On this page you’ll find interesting information I’ve uncovered doing research, but which doesn’t make it into the final manuscript. I generally apply the 5% rule, i.e., while it’s important for the writer to be grounded in the research, only a small fraction of that information should appear in the narrative. The work is a story, not a treatise. On the other hand, some readers may share my fascination with the real story behind the imagined one. If so, savor these unearthed tidbits.
The inspiration behind the story “A Fifth Way” published in Spank the Carp (see SHORT STORIES) was an old newspaper clipping I found online at Weird Universe from the Seattle Star, dated March 24, 1922: Four-Way Suicide Plans Futile (Charleston, W. VA) – “Jim Smith, a short order cook, wearied of a life of egg frying. He went to a bridge over Elk River. He fastened one end of a rope about his neck and the other to the bridge. He poured gasoline on his clothes and lighted a piece of paper at his feet. With one hand he fed himself some antimony, in the other he held a gun. His foot slipped off the railing of the bridge; the gun went off – but over his head, severing the rope. A flaming torch, he dropped into the icy water. The cold shock made him sick. His stomach threw out the poison. The water extinguished the flames. James swam ashore.” (Posted 03/03/19)
The inspiration for my short story “A Fifth Way” published in Spank the Carp
While writing about my father’s journey from Poland to America as a small boy in the early 1900s (see “David’s Crossing” in MEMOIR), I became curious about the ship on which he traveled, below deck, with his mother and aunt. The SS Rotterdam IV was a luxury passenger liner from 1908 to 1940 that also transported European immigrants before and during World War I and early refugees from World War II. Operated by Holland-America Line, and built by Harland and Wolff, she was 689 feet (210 meters) long, her beam was 77 feet (23.5 meters), she weighed 26,000 tons, and her speed was 25 knots. Wealthy passengers were given a grand sendoff with music and streamers. During the voyage, they lounged on deck chairs, were served coffee by waiters suited up in braid-trimmed jackets, and played shuffleboard (a game that originated in England in the 1400s, called “shove board” or “shove groat” because it involved shoving a coin called a groat down a table). Immigrants and refugees huddled below deck in crowded and unsanitary conditions, and were allowed on deck only when the ship passed the Statue of Liberty and prepared to dock at Ellis Island. To see a short video of the passenger ship as a luxury liner in 1908, go to SS ROTTERDAM IV. (Posted 02/04/19)
The SS Rotterdam IV, a passenger liner that also transported European immigrants and refugees to the U.S. from 1908 to 1940
While researching a story on Boston’s first public high school for girls (titled “The Principal”), I came across a theory prevalent at the time. In the first half of the nineteenth century, as more girls attended high school and college, the medical establishment became alarmed. Edward Hammond Clarke, a respected Harvard-trained physician, claimed educating girls was dangerous. He said that when girls aged 13 to 17 spent too much time learning, it hindered the growth of their ovaries and uterus. Boys could withstand the rigors of school and turn into men with fully functioning reproductive organs. Girls could not do both. Boys could handle six to eight hours of schooling a day; girls no more than four or five. Citing as evidence his female patients, Clarke claimed that excessive study time contributed to a population of puny and unhealthy women. To buttress his argument, he described a recent trip to Halifax where, he wrote, “Girls of 10 or 11 looked like ideal women, calm and undisturbed.” The reason, he concluded, was that Halifax had no public schools. (Posted 11/17/18)
Coming across a news article about a death café, I was inspired to write a short story titled “It Ends With Cake” (see SHORT STORIES). Here’s what I discovered while researching the tale: The modern death café, developed in the U.K. in 2011 by Jon Underwood, is modeled on the ideas of Bernard Crettaz, a Swiss sociologist who originated the “café mortel” in 2005 after the death of his wife. A death café is an informal gathering whose “sole topic of conversation is every living thing’s inevitable demise,” a subject we are all preoccupied with but rarely talk about. Although meetings can be held anywhere, the word “café” captures the idea of a community where ideas flow freely. In keeping with that principle, a death café always includes food and drink along with talk. To date, nearly 7,000 death cafés have been held in 56 countries around the world. Anyone can organize a death café and the movement’s website (http://deathcafe.com/) includes detailed guidelines on how to create and run one. As one leader said, “I have yet to meet a person who is inauthentic when talking about their feelings around death.” (Posted 09/23/18)
In November 1909, 23-year-old labor activist and Russian immigrant Clara Lemlich Shavelson led a strike of 20,000 women to protest the working conditions in New York City’s garment industry. Male union leaders had cautioned against the strike, but in February 2010 the “Uprising of the 20,000” women got factory owners to agree to a 52-hour work week and recognition of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), which subsequently also achieved better safety regulations and higher wages. One holdout was the Triangle Waist Company, where just a year later, in 1911, a fire killed 146 workers, mostly young Jewish and Italian immigrant women. After the successful labor strike, Shavelson turned her attention to the rights of those living in tenements, women’s health, and children’s well being . When she died in 1982, at the age of 96, she was living in the Jewish Home for the Aged in Los Angeles, where she organized the nurses and orderlies. “How much worse could these conditions get?” she asked the hesitant staffers, before they successfully unionized. “You’d be crazy not to join a union.” Read more about this labor pioneer in the belated New York Times obituary at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/01/obituaries/overlooked-clara-lemlich-shavelson.html. Learn more about the Triangle Waist Company fire and immigrant life 100 yeas ago in Tazia and Gemma (see NOVELS). (Posted 08/02/18)
