Pat McNees

"Pat McNees is one of my favorite writers," said Barbara Greenman, former executive editor of book development at the Literary Guild.

    "She put heart and soul into the project we did together, the anthology Dying: A Book of Comfort. Instead of using only her own experience helping her dying father, she researched the literature, found out (or intuited) what people facing a death or bereavement might need to read, and after finding an amazing amount of wise and wonderful material did a beautiful job shaping it into a gem of a book, which has helped many, many people. She was realistic about publishing realities, easy to work with, and knowledgeable and thorough about copyright and permissions (she teaches a course on the subject). Most important, she managed to make readers feel that dealing with a death could be a life-affirming experience. Over my 20 years here, Dying is the book I am most proud of publishing."

"This remarkable collection, coming from personal experience and wide reading, will help many find the potential of growth through loss."

    ~Dame Cicely Saunders, OM, DBE, FRCP, founder of the hospice movement

"This is a special gem of a resource for those contending with dying,death, and bereavement. Through its expertly chosen material, Dying, A Book of Comfort informs, guides, and gently enables healthy grief and mourning. I recommend it heartily.

    ~ Therese A. Rando, author of How to Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies

“The subject of death is so rife with terror that it takes a calm and sure hand like Pat McNees’s to soothe, help us understand, and finally, rejoice in life. This is an important and very dear book.”

    ~ Sherry Suib Cohen, author of Secrets of a Very Happy Marriage

“A remarkable collection (331 pages) of quotations of comfort.” ~ Ernest Morgan, Dealing Creatively with Death

 

“Seldom have I read a book that exudes such comfort, such an embrace of genuine insight, care and support....The book’s gift, and it is a rich treasure for the reader, is that it embraces who we are.... The book can be read cover to cover, or just pick out a page. Something will leap off the page, a story, a quote, a reading, narrative couplings of diverse themes colorfully worded by the author/scribe, to give you the needed word or embrace....This book needs wide circulation. The bereaved deserve this, and the book will help all of us.”

     ~ Rev. Richard B. Gilbert, director, World Pastoral Care Center, in Resources Hotline

"For those who face the lonely reality of death, this book provides understanding and much-needed solace."

    ~ Claire Berman, author of Caring for Yourself While Caring for Your Aging Parents

 

“McNees has provided a remarkable anthology of insights, comforting words, stories, reassurance, and guidance for the journey of dying and grieving. Fourteen chapters delve artfully and compassionately into a full range of dying, death, and bereavement topics. An index by author ‘Names’ and another by ‘Titles and Selected First Lines’ make it possible to return and savor the many rich offerings she has gathered.”

     ~ Rev. Paul A. Metzler, The Center for Living with Loss, in newsletter, Association for Death Education and Counseling

"Dying, A Book of Comfort is THE book to press into the hands of those you love, read out loud in the company of others, and reflect on after they have all gone home. Pat McNees gently guides us as we reluctantly explore the far side of forever."

     ~ Lynne Lamberg, author of The Body Clock Guide to Better Health

 

                                                Buy Now - Dying: A Book of Comfort

"This is a wonderful gift book — better than flowers because it lasts longer. Once the company is gone and you're alone with your grief, the book is there to stay — and it's a great source of comfort." ~ Maggie Hudak

 

Buy Now - Dying: A Book of Comfort Five Wishes Dying: A Book of Comfort Dying: A Book of Comfort ISBN 978-1-56865-157-6

 

“I travel around the country presenting programs on grief, loss, and working with dying patients and their families. It was a stroke of luck that led to my purchase of Pat McNees's book. Dying, A Book of Comfort has become more than just another book in my library. It has become a companion, a vehicle for bringing others into touch with the broad range of emotions that make up the process of grief. I tell my audiences that if they can only buy one book this season, it should be Dying, A Book of Comfort. For those of us who are called upon to impart words of healing and consolation, this wonderful collection will become the vehicle for instilling hope and understanding in those who seek our support. On a personal level, it is the book I keep at my bedside. It is the book to which I turn in my own moments of darkness.”

      ~ Judith A. Skretny, Life Transitions Center, educator for the American Academy of Bereavement

"It's nice to give people a sense of the life of the person being remembered. When my mother died, after a long and difficult illness, at a service we conducted ourselves, we emphasized her life story (see Eulogy for Eleanor), so all the young people who came to say goodbye would have a sense of her life and times, and what she was like when she was young and vibrant."

