DEAR COACH: Letters Home from WW II

Finally, after 7 years, I've published Dear Coach. It's now available at the Elizabethtown College online bookstore (www.etown.edu) and will soon be on Amazon. Very exciting but sometimes eclipsed by campaign activities. I think my parents would both be happy with the book. I'm looking forward to getting together with some of the letter writers and their families at the College Homecoming on October 17th. We'll read some of the letters that day - the stories are so moving. Here's one of the blurbs that was written for the cover:

"More than just a collection of letters, Dear Coach is the scrapbook of an extended family - a coach and his kids - dealing with a war that forced a generation to grow up overnight. The warmth between Coach Ira Herr and his kids shows the positive impact that caring educators can have on students' lives and how supportive mentoring can reach across oceans and continents to help sustain young people as they face the challenges of adulthood, The book's intimate correspondence, set in the context of a traditionally pacifist Christian college community also offers a glimpse at idealist souls wrestling with the tension between a commitment to non-violence and the need to combat Axis evils." Jim Kushlan, Editor and Publisher of America in WWII Magazine.

underway

Learning my way around the Queen Victoria, finding spa and food hotspots, getting used to the motion. People mostly in pairs but interesting folks. No children. No land, either. We're somewhere off the coast of SC I suspect - still not warm enough! Left NYC in snowstorm. First lecture by Rick Senat, former EVP of Warner Bros - maybe get some tips about getting Dear Coach into a movie - THAT would pay for the trip.

Transition

Now that we've won the White House and have had our days of euphoria, let's look at what else happened lately: Our local candidates scored well but did not get elected here in this red county (we will win someday). My friends, Democrats Sam Bennett and Joanne Tosti-Vasey lost their challenges to incumbents. We lost Catherine Baker Knoll to cancer. We still have an economy in free fall. We're still stuck in Iraq. Millions go without healthcare here in the US. The world is still getting warmer.

There is much work to be done to win future races, to live up to the expectations CBK had for women in Government, and to solve the huge problems facing our society and our world.

For the moment, however, I have turned back to a book I've been working on - DEAR COACH: Letters Home from WW II. More about that in future posts.