December 2018 – Ann S. Epstein Writer

Learn History Through Fiction: Thank Immigrants for the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop

Revelers have gathered in Times Square on New Year’s Eve since 1904, when Adolph Ochs, son of immigrants and owner of The New York Times, organized a celebration for the opening of the newspaper’s new headquarters. (Ochs also lobbied to change the name of the erstwhile Longacre Square.) However, the first ball drop wasn’t until 1907. That ball, made of iron and wood and adorned with one hundred 25-watt light bulbs, was 5 feet in diameter and weighed 700 pounds. It was built by a young immigrant metalworker named Jacob Starr, whose sign company, Artkraft Strauss, was responsible for lowering the ball for most of the 20th century. Read more about New York City history during this era and the vital role of immigrants in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

Workers prepare for the first New Year’s Eve ball drop in Times Square in 1907: The five-foot diameter, wood-and-iron ball, weighed 700 pounds and was lit with 100 25-watt bulbs.

Revelers amass in Times Square for the first New Year’s Eve ball drop in 1907.

Tazia and Gemma (Vine Leaves Press) by Ann S. Epstein

Learn History Through Fiction: Radio City Music Hall is a Kick

Eighty-six years ago today, on December 27, 1932, Radio City Music Hall opened during the height of the Great Depression. The brain child of billionaire John D. Rockefeller, the Art Deco theater in a formerly derelict area of midtown Manhattan, was designed as a “people’s palace.” The 100-foot long stage is most famous for showcasing the Rockettes, synchronized high-kicking dancers, who debuted in 1933. Their annual Christmas show draws more than a million visitors each year. Read more about New York City and 1930s culture in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).

Radio City Music Hall opened on December 27, 1932

The Rockettes have been kicking up their heels since 1933

A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (Alternative Book Press) by Ann S. Epstein

Learn History Through Fiction: We Can All Agree (Sometimes)

1970 was an active year in the divisive anti-Vietnam War movement. However, other events remind us that we could agree on important issues. For example: several million viewed a solar eclipse visible all along the Atlantic (03/07/70); President Nixon signed a law banning cigarette advertising on TV (04/01/70); the first Earth Day was celebrated (04/22/70) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began operations (12/02/70). Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, on a visit to Poland, German Chancellor Willy Brandt went down on his knees before a monument to victims of the Warsaw Ghetto (12/07/70). Read more about 1970s culture in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS ).

Learn History Through Fiction: The Missing Midwife

Nativity scenes typically depict Mary and Joseph, baby Jesus, the three magi, an angel, and perhaps a shepherd boy and his flock. Missing is the midwife who almost certainly would have delivered the child (and could have attested to Mary’s virginity). Midwives play a prominent role in Jewish scripture and have been around for thousands of years. The mother of Socrates was a midwife, midwives appear in Roman frescoes, midwives assisted at royal births in Europe, and African slaves brought their midwifery skills to America. Until the 1920s, 70% of births occurred at home attended by midwives. Although most deliveries later took place in hospitals, midwives are gaining in popularity today, with 12,000 in the U.S. and 27 million worldwide. Read more about midwifery 100 years ago in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

Learn History Through Fiction: 80 Years With the Navy

In 1939 the Navy took ownership of Camp Kearny in San Diego and commissioned it as the Naval Auxiliary Air Station on 02/20/1943. By the end of WWII, the base had grown from 423 to 1101 acres and the combined facilities were commissioned as Marine Corps Air Station, Miramar on 05/01/1946. Further expansion to accommodate jet aircraft took place in the 1950s, the station became the Fighter Command for the Pacific Fleet in 1973 and added the “Top Gun” Flight School (of 1986 movie fame), and then became the Airborne Early Warning Wing Command. In 1998, the Naval Air Station closed and again became a Marine Corps Air Station. Read more about the history of the military and aviation in San Diego in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

Top Gun Flight School at San Diego Navy Base

Tazia and Gemma by Ann S. Epstein published by Vine Leaves Press

Learn History Through Fiction: Oz Without the Rainbow

“Over the Rainbow” was almost cut from the 1939 Hollywood classic The Wizard of Oz because MGM studio executives thought the song made the Kansas sequence too long, would be over the heads of children, and degraded Judy Garland by making her sing in a barnyard. Producer Mervyn LeRoy fought for its inclusion and it won the Academy Award for Best Song. In 2004, “Over the Rainbow” was ranked #1 by the American Film Institute on a list of the 100 Greatest Songs in American Films. Read more about the movie in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS).

Judy Garland, as Dorothy Gale, sings “Over the Rainbow” in the 1939 classic “The Wizard of Oz”

“A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve” published by Alternative Book Press

Learn History Through Fiction: One-Armed Bandits and Fruit Machines

Slot machines are called “one-armed bandits” because of the lever on the side, or “fruit machines” because of the images of three fruits across top that results in a win (jackpot) if they match. Read about when gambling was illegal in Las Vegas (1911-1931) and how the Mob established underground casinos in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS).

Slot machine a.k.a. “one-armed bandit” a.k.a. “fruit machine”

Learn History Through Fiction: Germany to Compensate Kindertransport Survivors

Germany has agreed to compensate survivors who fled the Nazis as children in the Kindertransport. From November 1938 (after Kristallnacht) to September 1939 (when Germany declared war on Poland), about 10,000 children, 7,500 of them Jewish, from Germany, Poland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, were sent to Great Britain. Many never saw their parents, who were killed in the Holocaust, again. The $2,800 paid to each of the estimated 1,000 survivors, most of whom remained in England or emigrated to the U.S., Canada, Australia, or Israel,, is symbolic compensation for the physical, psychological, and spiritual harm done to them. Most never recovered from the trauma. To learn more about the life-long effects of the Kindertransport on the children whose lives were torn apart, read my short story, “Golo’s Transport,” published in The Madison Review, Fall 2017) (see SHORT STORIES).

Orphan Camp Just Published in Summerset Review

I’m pleased to announce that my short story, “Orphan Camp” has just been published in The Summerset Review, Winter 2019. Here’s the log line: “Orphan Camp” examines how the resilience that allowed Jewish children to survive during WWII made them resistant to adoption afterwards. Although set seventy years ago, the story speaks to today’s many war orphans. Read the story online at http://www.summersetreview.org/19winter/orphan.html.

Learn History Through Fiction: TIME 1955 Cover Stories

In the mid-1950s, TIME, the weekly news magazine founded in 1923, featured covers devoted to the economy, Hollywood, psychiatry, Russia, labor, and fashion. Titles and photos inside its distinctive red border included the following: The Bull Market (a bull on Wall Street); Gentleman Prefer Ladies (Grace Kelly); Exploring the Soul – A Challenge to Freud (Carl Jung); Shakeup in the Kremlin (Nikita Khrushchev); AFL’s George Meany (smoking a cigar, bald-headed, with bad teeth); and The American Look (fashion designer Claire McCardell). Harlow Curtis, President of GM, was named Man of the Year. GM sold five million vehicles and became the first U.S. corporation to earn $1 billion in a single year.A copy of TIME in 1955 cost twenty cents. Today each weekly issue sells for five dollars. Read more about 1950s culture and TIME magazine in A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. (see NOVELS.