From Portable Pianos to Portable Organs

Earlier this week My Own True Love and I were at an event at an aviation history museum in Poplar Grove, Illinois.* In the course of chatting with the executive director, the GI Steinway (aka the Victory Vertical) came up. The director mentioned that another museum in the community had a portable organ made for…

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Pianos for Victory

This story has been brought to my attention twice in the last 48 hours from two different sources.* Sometimes the universe says “You need to write a blog post about this!” in a very clear voice. When the United States entered World War II in 1941, raw materials of all sorts were diverted to the…

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Hitlerland

My first step when I begin a new book is what I think of as a self-directed masters’ program. Since I am inevitably writing about something outside my academic field, I read deep and wide.* It is a wonderful part of the process—one I share with you as I wrap my head around the big…

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