“Spinning” is the title of a short story in progress, about Bartlett Yarns, the last commercially operated spinning mule in the United States. (There is one other in North America, in Canada.) Located in Harmony, Maine, the mill was established in 1821, then burned down and was rebuilt in the early 1920s. Today it is committed to sustainable practices, including the use of organic products to wash, card, spin, and skein wool from local farmers. The heart of the mill is the spinning mule, in which 240 spindles rest on a carriage that travels along a 60-inch track while drawing out the roving and spinning it into yarn, On the return trip, the carriage moves back to its original position while the newly spun yarn is wound onto spindles. My story, inspired by an article about the company in one of my fiber art magazines, imagines the lives of three young women working at the mill roughly one hundred years apart: 1821, 1920, and present day. (Posted 06/24/18)
BIBLIOTHERAPY is the practice, dating back to the Ancient Greeks, of encouraging reading for therapeutic effect. After the First World War, traumatized (“shell-shocked”) soldiers returning home were often prescribed a course of reading to help them readjust. In the U.S., the American Library Association, which collected and sent ten million publications to soldiers during the war (mostly nonfiction but also poetry and Shakespeare’s plays), distributed a list of recommended books for veterans. Meanwhile, the novels of Jane Austen were advised in the U.K. Today, research on “mirror neurons” in the brain shows that reading literary fiction (rather than popular fiction or literary nonfiction) improves empathy, i.e., the ability to experience what others go through as if you had gone through it yourself. Learn more about bibliotherapy in an article at https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/can-reading-make-you-happier. To find a book for what ails you, check out The Novel Cure: An A-Z of Literary Remedies (Berthoud & Elderkin, 2016). Read more about traumatized WWI veterans in On the Shore (see NOVELS). Here is a list of literary novels popular in the years ending and after the Great War: 1918: My Antonia (Willa Cather); The Magnificent Ambersons (Booth Tarkington); The Land That Time Forgot (Edgar Rice Burroughs); The Return of the Soldier (Rebecca West); Far Away and Long Ago (William Henry Hudson); The Madman (Kahlil Gibran) // 1919: My Man Jeeves (P.G. Wodehouse); Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson); The Moon and Sixpence (W. Somerset Maugham); In the Penal Colony (Franz Kafka); Night and Day (Virginia Woolf); The Magic of Oz (L. Frank Baum); The Mark of Zorro (John McCulley); Tarzan the Untamed (Edgar Rice Burroughs); Heartbreak House (George Bernard Shaw) // 1920: The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton); This Side of Paradise (F. Scott Fitzgerald); Women in Love (D.H. Lawrence); Main Street (Sinclair Lewis). (Posted 03/26/18)
For a WWII-era story titled “Orphan Camp,” I learned the following about the youngest people ravaged by war: In 1943, the United Nations estimated that 21 million people were displaced in Europe and established the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) to assist them. In April 1945, UNRRA entered the American zone of Germany and registered between 6,000 and 7,000 displaced children. Both Jews and non-Jews, they included survivors of concentration camps, forced child laborers, and children whose parents were sent to forced labor camps. In July, not far from the Dachau death camp, UNRRA created an international pilot program in Kloster Indersdorf, a former monastery closed by the Nazis. Between 1945 and 1948, it became home to more than 1,000 refugee youth. Led by a disciple of Anna Freud, the institute served as a model for five other centers in Europe. Groups of 12-15 orphans were organized into surrogate families led by an adult parent figure. Said one staff member, “The first thing was to give them plenty of food, clothing, and listen to their stories, days and nights. It had to come out. Sometimes it took hours. You could not interrupt.” Photos of the children were posted in hopes that relatives, if alive, would recognize and claim them. In a few cases this happened, but for most of the Jewish children, “their dark suspicion grew gradually into the horrible certainty, that from now on each was all alone in the world.” (Posted 03/13/18)
Researching the date and origin of the word “nerd” for Tazia and Gemma (Vine Leaves Press, 2018, see NOVELS), I learned that its first documented use is an imaginary creature in If I Ran the Zoo by Dr. Seuss (1950). The book’s narrator Gerald McGrew says he’ll collect “a Nerkle, a Nerd, and a Seersucker too” for his mythical menagerie. The slang meaning of nerd followed a year later. Newsweek reported that it was a popular synonym for drip or square in Detroit. By the early 1960s the term nerd had spread throughout the U.S. and as far as Scotland, taking on connotations of bookishness and social ineptitude. A 1965 student publication at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) used the term, spelling it knurd, said to derive from drunk spelled backward, to describe students who studied rather than partied. That same year, gnurd (spelled with a “g”) was also used at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The Online Etymology Dictionary speculates that nerd is an alteration of the 1940s word “nert” (meaning a stupid or crazy person), which itself originated in “nut” (or nutcase). The term nerd was further popularized in the 1970s sitcom Happy Days, while the related word “geek” appears in Robert Heinlein’s short story “The Year of the Jackpot” (1952) to describe a science, math, or technology enthusiast and is said to come from “geck,” German dialect for fool or freak. (Posted 01/16/18)
Several of my novels and short stories take place in New York City in the early 1900s, not long after the five boroughs were consolidated into one municipality. However, the city acquired the nickname “Gotham” a hundred years earlier, in 1807, when author and NYC native Washington Irving first used the term in his satirical periodical, Salmagundi. The name is said to derive from a folk tale, “The Wise Men of Gotham,” in which the residents of England’s Gotham village hear that King John will be traveling through their town. Knowing his visit would bring chaos to their quiet village, the citizens feign madness, then thought to be contagious, to encourage the king to find another path. (Posted 01/07/16)