            ~ Pat McNees, who compiled Dying, A Book of Comfort

 

DYING made the 25th anniversary list of favorite books by women, compiled by the Women's National Book Association (Washington DC).

Buy Now - Dying: A Book of Comfort

 

This is the beautiful small Literary Guild giftbook edition, the original publication with glossy artwork centered in the middle of a lovely muted yellow cover. Warner Books issued a trade paperback, which is larger, heavier, and not quite as easy to hold as the Guild gift book, I am told by elder fans of the collection. The paperback edition being sold by amazon.com and others is not as easy told as the lighter-weight Guild hardcover edition. You can buy the Guild edition from Pat—because she had the foresight to order enough copies. 

        

A friend sent me this link to a Zoom talk I gave to members of the Personal Historians Northeast Network a few years ago and I just got a query because of it. 

https://www.facebook.com/profile/100069734604473/search/?q=Pat%20McNees

HOW TO's
• How to parallel park in a tight space
• Get off the floor unassisted
• Transform your posture A physical therapy exercise for someone with rounded shoulders, a forward head, and a developing neck hump. 
• Strengthen your hips, say goodbye to back pain (Physical therapy session)
• 6 low-impact balance exercises for seniors
• A weird treadmill bike that moves while you walk
• Your daily 60 exercises (not easy, including 60 squats)
• Breathing techniques for anxiety
• Get off the floor unassisted

 

HACKS and CLEVER HOW-TO'S:
• A clever way to get a stuck ring off a finger
• A weird hack for when you don’t want to sit on a bare public toilet CLEVER HOW-TO's
• Build a bench around a tree
• How to fold a beach towel so it becomes a tote bag (extra parts required)
• Why to bring a plastic bag to the beach
• A working backyard ferris wheel for your kids
• Making grape hearts
• How to make a cat bed from a blanket
• Useful tips for your succulents

 

INTERESTING:
• Skilled helicopter pilot trims very tall trees
• Animal rescue Elephant and zebra unite to help a leopard in need.
• Giraffe saves tiger cub from drowning
• Driving lessons
• Boy inventor transports animals
• A house built like Legos
• Reverse beauty art

Things I wish I'd known before age 40 

 

That the moment you hit 40 your vision declines and you may soon need reading glasses.

 

That some people begin developing glaucoma or macular degeneration in their 40s. "If it's caught early, your vision can usually be saved.”

That you're now likely to grow crops of wrinkles, age spots, and small growths called skin tags.

 

That you now appreciate the days when your upper arms were toned.

 

That all those days spent tanning hasten the aging process as UV rays cause thick, damaged skin.

 

That you'll never get back to your pre-baby weight because your children drive you to drink.

 

That you've made enough mistakes to have learned many valuable life lessons.

 

That little children are unlikely to be able to tell you from any other adult stranger with similar features.

To add to this list, post your suggested entry below.

 

I lifted this from either a book or the Internet, but didn't jot down the source, and now I can't provide a credit. 

Who wrote these? I find the last one surprising. ~ Pat McNees

Moved here from another corner of Pat's website:

Stories of the Nazis, of Jewish Deaths, and of Survival

 

