“Did your dad tell you about the strawberry birthmark?” my aunt asked. I was driving north with her on 35 in the summer of 1989, an occasional moth splattering plumply against the windshield. “What’s a strawberry birthmark?” I asked, glancing quizzically at Aunt Dorothy in the passenger seat. Her silver hair fanned out along the […]

Illustration by Grace Harnois   How my ancestors survived the flu epidemic of 1918-19 has become part of our family’s lore. Can remembering stories like this help us now? Carl, Vera, and Carl’s brother Morris were homesteading in a log house in Polk County, Minnesota, when the winter of 1918-19 arrived. Carl and Vera had […]