Senior Women Web

Author: SeniorWomenWeb

  • Celebrating a Decade of Words and Wonder; A Rolling Exhibition to the Heartland

    If you missed or couldn’t attend the National Book Festival this weekend on the National Mall in Washington, DC or hadn’t watched it on C-Span2 (Booktv.org), there are sources for author’s interviews, a kids and teacher’s guide, and author’s podcasts. Thousands of book lovers gathered to help celebrate the 10th anniversary, “A Decade of Words and Wonder.” This event, organized and sponsored by the Library  with honorary chairs President Barack Obama and Mrs. Michelle Obama,  sparked readers’ imaginations, creativity and passion for learning when they  interacted with the nation’s best-selling authors, illustrators and poets.

    Celebrated authors Isabel Allende, Laura Bush, Suzanne Collins, Ken Follett, Jonathan Franzen, Katherine Paterson, David Remnick, Stacy Schiff, Richard Rhodes  and Anthony Shaffer  — as well as celebrity chefs Lidia Bastianich and Spike Mendelsohn — were among scores of writers, illustrators and poets presenting at the 2010 National Book Festival. See below for a full listing of participants.*

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  • Farewell to the Feckless Life

    by Julia Sneden

    The news that President Obama has appointed Dr. Elizabeth Warren to take charge of designing the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection appears to be at once a brilliant concept and a clever endplay. The proposed Bureau will be a big help in restricting the financial industry’s ability to screw consumers.

    But beyond that, the Presidential Appointment of Professor Warren neatly steps around the need for endless Congressional hearings to approve her, hearings which would have been automatic had she simply been nominated to become Director of the Bureau. Given the financial community’s strong influence in Congress, it would take a miracle for a brilliant, forthright consumer advocate like Warren to squeak through those hearings.

    Perhaps the new Bureau will also take on the job of educating a financially ignorant public.

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  • Pew Research Finds That Independents Oppose Party in Power … Again

    Overview

    For the third national election in a row, independent voters may be poised to vote out the party in power. The Republican Party holds a significant edge in preferences for the upcoming congressional election among likely voters, in large part because political independents now favor Republican candidates by about as large a margin as they backed Barack Obama in 2008 and congressional Democratic candidates four years ago.

    The survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press was conducted Aug. 25 – Sept. 6 among 2,816 registered voters, including 2,053 voters considered the most likely to vote on Nov. 2. The survey finds that 50% of likely voters say they will vote for the Republican in their district, while 43% favor the Democratic candidate.

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  • Women’s Health Research; Progress, Pitfalls, and Promise

    The US Institute of Medicine has released a new report concerning Women’s Health Research; Progress, Pitfalls, and Promise. The report brief that follows closely examins a subject that was both needed and overdue:

    Even though slightly over half of the US population is female, apart from reproductive concerns, medical research historically has neglected the health needs of women. However, over the past two decades, there have been major changes in government support of women’s health research — in policies, regulations, and the organization of research efforts. To assess the impact of these changes, in 2008, Congress directed the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to ask the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to examine what has been learned from that research and how well it has been put into practice and communicated to both providers and women.

    An IOM committee defined women’s health broadly, encompassing health conditions that are specific to women; are more common or more serious in women; have distinct causes or manifestations in women; have different outcomes or treatments in women; or have high morbidity or mortality in women. Although the committee could not review all such conditions, it finds that women’s health research has contributed to significant progress in addressing some conditions, while other conditions have seen only moderate progress or even little or no progress over the past 20 years. Gaps remain, both in research areas and in the application of results to benefit women in general and across multiple population groups.

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  • Celebrating Comprehensive Health Care: The Affordable Care Act’s Six-Month Anniversary

    The following is part of the Center for American Progress Health Care coverage; CAP “provide[s] long-term leadership and support to the progressive movement”:

    In the months to come, the tempo of health reform implementation will speed up and the tangible benefits will become even more apparent. Specifically, in 2011:

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  • The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City at the Peabody Essex Museum

    “An emperor or king should have extensive grounds to stroll in and lovely vistas to enjoy. If he has such a place, he will be able to cultivate his mind and refine his emotions.” — The Qianlong emperor

    jWhen the last emperor of China, Puyi, left the Forbidden City in 1924, the doors closed on a secluded compound of pavilions and gardens deep within the palace. Filled with exquisite objects personally commissioned by the 18th-century Qianlong  emperor for his personal enjoyment, the complex of lavish buildings and exquisite landscaping lay dormant for decades. Now for the first time, 90 objects of ceremony and leisure — murals, paintings, furniture, architectural and garden components, jades and cloisonné — are on view at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City reveals the contemplative life and refined vision of one of history’s most influential rulers with artworks from one of the most magnificent places in the world.

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  • Making Movies

    by Ferida Wolff

    My first memory is of being lost. It was the summer of 1949 and I was three years old. I wanted to play with my sister and her friends who were double my age. They didn’t want me around but I kept following them. They ran away, down the block. I hurried as fast as I could after them. They ran down the street. I was there, a step or two or three behind. Okay, they said at last. You can play. They led me around the corner into a courtyard between buildings that was typical of the houses in my Brooklyn, NY, neighborhood. My sister and her friends told me we were going to play Hide and Seek. I was It. I had to close my eyes and count to ten – verrry slowly. I was proud of my newly learned counting skills, so I began. One. Two. Three …

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  • FactCheck.org Analyzes a Misleading Ad by 60 Plus

    Summary

    The conservative 60 Plus Association has launched a flurry of ads against 16 Democrats, many of them in tight House races. The group is spending more than $5 million – from donors whose identities it doesn’t have to disclose – to run the ads saying the lawmakers “betrayed” their constituents by voting for the health care overhaul signed into law earlier this year. That’s a matter of opinion, of course. But most of the ads also make statements that can’t be backed up, lack important context or are wrong.

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  • Life Long Pursuits: Defining a Birder

    by Mary Ann Sternberg

    Fifteen or so years ago, I flunked birding.

    It happened as I was sitting on the porch of a cinderblock cottage at Neal’s Lodges in Concan, Texas, overlooking the bluegreen Frio River which foamed and roiled over sculpted rocks between green and stony banks. I watched a large tawny dog chasing a ball that bobbed in the frothy current and a few shots of cotton clouds wisping over distant green hilltops. I noticed the shadows of whispering cypresses and a dozen other trees as they fell across the white swirls of the river. I very much wanted to ask someone what the other trees were, as well as the names of each of the wildflowers growing in casual arrangement near my doorstep, but no one was around. Everyone else from our natural history tour had gone birdwatching.

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  • Science, Travel and History: Never Lost

    “Thousands of years ago, small groups of Polynesians set out on canoes for points unknown, possibly never to return, leaving behind loved ones and the safety of terra firma. What made them do it?”

    “No written record preserves Polynesian history, but speculations abound. They may have been driven by population pressures, a famine caused by a period of drought, or a lost battle. Or they may have been led by an ambitious chief, bent on glory or expansion. Some voyages may not have been driven by necessity at all, but instead by curiosity and a spirit of adventure.”

    “This much is certain: Traditions of seafaring ran deep in the peoples of Polynesia, and often those who voyaged left their homes with no intention of returning, bringing with them the plants and animals they would need to start their lives afresh in a new land.”

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