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Answering Proust’s Questionnaire
The questions here are from the second questionnaire he developed, the one when he was 20. I thought it might be a fun exercise.
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Could Donora Happen Again? Here in the US?
Certainly there have been strides made in the nation’s ability to combat air pollution. The greater Pittsburgh area, which once served basically as “Air Pollution Central” due to the many steel plants there, has seen continued progress (right) for many years, as have most cities throughout the U.S. We need to remain fully committed to…
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Do You Know Any of These Donora Smog Victims?
Four people are sometimes listed as having perished in smog, but for many reasons finding definitive information on them has proven extremely difficult. They are Steve Faulchak, Ruth Jones, and Alice Ward.
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The Life and Death of a Smog Victim
Susan was having trouble breathing that morning, but she kept ironing nonetheless. She also had a headache that wouldn’t go away. She had never had a health problem before, aside from a twisted ankle when she was young, and she had no history of asthma or other lung disease. Yet on this foggy day a…
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2018 Oscars Fashion by Someone Who Knows Almost Nothing About Fashion
I know virtually nothing except that I can identify a wide variety of women’s shoes. (Slingbacks, kitten heels, open-toed pumps — don’t even get me started.) We dutifully watched the 90th Oscars last night, and I give you now my best-ofs in my own categories.
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Saving Donorans on a Deadly Night
He strapped on the oxygen tank he kept at home, the green one, labeled TO BE FILLED WITH COMPRESSED OXYGEN ONLY, and walked out the back door, onto Thompson Avenue, into the dark fog. Bill Schempp at a fire practice Walking had become so difficult by then that he dropped to his hands and knees…
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Hey, I Can Hear You Now!
After numerous tests and bunches of conversations with my wife that went something like this: Her: Could you let the dog in? Me: What? Her: For God’s sake, GET HEARING AIDS! I finally went and did just that. I went to a wonderful audiologist, Dr. Holli Lish at the Audiology & Hearing Aid Center in…
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Donorans, Dressings, and the Fight Against Cancer
Cancer was once a word uttered soto voce, a word so dangerous it would conjure demons and visions of the Spectre of Death. A barely-known radiologist named Marjorie B. Illig helped to change that, and the women of Donora readily jumped aboard her world-changing vision.