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  • The Successor to Sweetie Pie: Meet ‘Gorgeous’

    by Elaine Soloway

    Is it wrong to want cup holders before I die? Hold your tears; my demise is not imminent — as far as I know — but I could wear out before my 1990 Honda Civic with 65,000 miles ever meets her foundry. Thus, if I continue to drive Sweetie Pie, I will never know the joy of cup holders. Instead, I’ll forever wedge my travelling mug betwixt gear shift and driver’s seat.

    Need I mention airbags? A CD player? Windows that slither down with a tap of the finger? A steering wheel unaccompanied by grunting? Doors that open without placing a key in a lock? An iPod plug in? Daytime running lights? I’ve never known these.

    Now, you may ask, why have I held onto Sweetie Pie so long? A valid question if you are the sort who does not believe automobiles have feelings. (You may even be the type that doesn’t kiss her iPhone before tucking her into the charger each night. Or, doesn’t wish her home office good morning with the On light switch.)

    Despite my attempt to convince you I am an Anthropomorphizer with a capital A, you may still wonder at my allegiance to this vehicle. Cue the violins. Sweetie Pie was purchased one month after separating from my first husband. 

    That marital relationship lasted 30 years, so I was naturally in a vulnerable state. The purchase of the Civic, with my name on the title, felt like a mark of independence. I had my own wheels. The two of us could travel together to the ends of the earth. More likely to Trader Joe’s. (Actually, Trader Joe’s didn’t enter the Chicago market until 2000, but I think it works better than Jewel, don’t you?)

    And during my singlehood, when I was ready to date again, and a personal ad in The Chicago Reader brought me interested swains from the suburbs, it was Sweetie Pie who drove me to meet them — a Chicagoland map unfolded in the passenger seat. Oh, there’s lots of tales I could tell in our long automotive relationship, but I’m skidding off topic, so I’ll leave them to your imagination. 

    This is what finally convinced me I should sell the Civic: I conceded there could come a time when arthritis, dimmed vision, or sluggish reaction time might rob me of ever experiencing the features listed in graph #2. And, for a self-described techie like me, I was embarrassed by my lack of experience with the latest motor car thingamajigs. 


    Update
    So, I sold the Civic to a good family and bought a 2011 Honda Fit. While I’m head over heels for Gorgeous (quickly named to speed bonding), I weep for Sweetie Pie. I know she’s happy being driven by younger people who energize her chassis. I know she prefers being outdoors, rather than sealed in a cold, dark garage. But, I worry: is she angry with me? Jealous of my new acquisition? 

    In time, I know I will grow as attached to Gorgeous as I was to Sweetie Pie. Wait, is that a horn I imagine I hear? Yes, it’s Gorgeous coaxing me to grab my key fob to unlatch her doors. Come, she croons, to the power windows that await my digit. To the CD and iPod players eager to share my jazz collection. And yes, to the cup holders (four!) that promise to cuddle my mug of Black Cat Espresso.

    I can feel the pain easing.

    ©2011 Elaine Soloway for SeniorWomen.com

  • Gone Grey and The Seven Senior Dwarves

    by Julia Sneden

    When I was a very little girl, my mother took me to see Snow White. I was so traumatized by the wicked witch that I had nightmares for weeks. But oh, how I loved those dwarves. Even at a young age, I got the connection between their personalities and their names.

    The other day, I was sitting around a lunch table with some friends. Suddenly Betsy bent over, reached down, and began to scratch her left ankle energetically.

    “Sorry,” she said, “but I’ve got this really itchy patch on my ankle. Just call me Ms. Itchy.”

    “Sounds like one of the seven dwarves,” said Myra. “You know, Happy, Sleepy, Dopey… Itchy …”

    “It’s one of those things nobody warns you about, when you are growing up,” said Maeve. You think you’re Snow White, until all of a sudden one day you find that you are Gone Grey.”

    Of course that triggered an onslaught of competitive silliness. We’ve all gotten to the point where making fun of the discomforts of our aging bodies is just one more way of coping with them.

    So, with apologies to the memory of Mr. Disney, here are our nominations for the Seven Senior Dwarves.

    The first one is actually conjoined triplets, so they count as just one:

    Flaky: has skin so dry that whenever she removes her nightgown, tiny flakes fill the air. If ever you want a sample of her DNA, just shake the tee shirt she has tossed into her laundry basket. Itchy follows her sister Flaky, but precedes sister Scratchy. Itchy is in charge of keeping her sister Flaky from settling down, but Scratchy is the liveliest of the three. She cannot hold still, and is always bending and stretching and reaching to stay in contact with her two sisters. Her most cherished possessions are her long-handled back scratcher and her collection of body lotions and greasers.

