And regarding love…


And regarding love 🙂 I’m not sure that love is something you find.  It comes and goes, emerges as things unfold in front of you.  If love is compassion, then yes, it is always there.  And there are days when you see the total loss of love, and that makes you want to cry out,…

Mutti & Me (Growing Up)


  123 E Oak Street = John Travolta Baybeee! = 1975 Frank off to the Prom =   Dad & Mutti- Having a good time = More of same = Nonna, Dad, & Mutti = Little Frankie = Playing Football = Not looking Happy = Typical grade school pics =   More of same =…

A Letter from James Herndon to Frank Aprile


In April of 1980 I was 18, and living in a $55 a month room, next to another room in the a boarding house that was filled with 5-6 winos & street people, in Portland, Oregon. I had arrived two months earlier, hitchhiked from Indiana to stay with good friends Kathy Glade, and Susan Roudebush,…

James Herndon & Ingeborg Maria Hinderschiedt


  This was the period when my mother found and connected to my eventual father, James B. Herndon in Paris France 1955 James B Herndon James Herndon (1926–1990) was an American writer and educator. He is best known for two memoirs of teaching, The Way It Spozed To Be and How To Survive In Your…

The Home of Ingeborg Maria Hinderschiedt


 123 E Oak Street The Arrival 🙂 = Bedroom/Study Desk = Bedroom – Dining Room = A View to the Front Porch = Mutti’s Outdoor Garden Place = My Grandfather was an orchestra conductor- Picture is over the piano- = Mutti’s Garden @ Purdue Horticulture Center = My mom loved to hang out on the…

The Medals of My Grandfather & My Great Grandfather


1918 Napoleonic Wars: Prussian 1813Iron Cross 1st Class Iron Cross 1st Class.   The Eiserne Kreuz (Iron Cross – often abbreviated EK or IC) was instituted on 10 March 1813 by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III.  It was awarded for bravery in the field – without regard to rank – during the Befreiungskrieg (War of Liberation also called…

Snapshots of a German Schoolgirl in WWII


Editor’s Note: I think fear of the unexpected is a normal human reaction.  I also feel that conditioning people to be fearful is an art that seems to be a well worn tactic by those who have no conscience, or hide behind the lies of their confidants- the people they hire to be a buffer…

To Put it Mildly


Ingeborg Maria Hinderschiedt:  June 18, 1929  to December 7, 2013 = To put it mildly There is dissension in the ranks when finalizing the death of your mother. What the question marks consist of- become themselves the question. There was nothing pretty about the house I grew up in, and had been essentially locked out…

A Freshman: Adversity Disowns Clowns [7]


This Book is Dedicated to: The Lost, the Orphaned, the Abandoned, & the Adopted… LoveJoy Avenue A Freshman If there was ever such a thing as a “Year of Living Dangerously”, that would be me, in my Freshman year of high school. It had a cruel and unusual ferment to it, as during the summer,…

Odd Choices: Adversity Disowns Clowns [6]


This Book is Dedicated to: The Lost, the Orphaned, the Abandoned, & the Adopted… LoveJoy Avenue Before LoveJoy : Odd Choices Is James Herndon my father? This story has it’s roots in post war Germany 10 years after the war to end all wars. My mother was a student at Heidelberg, my adaptive father was…

Hide & Seek: Adversity Disowns Clowns [5]


This Book is Dedicated to: The Lost, the Orphaned, the Abandoned, & the Adopted… The Kinderheim Hide & Seek Big trees with wind blown dresses hiding behind them. My new mother and a strange man named Diether, that is what I remember of the Black Forrest. Little children’s games of hide and seek It is…

The Tower: Adversity Disowns Clowns [2]


This Book is Dedicated to: The Lost, the Orphaned, the Abandoned, & the Adopted… The Kinderheim The Tower The Kinderheim was an asylum so to speak. Nestled very neatly in the wrappings of Germany’s famous Black Forrest (Schwartzwald) in the southern corner so close yet so far from France and Switzerland. When I think of…

The Road to Fear: Adversity Disowns Clowns [1]


This Book is Dedicated to: The Lost, the Orphaned, the Abandoned, & the Adopted… The Kinderheim The Road to Fear Kinderheim in German means a children’s home. A home for kids basically. As well, it serves a respite for persons of means with adequate wealth to briefly forgive the responsibility of parenting and lend their…

Justin’s 6th Birthday !


