What It Was Like Waiting For The Vietnam Draft In The 1960s
I’m no gambler, but I do have to admit that I get sucked into buying lottery tickets at my local grocery store whenever the pot gets over $100 million. Pretty stupid, I know, as I’ve seen the odds, and even if I won, I wouldn’t know what to do with the money. However, there was…
Read MoreHow The Cuyahoga River Fire Became a Turning Point for Environmentalism in America
While the growth of industry in the early twentieth century brought jobs and opportunities to the Cleveland area, there was an ugly downside in the pollution and grime that caught up with the city by the 1950s. Most people would consider the day that Cleveland made the national headlines with an ugly environmental disaster the…
Read MoreHere’s What It Was Like Growing Up With The Cleveland Sports Scene
I’ve always been the world’s worst athlete. In basketball, I’m lucky to hit the backboard. In golf, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve broken 100. Name a sport; I’ve tried it and failed. I blame it on being from Cleveland. Cleveland Sports: Failure and Disappointment With very few exceptions, in…
Read MoreDiving Into Cleveland’s Hough District History In The 1960s
1960s Hough District, Cleveland My great-grandparents came from Ukraine to the U.S. and settled in the Hough area (pronounced Huff), where my grandfather and father grew up among other refugees to escape antisemitism and persecution around 1900. My father didn’t leave the area until 1954. From the late 1800s to the pre-WW II era of…
Read MoreA Historical Perspective of 1960s Cleveland Culture From A Guy Who Lived It
History: Cleveland in the 1960s In the 1960s, Cleveland got a bad rap. Let’s be honest; much of that was deserved. The winters could be brutal, the industrial base was shrinking, the roads were full of potholes, and the Cuyahoga River was on fire. But it was also a great place to grow up. Sure,…
Read MoreThe Cleveland I Knew Forever Changed: The Aftermath Of The Hough Riots
The Hough District My great-grandparents escaped from an oppressive and toxic world of hatred in Tetyiv, Ukraine, a city that at the time (1890s) was 95% Jewish but would see thousands murdered, decades before the Nazis came to town. Fortunately for me and thousands of others, there was a mass movement of people from that…
Read MoreWhat It Was Like Growing Up Taking The Trolley In Cleveland
The Trolleys of Cleveland For anyone who wasn’t around to remember the city in the late 1950s, this photo would look like it came from another planet. City transportation in the first half of the 20th century relied heavily on various types of trolleys and electric buses. This is how I remember what the true…
Read MoreWelcome To My Blog! On Writing, Cleveland, and Life…
Welcome to The Healer’s Miraculous Discovery! Writing The Book This is my first book, and admittedly, it’s a big surprise, as I’m the last person you would ever expect to write a full-length novel. Many of my friends and colleagues have asked about how I decided to give this a try a few years ago…
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