History

After a divisive presidential election cycle, which pitted neighbor against neighbor and split the country down the middle, there will be many disappointed people after the results are announced. Chances are, you might be one of them. Here are seven things you can do to ease some of the discomfort following the election. Reflect Look…

My Netflix DVD queue contains 47 movie titles. At a rate of about one viewing per week, it would take almost a year to get through my whole list, if I weren’t always growing it. Often, I’ll add a movie and shoot it directly to the top. The list remains roughly the same length, and…

Last week, husband Jim and I went on a genealogy trip to Cranston, RI, and while we were there, we thought it would be a nice idea to pop over to Newport, where we spent part of our honeymoon “quite some time” ago. We relived those days as we toured the mansions and strolled the Cliff Walk. Newport,…

My husband is quite the genealogist. He’s always following hints on Ancestry.com, scrolling through old, imaged documents, and updating his Italian family tree. We even traveled to Italy a few years ago to walk the same narrow streets his grandparents did at the beginning of the 20thcentury. Recently, a distant relative from Cranston, RI, contacted…

Waldameer’s First Ravine Flyer (Ravine Flyer I) When I was a kid, my mother told me that long, long ago, a roller coaster used to pass right over Peninsula Drive, in our hometown of Erie, PA. She said that a young man died after he fell out of the Waldameer Park roller coaster, onto the street, and…

When I was a kid, I was a voracious reader. Luckily, we lived near a library. My trips to the library often employed a wagon to ferry my borrowings home. Once, my mother walked by me in the living room as I turned a last page and said, “You didn’t read that whole book already,…

I recently began reading a book that I picked up at a library sale last summer, called Helen and Teacher by Joseph P. Lash. Within the first few pages, I learned about the woman whose education paved the way for Helen Keller’s fame. Here are seven facts about Laura Bridgman: 1. Laura Bridgman (1829-1889) was the first deafblind person to become famous,…

Most of us think of Presidents’ Day as a day off of work or a day that you check your mailbox and the mail hasn’t come. Here are some other facts about this national holiday that you might not have known and links to interesting articles about each. 1. Presidents’ Day is celebrated on the third…

Ten years ago, when I met with the Academy High School class of 1935 in Erie, PA, and asked them about their former assistant principal, William Dimorier, using the French pronunciation, Di-more-ee-ay, they didn’t know who I was talking about. Then I tried pronouncing it as it is spelled, and still no recognition registered with the…

Some men might have rejoiced over a physical defect that would keep them out of World War II. Take Donald Michaels, the conscientious objector who was sentenced to three years in a Federal penitentiary for refusing to go to war. A minor physical deformity, like a crooked finger, could have saved him a lot of trouble.…