The Aprile’sWell it was a really nice day for Justin’s 6th birthday celebration.  The whole family, and the kidz on the block shared a bouncy house, some seriously rockin’ tunes, and a lot of freeze pops and ice cream. It was all good 🙂

To Mutti: We Are Born Amazed


My Mom, Ingeborg Maria Hinderschiedt:  June 18, 1929 – December 7, 2013 Please say it now-click the underlined link >  Love or condolences- in the “Reply” section below 🙂 Some of the great songs she loved- = = = = = =   = Ingeborg Maria Hinderschiedt (Aprile)  1929-2013 Eulogy: Ingeborg Hinderschiedt Professor Emerita of…

We Are Born Amazed


We are not born alone … We are born amazed. A completely pristine white page of talent waiting to be uncreased and unfurled  to the end of all that we can see that is that history of ours, yet to be heralded, yet to be written and a  grand suggestion of a future history that…

To My Father: Max Aprile


We are not born alone … We are born amazed. A completely pristine white page of talent waiting to be uncreased and unfurled  to the end of all that we can see that is that history of ours, yet to be heralded, yet to be written and a  grand suggestion of a future history that…

A West Texas Summer


Wednesday:  July 6 Click Audio Play Button Below… Maria brings her best friend Hannah to visit Dad in Texas. Airplane to Dallas from Detroit, unaccompanied Minors !!! Did I say UNACCOMPANIED ???? Maria’s in charge- cuz she’s flown the most. Weird guy on plane, looks like a terrorist.  Spends waaay to much time in the…

The Last Long Weekend …


Click Below to Play Audio Thursday:  July 21 Today is LaserTag Thursday (finally). Off to The Main Event ! We decided against Laser Tag– went for Glow-in-the-dark miniature golf… Some of the geographical features… The obligatory alien dude… Then off to some Air Guitar- Looking like Some Girl Band- And then the Apollo 13 Mission…

A Life Worth Living … (With You)


Is It 8 Years? Well let’s run from that last one…  It is actually almost 9. People say that love isn’t that complicated. But it is. It is tethered by rules and obligations that souls make to one another on the fly. It becomes a rocket when a balloon is released. It is unsolvable. An…

Stepping Back from the Table …


It Starts Here … Deconstructing the anatomy of an open heart  team is like reading the writing on a wall from some war memorial somewhere, remembering a lot of somebody’s, that were in a lot of battles somewhere, fighting for a lot of  something. Nothing stands out.  Different hats, different times, different weapons, for sure…

The Second Decade


There is something different when you look back at a life changing experience, running it in reverse. Although I had envisioned it- I chose not to kiss the sacred ground that is America when I arrived by military plane back home from a 15 month mission to the Republic of the Philippines.  There were a…

A Lightening Storm for Elroy


It was a hot West Texas night, and the first thunder storm for Elroy… A dry heat, distant rumblings, a slowly moving something-  heads towards our direction with a light show.  Elroy, the newest pup at 6 months and 60 plus pounds of extension and growing up, is kinda hanging with me through it all.…

Skipping Stones to Lovejoy


The process of using surface tension to skip a stone across a tensionless  mirror requires the length, and elasticity of a poet,  the muscle memory of a baseball pitcher, and a hint of  rocket scientist laced with the confidence of a fool. All put together, it is a composite of choice, a missile selected and…

Clash of the Titans …


So came the day when two Titans Roamed the Earth: Evil incarnate: AKA  “The Jackal”, AKA “Lizzerd” had laid waste to everything- including the waste itself…  (Hmmm) The Jackal Meets: Elroy The Onslaught is Furious… The crows are gathering as the Jackal has the upper hand… But Wait !   From the Edge of Despair ……