For my novel-in-progress, One Person’s Loss, set during World War Two, I researched how the U.S. government instituted rationing, encouraged recycling (especially metal, rubber, and oil), and promoted civilians taking factory jobs. That made me wonder what manufacturing options existed in New York City, where the book takes place. I discovered that the first penicillin factory in the world was opened by Charles Pfizer and Company in Brooklyn in 1943. The factory made 90 percent of the antibiotics carried by Allied forces on D-Day. Other wartime manufacturing activities in New York City: Steinway and Sons in Queens switched from making pianos to glider wings because, like piano rims, they required layers of hard wood shaped into curves. Two ground-floor galleries of Manhattan’s New York Historical Society were turned over to the American Red Cross, which produced four million surgical sponges by December 1944. And the Arms and Armor Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art designed the helmets and body armor for American soldiers and bomber crews, based on historical armor models. (Posted 01/01/18)
My WWII-era novel-in-progress, tentatively titled One Person’s Loss, includes rituals that the protagonists, German Jewish immigrants, use to ward off the “evil eye” when their baby is born. I researched whether their Italian immigrant neighbors might have similar superstitions. Jews tie red ribbons on the carriage, and/or a red string called a roite bindele around the infant’s left wrist, to protect it from demons. The idea, from old Jewish folklore, is associated with Kabbalah (a mystical, not a religious, doctrine), and is connected to other people’s envy having the potential to cause evil. With newborns, it is linked to the mythological figure of Lilith, Adam’s first wife, who became known as a demonic woman blamed for deaths of infants; she is sometimes called the “baby-stealer” and the talismans are worn to ward off her “evil eye.” Italians wear a cornicello, a charm resembling a red pepper, to ward off bad luck. One can also make le corna, the sign of the horns, by extending the index and little fingers, while holding down the middle and ring fingers with the thumb, and point the hand downwards. Upwards signifies a cuckold, and mistakenly pointing your hand that way might really bring bad luck! Another superstitious behavior one might use to bring good luck in Italy is tocca ferro (touch iron), much as other cultures “knock on wood.” By contrast, spilling salt or olive oil bring bad luck. (Posted 09/25/17)
Also discovered while researching the story “A Fifth Way” – The Band-Aid was invented in 1920 by Johnson & Johnson employee Earle Dickson for his wife Josephine, who frequently cut and burned herself while cooking. The prototype allowed her to dress her wounds without assistance. The original Band-Aids were handmade and not popular. They used the available resources of the time, which were limited in an era of great poverty. By 1924, J & J made a machine that produced sterilized Band-Aids. The first decorative strips, introduced in 1951, were a commercial success. Decades later a colored adhesive bandage was created (in a brown-tone called “Ebon-Aid”), followed by light brown, dark brown, cinnamon, and clear-strips for any skin color. Dickson, the inventor, later rose to vice president of J & J before his retirement in 1957. (Posted 09/18/17)
The following bizarre article, titled “Four-Way Suicide Plan Fails” from the Seattle Star of March 24, 1922 sparked my short story “A Fifth Way” – (Dateline: Charleston, West Virginia) Jim Smith, a short order cook, wearied of a life of egg frying. He went to a bridge over Elk River. He fastened one end of a rope about his neck and the other to the bridge. He poured gasoline on his clothes and lighted a piece of paper at his feet. With one hand he fed himself some antimony, in the other he held a gun. His foot slipped off the railing of the bridge; the gun went off – but over his head, severing the rope. A flaming torch, he dropped into the icy water. The cold shock made him sick. His stomach threw out the poison. The water extinguished the flames. James swam ashore.” One hopes that in real life, there was no fifth attempt. Or, if there was, it proved equally unsuccessful. (Posted 09/18/17)
Researching a story about the first U.S. policewoman, who worked on the Los Angeles “purity squad,” I read up on nickelodeons, one of the places she patrolled. The nickelodeon was the first indoor exhibition space dedicated to showing projected motion pictures. The word “Nickelodeon” was concocted from the five-cent coin charged for admission and the ancient Greek word odeion, which was a roofed-over theater. In the early 1900s, nickelodeons were typically converted storefronts that sat fewer than 200 patrons on hard wooden chairs. The screen was hung on the back wall and a piano (and maybe a drum set) was placed beside or below the screen. Larger nickelodeons in big cities had the capacity to seat over 1,000 people and offered a more elaborate array of musical instruments. Nickelodeons flourished from 1905-1915. The number of venues doubled from 1907 to 1910, up to 8,000 nationwide. As many as 26 million people went every week to watch “the flicks” (so called because the images flickered). (Posted 09/07/17)
Several of my stories take place during the height of the silent film era (1920s and 1930s). Silents were popular for so long because it took years for the technological challenges of talkies to be overcome. Thomas Edison intended to marry images to sound as far back as 1885. The problem was he couldn’t get his phonograph and kinetoscope to synchronize. When others finally did, rather than admit defeat, Edison declared in 1926 that Americans would always prefer silent movies over those with sound. Hollywood movie-makers felt the same, with the exception of Warner Bros., who in 1925, were eager to make their already popular movie theaters more popular. Sam suggested to his brothers Harry, Al, and Jack, that they give sound a try. At first they only recorded standardized music; they didn’t think audiences wanted to hear actors’ voices. Not until Al Jolson sang and kibbutzed in The Jazz Singer (1927), did it become obvious that people loved hearing actors speak their lines. Once other studios realized sound was not just a fad, the talkies took over the movie business and silent films passed into history. (Posted 09/06/17)
My short story “The Mask” is about the heyday of the silent film era (with an unusual twist, i.e., a stage actor with a terrible voice finds salvation in silent movies, unlike silent actors with bad voices who were later ruined by talking pictures.) The early 1910s to late 1920s were an artistically fruitful period for film, including the movements of Classical Hollywood, French Impressionism, German Expressionism, and Soviet Montage. The silent era was also pioneering from technical standpoint, ushering in three point lighting; visual techniques such as close-up, long shot, and panning; and advances in editing long before silent films were replaced by talking pictures. Color was also more prevalent in silent than sound films for decades. By the early 1920s, 80% of silent movies were in color, usually in form of tinting (colorization) but also with real color processes such as Kinemacolor & Technicolor. (Posted 09/04/17)
