The Enduring Magic of Little Golden Books
Do you remember reading Little Golden Books when you were a child, or reading them to children and even grandchildren? This institution of American children’s books began in 1942 during World War II and, after 82 years, it’s been read by generations of children. In 2013, the Smithsonian…
Peyton Place and the Sexual Education of America
Most people have heard of the phrase “Peyton Place” and associate it with titillating scandal and soap opera. But Peyton Place began as a novel, released in 1956 by a rebellious mother and housewife who wanted to expose the hypocrisies of her hometown and her times. Sex and…
What Is My Dog Thinking?
There are dog owners who are positive they know exactly what their dogs are thinking, and they are the ones who tend to anthropomorphize and project their own thoughts upon the dog. Say this dog owner is named Betty. My guess is that much of the time Betty…
Psychiatric Holocaust
Eugenics and the Monstrous Objective of “Racial Purity” The Nazi Party embraced an ideology of purifying their population from anyone deemed genetically inferior—to create a master race that would take their “rightful place” as the masters of Europe. It was at the top of Hitler’s agenda and he…
Creativity and Mental Health Challenges
Many people know that Vincent Van Gogh was institutionalized during much of his creative lifetime and that he painted the famous Starry Night at the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole. He cut off his ear after an argument with Gaugin and eventually committed suicide. Other famous artists have also struggled…
Whoops, Where Did That Year Go?
Dear friends, It has been an event-filled year in my life and so you haven’t heard from me in a while. There were a few challenges that stalled my writing life: early-detected cancer (thank you, Baystate doctors for catching that so early), Carpal Tunnel Syndrome that made it…
The Canine-Human Success Story
Dogs ARE human’s best friend Genetic success is defined by numbers and dogs are a huge genetic success story. World-wide population estimates of dogs range from 700 million to 1 billion, usually listed behind the most populous large mammalian species of humans (7.8 billion- 2020), followed by cows,…
Who Was Rosie The Riveter?
Imagery This Rosie the Riveter image is widely recognized as a symbol of female empowerment and the feminist movement. It was originally a poster made to encourage the newly working women at the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company during WWII. The poster was made by J. Howard Miller…
Disaster at the Brooklyn Navy Yard
In my novel, Breathing Water, Tony’s father works at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, along with ~70,000 others during the WWII peak and ~10,000 others during peacetime. They mostly built battleships and aircraft carriers and did repairs on any number of other types of ships. The USS Arizona (sunk…
What Makes a Fox Tame?
Thanks to my friend Nora, another dog lover, for recommending the 2017 book: How to Tame a Fox (And Build a Dog) by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut. The book chronicles an extended experiment done in Siberia started in the 1950s by two amazing geneticists, Dmitri Belyaev…
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Donna Barten 