Writing with a Painful Paw
I'm deep in writing again, and dang if my hand pain didn't come back. CBD to the rescue!
I'm deep in writing again, and dang if my hand pain didn't come back. CBD to the rescue!
The Wizard of Menlo Park helped ease a housing crisis in Donora.
A prominent bronze plaque at the southern entrance to Donora honors smog victims...and then some.
This is the second of a three-part series covering devastating strikes of the 1890s, strikes that surely helped cement anti-unionism in Donora's founder, William Donner.
This is the second of a three-part series covering devastating strikes of the 1890s, strikes that surely helped...
William Donner, the founder of Donora, never liked unions. He was a businessman seeking ever-increasing profits, and unions tended to cut into them. Donner had grown into his wealth during a time of...
Who was Opechancanough, and what did he have to do with blast furnaces in Donora?
Who was Prince Wells, and how did he get the great William Donner so blinkin' high? William Henry Donner, founder of Donora, was an astute,…
The second part of two posts linking Donora's founder with the industrial titan Andrew Carnegie.
William Henry Donner, founder of Donora, was never a titan in the mold of Rockefeller, Carnegie, or the Mellon brothers were, but he learned a great deal from them all. Including how to build his mills in Donora.
Could he have survived if he hadn't worked so hard?
Once a great while it happens that death can fool even experienced healthcare professionals. It did me, certainly.
One of the saddest days of my nursing career happened when I made shift rounds and found that an elderly patient was in the throes of death, alone. I didn't know him, but I stayed with him until his final breath. No one should have to die alone. But with COVID-19, they are and will continue to die with no loved ones nearby.
My writing life hasn't changed while I'm in social isolation, but my mind sure has.
I thought I had determined the final count of victims from the Donora Death Fog. I was wrong.
After Susan Gnora died in the smog, a settlement with US Steel allowed each of her eight children, all of whom were age 20 or older, to receive a bit over half the cost of a new TV.
So, who *really* died in the Donora Death Fog?
After the smog cleared out of the Mon valley that deadly October 1948, after Dr. William Rongaus's pleas for people to leave town went unheeded,…