The Anglesey, Wales village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyll (Llanfairpwll for short) is world famous for having Britain’s longest place name. Less well know is that it is where the first Women’s Institute (WI) in Britain was founded. The movement started in Canada in 1897. In 1913 a lady called Mrs. Alfred Watt, who had worked at the WI headquarters in Canada, came to London and tried, without success, to start WI’s in the south of England. She then joined the Agricultural Organisation Society (AOS), set up to advise the Government on food production during WW I. Mrs. Watt was invited by Bangor University College to address the North Wales branch of AOS and there met Colonel Stapleton Cotton, its Chairman from Llanfairpwll, who worked tirelessly to benefit the local community. He invited group of ladies from the village to meet Mrs. Watt and consider starting a WI. A motion to establish a chapter was passed unanimously and the first official British WI was founded there in September 1915. Women’s Institutes are still active today in Canada and Britain today. Read a fictionalized account of the origins of WIs in “Jamming” (see STORIES). (Posted 08/31/17)
The rigors of Navy life during World War One play a prominent role in On the Shore, including a scene where protagonist Shmuel Levinson, who has taken the name Sam Lord, contemplates his identity during a lonely, nighttime watch. The traditional watch rotation in the Navy is called “five and dime.” Sailors serve five hours on watch, followed by ten hours off. However, during those ten hours, they often have other duties, so it’s not uncommon for a watch officer to work a 20-hour day every three days, with sleep interrupted by drills or refueling operations. Sailors can be on duty up to 108 hours a week. The result is sleep deprivation, causing their performance levels to be equivalent to someone who has downed several beers in quick succession. This state in turn leads to accidents, such as the recent ones in the Seventh Fleet that claimed many sailors’ lives. Some ships are now switching to a “three and nine” watch schedule, which is closer to circadian rhythms, but most resist change. Three-quarters still use the old “five and dime” system, despite its devastating consequences. Read more about the traditional Navy during WWI in On the Shore (NOVELS). (Posted 08/28/17)
Prohibition features in my story “Blood and Sand” (see STORIES) as well as in a coming-of-age scene in my novel On the Shore (see NOVELS). On January 16, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition) became law, banning the manufacture, transportation, importation, and sale of intoxicating liquors in the U.S. The amendment was the culmination of more than a century of attempts to remove alcohol from society by temperance organizations, and many large cities and states were already dry by 1918. During Prohibition, bootlegging grew into a vast illegal empire, helped by widespread bribery. Corruption among enforcement agents (with bribes as high as $300,000 a month) was so prevalent that President Warren G. Harding commented on it in his 1922 State of the Union address. Yet Harding, who had voted in favor of Prohibition when he was a senator, kept the White House well stocked with bootleg liquor. This discrepancy between legality and practice led to widespread contempt for authority. After a very wet “dry run,” Prohibition ended December 05, 1933. (Posted 08/21/17)
Discovered while researching the story “Felines at Fault” – In the 1910s and 1920s, cats became pets instead of just mousers. At the same time there was an uptick in the number of house cats, there was an increase in the number of divorces. Back then, couples had to prove a valid reason to dissolve a marriage. Cats often provided the excuse, as newspapers delighted in reporting. The Los Angeles Herald said a Milwaukee man asked for a divorce after his wife threw a growler of beer at his head for stepping on her cat’s tail. The Lompoc Journal reported that a Kansas City man obtained a divorce because his wife kept 35 cats and “it was a physical impossibility for him to kick them all around at once.” According to the The Telegraph of Salem, Massachusetts, a woman was granted a divorce because she tolerated her husband’s profanity but objected to his heaving a cat at her head. After no-fault divorce laws went into effect in the U.S. (beginning late 1960s), the number of cat-related divorces declined. (Posted 08/10/17)
I discovered this morsel about the “Kosher Meat Boycott” of 1902 after completing my historical novel On the Shore, but it fits with the labor and housing movements portrayed in the book. By 1900, the Lower East Side had over 130 kosher butcher shops catering to Eastern European Jewish immigrants. In 1902, the National Beef Trust of America (a monopoly) was created and raised the price of beef from 12 cents to 18 cents per pound, a 50% increase. Thousands of angry Jewish women stormed neighborhood butcher shops, smashing windows and destroying meat by tossing it in the street or soaking it in kerosene and setting it on fire. The women disrupted Sabbath services in synagogues to urge a boycott of butchers. This was a double no-no. First, women were not allowed in the men’s sections of synagogues, especially on the bima (platform) where Torah was read, yet that’s where they stood to make their announcement. Second, dealing with money matters on the Sabbath is forbidden. Men tried to shoo them away, but the women would not be deterred, in the synagogue and on the streets. After a month of protests, the Beef Trust caved in and lowered the price to 14 cents per pound. The Lower East Side remained a hotbed of social activism for decades to come, with women playing a significant role. (Posted 07/28/17)
A century ago, penny arcades were a popular form of entertainment. Attractions included stereoscopes, tests of strength and lung capacity, perfume sprayers, mechanical fortune tellers, electric shockers (thought to stimulate health), and machines like “Dr. Vibrator,” the title of my latest story. Unlike the sexual association of today’s vibrators, the devices consisted of a rubber hand that users pressed against different parts of their body to “relieve specific ailments” (such as a stiff neck or aching back) and to generally “charge and replenish the body’s vital forces.” The machines were advertised with the slogan “Vibration is life!” (Posted 07/16/17)
