By Bob Podurgiel Common Milkweed seed pods are about 4 inches long, inflated looking and covered in little bumpy projections. They are green initially, turning brown as they mature. They split open revealing 50-100 seeds each with a white, fluffy coma (“parachute”) that allows wind dispersal (National Park Service) On warm summer
PBS North Carolina's "Comic Culture" recently featured a program on famed World War II cartoonist Bill Mauldin. Host Terence Dollard discusses Mauldin's career, life and impact as an editorial cartoonist with biographer Todd DePastino. This conversation with Todd DePastino, author of Bill Mauldin: A Life Up Front, focuses on Mauldin's World War II cartoons,
By Todd DePastino Last night, Ben Wright, Larry Woods, and I all walked out of the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh together after our 70th Anniversary of the Korean War Armistice Agreement Commemoration event. As we filed from the elevator through the first-floor Great Hall, we passed a much-treasured artifact from World War II:
Written by Todd DePastino In 2009, when the VBC was just beginning, I visited a retirement community just east of Pittsburgh and met a man who called himself "Big George." Big George carried clippings from Stars & Stripes and Yank Magazine, yellow brittle rectangles of folded paper that left behind flakes wherever they went.
Written by Todd DePastino At the conclusion of our VBC Happy Hour on May 8 with Korean War veteran Bud Mendenhall, our resident historian Greg Yoest gave us a quick thumbnail history of the German surrender in 1945 in World War II. Boy, was it complicated. In short, the Germans surrendered very early on
written by Todd DePastino In the world-changing year of 1945, one of the biggest shocks came on April 12, the day the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, unexpectedly died. He was only 63 years old. Few could imagine a future without him. It's hard to appreciate today, but FDR's sudden death
