Creative History

  It is Sunday October 21, 1638 and approximately 300 worshippers are packed into St. Pancras church in the English village of Widecombe-in the-moor during the early afternoon.   The worshippers represent almost the entire able-bodied population of Widecombe.  Only a few idle church dodgers, whose souls are sure to go to Hell anyway, everyone in St. Pancras’ church believes, choose to spend their Sabbath day drinking and gambling at a tavern just a few miles outside the village.    The faithful are there in church, as they are every Sunday, to listen to the sermon of  their Anglican minister, George Lyde and to hear the Word of the Lord.  Lyde stands at the altar, as he does each week, with his faithful wife sitting attentively in the first pew only a few feet away at the very front of the church.  Little does he, or anyone else in St. Pancras that fateful afternoon know, but many there that day have only moments left to live. St. Panc...

  Located only a stone’s throw north of the New Jersey border in Rockland County, New York, forty miles from Manhattan along the banks of the Hudson River nestled among the Ramapo Mountains, the town of Haverstraw is today a bustling yet still quaint village that is home to about 35,000 souls. Originally settled by the Dutch in the 1660’s Haverstraw derives its name from the Dutch word ‘haverstroo’ meaning oats and straw.  Henry Hudson sailed past the present day site of Haverstraw during his historic exploratory voyage up the river which today bears his name back in 1609.  And during the American Revolution the place that the Dutch called ‘Haverstroo’ was integral to the Patriot cause as it was used by lookouts from George Washington’s Continental Army to monitor British naval activities along the Hudson River. Downtown Haverstraw Today However, it was during the 19th century when Haverstraw first gained notoriety and was brought to the nation’s attention as the bric...

  On the day before Halloween in 1948, a Saturday, in the early afternoon the Donora Pennsylvania High School football team was defeated on its home turf, Legion Field,  by local rival Monongahela High School.  The final score was Monongahela 27 Donora 7. Not a single pass was thrown during the entire game by either team.  But there was something far more odd, sinister and tragic than erratic play on the gridiron that both literally and figuratively overshadowed the field and the one hundred and fifty or so players and spectators who had gathered together that afternoon at Legion Field in suburban western Pennsylvania. The Smog. Speaking sixty-years later in 2008 to reporters from the Pittsburgh Gazette local resident Sam Jackson, who played in the football game for Monongahela High School remembered, “The smog was like a big cloud of yellowish mist hanging over the players.” Donora resident Paul Brown, who had left work early from the U.S. Steel Company Mill...