• This Is the Holocaust Story I Said I Wouldn’t Write (Taffy Brodesser-Akner, NY Times, 4-6-25) For years, my friend’s father asked me to recount his childhood escape from the Nazis. I had not told Mr. Lindenblatt’s story, the thing he asked me for forever, and now he was dying. Here it is, an old Jewish story about the Holocaust and a man who somehow survived the pernicious, organized and intentional genocide of the Jews. But right behind it, just two generations later, is another story, one about the children and grandchildren who have been so malformed by the stories that are their lineage that some of them made just as eager work of running from it, only to find themselves, same as anything you run from, having to deal with it anyway.
• As Children, They Fled the Nazis Alone. Newly Found Papers Tell Their Story. (Claire Moses, Reporting from London, NY Times, 3-19-25) Just under 10,000 Jewish children fled to Britain from Europe from December 1938 to September 1939. Not much was known about their journeys, until recently. More than eight decades on, the lists have brought Ms. Miley a renewed sense of grief. “One of the big losses when you’re taken away from your family so suddenly,” she said, “is that you don’t know the personality of your parents.”
• They Asked for Help to Escape the Nazis. Their Pleas Went Unanswered. (Nina Siegal, NY Times, 2-17-25) A new book focuses on the desperate letters written by many Jews seeking refuge in the Netherlands but who were denied entry after it closed its border in 1938. The frantic efforts of terrified Jews in Germany, Austria and other parts of Europe trying to escape persecution filled letter after letter that came in to the committee.
• Holocaust Death Toll on English Channel Island Is Raised by Hundreds (Claire Moses, Reporting from the Imperial War Museum in London, NY Times, 5-22-24) A panel of historians examining the Nazi occupation of the island of Alderney during World War II said it found more conclusive evidence of how many people were killed during the Nazi occupation of Alderney, one of the Channel Islands in British territory. The panel settled on a range of deaths that surpassed a previous estimate. It also documented the lack of prosecution after the war. The panel concluded that during the occupation between 1940 and 1945 between 7,608 and 7,812 forced laborers were killed. Most of them were forced laborers from the Soviet Union. That number also included 594 Jewish prisoners from France.
• The Holocaust’s Grandchildren Are Speaking Now (Marc Tracy, NY Times, 10-20-24) Three generations on, filmmakers, writers and artists are making new meaning from ancestral trauma. Works of art about the Holocaust by or about the third generation have been made ever since survivors’ grandchildren (or grandnephews and -nieces) were old enough to make them. This is virtually a reading and watching list, and the link lets nonsubscribers read this piece.
• Holocaust Memorial Day: Kindertransport refugees who made Britain home (Tim Dodd, BBC News, 1-29-24) The Kindertransport (German for 'children's transport') was a series of rescue efforts between 1938 and 1940 that brought about 10,000 mostly Jewish refugee children to Great Britain from Nazi Germany.

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• French Holocaust denier who fled to Scotland jailed (BBC,3-20-25)

    Vincent Reynouard was arrested in Anstruther, in Fife, in November 2022 and handed over to French authorities last year after he lost a legal battle against his extradition. The 56-year-old was wanted for inciting hatred and denying the occurrence of the Holocaust. He was found guilty of denying war crimes, denying crimes against humanity, and incitement to racial hatred. The judge said that although it was not an offence to hold such views or to express them in certain contexts, it was a breach of Communications Act legislation to communicate them to the public on the internet. Lord Carloway also said seven videos featuring Reynouard amounted to an offence of relative seriousness by Scottish standards.
    In one video he described Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as "the most slandered man" and said he wanted to "rehabilitate" National Socialism. Lawyers for Reynouard argued that the videos did not threaten serious disturbance to the community and did not constitute a call to action and that to extradite him would be disproportionate.

• Behind a Locked Door: The Villa Where a Doctor Experimented on Children (Margaret Talbot, New Yorker, 10-2-23) As a girl in Austria, Evy Mages was confined to a mysterious institution in Innsbruck. Decades later, she learned why. In final part she documents how she searched for information about her roots.
      "At the villa, Evy had to sleep with a blanket pulled tight under her armpits, her arms ramrod straight by her sides, to insure that her hands couldn’t wander. Socializing was virtually forbidden. Nobody ever told her the reason for these rules."
• Perseverance: One Holocaust Survivor's Journey from Poland to America by Melvin Goldman and Lee Goldman Kikel. Also available, two history units on the Lodz Ghetto for use in classrooms, available through Teachers Pay Teachers
• No More Lies. My Grandfather Was a Nazi. (Silvia Foti, NY Times, 1-27-21) "On her deathbed in 2000, my mother asked me to take over writing a book about her father. I eagerly agreed. But as I sifted through the material, I came across a document with his signature from 1941 and everything changed. The story of my grandfather was much darker than I had known... In Lithuania, he was celebrated as a hero....I concluded that my grandfather was a man of paradoxes, just as Lithuania — a country caught between the Nazi and Communist occupations during World War II, then trapped behind the Iron Curtain for the next 50 years — is full of contradictions."
• We All Bleed Red: A Conversation with Heather Morris (Jane Ratcliffe, LA Review of Books, 1-30-22) Three sisters, Slovakian Jews, were carted off to Auschwitz. Their real-life story is captured in the gut-wrenching yet stubbornly hopeful novel Three Sisters. A Q&A interview, partly about abuse the women suffered in the camps. "You've got to acknowledge this! We allowed these women to go to their deaths 60 or 70 years later, carrying the shame of having been abused, when it was never their shame, it was ours."
• Cantor has one more lesson to share with his bar and bat mitzvah students: a personal look at the Holocaust (John Barry, St. Petersburg Times, 11-25-09)
• Cousins who survived Holocaust reunite in Broward after almost 70 years (Elinor Brecher, Miami Herald 3-11-12). The two men, who last saw each other in a concentration camp, fulfilled a dream Sunday in Tamarac as they met again, thanks to a memoir that one wrote.

