Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck has written extensively about over-praising children. See Carol S. Dweck, “The Perils and Promises of Praise,” Educational Leadership, 65, no. 2 (October 2007): 34–39, available electronically at http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/oct07/vol65/num02/The-Perils-and-Promises-of-Praise.aspx.
In addition, researchers have found that people who experience moderate stress in childhood are more resilient and better able to cope with stress as adults. Linda J. Luecken of Arizona State University has published several studies of resilience in children. Other studies include: David M. Lyons, Karen J. Parker, Maor Katz, and Alan F. Schatzberg, “Developmental Cascades Linking Stress Inoculation, Arousal Regulation, and Resilience,” Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 3, 32 (2009). Prepublished electronically July 10, 2009. Published electronically September 18, 2009. doi: 10.3389/neuro.08.032.2009 PMCID: PMC2759374; and Mark D. Seery, “Resilience: A Silver Lining to Experiencing Adverse Life Events?,” Current Directions in Psychological Science, n. page (2011). Accessed October 6, 2012, http://seery.socialpsychology.org.
Malcolm Gladwell popularized the concept of 10,000 hours of practice required for true expertise: Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2008).
Gladwell cited research by K. Anders Ericsson. For Ericsson’s early research, which focused on violinists at the Music Academy of West Berlin, see K. Anders Ericsson, R. T. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer, “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance,” Psychological Review 100.3 (1993): 363–406.
For Ericsson’s later work applying his research to business success, see K. Anders Ericsson, Michael J. Prietula, and Edward T. Cokely, “The Making of an Expert,” Harvard Business Review. Available online at http://www.uvm.edu/~pdodds/files/papers/others/2007/ericsson2007a.pdf.
British composer and musicologist Cecil Forsyth was witty as well as erudite in his description of the viola, and his observations still ring true almost a century later: Cecil Forsyth, Orchestration (1914 edition) 395–396, Cornell University Library. Available online at http://books.google.com/books?id=m9_CTe8qNWIC & pg=PA395 & lpg=PA395 & dq=forsyth+viola+anxiety & source=bl & ots=gkP3wxsypz & sig=XilDJ9HQebJcnb2Y-lNVAmwoaCM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-A0ST5riHIH20gHY9cX5DA&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=anxiety&f=false.
A good overview of the viola’s history can be found at viola-in-music.com: http://www.viola-in-music.com/history-of-the<Bi-viola.html.
For additional background on the school reform movement, please see: Maureen Stout, The Feel-good Curriculum: The Dumbing-down of America’s Kids in the Name of Self-esteem (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus, 2000).
Soyuzivka’s colorful history is described in Roma Lisovich’s “Soyuzivka: A Look at Its Beginnings as Nonkanahwa,” The Ukrainian Weekly, LXXVIII, no. 27 (July 4, 2010). Lisovich recounts how the property was purchased by John Foord, who was editor in chief of the New York Times from 1876 to 1883. The property was turned into a sanitarium by Foord’s son, Andrew, a psychiatrist and society figure, and it grew to greater fame under one of Andrew’s sons, Federick “Fritz” Foord, a landscape painter and industrial designer who was a member of the famed Algonquin Round Table in New York City. According to Lisovich, the sanitarium “offered treatment for depression, ‘neurasthenia’ (a popular nervousness condition of the 1900s), alcoholism and post-operative recuperation.”
James Thurber wrote a number of letters from and about Foord’s Sanitarium, collected in The Thurber Letters, edited by Harrison Kinney with Rosemary A. Thurber (Simon & Schuster 2003). The editors describe Foord’s as “a popular drying-out place for New Yorker writers and editors.”
Theresa Chen writes about peer pressure on adolescent student musicians in her “The 6 Stages of Piano Students: Why and When Piano Students Quit Lessons,” Private Music Lessons, Opus Music Education Blog, August 19, 2011. Accessed electronically October 6, 2012, http://www.opusmusiceducation.com/blog/2011/08/the-6-stages-of-piano-students-why-and-when-piano-students-quit-lessons. Her work draws on research by Sidney J. Lawrence, who specialized in the psychology of music education. See “This Business of Music Practicing: Or How Six Words Prevented a Drop-Out”; to access this article, see: http://www.amazon.com/This-business-music-practicing-prevented/dp/B0007EWSLS.
Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic, 2010) is an indispensable resource for understanding Ukraine before and during World War II. The author, a history professor at Yale University, generously provided additional insights in an interview.
Mr. K recounted his early years in several essays published in Ukrainian in conjunction with school reunions of the Berchtesgaden refugee-camp gymnasium. He also wrote Ukrainian-language articles about his youth for Svoboda (Ukrainian for “Liberty”), a newspaper for émigrés published in the United States. See “Dyvnym i neperedbachenym ruslom: spomyny pro Berkhtesgaden z pryvodu 50-ykh rokovyn taboru ’Orlyk,’ “Svoboda (July 23, 1996): 2; Svoboda (July 24, 1996): 2–3; and “Spomyny pro ’Ridnu Shkolu,’ “Svoboda (June 30, 1998): 2, 5. To access these articles, see: http://www.svoboda-news.com/arxiv.htm.
He also described his wartime experience in several English-language newspaper interviews, including the following:
“Recent DP Now College Student Here,” The Ukrainian Weekly, XV (January 27, 1947): 2.
Marie Kidd, “Shawneetown Director Is Hero of Metropolis Festival,” Paducah Sun-Democrat, April 14, 1957.
Pat Ordovensky, “The Old World and the New,” The Town Crier, XII, no. 3 (March 1960). Published by the Sentinel Publishing Co., New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Additional descriptions of Mr. K’s teenage years and/or life in the refugee camps were provided by Ihor Hayda, Olga Sawchuk, and Helena Melnitchenko. Taras Hunczak, history professor emeritus at Rutgers University and a native-born Ukrainian, shared both his knowledge of Ukrainian history and firsthand descriptions of life during the war.
For additional information about the Holodomor and its effects, see Steven Bela Vardy and Agnes Huszar Vardy, “Cannibalism in Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China,” East European Quarterly, XLI, no 2 (2007) Duquesne University.
The lives of forced laborers are vividly documented in Forced Labor: The Germans, the Forced Laborers, and the War, a companion volume to an exhibition produced by the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation.
Other valuable resources that were indispensable in tracking down original documents and providing historical context include the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, Germany; the U.S. Holocaust Museum; the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard; the Shevchenko Scientific Society in New York City; the Ukrainian Canadian Research & Documentation Centre in Toronto; and the Petro Jacyk Central and East European Resource Centre at the University of Toronto.