“Dr. Vibrator” is the story of Alice Stebbins Wells, the first policewoman in the United States, appointed to the Los Angeles Police Department in 1910. She worked on the “purity squad,” where she was responsible for enforcing laws concerning “dance halls, skating rinks, penny arcades, picture shows, and other places of public recreation.” Although not allowed to carry a gun, she was authorized to make arrests. Standing just five feet tall, Alice was also an ordained minister, social worker, and active member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. (Posted 07/16/17)
Researching the short story “The Mask,” set in the heyday of the silent film era, I uncovered this “puff piece” about one of the most famous restaurants in New York City’s former Herald Square theater district. Keens Chophouse (72 W. 36th St.), founded in 1885 by Albert Keen, was host to actors and others in the theater business. Most steakhouses were known for porterhouse steaks, rib eyes, and prime rib. At Keens, the star attraction was the Mutton Chop, a two-inch thick saddle of lamb. More noteworthy than the meat, however, was the restaurant’s “pipe club,” a collection of hundreds, if not thousands, of smoking pipes lining the ceiling. As was the custom at taverns and inns of the time, the pipes were left by their owners so they were ready whenever they wanted an ale and a smoke. At Keens, pipes were registered by the guests and kept clean by “pipe boys,”clearly an artifact of the days long before smoking was prohibited in restaurants. (Posted 07/10/17)
Here are some facts about U.S. immigration in the early 1900s, gleaned while researching On the Shore. Immigrants arriving at Ellis Island were asked 29 questions including the following: Are you a polygamist,? Are you an anarchist? Were you ever in an almshouse? Ellis Island was nicknamed “Heartbreak Island” because 2% of arriving immigrants were not admitted and were deported back where they came from. A wooden column outside the Registry, where new arrivals met relatives who had already settled in America, was named the Kissing Post. Many immigrants to New York settled on the Lower East Side’s Tenth Ward, a geographic, ethnic, and religious melting pot. Russian and Eastern European Jews lived together with German, Polish, Irish, and Italian Catholics. There was also a thriving Chinatown. Walhalla Hall was the community’s main civic center and the site of weddings, dances, and union meetings for all groups. Unions arose from the immigrants’ miserable working conditions. For example, garment sweatshops had no ventilation and poor lighting. Laborers worked 12-16 hours a day, 6 days a week. Weekly wages were $6-10 for men, $4-5 for women, and less than $1 for children. (Posted 06/21/17)
The 1918-1920 Spanish flu epidemic resulted in an estimated 50-130 million deaths. One-third of the world’s population (500 million people) were infected, and 10-20% of them died. Over half (43,000) of the U.S. soldiers who perished in Europe during World War I died from the Spanish flu rather than from enemy fire. Read more in On the Shore. (Posted 06/21/17)
Ninety-five years ago (1922), two new edifices achieved prominence in the Washington, D.C. area. The Lincoln Memorial was dedicated by former president William Howard Taft on 05/30/22. President Harding went on the radio (a White House first) to dedicate the Frances Scott Key Memorial in Baltimore less than a month later, on 06/14/22. (Posted 06/21/17)
My story “The Mask” takes place during the height of the silent film era (1910 to late 1920s). Early on, when films were very short, in-house narrators explained the plot to the audience. As films increased in length, narrators were replaced by onscreen titles which presented key story points and dialogue, and even commented on the action with words and graphics. The title writer was often someone other than the scenario writer. Music also magnified a film’s effects. The “Mighty Wurlitzer” organ was an entire orchestra and sound effects studio in itself, whether simulating the percussion effects of bass drums and cymbals, or the clatter of galloping horses and pounding rain. Most notable, of course, were the exaggerated acting techniques — body language and facial expressions — which modern audiences find campy. However, as directors like D. W. Griffith pioneered the use of close-ups, audiences began to prefer more naturalistic acting. (Posted 06/01/17)
Many new products appeared in the first two decades of the 1900s (the era of On the Shore), including the following: Hydrox cookies (1908); Oreo cookies (1912); Brillo (1913); Pyrex cookware (1915); S.O.S. (1917) which stands for Save Our Saucepans and was named by the inventor’s wife; Adhesive bandages (1920); Nestle Wave home permanent (1921); and Peter Pan Smooth Peanut Butter (1922). The first issue of Reader’s Digest was published in February 1922. And Richard Drew, working at 3M, invented Scotch Tape in 1925. Previously, tape had to be adhered with heat or glue, but this new tape was designed to be self-sticking. (Posted 06/01/17)
I discovered while researching On the Shore that the military has always been a rich source of slang, notably of the gross or macabre variety. In WWI, U.S. sailors called their sleeping gear, which consisted of a hammock and a canvas-covered mattress, a fart sack. The British Navy had its own irreverent expressions, describing everything from eating to expiring. Here are some of my favorites (or “favourites”): bully beef was a concoction of canned, boiled, and pickled beef); maconochie was a hearty ration made up of beef, potatoes, beans, onions, and carrots awash in gravy; pozzy referred to ration-issued jam (the Brits were big on preserving fruits and vegetables); chat was the delicate word for indelicate body louse; go phut, applied to mechanical devices, meant to stop working; napoo indicated used up or worn out; go west was a euphemism for dying; and last post referred to the Taps played upon a serviceman’s death. (Posted 05/21/17)
One of the best known WWI Navy recruitment posters announced: “Don’t READ American history, MAKE IT!” Among the many places where posters appeared was United Drugstores (the forerunner of Rexall), where managers were deputized to sign up recruits. (Featured in On the Shore.) Other notable WWI Navy posters:
* GEE!! I wish I were a man. I’d join the Navy! (featured a woman dressed in a sailor suit)
* JOIN THE NAVY! America’s new prestige in world affairs will mean a great part for the Navy. BE A PART OF IT. America Advances.