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• Echos of Memory (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) An ongoing collection of survivor reflections, memories, and testimonies, written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.
• Finding My Father’s Auschwitz File (Allen Hershkowitz, New York Review of Books, 1-25-19) A detailed account of what a long-term survivor of the Nazi concentration camps went through and how he survived.
• Found in Translation (Tyler Foggatt, New Yorker, 12-23-19) Lithuanian cartoonist and translator iglė Anušauskaitė travelled to New York to find missing sections of young Jews’ autobiographies, hidden in Vilnius during the Second World War. A contest for the “best Jewish youth autobiography,” open to young men and women, was interrupted by Germany's invasion of Poland in 1939. A group of Jews managed to smuggle out thousands of texts.

• A Trove of Yiddish Artifacts Rescued From the Nazis, and Oblivion (Joseph Berger, NY Times, 10-18-17) "Many of the items, the experts said, offer glimpses into the hardscrabble everyday lives of the Jews of Eastern Europe when the region, not Israel or the Lower East Side, was the center of the Jewish world."
• The Nazis took a precious kettle from a Jewish couple. Some 86 years later, their grandson in Maryland got it back.(Sydney Page, Washington Post, 10-16-2020)
• A family hid their Bible in an attic as Nazis invaded. Almost 80 years later, it was reunited with the family’s heirs. (Nicole Asbury, Washington Post, 8-24-21) Listen or read.

• The Louvre is showing Nazi-looted art in a bid to find its owners. Some wonder why it took so long.(McAuley, 2-2-18) 

•  A Paris exhibit of Nazi-looted art honors a Europe many fear is under threat again (James McAuley, WaPo, 2-28-17)

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• History Unfolded: US Newspapers and the Holocaust What did American newspapers report about Nazi persecution during the 1930s and 1940s? You can help the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum answer this question. "History Unfolded is a project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. It asks students, teachers, and history buffs throughout the United States what was possible for Americans to have known about the Holocaust as it was happening and how Americans responded. Participants look in local newspapers for news and opinion about 32 different Holocaust-era events that took place in the United States and Europe, and submit articles they find to a national database, as well as information about newspapers that did not cover events."
• 'He Was Sent by God to Take Care of Us': Inside the Real Story Behind Schindler's List (Olivia B. Waxman, Time, 12-7-18) Twenty-five years later, the film is seen as a realistic depiction of life during the Holocaust, in terms of the brutality of the Nazis and the lifestyles of those they persecuted, though it does stray from the real story in a few big ways.
• His father brought hundreds of Jewish tailors to Canada - now he's stitching together their stories (Ryan Patrick Jones, CBC, 4-17-18) When Max Enkin led a Canadian delegation to the displaced persons camps of Europe in 1948, he was looking for more than tailors. The Tailor Project — formally known as the "garment workers' scheme" — was an immigration program that brought around 2,000 displaced people from Europe to Canada to work in the clothing industry. More than half were Jewish. It was the first program that permitted large numbers of Jewish adults to immigrate to Canada following the Second World War. "It opened the doors," said Larry Enkin, 89, the son of Max Enkin. "Slowly but surely Canada began to accept Jews as part of the community."

