On the evening of January 31, 2019, I sat in a third floor classroom of Loft Literary in Minneapolis and … More
Category: family
Two Bedsides
March 4, 2006 The phone rang at our Texas home on Saturday afternoon. It was the nursing home Dad had … More
The Making of Margaret Hyde
My forebears gaze at me, neatly arrayed in the sepia tones of 1936. In the center sits the patriarch, my … More
Christmas Day, 1944, Somewhere in France
On Christmas night 70 years ago, my father sat down at a typewriter to write a letter to his family … More
Holiday Letters – Then and Now
During the last few years of my mother’s life, one of the most important set of tasks on her year-end … More
The Objects of Family History
When I think and write about history, I use words. My book about my father’s transformation from boy to man … More
In Praise of Carbon Paper
I spent several days last week working through archived papers of women journalists. I’d been to the National Women and … More
Was Mom a Little Bit Racist? Am I?
In 1972, Michigan Judge Stephen Roth ruled in Bradley v. Millikin that the requirement to integrate the Detroit Public Schools … More
Reading (and Writing) the Obituary Page
Even when I was young, the obituaries were “must reading” in my local newspaper. I wasn’t a morbid child – … More
Mom, Nikki, and the Queen
It was one month before Mom turned 90 – I knew that. It was three months before she died – … More