Tough and Determined: Pioneering Newspaper Editor Rebecca F. Gross

Posted by on Jun 13, 2017 in | Comments Off on Tough and Determined: Pioneering Newspaper Editor Rebecca F. Gross On a night in the winter of 1947-48, Rebecca F. Gross, 42 years old and the editor of a 10,000-circulation daily newspaper in the small town of Lock Haven, Clinton County, was scheduled to have dinner with two luminaries of the time: Robert Capa, the internationally famous war photographer, and John Steinbeck, the novelist and future Nobel laureate. The dinner was an event set up for members of...
read more

Samuel Yellin: With a Hammer for a Pencil

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on Samuel Yellin: With a Hammer for a Pencil When Samuel Yellin opened his Arch Street Metal worker’s Studio in Philadelphia in 1920, most who shared his ancient craft had abandoned their tools in favor of other pursuits. Yellin was a blacksmith – he insisted on calling himself that, although clients flocked to him for his sculptural and artistic skill, rather than to have horses shod or plows mended. From his shop poured the...
read more

The Man Who Bought Alice in Wonderland

Posted by on Nov 29, 2013 in | Comments Off on The Man Who Bought Alice in Wonderland On April 3, 1928, a slightly tipsy world, still reeling through the heady Twen­ties, focused its attention on Sotheby’s in London, where one of history’s most famous and beloved of all books was about to be auctioned. Through Sotheby’s dark pas­sages, an excited throng tum­bled into the large auction gallery to see who would offer the winning bid for Lewis Carroll’s...
read more

Pennsylvania Gridiron: Washington and Jefferson College’s First Century of Football

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Gridiron: Washington and Jefferson College’s First Century of Football Gentlemen, you are now going to play football against Harvard. Never again in your whole life will you do anything so important. Yale’s noted football coach T.A.D. Jones delivered his message just as his team was going out to defend Yale Bowl against its ancient rival. But it’s not only coaches whose pas­sion for football is ardent­ – millions play the game on high school,...
read more

Bookshelf

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Bookshelf Guide to Photo­graphs at the Pennsylvania State Archives by Linda A. Ries Pennsylvania Histori­cal and Museum Commission, 1993 (229 pages, paper, $6.95) Although the Pennsylvania State Archives safeguards mostly documentary materi­als – such as the private and personal papers of individuals, governmental records, maps, military records, industrial reports, and similar archival items...
read more

Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958)

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876-1958) Despite being the busy wife of a physician, mother of three sons, and victim of fragile health, Pennsylvania native Mary Roberts Rinehart became one of the most popular and highest-paid writers in America. Between 1908 and 1953, she churned out fifty-four books, mostly “whodunit” novels, which enthralled readers worldwide. In her 1980 biography, Improbable Fiction: The Life of Mary...
read more

George Gordon Meade (1815-1872)

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on George Gordon Meade (1815-1872) General George Gordon Meade (1815–1872) may be best known as the commander of the victorious Army of the Potomac that defeated Confederate General Robert E. Lee at the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863. Meade was born in Cadiz, Spain, the eighth of eleven children. His father, Richard Worsam Meade (1778–1828), a native of Chester County, was a wealthy Philadelphia merchant serving the...
read more

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-1990)

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-1990) Well known among those who advanced the understanding of human behavior are Plato, Socrates, Descartes, Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Carl Jung, and Carl Rogers. Northeastern Pennsylvania claims another great thinker as a native son, one who revolutionized the field of behavioral psychology, the controversial B. F. Skinner. Burrhus Frederic Skinner was born March 20, 1904, in Susquehanna,...
read more

An Activist Government in Harrisburg: Governor George H. Earle III and Pennsylvania’s “Little New Deal”

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on An Activist Government in Harrisburg: Governor George H. Earle III and Pennsylvania’s “Little New Deal” Despite substantive efforts by Governor Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946) during his second non-consecutive term, from 1931 to 1935, unemployment, underemployment, and poverty continued to plague the Commonwealth. The Great Depression had crippled the nation and Pennsylvania – America’s workshop – was hard hit as unemployment soared to nearly 40 percent in several industrial...
read more

George Nakashima House, Studio, and Workshop

Posted by on Nov 20, 2013 in | Comments Off on George Nakashima House, Studio, and Workshop George Nakashima (1905–1990) was an internationally acclaimed Japanese American architect, modern furniture designer, and woodworker, who won numerous awards for his work and his furniture. He was a leading innovator of twentieth-century furniture design and a father of the American craft movement. He was born in Spokane, Washington, to Katsuharu and Suzu Nakashima, and grew up in the forested...
read more