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• Homecoming II (Henrietta Rose-Innes on the quiet secrets of her Cape Town home, Granta)
• Holocaust survivor breaks decades-long silence to share her horrific story (Buffalo News, 1-27-2018) For more than seven decades, Edith Fox kept her Holocaust story inside. To make sure people never forget the Holocaust, she finally told her story to Nina Trasoff, Fox’s “friendly visitor” through a Jewish Family and Children’s Services program in Tucson designed to keep Holocaust survivors active, and to family friend Sharon Price.
• Holocaust Survivor Reunites with the Family That Helped Hide Her from the Nazis After 73 Years (Lindsay Kimble, People magazine, 12-7-18) Charlotte Adelman, 86, was only 11 in 1943 when her Jewish family was separated, and her father orchestrated a daring escape to Eastern France, where she lived in hiding with the Quatrevilles for nearly two years. In November 2014, she received a message. The young boy whose family had hid her from the Nazis in a cellar for nine months during the Holocaust wanted to reconnect.
•The Holocaust Survivors Who Take Care of Their Own (Marina Kamenev, Narratively, 3-7-18) As the children of the war reach old age, one group of survivors is teaching nursing home workers how to treat a type of trauma that only they can understand. Australia has the largest per-capita survivor population outside of Israel, and those who were born during the Second World War are already in their seventies.
• Holocaust survivors will be able to share their stories after death thanks to a new project (video, Leslie Stahl, 60 Minutes, 4-5-2020) Survivors of the Holocaust now have the chance to preserve their stories in a way that allows them to directly answer future generations' questions about their experiences.

• Learn about the Holocaust (links to resources, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum) Scroll down for a cluster of resources on the Holocaust from the Holocaust Museum.
• Conducting an Interview (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, DC) Download (PDF) the museum's Oral History Interview Guidelines
• Arolsen Archives (International Center on Nazi Persecution) The archive in the town of Bad Arolsen says with help from Israel’s Yad Vashem, documents with information on more than 2.2 million people are now available online. Work is still being done to improve searchability. See brief story here: German Holocaust archive puts over 13 million documents online (Times of Israel, 5-21-19) Arolsen Archives makes available details and artifacts of about 2.2 million people, including Nazi concentration camp prisoner cards and death notices.
• Germany and the Holocaust: Informational and Primary Source Websites (University of Texas libraries)
• Navigating the Holocaust-Era Looted Cultural Property (National Archives, USA)
• Holocaust Historical Data Goes Digital (AP story: "Israel's Yad Vashem memorial, the world's largest collection of Holocaust documents, is teaming up with Google to make its photographs and documents interactive and searchable on the Internet."
• Sample Questions for Interviewing Holocaust Survivors (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
• Yad Vashem collections. Google "Yad Vashem" and photos and you'll find many resources.
• Yad Vashem Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names
• Holocaust Oral History Projects
• Holocaust Encyclopedia (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
• "If you want to keep a memory as is, you carve it into a story. It’s not only keeping the content, it’s keeping the feeling alive. The best part is, you’re not the only one remembering it."— from neuroscientist Daniela Schiller's talk on "Keeping Memories Safe" (about Holocaust memories) on a Studio 360 radio program (NPR) featuring stories of neuroscience and memory
• Stories from the Holocaust (top left on this page of the website)

• Introduction to the Holocaust (Holocaust Encyclopedia, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
---The Nazi Persecution of Black People in Germany
---African Americans in Nazi Germany
---The Nazi Olympics Berlin 1936: African American Voices and "Jim Crow" America
---What were some similarities between racism in Nazi Germany and in the United States, 1920s-1940s?
---The Reichstag Fire
---Nazi Party Platform
---Antisemitism
---Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution
---The Nuremberg Race Laws
---Postwar Trials
---International Military Tribunal
---Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings
• Perseverance: One Holocaust Survivor's Journey from Poland to America by Melvin Goldman and Lee Goldman Kikel. Also available, two history units on the Lodz Ghetto for use in classrooms, available through Teachers Pay Teachers.