* I’m doing my duty. Are you? Your NAVY needs you THIS MINUTE.
* Join the NAVY, the service for fighting man. (featured a man “riding” on the back of a torpedo)
* Uncle Sam is calling you. I WANT YOU IN THE NAVY and I WANT YOU NOW!
(Posted 05/01/17)
In time for baseball season, here’s some sports trivia I gleaned while researching On the Shore. Construction of Yankee Stadium in the Bronx began on May 5, 1922 and was finished in 1923 at a cost of $2.4 million dollars (equal to $33.9 million in today’s dollars). The stadium was the first three-tiered sports facility in the country. Since 1913, the Yankees had shared the Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan with the New York Giants, but tensions flared when the Yankees hired slugger Babe Ruth, which made them a bigger draw than the Giants. To end the decade-long standoff, the Yankees’ owners built their own stadium. [Note: I’m a Bronx girl, born and raised, and watched Roger Maris hit home runs in 1961. Although I moved away from the City in 1963, I remain a lifelong borough-identified fan.] (Posted 05/01/17)
On the Lower East Side in the late 1800s and early 1900s, 2,500 pushcart peddlers a day haggled and sold every type of goods imaginable, including shirt collars, shoelaces, vegetables, and pots and pans. An article in The New York Times (June 30, 1893) said “This neighborhood, peopled almost entirely by the people who claim to have been driven from Poland and Russia [a.k.a. Jews] is the eyesore of New York and perhaps the filthiest place on the Western Continent. It is impossible for a Christian to live there because he will be driven out, either by blows or the dirt and stench. Cleanliness is an unknown quantity to these people. They cannot be lifted up to a higher plane because they do not want to be.” Read more about the Lower East Side in On the Shore. (Posted 04/24/17)
New York City’s Grand Central Terminal, which opened in 1913, has the world’s largest Tiffany glass clock. The clock is four-sided, stands 48 feet high with a circumference of 13 feet, and is surrounded by sculptures of Minerva, Hercules, and Mercury. It has a secret door that leads to the ticket booth. Read about other New York City landmarks in On the Shore. (Posted 04/24/17)
Three notable firsts occurred in 1922, the post-WWI era of On the Shore. The First Newberry Medal for children’s literature was awarded to Hendrik Van Loon for The Story of Mankind on 6/27/22. Ralph Samuelson was the first person to ski on water, in Minnesota, on 7/02/1922. A new sport was born. “Playing doctor” kits were released in 1922. They caused a scandal but quickly became the most popular Christmas toys that year. The toys are still popular today. A vintage kit in good condition can cost upwards of $50. (Posted 04/15/17)
In WWI (the era of my novel On the Shore), soldiers ate Iron Rations. They pounded the hard tack into chips with their rifle butts and soaked bully beef in soup or hot water. To supplement these meager and tasteless offerings, they visited the Gedunk stand, a bar or canteen where they bought soda, sandwiches, candy, and other snacks. There are many ideas about where the term “Gedunk” originated. The one I like best is that it derived from the Chinese word meaning “Place of Idleness.” (Posted 04/15/17)
New York City is known for its landmarks, some dating to the heyday of early European immigration (in the years just before my novels On the Shore and the beginning of Tazia and Gemma). Central Park was the first landscaped city park in America. It opened to the public in 1858. The Brooklyn Bridge opened on May 24, 1883. Most famously, the Statue of Liberty, across the East River from the bridge, was dedicated on October 28, 1886. (Posted 04/02/17)
At the beginning of WWI, the U.S. fighting force was small. Selective Service originally required males aged 21-30 to register; this was amended in August 2018 to allow men aged 18-45 to enlist. As a result, the country drafted 2.8 million men in just over a year and sent 10,000 new soldiers abroad every day. The U.S. Navy, the service featured in my novel On the Shore, grew from 59,000 to 530,000 men from late 1916 until WWI ended in November 1918. (Posted 04/02/17)
Researching the early decades of the last century for On the Shore, I learned a lot about U.S. immigration laws that has, alas, much relevance today. The U.S. government began to restrict immigration in 1917. The rate of admissions swung widely in the first half of the 1920s. It peaked in 1921 (to a high of 800,000/year), fell during the 1922 depression (300,000/year), rose in 1923 (500,000/year) and again in 1924 (at 700,000/year), then dropped once more in 1925 (back down to 300,000/year). The 1921 Immigration Act limited new arrivals to 3% of the sending country’s population. This was lowered to 2% in 1924. The laws favored those from northern Europe. The 1924 Immigration Act imposed severe restrictions on immigrants from central, southern, and eastern Europe, and was aimed at keeping out Jews and Catholics. These limits were not relaxed until 1929. (Posted 03/26/17)
As women’s history month draws to a close, here’s what I learned about Annie Oakley, a TV western heroine of my childhood, while researching On the Shore. Annie Oakley, born Phoebe Ann Mosey on August 13, 1860, is famous for setting the women’s sharpshooting record by breaking 100 clay targets in a row on April 16, 1922. The sixth of nine children, born to Quaker parents, she had little formal education. She began trapping by age seven, and hunting by age eight, to help support her widowed mother and siblings. In addition, she sold the game to restaurants and hotels in northern Ohio. Also known as “Little Sure Shot” (she was only five feet tall), she was an international star who performed for royalty and heads of state. Over the course of her career, she taught an estimated 15,000 women how to use a gun as a form of physical and mental exercise, but more importantly to defend themselves. She said: “I would like to see every woman know how to handle guns as naturally as they know how to handle babies.” (Posted 03/26/17)
