a.d. elliott - Take the Back Roads

Dear Henry, The other day I read about the WWII Japanese prisoner transport ship the Enoura Maru. On January 9, 1945, the Enoura Maru was docked at Takao in Formosa and was overfilled with Allied prisoners. The ship was attacked by a raid of mostly American aircraft.  As many as 400 prisoners died during the attack and the days that followed. The survivors were transferred to the ship Brazil Maru and sent to Moji Japan.  Over 500 additional Allied prisoners died on that leg of the journey. The account I read  had an eyewitness testimony of the experience from USAF servicemember John Jacobs. While John Jacobs is a fairly common name, I can generally puzzle together enough information to piece together enough for an entry in the www.everydaypatriot.com blog.  Such would not be the case here. It wasn't that there wasn't any information about John Jacobs, it was that there was so much and the sheer number of John Jacobs became overwhelming. For example, th...

Dear Henry, I found this cute, little mushed flower and decided it would be a work of art. Ever since the accident , I have a soft spot in my heart for the bruised and the broken and when I realized this little flower was overlooked because it was rumpled, it broke my heart (yes, yes, I got entirely too emotional about a flower). Because of this soft spot, I am quite drawn to the Japanese Kintsugi pottery repair method, where the pieces of broken pottery are reassembled and repaired with gold (or other precious metals) to enhance damage and to reveal the piece's history and resilience. Kintsugi is also a philosophy, one which recognizes the history of breakage and repair is a history to be celebrated and acknowledged, not hidden. It is difficult to do in practice though. The easiest way to wear damage is with the titles "victim" or "survivor", titles that I have never liked because those bring the focus exclusively to the damage and I will, forever,...