 

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Breaking's debut, Paris Olympics 2024

 

• Throw-down in Paris (Jonathan Abrams, Bedel Saget and Umi Syam, NY Times, 8-5-24) More than 50 years since its inception, breaking debuts as an Olympic sport in Paris, where B-boys and B-girls will vie for gold and glory. Watch video of basic "steps."
     "The Olympic battles, which are set for Aug. 9 and 10, will be a watershed moment for a dance form conceived and cultivated by Black and Hispanic youth in the Bronx during the 1970s, when they boogied at basement parties and park jams to the break beats played by hip-hop architects like DJ Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash.
     "Back then, breaking’s fundamental movements provided escapism and expression, competitive and spontaneous physical performance breathed to life by the dawning genre of hip-hop. Breakers danced to make a name for themselves and earn respect in their neighborhoods.
• The origins of breaking, the newest Olympic sport (YouTube Video, 6 min., CBS Sunday morning, 6-30-24) Breaking (not "breakdancing," apparently), an acrobatic dance style with its roots in New York's hip hop culture, is making its Olympic debut in this year's Summer Games in Paris. Correspondent Luke Burbank talks with Victor Montalvo (a.k.a. B-Boy Victor), who will be competing for breaking gold; and with founding members of the b-boy group New York City Breakers, who came up with some of the sport's original moves in the Bronx back in the late 1970s and early '80s.
• Paris 2024: The move breakers just can't crack (YouTube video, Le Monde, 8-8-24) Over two years and three countries, Le Monde followed dancers from France to Taiwan to Laos who set out to conquer a move long considered impossible: the double airflare. Monkey King works toward mastering it. You have to watch this. Imagine a fellow twirling on one fore-arm (not one leg).

• Video from Best Moments of Break Dance 2023 (Red Bull One World Final, 2023 Breaking Zone)
• The Notorious IBE 2012 | Red Bull BC One All Stars Vs. Team France. This was earlier in breaking history and there seem to be more in-the-air steps than in the 2024 competitoin, which surely deserve praise from the eagerly watching audience.
• Lawksam's Best of Breaking 2023 video compilation(notice how different the audiences are, in his case happily rowdy, always cheering good moves and here doing a little together-breaking)
• Video of champion breakdancers (video, Break Dance World Championship 2024) I'm not sure I'd call it dancing, but it DEFINITELY take strength, skill, and a lot of practice and muscle-building! Short clips of various competitive break dancers break dancing.
• B-Boy Lil Zoo (in Russia?) (video of another b-boy)
• B-boys – Subcultures and Sociology (Grinnell College) Academia's take. B-boy dance forms (breakdancing) are composed of distinct breaking movements, such as toprock, downrock, power moves, and freezes.

     Traditionally, B-boys performed to the tune of rap, Hip-Hop, and computerized beats with a distinctive 'scratch' or over dubbing sound. B-boy dance forms (breakdancing) are composed of distinct breaking movements, such as toprock, downrock, power moves, and freezes. Traditionally, B-boys performed to the tune of rap, Hip-Hop, and computerized beats with a distinctive 'scratch' or over dubbing sound.
• How Breaking Went From a Street Dance to an Olympic Sport (Sarah Kuta, Smithsonian Magazine, 4-22-24) This summer, 32 athletes will compete in what’s commonly known as breakdancing, a dance sport that combines athleticism and artistry. When the International Olympic Committee announced the 2024 Paris Games would include breaking for the first time, not all athletes danced with joy.
• United States' B-Boy Victor breaks his way to bronze medal (video, NBC Sports, Olympics, #Paris2024) Victor toppled Shigekix in the bronze medal battle, 3-0, to earn the first breaking Olympic medal for the U.S., a bronze.

• B-Boy Victor takes center stage in Olympic breaking debut vs. Shigekix (video, NBC, Olympics, #Paris2024)
• So, how does Breaking work at the Olympics? (video, Olympics #Paris2024) What do you think?

• Paris 2024 Olympics: Breakdancing makes its debut at 2024 games (YouTube video, France24) Born in the United States in the 1970s, the dance style quickly took storm thanks to its highly entertaining "battles". How will competitions be run in Paris? FRANCE 24's Natalia Ruiz Giraldo, Cedric Ferreira and Leo McGuinn report

• Once Sidelined, Breaking’s B-Girls Now Throw Down at Center Stage (Jonathan Abrams, NY Times, 8-9-24) Women are competing in breakiaring in greater numbers and, thanks to better training and more opportunities, with more dynamic moves. (H/T Nancy Kane)

• #breakdancing YouTube shorts show what breaking looks like
• Paris Olympics: What to know and who to watch during the breakdancing competition (Associated Press, 7-12-24) A roadmap to follow for breakdancing's debut at the Paris Olympics

 

