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SALLY JAMESON BOND
Sally's Soliloquies
Welcome to Sally’s Soliloquies!
Each week, as I share snippets of the research that helped me develop my story, you will learn about the often-turbulent times of World War II. When My Mother’s Friend is finally published, and you open your copy to page one, you’ll be up to speed on the time and place of my story and so much more.
If you haven’t done so, please consider subscribing for updates. I’m writing these posts for you, so I hope you'll stick around for a while.
– Sally
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Anne Frank and her diary
My husband Joe and I have flown “across the pond” (the Atlantic Ocean) ten times (ten round trips, that is). Our first overseas adventure...
Sally Jameson Bond
Jul 28, 20215 min read
SPAM-in-a-can
Raise your hands—who has eaten SPAM? Uh-huh—are you sure?—how ‘bout that—more than I expected. It had been decades since I tried it the...
Sally Jameson Bond
Jul 21, 20213 min read
They weren’t all Nazis
You don’t often see letters to the editors of newspapers on the front page, but I recently found one such letter on the front page of the...
Sally Jameson Bond
Jul 14, 20216 min read
Saint-Lô
I look in all sorts of places for blog ideas. So far (this is number eighteen), most of my ideas have come from folders in file drawers...
Sally Jameson Bond
Jul 7, 20214 min read
Styes In My Eyes and the Scourge of Polio
I’m just getting over a stye. It’s the third one I’ve had since the end of March when the first one made its unwelcome appearance. Three...
Sally Jameson Bond
Jun 30, 20214 min read
R(oyal) M(ail) S(hip) Queen Mary
Six years ago this week, my husband Joe and I sailed on the Ruby Princess from Seattle through Alaska’s Inside Passage. We were on board...
Sally Jameson Bond
Jun 23, 20214 min read
Nimitz: The Man and the Freeway
Everyone knows the name Dwight David Eisenhower, at least I hope they do. Selected by President Franklin Roosevelt as the Supreme Allied...
Sally Jameson Bond
Jun 16, 20215 min read
The National D-Day Memorial
This past Sunday marked the 77th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of occupied Europe at Normandy, France during World War II....
Sally Jameson Bond
Jun 9, 20213 min read
June Brides (and Grooms)
Seventy-three years ago today, Donald William Johnson (my dad) and Phyllis Anne Pohlson (my mom) were married by Rev. Malvin Lundeen at...
Sally Jameson Bond
Jun 2, 20213 min read
The Not-So-Great Escapes
One of my favorite World War II movies is The Great Escape—Steve McQueen, James Garner, Charles Bronson, David McCallum (remember him...
Sally Jameson Bond
May 26, 20214 min read
V-Mail
Last week I wrote about the “Service Men Clip Column,” a weekly feature in The Algona Upper Des Moines newspaper during 1944 and 1945....
Sally Jameson Bond
May 19, 20214 min read
Wartime Newspapers
In 1944, Algona had two weekly newspapers: The Algona Upper Des Moines (published on Tuesdays) and the Kossuth (kuh-SOOTH) County Advance...
Sally Jameson Bond
May 12, 20212 min read
NARA
So, you want to write a historical novel about World War II. Maybe it’s about a prisoner of war camp somewhere in the United States, like...
Sally Jameson Bond
May 5, 20214 min read
Exercise Tiger: The Slapton Sands Tragedy
Seventy-seven years ago this week, one of the worst and little-known tragedies of World War II occurred off and on the shores of Slapton...
Sally Jameson Bond
Apr 28, 20213 min read
Gardening for Victory
Spring has definitely sprung here in Southwest Virginia. The forsythia and daffodils are pretty much histoire, and many of the tulips are...
Sally Jameson Bond
Apr 21, 20213 min read
Vaccines--then and now
I got my COVID vaccine on April Fool’s Day (no fooling!). I’d registered on the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) web page a couple of...
Sally Jameson Bond
Apr 14, 20213 min read
Could you survive rationing?
It was just about a year ago when the bizarre national panic commenced. “There’s no toilet paper at Kroger—or Food Lion—or Walmart!”...
Sally Jameson Bond
Apr 7, 20214 min read
They sure don’t make them like that anymore.
Our microwave died a couple of weeks ago. It gave up the ghost as we were making popcorn, a decades-long Sunday night tradition in our...
Sally Jameson Bond
Mar 31, 20214 min read
Why build a POW camp in Algona?
That’s a great question. By 1942, Great Britain was running out of room for all the enemy combatants who had been captured by the Allies...
Sally Jameson Bond
Mar 24, 20214 min read
I’m so glad I got to write about Iowa.
A (very) brief history . . . you might want to grab an atlas. Iowa (the name is derived from the Ioway tribe who once lived in that part...
Sally Jameson Bond
Mar 17, 20213 min read
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