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  • Eco Chic: Towards Sustainable Swedish Fashion

    The following text is from the Scandinavia House release about the Eco Chic Exhibit:

    Proving that “going green” is more than a feel-good fad, Swedish designers collaborated to establish a culture of sustainable fashion. The fashion industry faces major challenges in both resources and labor, but designers featured in the Eco Chic exhibition strive to change the general attitude of fashion and consumption. They believe that sustainable development is not simply an empty phrase, and fashion is not just about appearance. This touring exhibition from The Swedish Institute (SI), which premiered in Belgrade in the winter of 2008, has visited major international cities including Minsk, Kiev, Riga, Istanbul, and most recently Berlin. The installation at Scandinavia House in New York marks the first American stop on this tour.

    Sustainable clothing has typically been distinguishable by its appearance. Now, as Eco Chic illustrates, ethical fashion looks no different from conventionally produced clothing; it can be exciting and it is possible to construct high fashion garments with sustainable and ecological practices. What sets this kind of fashion apart is implicit in the values and attitudes of individual designers. The ecological and ethical production of clothing begins with the design of a garment, and continues right through to the finished product, including the transparency of fashion companies about their production processes and materials.

    Eco Chic designers aspire to create a culture of principled design and production. Through this touring exhibition, they hope to inform consumers that fashion can be simultaneously stylish and sustainable.

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  • Elena Kagan’s Nomination at the Senate Judiciary Committee Website

    “And a number of you, who go into business or other endeavors, will deal with law mostly from the vantage point of a client. But in each of your spheres of life, and at every level of responsibility, you will face choices that have much in common with the choices that I’ve related to you today. You will face choices between expedience and principle. You will face choices between doing what is easy and doing what is right. You will face choices between disregarding or upholding the values embedded in the idea of the rule of law.”

    “So which character in the story will you be? The lawyer who stands up for principle, and upholds the true and the right? Or the lawyer who manipulates or bends or evades the law to seek short-term advantage?”

    — from Elena Kagan’s 2007 speech to graduating students at Harvard Law School

    From the Senate Judiciary Committee Website:

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  • A Trip Through Henry James’s Italian Hours

    An excerpt from the free text of Henry James’s Italian Hours at Project Gutenberg:

    I must not, however, speak of St. Mark’s as if I had the pretension of giving a description of it or as if the reader desired one. The reader has been too well served already. It is surely the best-described building in the world. Open the Stones of Venice, open Théophile Gautier’s ltalia, and you will see. These writers take it very seriously, and it is only because there is another way of taking it that I venture to speak of it; the way that offers itself after you have been in Venice a couple of months, and the light is hot in the great Square, and you pass in under the pictured porticoes with a feeling of habit and friendliness and a desire for something cool and dark.

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  • Downsized by Corporate America; Frustrations of a Recipe Cook

    by Julia Sneden

    For those of us whose parents struggled through the Great Depression, today’s hard times are a matter of déjas vu. We grew up hearing tales of those difficult days, and were proud and happy that our families had survived and even prospered. We felt smugly that nothing like those bad times could possibly come around again in our lifetimes.

    Surprise!

    Today’s cross-generational difficulties are a reprise of the ’30’s, eighty years later: job losses, salary cuts, depleted savings accounts, tanking investments, and devastated property values are an echo of the stories we heard when we were young.

    Considering all that, it seems petty to gripe about the small stuff, but I have a bone to pick with producers of packaged goods. Perhaps companies in those Depression days cut salaries, or let employees go, or even went out of business altogether, but I don’t recall hearing that they quietly shaved their standard product sizes without lowering cost, hiding their “adjustments” by clever packaging.

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  • Twitter Settles Charges that it Failed to Protect Consumers’ Personal Information

    Company Will Establish Independently Audited Information Security Program

    Social networking service Twitter has agreed to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it deceived consumers and put their privacy at risk by failing to safeguard their personal information, marking the agency’s first such case against a social networking service.

    The FTC’s complaint against Twitter charges that serious lapses in the company’s data security allowed hackers to obtain unauthorized administrative control of Twitter, including access to non-public user information, tweets that consumers had designated private, and the ability to send out phony tweets from any account including those belonging to then-President-elect Barack Obama and Fox News, among others.

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  • Daring Pairings: A Master Sommelier Matches Distinctive Wines with Recipes from His Favorite Chefs

    Book Review by Sharon Kapnick

    by Evan Goldstein
    Published by University of California Press, hardcover, 353 pages

    I love books about food and wine because they’re two of my favorite things. So I was delighted to hear about Evan Goldstein’s follow-up to Perfect Pairings (for my review, see A Very Good Year: Here’s to 10 Books That Will Be A Welcome Addition to a Wine Lover’s Library).  Perfect Pairings covered the household names — Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, etc.

