A loving father’s torment on the birth of his child — Steve was one of the kindest men I’ve ever known. He laughed easy and listened like no one else existed. Never had much, grew up a poor farm kid, but he’d give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. I say that so you understand the depth…

Artist Becca Saladin’s art amplifies the pain and tragedy of five beautiful young women who died too young — The daughter of two teachers, Becca Saladin has always loved history. Her love of history, paired with her talent as a graphic artist is breathing new interest into centuries-old stories. It all started with Anne Boleyn The first book her father read her was a fictionalized version of the Anne Boleyn story. Boleyn, King Henry VIII’s…

On Thanksgiving weekend, 2011, San Jose police officer Christopher Shimek wrapped his hands around his wife’s throat and squeezed until she was dead. Then he shot himself. Why? She said she wanted a divorce. Christopher O’Kroley said it was “easy” to kill Caroline Nosal. They both worked at a grocery…

It took over 700 years to figure out what happened to them — Hamelin is a charming and picturesque little town. Even today, the town is all 16th Century manors with Gothic gables and elaborate scrollwork. Quaint buildings in the flamboyant Weser-Renaissance style, with gargoyles and painted wooded sculptures that look like children’s toys. The town looks like something out of a fairy…

If whitewashing is okay, so is black Anne Boleyn, but I wish they’d ordered her necklace off Amazon — Whitewashing has always been a thing in Hollywood. If you didn’t know, it means “to alter in a way that favors, features, or caters to white people: such as … casting a white performer in a role based on a nonwhite person or fictional character” Like when Mickey Rooney played…

Did Hollywood whitewash Cleopatra? A Pulitzer Winning historian says no. — Most of what we know about Cleopatra is wrong… She was a queen at 18, the richest woman in the world, lover of Julius Caesar, and Marc Antony, the most famous woman of the Greco-Roman era — and yet almost everything we know about her is wrong. How sad is that? She was not a promiscuous seductress. She had…

Write them on a sticky note and whack them when you see them — There are 5 words that weaken your writing. Whack them when you see them and increase the power of your prose. In random order… 1. Very / Really Very and really are often used for emphasis. Funny thing is, they’re so weak they do a poor job of emphasizing much of anything. …

#2. If you need a brassiere, wear one. (Said no man, ever) — 1938 was a very different time to be alive. The depression was winding down but WWII had not started yet. Recreation was talking, reading and radio. People listened to radio shows because there was no tv — television broadcasting wouldn’t start until 1939 Visual media was wildly popular Because of course. Can you imagine having…

Men didn’t help with the housework back then, either — Ah, Victorian women. So delicate and genteel in their long, feminine gowns with cinched waists and petticoats. Prim and polite, morning to night. Right? Well, no. Apparently not, as one magazine discovered when some man thought it was a good idea to ask single women why they’re not married. I…

Too many writing tips are a big waste of time. — Too many writing tips are a big waste of time. You know what they are? “Content creation.” Things written just to write something, not to actually help anyone. — For example , who needs to be told to make time to write? So many writing tips say “you need to make time…” —talk about stating the obvious. — Also, no…

Start with a bang, indeed. — Good writing should start strong… Almost every list of good writing tips says some version of that. Sometimes they just say start with a bang. Or they suggest you chop the first paragraph. So many first paragraphs are slow. Or they say the first sentence only exists to get you to read the next one. …