    Sniffly: tries to have a tissue with her at all times, but she goes through her supply every few minutes. Her nose starts to run for all sorts of reasons: shifts in temperature, warm to cold or cold to warm; dust in any form; friends with strong perfumes; a bowl of hot soup steaming away on the table in front of her; bits of down that fly out of her pillow. Her nose is particularly prone to running when she has both hands full and nowhere to set down whatever she’s holding.

    Wrinkly: The crows’ feet could be passed off as something caused by a temporary squint in bright sunlight, but nowadays they remain when she is indoors, too. And then, of course, there’s the fact that her dimples have morphed into long, narrow crevices, and the backs of her upper arms and thighs have taken on the texture and loose swing of elephant skin.

  • The Health Effects of Airport Security Scanners

    Published 17 March 2011 by HomelandSecurityNewswire and reprinted with their permission. We bring this up (as we have previously) as older travelers have had more exposure to radiology than younger travelers and cumulative effects can be more cause for concern.

    The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has begun to use whole-body imaging scanners as a primary screening measure on travelers passing through airport security checkpoints; one type of scanner employs millimeter wave technology, which delivers no ionizing radiation; the second type of scanner currently deployed at airports, however, uses backscatter X-rays that expose the individual being screened to very low levels of ionizing radiation; what are the health implications of these scanners? Two prominent radiologists offer answers

    The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has begun to use whole-body imaging scanners as a primary screening measure on travelers passing through airport security checkpoints. One type of scanner employs millimeter wave technology, which delivers no ionizing radiation. The second type of scanner currently deployed at airports, however, uses backscatter X-rays that expose the individual being screened to very low levels of ionizing radiation. In the April issue of Radiology, two articles address the question of what potential long-term public health threats, if any, these backscatter X-ray systems pose.

    Eureka reports that in the first article, David J. Brenner, Ph.D., D.Sc., director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, proposes that from a public health policy perspective, given that up to one billion such scans per year are now possible in the United States, we should have concerns about the long-term consequences of an extremely large number of people being exposed to a potential radiation-induced cancer risk, no matter how slight.

    “The risks for any individual going through the X-ray backscatter scanners are exceedingly small,” Dr. Brenner said. “However, if all air travelers are going to be screened this way, then we need to be concerned that some of these billion people may eventually develop cancer as a result of the radiation exposure from the X-ray scanners.”

    In the second article, David A. Schauer, Sc.D., C.H.P., executive director of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), argues that the summation of negligible average risks over large populations or time periods into a single value produces a distorted image of risk that is out of perspective with risks accepted every day, both voluntarily and involuntarily.

    “There is no scientific basis to support the notion that a small risk to an individual changes in any way for that individual as others around him are also exposed to the same source of radiation,” he said. “Critics of security screening acknowledge that doses from backscatter X-ray systems are very low and safe for an individual.”

    Dr. Schauer advocates strict regulatory control of the backscatter scanners in order to ensure that their use is consistent with the goals and objectives of radiation protection, which include justification (benefits exceed cost or harm), optimization (exposures are kept as low as reasonably achievable) and limitation (individual doses are limited).

    “Any decision that alters the radiation exposure situation should do more good than harm,” Dr. Schauer said. “In other words, people should only be exposed to ionizing radiation for security screening purposes when a threat exists that can be detected and for which appropriate actions can be taken. In addition, exposures must be justified and optimized.”

  • ‘Reproductive Health’ Bills Introduced and the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Anniversary Recognized

    The past week brought a number of new bills to Congressional attention. In addition, a resolution was introduced recognizing the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, and designating the week of March 21, 2011, through March 25, 2011, as the 100th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Remembrance Week.

    Child Protection

    S. 581 — Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC)/Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (3/15/11) — A bill to require criminal background checks for child care providers.

    S. 645 — Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY)/Judiciary (3/17/11) — A bill to amend the National Child Protection Act of 1993 to establish a permanent background check system.

    Education

    S. 571 — Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)/Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (3/14/11) — A bill to provide education for homeless children and youths, and for other purposes.

    Judiciary

    H.R. 1096 — Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)/Judiciary (3/15/11) — A bill to provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception, and for other purposes.

