I wanted to…

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… After All These Years

You’d think, after giving it more than 50 years, that we, the Vietnam War Generation, would have managed to make some sense of it. Fifty years worth of education, life experience, technical skill, hobbies, travel, social engagement—all those things that add value to…

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