Blog Posts
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 and was inspired by a photograph of…
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 in Pearl Harbor) and the USS Missouri…
Dating in the 1950s: Romantic and Dangerous
Dating became more formalized in the 1950s and also less chaperoned than in earlier generations. Although dating originated at the turn of the century, it continued to evolve away from courting rituals where men interacted with potential spouses in the girl’s parents home or in very public venues. Labor of Love: The Invention of Dating…
Donna Barten 