• America

    Women of America: Anne Hutchinson

    Anne Hutchinson and her family arrived in America on September 18, 1634 and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  A controversial woman of religious fervor, she held meetings in her home for the women of Boston.  She taught that salvation was through faith only and not dictated by church attendance or by the laws of the church. Her message was met with hostility and she stood trial in 1637.  Anne Hutchinson was found guilty of heresy against the Puritan tenet and banished from Massachusetts.  She, her family and 70 followers settled on the Island of Aquidneck, Rhode Island. In 1642, she moved to Pelham Bay, New York with her children, where in…

  • Dust Bowl,  Family History,  Oklahoma History

    Childhood Tales of the Great Depression and Drought

    written by Laurie C. Brough While waiting to checkout at the grocery store I overhear a man telling the cashier how dry it is in far Western Oklahoma. He said, “It is so dry the grasshoppers don’t even bother to stop to take a nibble cause there’s nothing to eat.” Listening to their conversation took me back to one of my Mother’s childhood stories about her days of growing up during the depression and the drought of the 1930’s. “Life was hard and my parents struggled to keep food on the table. In the morning, Daddy always got up first to tend the fire in the cook stove so Momma…

  • Firsts in History,  Sports

    Never Give Up

    Diana Nyad, a long distance swimmer, finally succeeded on her fifth try at attaining her arduous swimming goal today, Monday, September 2, 2013, at the age of 64.  She swam 110 miles from Cuba to Florida. Although the area is shark infested, she did not use the protection of a shark cage. Let her be an example to us all in the principle of never giving up. Read More at NBC News  

  • Weather

    Hong Kong Typhoon on September 13, 2009

    I grew up in tornado alley, so many tornadoes have come and gone over me, beside me, yet thankfully, not through me, in my life. However, a typhoon, something you don’t see when surrounded by plains land, was not something I had ever experienced until 2009. I was visiting Hong Kong at the time and ignorant of the danger, while walking along one of the streets located in Hong Kong’s Central business district. Needless to say the winds were high, high enough to blow a large heavy sign off a business. We were almost hit. It was time to dash indoors of the large skyscraper hotel where we were staying. The following morning…

  • American Business

    Napoleon Hill: Habits of Success

    It was the late 19th century, during the industrial revolution, a time when some men made riches well beyond the average American, that Andrew Carnegie made his great wealth in the steel industry. A philanthropist he funded an important and influential project that would take 20 years to complete. The 1908 Carnegie funded project was conducted by Napoleon Hill.  Napoleon interviewed hundreds of men based on their common defining  factor of great power and success in the world. He compiled his data and extrapolated from it a list of common core principles. He proposed that if you follow the laws of success that great men held to, you too could succeed in a significantly large scale manner.…