    Miscellaneous

    S. Res. 106 — Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)/Considered and agreed to (3/17/11) — A resolution recognizing the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, and designating the week of March 21, 2011, through March 25, 2011, as the “100th Anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Remembrance Week:”

    Whereas the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire was the deadliest industrial disaster in the City of New York’s history and resulted in the 4th greatest loss of life from an industrial accident in the history of the United States, claiming the lives of 146 garment workers, many of whom were young immigrants;

    Whereas this human catastrophe exposed the need to strengthen labor laws, fire regulations, and health and safety protections for workers;

    Whereas the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire helped spur the growth of the modern-day organized labor movement, particularly the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, which continued to fight for better conditions for sweatshop workers;

    Whereas from the ashes of this horrific event emerged the modern celebration of International Women’s Day, and the death of 129 women workers in the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire demonstrated the need for workers’ rights and women’s rights;

    Whereas more than 5,000 workers lose their lives each year on the job, and protecting the health and safety of workers continues to be a critical issue in the United States today; and

  • On the 8th Anniversary of the Iraq Invasion — Just Another Day in the Park

    by Jo Freeman

    Remnants of the once vast anti-war movement rallied in front of the White House on March 19 in the eighth annual protest of the 2003 military invasion of Iraq, while five thousand miles away US and British vessels launched a missile invasion of Libya in order to create a UN-sanctioned no-fly zone.

    Roughly a thousand people gathered around a stage in the middle of Lafayette Park to hear speakers denounce war on the first sunny Saturday of the year. It was a Sixties crowd, in both senses of the word. One man’s sign bragged that he had been “Protesting Stupid Wars and Nukes since 1967.” Compared to most of the people at the rally, he was a late-comer.

    A hundred feet away, on the edge of Pennsylvania Avenue, two dozen youthful-looking demonstrators denounced Libyan dictator Col. Muammar Quadaffi. Waving the flag adopted by the newly proclaimed Libyan Republic, most of their signs and shouts were in Arabic, but their sentiment was clear. A separate group, waiving Syrian flags, denounced its ruling family. “Syria is not a family business” said one sign in English. 

    On Pennsylvania Ave. itself, half a dozen people declared that “9/11 was an inside job,” while another half dozen wanted the world to know that “we salute our troops” and “God Bless America.” One man walked around with a Palestinian flag, another had a large banner on wheels that said something about corruption in Canada and still another carried two signs objecting to the existence of Israel. He said he came every Saturday.

    On the other side of Lafayette Park, greeting those who entered from the North, were a dozen people from PETA. They were unhappy that the State Department’s evacuation of US nationals from Japan does not include “companion animals.”

  • Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time

    As American artists rebelled against the academic art and aristocratic portraiture that predominated at the turn of the 20th century, they began looking to modern life for their subject matter. One of central figures in this dramatic shift was Edward Hopper, whose work is exhibited in relation to his most important contemporaries in Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art until April 10th. New York Interior

    Placing Hopper beside such artists as Robert Henri, William Glackens, John Sloan, George Ault, Guy Pène du Bois, George Bellows, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Charles Demuth, Ralston Crawford, Paul Strand, Charles Sheeler, Charles Burchfield, Ben Shahn, Lisette Model, Thomas Hart Benton, and Reginald Marsh, the show traces the development of realism in American art in the first half of the twentieth century. The exhibition, organized by Whitney curator Barbara Haskell and senior curatorial assistant Sasha Nicholas, and shown previously in different form at the Bucerius Kunst Forum, Hamburg, and the Kunsthal Rotterdam, is  installed in the second-floor Mildred & Herbert Lee Galleries.

    The work of Edward Hopper (1882-1967) has been presented often by the Whitney throughout the institution’s history, beginning with his first-ever solo exhibition, held at the Whitney Studio Club in 1920, but Modern Life is the first Whitney exhibition to focus specifically on the context in which he worked. It follows Hopper’s evolution into America’s most iconic realist painter, tracing his connections to the artistic movements that paralleled his work while also highlighting his development of a singular aesthetic that would ultimately distinguish his art from that of his contemporaries.Hopper Self-Portrait

    Modern Life begins in 1900, the year that Hopper arrived on New York’s art scene. In the exhibition’s first section, his art is seen alongside the work of the Ashcan School artists, who boldly depicted the changing social and political environment of New York using rapid, loose, impressionistic brushstrokes, heavy impasto, and a dark, gritty palette. In the first decade of the century, Hopper studied with both Robert Henri and John Sloan, and quickly began to exhibit with the artists in their circle. The lessons Hopper learned from them — especially the urge to paint everyday, even mundane subjects, and a passion for capturing dramatic light effects — were immediately evident in his early paintings.  Among the wealthy art patrons of the time, only Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney would stake her reputation and fortune on the work of the Ashcan artists and their successors. Her advocacy, crucial to the flourishing of a distinctly American modernism, led to the founding of the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1930 and to the formation of the collection on view in this exhibition.

