On fiddling with scenes from history: “Well, it's nothing new, you know. When President Reagan says the Nazi S.S. were as much victims as the Jews they murdered—wouldn't you call that fiddling?”

In 1917, my father's naval training completed he received his ensign's commission and shortly thereafter sailed as a signal officer on a troopship to Europe still in the wrong-colored uniform among deckloads of backpacking, leg-putteed doughboys.

 

They’re nothing new, you can read about the Leather Man for instance, a hundred years ago making his circuit through Westchester, Connecticut, into the Berkshires in the summer

What follows are the authors’ discussions on the first stirrings, the germination of a poem, or a work of fiction. Any number of headings would be appropriate: Beginnings, The Starting Point, etc. Inspiration would be as good as any.