The novel Tazia and Gemma begins with Tazia surviving the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire on Saturday, March 25, 1911, on the 8th to 10th floors of the Asch Building in New York City’s Greenwich Village. As people were packing up to leave, a cutter noticed a small blaze in a wicker scrap bin under his table. Workers poured pails of water on it but the fire quickly got out of control. They then tried to use fire hoses but when they turned on the valves, nothing came out. Shirtwaist makers, as young as 14, worked seven days a week, from 7 AM to 8 PM with a half-hour lunch break, for $6 per week. In some cases, they were required to use their own needles, thread, irons, and even sewing machines. Women had to leave the building to use the bathroom, so management locked the steel exit doors to prevent the “interruption of work.” Only the foreman had the key. When the fire erupted, the women were locked inside. They pressed against the door, trying to escape, meaning firefighters couldn’t push open the door from outside. A total of 146 garment workers died, 129 women and 17 men, some of whom jumped to their deaths. Most victims were recent Jewish and Italian immigrant women aged 16 to 23. (Posted 03/22/17)
Part Two of On the Shore opens with Dev Levinson, age 12, getting her period for the first time. In researching the book’s era (1917-1925), here’s an interesting fact I uncovered that is worth sharing during Women’s History Month: Lister’s Towels were the first feminine sanitary pads, manufactured in 1896 by Johnson & Johnson. Before then, women used and washed out rags, which is where the expression “on the rag” comes from. (Posted 03/13/17)
My novel On the Shore takes place before and after the women’s suffrage amendment was passed (1920). In honor of Women’s History Month, here’s something else that may (not) be considered progress. Women smoking became less taboo as they took over men’s jobs in WWI. There were several brands targeted exclusively for females. One ad read: “For discerning women: Milo Violets delicately scented gold tip cigarettes.” Another early brand was Murad Turkish cigarettes. The ad featured a ringed hand holding a cigarette with the tagline line: “Which is the jewel?” The cost of cigarettes then was 25 cents for a pack of 10. (Posted 03/13/17)
Candy manufacturers began using corn syrup during World War I because sugar was rationed. It was cheap and plentiful, so they never stopped. Popular candies of that period (dubbed “war candies”) were Amalkaka (chocolate-covered animal crackers) and GooGoo Cluster (a roundish mound of caramel, marshmallow nougat, fresh roasted peanuts, and milk chocolate). Its shape was harder to wrap than conventional rectangular or square candy bars of the day, and it was the first time multiple elements were mass-produced in a retail confection. Some candies still popular today were invented even earlier, in the late 19th century: Tootsie Rolls (1896); Twizzler’s Licorice (1845); Good & Plenty (1893); and Juicy Fruit Gum (1893). (Posted 03/06/17)
The Roaring Twenties and Prohibition were fertile ground for germinating slang. Here are a few of my favorites, discovered while I was researching On the Shore (see Novels) and several shorter pieces (see Short Stories) set in that era: Mash in the mush (Hit in the mouth); Lunachick (Crazy dame); Bearcat (Hot-blooded girl); Applesauce (Horsefeathers); Hayburner (Gas-guzzling car); Iron (Motorcycle); Orchid (Expensive item); Struggle buggy (Car to make out in); Barney mugging (Having sex); Skatey (Vulgar, cheap); Iron one’s shoelaces (Go to the restroom); Mazuma (Money); Splifficated (Drunk); and Zotzed (Killed). (Posted 03/06/17)
During the Depression, Cornell University’s College of Home Economics developed low-cost recipes to help Americans survive difficult times. Eleanor Roosevelt was a big fan of this work, which she saw as “scientific” and a means to advance the knowledge of homemakers. The recipes were indeed based on nutrition research. Unfortunately the food was colorless, textureless, and above all, tasteless. The dishes were given fancy names to make them sound scrumptious, and the First Lady proudly served them to distinguished guests. An unspoken rule in Washington was that if you were invited to dine at the White House, it was best to eat beforehand. FDR, a gourmand, was perennially peckish but refused to interfere in his wife’s domain. In a short story titled “Milkorno” (a supplement of vitamin-enriched powered skim milk and ground corn kernels), I included several such recipes foisted upon the public. Here’s one. You be the gustatory judge. (See the Short Stories page to read more about “Milkorno” published by Ascent http://www.readthebestwriting.com/milkorno-ann-s-epstein/)
Corned Beef Delight Luncheon Salad
Ingredients: 1 cup boiling water; 1 3-oz package unflavored gelatin; 1 TB vinegar; 1 TB lemon juice; 1 12-oz can corned beef; 1 12-oz can peas.
Preparation: Pour boiling water on gelatin in large bowl. Stir until dissolved. Stir in vinegar and lemon juice. Refrigerate until slightly thickened (about an hour). Break up corned beef with fork and stir with peas into gelatin mixture. Pour mixture into 6½ cup gelatin mold. Refrigerate until set (about 2 hours). Unmold. May be stored up to 48 hours. (Serves 12)
With regard to the story “Shoot the Chute” — From 1903 to the 1940s, premature babies in incubators were part of the carnival show at Coney Island, next to Violetta the Armless Legless Wonder, Princess WeeWee, and Ajax the Sword-Swallower. Entry cost a quarter and people flocked to see them. The display was the creation of Dr. Martin A. Couney, born in Alsace and trained in Berlin, and based on a warming chamber to rear poultry at the Paris Zoo (which he jokingly referred to as a “peanut roaster”). He also set up exhibits at the 1901 Buffalo Exposition and 1939-40 New York World’s Fair. In those days, most premature babies died. The doctor recruited them from poor parents, some glad for the free care, others relieved to abandon their doomed infants. Other new mothers were hired to provide milk in the immaculate and climate controlled environment. Dr. Couney, a dandified showman, was both reviled and credited with getting hospitals to adopt incubators. Of the estimated 8,000 babies in his exhibits, over 6,500 were saved. The smallest, Baby Qbata, weighed 2 pounds, 9 ounces.
