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sign up today—it's free! On This Day1850 — Harriet Beecher Stowe arrives in Brunswick seven months pregnant after 18 years in Cincinnati. While living in Brunswick in 1850-1851, when her husband Calvin, of the Bowdoin Class of 1824, was teaching theology, Stowe wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” one of the most influential novels in American history. Stowe wrote in her husband’s study in Appleton hall and in the family home on Federal Street, where she hosted Bowdoin students to read and discuss the book before it was published. StorePurchase Bowdoin merchandise online. |  Lydia Singerman '13 Lydia Singerman ’13 is taking advantage of her current internship at Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE), a nonprofit, to learn the skills the interns typically pick up, such as how to raise money or set up a board of directors. But the Bowdoin senior is getting much more from her experience: besides her internship duties, she’s also working on an ethnography of SHE, whose mission is to invest in people and ideas that are typically overlooked as vehicles of socioeconomic change. SHE’s first initiative is to address women’s inability to afford menstrual pads, which can harm their health, education, productivity and dignity, according to Singerman. SHE is piloting this initiative in Rwanda and plans to scale its model to other countries. Continue reading An Ethnography of an NGO That’s Using Banana Fibers to Help Women  Photo by Michele Stapleton The Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority is working on the final details, readying the Amtrak Downeaster train for service to Brunswick. Patricia Quinn, the executive director of NNEPRA, which oversees the Downeaster, says the train’s expected start date is early November. The passenger train’s two daily trips between Brunswick and Boston will be scheduled for the mornings and evenings, allowing riders to leave early for either location and be back that same day, Quinn said. Currently, the Downeaster makes five daily runs between Portland and Boston, and the extended service will include stops in Freeport as well as Brunswick. It’ll be the first time in 52 years that Brunswick has had regular passenger train service, according to the Associated Press. In the weeks leading up to November, the railroad crews will be completing all the new computerized signaling, building crossings, replacing ties, doing some culvert work and running tests. “We’re getting down to the end,” Quinn said.
 Sleeping hamster Researchers at Ohio State University Medical Center have found that hamsters exposed to chronic dim light at night over a few weeks were prone to symptoms of depression. The darkness-deprived rodents reduced their physical activity compared to hamsters in normal light-dark conditions, showed greater signs of distress when stressed, and were less interested in things that once delighted them, like sugar water, according to Time.com. The research suggests the same could be true for humans. The American Medical Association also warns that over-exposure to light suppresses melatonin, a hormone believed to fight tumors and cancer. Plus, changes in the body’s circadian rhythms from light-dark imbalances could make one more susceptible to obesity, diabetes and reproductive problems. Meanwhile, light pollution from TVs, computers, streetlights, mobile devices, insomniacs’ bedside lamps, traffic and neighbors has supposedly surged over the past 50 years, a trend that coincides with increases in depression, the article states. | On This Day in Civil War History…Bowdoin Talks: Lectures, Discussions and Events |