  • Memory Lane and Morality: How Childhood Memories Promote Prosocial Behavior

    Copyright ©2011 by Francesca Gino and Sreedhari D. Desai
    Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University  & Women & Public Policy Program, Harvard Kennedy School of Government

    Abstract: Four experiments demonstrated that recalling memories from one’s own childhood lead people to experience feelings of moral purity and to behave prosocially. In Experiment 1, participants instructed to recall memories from their childhood were more likely to help the experimenter with a supplementary task than were participants in a control condition, and this effect was mediated by self-reported feelings of moral purity. In Experiment 2, the same manipulation increased the amount of money participants donated to a good cause, and self-reported feelings of moral purity mediated this relationship. In Experiment 3, participants who recalled childhood memories judged the ethically-questionable behavior of others more harshly, suggesting that childhood memories lead to altruistic punishment. Finally, in Experiment 4, compared to a control condition, both positively-valenced and negatively-valenced childhood memories led to higher empathic concern for a person in need, which, in turn increased intentions to help.

    Too often the news reports stories of injustice, dishonesty, and human violence: longlived conflicts in different parts of the world, terrorist attacks, and corporate corruption. These and other, more ordinary instances of unethical behavior are all examples of how human nature seems to be driven by self-interest and impure motives. Yet, throughout history, there are equally compelling stories of small and large acts of helping, honesty, and prosocial behavior more generally.

    One example is provided by the actions of several people across Europe who risked their life during World War II by welcoming and rescuing Jews and other victims of the Holocaust.  Similarly, the news often reports stories of exemplar altruistic acts, such as those of people saving others during fires, those of individuals generously helping abandoned children or needy families, those of people contributing large sums of money or time to good causes, or those of organizations founded to help others. In contrast to the first set of examples, these stories seem to suggest that humans may be prosocial in nature.

    Scholars have long debated the question of what traits and behaviors are inherent in humanity, and have concluded that whether individuals are more self-oriented or other-oriented in their actions depends on cultural norms and on a complex interaction between biological potentialities and environmental experiences.

    Scholars have also recognized that, together with these factors, situational cues can promote prosocial and unethical behavior across time and across cultures. For instance, in a recent investigation, Zhong, Bohns and Gino (2010) found that ambient darkness leads people to be less generous towards others in a dictator game. Situational cues may signal or activate implicit or explicit norms in a given social context. Cialdini, Reno and Kallgren (1990), for example, demonstrated that the amount of litter in the environment regulates littering behavior by subtly activating norms prescribing what is appropriate or inappropriate in a given setting and by providing implicit social proof.

  • Risks to US from Japanese Power Plant Seen as Low

    This article published with the permission from  Medpage Today.
    By John Gever, Senior Editor, Crystal Phend, Senior Staff Writer, Todd Neale, Staff Writer, Joyce Frieden, News Editor, MedPage Today

    MedPage Today took a look at the risks that radiation leaks from the Japanese plants may pose to the US, whether plants here may be vulnerable to natural disasters, and what our level of medical preparedness is.

    The general consensus among our sources: The risk is low.

    (SeniorWomen.com’s Editor’s Note: We would recommend that readers keep up to date, at least with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s website. You may want to choose a subscription from the site’s email choices.  And, from C-Span, a hearing from today, the 16th, Congress Looks at Nuclear Safety and Crisis in Japan.

    Will Radiation from Japan Threaten the US?
    Experts contacted by MedPage Today generally agreed that radioactive particles will eventually reach the U.S., but at levels too low to measurably affect people’s health.

    In an update today [March 14, 2011], the International Atomic Energy Agency said winds have been blowing eastward from the Japanese coast — toward the US and Canada — in a pattern expected to continue for the next three days.

    But the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said it is unlikely that harmful levels of radiation leaking from Japanese reactors will reach any part of the US, including Hawaii, Alaska, and various territories in the Pacific, considering the vast distances between Japan and those areas.