Researching hoaxes of the 1920s and 1930s, I came across the 1927 “Killer Hawk of Chicago.” The Chicago Journal reported that a predatory chicken hawk was seen killing pigeons near the Art Institute. Some citizens declared the hawk should be destroyed at once. Others, tired of the messy pigeon droppings on downtown streets, called the hawk an avian hero. (Faked) photos of the hawk appeared and rival papers competed to offer a reward for its capture, the highest from the Tribune at $100 alive and $50 dead. News coverage ended when the Chicago Journal launched a serial work of fiction titled “The Pigeon and the Hawk” and other papers concluded they’d been duped into “hawking” publicity for the story. The ultimate irony: The hawk was probably real, that is, seen by the reporter. Sensing it had become the prey of irate Chicagoans, however, it alighted for safer hunting grounds. Meanwhile, the editor of the Journal, spotting a better story, turned it into a “fake hoax.” Both versions of “the story” sold!
As you may know, or will after reading my novel A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve., Henry Ford employed midgets to work in the Willow Run (Michigan) B-24 Bomber Plant during the Second World War. They were small enough to crawl inside the wings and buck rivets from the inside. People who visit the Tap Room Bar today, in nearby Ypsilanti, may wonder why the doorknob is only three feet off the ground. The bar, founded in 1941, was a favorite of the Little People but the owner noticed they had trouble reaching the door handle. He lowered it and the position has been preserved by subsequent bar owners to this day.
My novel On the Shore, plus several short stories, span the Roaring Twenties and are peppered with the slang of that era. Theories abound about the origin of many terms. Here is one: Galoshes, the standard rain gear of the day, were ugly rubber overshoes with six metal buckles. To make them more fashionable, young women didn’t fasten them and spread the opening as wide as possible. The loose flaps slapped against each other, making a satisfying swish and jingle with every step. Hence the name “flapper.” Less risque women fastened all but the top two buckles and turned down the cuff around their ankles, while the tongue, left upright, created an artistic butterfly in front.
“Bea and Bruce” is the story of a Canadian war bride. Nearly 45,000 European women left their homelands to start a new life in post-war Canada, over 93% of them British. Why? Canadians were the first to come to Great Britain’s assistance after war was declared in 1939 and spent more time there than any other member of the Allied Force. The first war bride marriage took place just 43 days after Canadian soldiers arrived in the U.K. One war bride said of her brief honeymoon, “We were oh-so-young, and it didn’t matter to us that most nights we were serenaded with air raid sirens and the distant ‘crump’ of bombs.”
The primary setting for the story “Door” is Andy Warhol’s studio, known as The Factory, circa 1970. In his commercial and fine art, and later his movies, Warhol deliberately incorporated mistakes. He said, “When you do something exactly wrong, you always turn up something interesting.” The same might be said about creative writing.
The setting for “Elephant Angel” is the Belfast Blitz of 1941 which left 100,000 people, nearly a quarter of the city’s population, homeless. In this story, an elephant from the Belfast Zoo is sheltered in a woman’s back yard. Elephants need a tremendous amount of water, 200 liters a day for drinking and showering. They have an exceptional sense of hearing and smell, but poor vision because their eyes focus down their trunk. Elephants exhibit bonding, compassion, grief, and play. They enjoy music and art, and are one of the few animals to recognize their image in a mirror (a phenomenon that does make it into the story but I thought was interesting enough to repeat here).
In “The Epigenetics of Barbie,” an unfortunately proportioned five-year-old is groomed by her aunt to become a wrestler. Some notable (real) nicknames for professional female wrestlers: Daizee Haze, The Fabulous Moolah, The Glamazon, MsChif, SoCalVal, and the no frills but menacing Woman.
Rice Krispies, whose deleterious effects on hearing are imagined in the story “Exploding Pyrex,” are known as Rice Bubbles in Australia and New Zealand, where they are mixed with Copha (a trademarked brand of vegetable shortening) and cocoa to make a treat called Chocolate Crackle. In 1964, the Rolling Stones recorded a jingle for a Rice Krispies television advertisement. Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rl4zS_59RD8.
“Newfangled” is a set of stories about three inventions occurring one hundred years apart, the last being Rubik’s Cube. Some history: In the mid-1970s, Ernőo Rubik worked at the Department of Interior Design at the Academy of Applied Arts and Crafts in Budapest. Although the Cube was reportedly built as a teaching tool to help his students understand 3D objects, his real purpose was solving the structural problem of moving the parts independently without the entire mechanism falling apart. He did not realize he’d created a puzzle until the first time he scrambled it and tried to restore its original configuration. Rubik’s Cube was first called the Magic Cube (Bűuvös kocka) in Hungary, and renamed after its inventor in 1980, when Ideal acquired the patent.
In “Undark,” a story about the Radium Girls who got radiation poisoning painting watch dials in the 1920s, the sister of one victim paints flowers with non-toxic paint. Many flowers and herbs have symbolic meanings. Here are a few: White stargazer lily = Innocence restored to the soul of the deceased; Daffodils = A single bloom is misfortune while a bunch is renewal and a fresh start; Alstroemeria = Wealth, prosperity, and fortune; Anemone = Fading hope or anticipation; Heather = Lavender color is admiration while white means wishes will come true; Hydrangea = Strong emotions including gratitude (positive) and heartlessness (negative); Peony = Either compassion and good health or indignation and shame; Ranunculus = Radiant charm; Statice = Sympathy or success; Yellow carnation = Rejection; Cyclamen = Resignation and goodbye.