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  • Pew Reports, More Women Without Children

    by Gretchen Livingston and D’Vera Cohn, June 25, 2010

    Nearly one-in-five American women ends her childbearing years without having borne a child, compared with one-in-ten in the 1970s. While childlessness has risen for all racial and ethnic groups, and most education levels, it has fallen over the past decade for women with advanced degrees. The most educated women still are among the most likely never to have had a child. But in a notable exception to the overall rising trend, in 2008, 24% of women ages 40-44 with a master’s, doctoral or professional degree had not had children, a decline from 31% in 1994.

    By race and ethnic group, white women are most likely not to have borne a child. But over the past decade, childless rates have risen more rapidly for black, Hispanic and Asian women, so the racial gap has narrowed. By marital status, women who have never married are most likely to be childless, but their rates have declined over the past decade, while the rate of childlessness has risen for the so-called ever-married — those who are married or were at one time.

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  • Lighter Than Air: Gauze Robes from China

    Editor’s Note: The following text accompanies the Denver Art Museum’s exhibit, Lighter Than Air, drawn from the Denver Art Museum’s Textile Collection. We found that the small font used in the exhibition might be difficult for some viewers and have increased it on this page.

    “Although the Manchu rulers of Qing dynasty China (1644-1911) loved beautiful things, they were not blind to practicality. In summer, they traded their heavy satin robes for lighter garments made of semi-sheer silk gauze. The open weave of these robes provided not only ventilation, but also the perfect foundation for embroidery carried out in colored silk as well as gold and silver threads. Other gauze garments have subtle woven patterns that appear and disappear with shifting light. The ten robes in the exhibition present a glimpse of court life during the Qing dynasty.”

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  • Grandparenting and Camp Counseling: Architecture Things to Do

    For a third summer, we’re assembling a camp experience for our grandchildren with ourselves as camp counselors. Last year we made T-shirts emblazoned with Camp Gray in block letters so we could keep up with our charges on our adventures.

    We happened upon these following activities, based on architecture, at the Victoria and Albert site. We’re adding them to our Camp Gray folder in preparation for our next trek into the world of counseling. As always, we find the V&A to be one of the great sites on the Web:

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  • Did Labor Lose When Lincoln Won? Not Exactly

    by JoFreeman

    Senator Blanche Lincoln’s win in the June 8 Arkansas Democratic primary over labor-backed candidate Lt. Gov. Bill Halter has left many political pundits criticizing the unions for taking on a big target in a under-unionized state — and losing.

    Sometimes one can win by losing — in sort of an inverse Pyrrhic victory.  This looks like one of those times.

    Organized Labor is the 800-pound gorilla in the Democratic Party, but current party leaders haven’t been paying much attention to Labor’s needs.  The gorilla wants to be fed.  Labor went after a Democrat who had voted against the union position too often, and who also looked vulnerable.

    Not vulnerable enough.  Blanche Lincoln outspent Bill Halter by three-to-one and won the primary by four percent.

    Why isn’t this the loss the pundits proclaimed?  Because Labor showed that it was willing to put its money where it’s mouth is — it was willing to fight.

    Over the last few decades the right wing of the Republican party has pulled the mainstream GOP in its direction through its willingness to fight.  It ran conservatives in the primaries who beat the moderates (the ones that used to call themselves progressive Republicans) even when it meant losing to a Democrat in the general election.

    It sometimes seemed as though there was a “conspiracy” between the Democrats and the right-wing of the Republican Party to decimate the mainstream, moderate wing of the Republican party.

    It worked.  Today’s Republican Party is decidedly to the right of where it was thirty years ago.  And the Democratic Party is to the right of where it would be if it hadn’t elected all those Blue Dog Democrats in districts that are not warm to the real thing.

    Labor may not want to go so far as defeating Democrats — at least not enough to cost the party its majority in Congress.  But it certainly wants the Democrats to stop taking it for granted.  Taking on Blanche Lincoln was one way to send this message, even if it didn’t take her out.

    By fighting Lincoln’s renomination, Organized Labor showed its willingness to take on the challenge of getting better Democrats.  By losing, it won’t get the blame if the Dems lose that seat in November.

    Now if Labor really wants to flex its muscles, it should take on the bigger challenge of re-electing Harry Reid in November.  Senate Majority Leader Reid may not be the best Senator on Labor issues but he’s better than most.  Nevada is a heavily unionized state, as well as one which is suffering a lot in the current recession.  The anti-incumbent mood is strong, but Harry Reid is a valuable incumbent. The pay-off to Labor from significantly helping to re-elect Reid could be really big.

    ©2010 Jo Freeman for SeniorWomen.com