Holocaust Essay Contest; Holocaust Education Committee

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Barbie's 60th, Dolls and Microsurgery and More

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Barbie's 60th, Dolls and Microsurgery and More: For Barbie's 60th, I bought the pilot Barbie; I just took a round-trip jaunt cross country, not for fun, for family business.  It seemed...

16 Little Flowers

The birds are building their nest in the customary place below my garage gutters, and I'm seeing tiny rabbits, and does sitting in my yard.  Spring must be here, so it's time to plant.  I started work on my pots and fairy gardens; here is what I have done so far.

I'm also trying to nurse a small monarch butterfly back to health, with to dark purple flowers, one from a butterfly bush, and a capful of canned fruit nectar.  Poor thing; I found it on the curb at a truck stop yesterday.  It was moving it's little feet, and was able to flip over; don't know if she can fly yet.

I couldn't bear to leave her.  I've saved a Polyphemus moth before, and other butterflies and insects, the occasional spider.  Once a baby bird and another time a baby mouse.  One year, we fostered two  nests of baby rabbits that made it.  You never know.

In honor of my mom who loved frogs.

This deep red marigold may stave off pests, too.

The Garden Witch begins her reign

Miniatures houses, dolls, and animals live in the fairy gardens

As for everything else, frustration and rain are killing me.  I don't know where it was written that I became all things to all people.  I can't even get a quiet morning to start the day; so called care givers are more care causers.  I'm sorry; but this is an industry profiting from others' misery if not done right.  I've cared now for my entire family, for years on end.  I traveled cross country, and dealt with one idiot after another.  It doesn't end.  I have cable and security companies that won't cancel accounts, medical frauds sending equipment no one ordered, people taking advantage of elderly people right and left.  I keep hitting my hand, and the farm and fleet worker who crushed my hand on her way into the bathroom is to be commended; it sill hurts.  I type for most of my living.  Do the math.

My mother, my dad, her youngest brother, my baby sister, should all be here to do this; not me.  I'm worn out, as Pym would say, cumbered with much serving.

I have news, folks.  My life is dwindling away.  Who will do the grunt work without me.  Who will pay the family members who want an income and reimbursement for each kindness, each tiny thing they do that I have done for years, as if we were strangers?    My parents didn't ask for anything when they took care of them, and when they had to pick out everyone else's coffins.  I haven't asked for it, and it takes a terrible toll on me. go figure.

I will try to stop griping, but I'm not well, either, and this museum needs a building, and I have books to write, and my own family.

With spring and with flowers and tiny animals come hope.  Maybe there is some for me.

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Great Big, Beautiful Dolls

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Great Big, Beautiful Dolls: Great Big, Beautiful Dolls Dolls, no matter their height, are the companions of childhood. Nothing less, certainly.   I have dolls tha...

The International Doll Museum blog: Große Puppen

The International Doll Museum blog: Große Puppen: Sehr große, schöne Puppen Puppen, unabhängig von ihrer Höhe sind die Begleiter der Kindheit. Nicht weniger, sicher. Ich habe Puppen, d...

Skyward Trinity May 2019

We are honored to have once again Dr. David Levy as guest blogger to our blogs.

Skyward

Trinity

May 2019

As the world prepared for war in 1939, a group of physicists was studying how to reproduce the behavior of a star on Earth:  to split an atom, either quietly to provide a virtually unlimited source of power, or explosively to create a weapon of mass destruction.  Worried that the Germans might develop an atomic bomb first, astrophysicist  Leo Szilard wrote a letter to President Roosevelt suggesting that the Americans should develop the bomb first.  Thinking that the letter would have more impact if it were signed by the foremost scientist of that time, Szilard made two visits to Albert Einstein’s summer home in Cutchogue, on Long Island, New York.  They persuaded him to sign the letter.

Einstein’s letter had an immediate and powerful impact on Roosevelt.  He immediately set in place the initial research that led to the start of the Manhattan project in June of 1942.  Within three years, the first plutonium nuclear device was test detonated near Socorro, New Mexico in the Jornada del Muerto (ironically translated to Dead Man’s Journey) desert.  J. Robert Oppenheimer named the actual test site Trinity, after the first lines in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 14:  

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you 

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; 

That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend 

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

   

Picture 2:  remains of a footing from the tower that supported the bomb and which was incinerated that day.

Picture 3:  The Schmidt-McDonald house, where the bomb was assembled.  All photographs were taken by David Levy.

 On July 16, 1945, at 5:29:45 am, the nuclear device detonated and the atomic age began.  Just one month later, two bombs were exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan,  and the Second World War came to a sudden end.

It is now 73 years later.  On April 6 our daughter Nannette, son-in-law Mark,  grandson Matthew,  friend David Rossetter, and Wendee and I visited Trinity Site.    It was a special and emotional experience for us.    We felt the shudder and silence of those who witnessed the blinding flash of light that turned dawn into noon across that lonely desert.  The power and force of the detonation reinforced the feeling of scientists there that this weapon was not a joke.    It was used in combat twice, and it is now a part of history.  We visited that day to experience the effect on people who felt the shock wave from 160 miles away and who had to replace broken windows in Albuquerque, where our family lives today. We didn’t see much trinitite there, as the army did an excellent job removing the radioactive glass.  We did not get much exposure to radiation either; according to Army statistics, our one hour visit to Ground zero gave us at most one millrem of radiation exposure, compared to an average annual dose of 620 millrems from medical and natural sources.

As we left the site we passed a protest going on at the entrance.  After all these decades, what happened that rainy July day in 1945 still has a profound effect on the people who lived and live in the atomic age.  For a second that day, humanity witnessed the process of a star here on Earth.  And when I got home that night and looked up at the peaceful stars, I shuddered again. 

Picture 1:  Inscription on the obelisk at Ground zero.

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