• The First Tango in Paris Made a Stir Worth Remembering (Jaimie Seaton, Smithsonian magazine, July/August 2024) As breaking makes its debut at this summer’s Olympics, take a look back more than a century when another dance rocked the City of Lights  (H/T Paula Stahel)

Selection from
STARTING OVER: The Life of Herman Ernst Sheets
his memoir, written with Pat McNees

"Although Oskar [Kraus] was one of the more famous members of the family, my grandmother continued to think of him as her idealistic and impractical younger brother, always in need of her unsolicited advice. As I recall, she summed up his friends, efforts, and accomplishments like this:

 

“First Oskar gets interested in and spends most of his career writing about Brentano. He could have picked someone noncontroversial to spend his time on, but no, he has to pick Brentano, the only professor to ever be expelled from the University of Vienna. And why was Brentano expelled? Because in 1894 he decided to argue that the Pope was not ‘infallible,’ a remarkably stupid thing to do in Vienna, the self-appointed capital of the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire.

“Next, what does Oskar get involved in? He supports hiring at the University of Prague some controversial civil servant from the Swiss Patent Office who isn’t even a lawyer. This Einstein wants to change all the laws of physics! First of all, no one understands anything he talks about. Everyone knows about Newton and the apple, how does he refute that? I don’t even think Oskar believes what Einstein is saying.

“Then Oskar gets involved with all those Czechoslovak nationalists. You know, like that former professor, Tomáš Masaryk, and his like-minded friends. The fact that both Masaryk and Oskar studied in Vienna with that expelled Professor Brentano clearly indicates that they have no practical sense. Also, anyone with any sense knows that the biggest tragedy of the Great War was the break-up of the Austrian Empire into all these silly little countries with no history and no culture!

“And as for his friend Albert Schweitzer, well at least he is not controversial. He has a lot of degrees and is well intentioned, but, like Oskar, has no practical sense. He is off in Africa so no one has any idea what he is doing or who he is.

“And finally, Oskar makes friends with Bertrand Russell in England. What good is a friend like him? He’s the most controversial person in the universe. What can you say about a mathematician who thinks he is a philosopher?”

~From Chapter 1, “Life in Germany and Czechoslovakia.”
(2007) Click here to order STARTING OVER: The Life of Herman Ernst Sheets

from BACK JACKET COPY:

Hermann Chitz's life, which began quietly in 1908 in the Kingdom of Saxony, was to span a century and two continents. He escaped to America from Hitler's Europe; his parents, assimilated Jews, stayed behind. With a Prague doctorate and patent in hand, he landed in New York in 1939, and changed his name—starting over as Herman Sheets.

In wartime he worked on critical aspects of the atomic bomb that would end the Second World War. In peacetime he directed research and development for Electric Boat's nuclear submarine program. At the peak of his career, in a single year, his wife died unexpectedly and he was fired for displeasing Admiral Hyman Rickover.

As a single parent, with three of his six children still at home, he started his career over again at the University of Rhode Island. Not until his own children were educated and launched did he remarry and take on an expanded family. This is the remarkable story of an immigrant, inventor, ocean engineer, technical consultant, and family man who consistently turned difficult transition into new beginnings.

Click here to order second-hand copies of STARTING OVER

The Amazon page shows an image of the paperback cover

On the Amazon page you can read a brief excerpt about Herman's chapter about working with Admiral Herman Rickover

SELECTIONS FROM THE MEMOIRS OF DR. THOMAS McNAIR SCOTT
the late Philadelphia pediatrician-researcher-educator

The following paragraphs are extracts from the memoir My Century by Thomas McNair Scott, the late pediatrician, medical educator, and medical researcher (reprinted here by permission). Tom's son, Robert, hired me to interview Tom and write his memoir. I spent two weeks in Philadelphia interviewing him and as you can imagine it was fascinating. Tom was in his 90s.

 

"Delivering babies in the poor parts of Dublin was quite an experience. You went into the room, drove out the chickens, and delivered the baby. Very often the new father would ply you with whiskey. I managed to escape the whiskey. On the first delivery I made, instead of a baby I found a rare condition called a hydaditiform mole, a cancer of the placenta. I was very proud that I recognized it and called the hospital for help."

