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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 Warminster…
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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.
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What’s In a Word? The Etymology of Smog
“The word thus coined is a contraction of smoke and fog — ‘smog’ — and its introduction was received with applause as being eminently expressive and appropriate. It is not exactly a pretty word, but it fits very well the thing it represents, and it has only to become known to be popular.”
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Gone Was the Wind
If even a slight breeze had strolled through the Donora valley that week the smoke would have broken up, giving residents some respite. But no, there was no breeze to be had, not in Donora, nor in Monessen to the south, nor in Monongahela to the north.
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Our Last ‘Real’ Conversation
To his friends, co-workers, and extended family, my father was friendly, even gregarious, charming, polite, and an intelligent conversationalist. To his children, though, all six of us, my father was, well, kind of a dick.
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Who Died in Donora’s Deadly Smog?
It seems that not everyone received a death certificate in 1948, or, if they did, it was lost or never archived. Marriage applications, census data, immigration passenger lists, and so forth, are also often inaccurate or provide inconsistent information.
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Who Was William Donner, the Man?
Most people know Donner, if they know him at all, as the founder of Donora, a town with a name unlike any other in the world. They might know that Donner was connected to the Mellons —Andrew W. and Richard B. — and that he was instrumental in creating the zinc and steel mills in Donora at the turn of the 20th Century. They might not know much else.
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A Lesson in Negotiating
Donora, Pennsylvania, would likely not exist today if town founder William H. Donner hadn’t finally persuaded Margaret Heslep, a surprisingly crafty negotiator, to sell her land.
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Even Cleaner Air Starts in Donora
With the EPA undergoing extensive downsizing and the Trump administration wanting to open previously protected lands to oil and shale drilling, Donora continues to remind the nation of the need for clean air.
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5 Tips for Building Your Own Town
If you’ve ever wanted to start your own town, there may be no better formula for it than the one William H. Donner used to start Donora at the turn of the 20th Century. Donner was a colleague of banking and industrial magnate Andrew Mellon, and they had decided to build a series of steel mills south of Pittsburgh. Donner found in some land along the Monongahela River the perfect spot to create a town. Let’s take a look at how he did it.
Blogging about my books, the sub-topics within them, and pretty much anything else I please, thank you very much.
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