    Reports indicate that any release of radioactive materials has been largely confined, and that explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant have not breached their outwardmost containment buildings.

    James Thrall, MD, radiologist-in-chief at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and president of the American College of Radiology, told MedPage Today that the chances of a consequential radiation exposure from the Japanese disaster anywhere in the US is “essentially zero.”

    He noted, however, that radiation detectors are so sensitive that they will likely be able to measure even minute levels of radioactivity from Japan on US soil.

    That’s how the world knew about the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, which occurred in what is now Ukraine, before Soviet government officials admitted it had occurred, according to Eric Hall, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University in New York City.

    At Chernobyl, the fuel rods melted through all layers of containment, accompanied by several explosions.

  • Center for American Progress, Japan and the Future of US Nuclear Power

    By Joseph Romm, Richard W. Caperton

    This map depicts the locations of USnuclear power facilities in gray, and locations of seismic activity in yellow.

    The loss of coolant, explosions and apparent partial meltdown of nuclear plants in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami remind us that nuclear power is inherently risky. The US government and the nuclear industry must take new actions to ensure that nuclear power is safe for the American public. In the immediate future, the government must do four things:

    1. Review the ability of every reactor to deal with threats to its safety.
    2. Congress must not cut funding for NOAA’s tsunami warning service.
    3. The permitting process must not be further weakened.
    4. The Department of Energy must continue to run the nuclear loan guarantee program to protect taxpayers and must continue to accurately charge the nuclear industry for the risk it incurs by guaranteeing these projects.

    Read more here.

    Seismic Activity and US Nuclear Facilities

    This map illustrates just how vulnerable we could be: many of the United States’s 104 nuclear facilities are located near areas of seismic activity. We need to make sure that we are taking steps to secure our aging nuclear infrastructure against earthquakes and other environmental disasters and that the risks of potential accidents are fairly bone not just by tax payers, but by those who profit from producing nuclear power. Read more and view the map here.

    Joseph Romm edits the blog ClimateProgress.org for the Center for American Progress Action Fund and Richard Caperton is a CAPAF policy analyst. Romm, who has a Ph.D. in physics, was acting assistant secretary of energy for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy during the Clinton administration.

  • Poster styles, Propaganda Messages and Advertising History: When Beans Were Bullets

    What can war posters tell us about our nation’s attempts to modify food consumption habits?Can All You Can

    When Beans Were Bullets is an online exhibit of posters from World War I & II organized at the National Agricultural Library (NAL). The exhibit examines the evolution of poster styles, propaganda messages and advertising history from the two time periods.

    Viewers will recognize familiar wartime messages about food conservation, rationing, and home canning. But today’s audience will be surprised by government messaging during World War I encouraging home front populations to eat locally, healthfully, and conscientiously in order to put the nation’s interest first and contribute to distant war efforts.

    The exhibit also retraces the advent of modern consumer culture, including the far-reaching influence of both the Advertising Council of World War II and the dawn of the advertising industry in the 1920s and ’30s.

    Combining the eye of a graphic designer with the research skills of a historian, curator Cory Bernat highlights the dramatic differences in style and content that emerged between the two wars.  She displayed copies of over seventy posters on fence panels instead of in frames to highlight their mass-produced quality in the physical exhibit. She uncovered the posters over the last two years within NAL’s Special Collections, where the originals are still held.Farm woman's dream poster

    A ready reference for researchers and educators,  Cory Bernat researched and created When Beans Were Bullets, and the exhibit was situated at the USDA South building in Washington, DC.

    Visit the expanded, online version of the physical exhibit which serves as a display of the posters that were displayed during the Fall of  2010. Cory Bernat researched and created When Beans Were Bullets in collaboration with the National Agricultural Library. Bernat is a designer, curator and public historian living in Washington, DC.

    The National Agriculture Library provides an opportunity to purchase these and many other posters from the Library’s Special Collections.  There are three convenient ways to order these products.

    A portion of the proceeds from the sale of these products funds the conservation treatment of Special Collections materials. To view items from Special Collections that have been identified for conservation treatment, visit this web page.

    For information about ordering Custom Reproductions, please click here.

    Credits for Posters Pictured:
    The Seeds of Victory Insure the Fruits of Peace, Maginel Wright Enright, artist; National War Garden Commission, Washington, DC.  1919

    The Farm Woman’s Dream; University of Missouri, College of Agriculture. 1920