***
"My fellowship at the Thorndike was to end in June of 1931, but in the spring of that year the recently founded American Pediatric Society held its annual meeting in Atlantic City. Child care as a separate discipline was introduced to America in the mid 19th century by Abraham Jacoby, a German doctor, practicing in New York. Noting the poor care that children were receiving, Jacoby had made the care of children the basis of his practice, initiating such things as pasteurization of milk and immunizations. He must have taught other doctors to follow his example for he was appointed professor of child health at the New York College of Medicine in 1861. From this beginning arose the group of doctors who became pediatricians, but the first pediatric organization in the United States, the American Pediatric Society, wasn't founded until 1928. I had enjoyed my six months' training in child health at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in London very much so I decided to go to Atlantic City to attend the pediatric meeting. I traveled down from Boston by train, more than an eight hour journey. While at the meeting, I fell in with some students from Johns Hopkins and, seizing the opportunity, I asked them if I could hitch a ride with them to Baltimore. Thus it was that I took part in the discussion of cases at the weekly 'Grand Rounds' with Dr. Edwards A. Park, one of the country's leading pediatricians.

"Shortly after I returned to Boston, I received a letter from Dr. Park, asking if I would be interested in a job as the resident in the pediatric outpatient department. It seems that the resident he'd chosen for Outpatient care had come down with tuberculosis and had been sent to a sanitarium. I quickly replied to him that I was very interested but that I had had only six months' experience in pediatrics. He took me anyway."

***

"Medical knowledge and treatments have changed since the days I was a resident at Hopkins. When I entered pediatrics, for example, the standard of medical care called for treating cases of infants with pneumonia by bundling them up and sending them with devoted nurses to sleep in the fresh air on the roof. Also, at that time, many children had mastoiditis from middle-ear disease, which then required emergency surgical intervention, mastoidectomy. Now both of these diseases are treated, and indeed prevented, with antibiotics, but in those days there were no antibiotics.

"There was a real resistance to change when I was in training. Medicine had a nihilist mind set. While Fleming had discovered penicillin in 1927, and had shown that it killed bacteria in the petri dish, nobody in clinical medicine had taken notice of it. Although Salvarsan, an arsenical, had been shown to cure syphilis in 1903, no other advances were made in the control of infectious diseases until 1935, when Domack discovered Sulfanilimide with its powerful therapeutic antimicrobial action. Then, with the Second World War coming on, clinical medicine rediscovered penicillin and Flory initiated full scale production of the antibiotic, which became available for U.S. Army use only, in the early 1940s. The Army used it to cure syphilis, which was prevalent during the war. After the war, penicillin became widely used and the mindset changed.

"Attitudes toward pediatric patients have also changed. In the 1930s, when I was a resident, children were kept in the hospital for a very long time, to get over whatever illness they had. Their parents were rarely allowed to visit, only once a month, for fear they would introduce infection into the hospital. In addition, in a study of hospitalized infants who were cared for in every way except that they weren't held, most of those babies failed to thrive and many of them died. That study called attention to the importance of touching and love in the care of infants. In the 1950s, a knowledgeable psychiatrist at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia, John Rose, realized that strict visiting rules were a mistake. Thinking that the nurses might object to any change in their routines, he persuaded them to try parental visiting three days a week. The nurses, soon realizing how much more quickly the children recovered, and how much burden having the parents there took off them, came to Dr Rose and asked, "Can't we have it every day?" This major change was not recognized as a real therapeutic advance at the time, and Rose died of complications from diabetes shortly after daily visits became routine at the Children's Hospital. But in my mind, this was a major advance in child care, which subsequently has became standard practice through out most of the world.

"We often discovered things as we worked. Cardiologist Helen Taussig, for example, ran the cardiac clinic for Dr. Park. She saw numerous babies with Tetralogy of Fallot, who were blue at birth for lack of oxygen, because their veins and arteries were transposed. She suggested that if one could surgically switch the vein and artery, these 'blue babies' could be saved. Dr. Blalock, a surgeon at Hopkins, was persuaded to try this operation. It was successful, and the baby being operated on turned from blue to pink. This procedure, the Blalock-Taussig operation, introduced cardiac surgery for babies and Dr. Taussig became known as the blue-baby doctor."

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These excerpts from the book STARTING OVER (2007) originally appeared on the Pat McNees website

In 2024 I moved them to the blog 'Telling Your Life Story' so readers could comment on them.