Tag Archives: michael charles smith

12/7/1960

Seventy-SIX years ago Japanese aircraft attacked the US Pacific Fleet. Nearly every capital ship in Pearl Harbor was sunk of severely damaged by bombs or torpedoes and the Pacific Ocean became a Japanese lake until Midway. The next day President Roosevelt declared before Congress, “December 7th shall live forever as a day of infamy.” This […]

August 1, 1995 Watchic Pond Standish Maine – Journal Entry

My sister and the rest of the clan had deserted the camp to visit a nearby Aquapark, so I arrived on Watchic Pond and sat outside under the pines. My grandfather and his friends had dammed a stream to create the pond back in the 1920s. It always seemed part of my life. Two years […]

August 1, 1995 – The South Shore / Watchic Pond – Journal Entry

I had planned on leaving for Asia the previous weekend, but after a long phone call with Todd Shigekane, I decided to bus north and visit Michael’s grave as well as my grieving mother. She had lost her baby son. His birth on December 7, 1960 was clear in my head. Thirty-five years ago. I […]

FREEBIRD INDEED by Peter Nolan Smith

Throughout 1994 the doctors at Boston’s Beth Israel spoke about turning the corner on AIDS and in January my youngest brother had made enough of a comeback for me to contemplate taking a West Coast job offer. “We’re opening a Milk Bar in Beverly Hills.” The original club in New York had been a success […]

THE MEANING OF PURE by Peter Nolan Smith

In the summer of 1995 my baby brother died of AIDS. Our family buried his body in a grave south of Boston. After the funeral I left the USA and sought solace for Michael’s soul at the holy sites of Asia. I lit candles before the Buddha in Chiang Mai. I circumnavigated Lhasa’s Jokhang Temple. […]