Senior Women Web

Author: SeniorWomenWeb

  • The IDF Medical Corps Team at Work in Haiti’s Soccer Stadium With Map

    We viewed an MSNBC Rachel Maddow interview with Dr. Nancy Snyderman in Haiti during which she praised the Israeli operation in that country, having brought and set up the components needed for a full operating hospital and community clinic:

    The Jerusalem Post described the units:

    “Since opening its doors on Saturday, the 121-person IDF Medical Corps team at the hospital have treated 200 wounded, performed 25 life-saving surgeries and facilitated three births. The large field hospital and community clinic is located in a soccer stadium in the center of town.”

    “They have been joined by professionals of IsraAID/FIRST, which has been operating in Port-au-Prince for the last five days. On Monday, nine volunteers from Los Angeles joined the Israeli delegation in the field hospital.”

    “Two rescue crews led by the commanders of the Home Front Command Search and Rescue Unit are also operating in the disaster-stricken area in cooperation with the local residents.”

    OC Home Front Command Maj.- Gen. Yair Golan left Monday night to head a second IDF delegation to assist the ongoing relief efforts in Haiti, and will deliver staff reinforcements and additional medicine and equipment to the field hospital in Port-au-Prince.”

    Today two young girls were located who had been trapped in a collapsed building for more than five days:

    Pictures can be viewed at the Israel Defense Force Spokesperson’s site and in addition, there is a Google map of the hospital located in the soccer stadium close to the airport.

  • A Year by Any Other Name is Still a Year

    Julia Sneden writes:  For several days around the turn of the year, the media folks seemed to be very concerned with what the world should call the year 2010. Rarely has so small a matter occasioned such a lot of hot air as this supposedly momentous decision: Will it be “Two Thousand and Ten,” or “Twenty-ten?”

  • J. R. Beard, 1800-1876 The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Negro Patriot of Hayti: Comprising an Account of the Struggle for Liberty in the Island, and a Sketch of Its History to the Present Period

    From The Commencement of the Struggle for Liberty

    The Full Establishment of Toussaint L’Ouverture’s Power

    Chapter 1

    I AM about to sketch the history and character of one of those extraordinary men, whom Providence, from time to time, raises up for the accomplishment of great, benign, and far-reaching results. I am about to supply the clearest evidence that there is no insuperable barrier between the light and the dark-coloured tribes of our common human species. I am about to exhibit, in a series of indisputable facts, a proof that the much misunderstood and downtrodden negro race are capable of the loftiest virtues, and the most heroic efforts. I am about to present a tacit parallel between white men and dark men, in which the latter will appear to no disadvantage. Neither eulogy, however, nor disparagement is my aim, but the simple love of justice. It is a history — not an argument — that I purpose to set forth. In prosecuting the narrative, I shall have to conduct the reader through scenes of aggression, resistance, outrage, revenge, bloodshed, and cruelty, that grieve and wound the hear, and exciting the deepest pity for the sufferers, raise irrepressible indignation against ambition, injustice and tyranny — the scourges of the world, and specially the sources of complicated and horrible calamities to the natives of Africa.

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  • Mechanical Puzzles, Brainteasers & Ingenious Objects Including a POW Escape Aid in a Rolling Ball Puzzle

    The Indiana University Lilly Library and the accompanying Digital Library Program hold the Jerry Slocum Mechanical Puzzle Collection which embodies a lifetime pursuit for the intriguing, the perplexing, and the compelling. “Unlike word or jigsaw puzzles, mechanical puzzles are hand-held objects that must be manipulated to achieve a specific goal. The Rubik’s cube and tangrams are popular examples. Confounding and delightful, precise and whimsical, the puzzles in the Slocum collection represent centuries of mathematical, social, and recreational history from across five continents.”

    Jerry Slocum retired as Acting President, Transportation Sector, Hughes Aircraft Co. after a 38 year career at Hughes. His career began with Jerry designing cockpits and cockpit displays for military fighter aircraft. For the last six years at Hughes he was responsible for the application of Hughes aerospace technology and expertise to the development of General Motors automotive products. Jerry served as a member of the SAE Technical Board and the SAE Aerospace Board.

    We chose some puzzle examples that intrigued us, many for their historical references:

    The Maze Puzzle made in England of embossed brass in  1888 where the object is to remove the ring by passing it from hole to hole. Puzzle Pup, in the cast iron and sheet metal classification has a similar goal, that of removing the collar from the ‘pup’. The American Way Rolling Ball Puzzle from 1930 had as its object the balance of the scales of justice. Another rolling ball example was The Dionne Quintuplets puzzle wherein the player must place the five ‘babies’  in the carriage.

    A more intriguing and event-oriented 1914 puzzle from England was the Niagara Puzzle with File and Compass. The player was directed to “Roll all the balls from the bank into the whirlpool (hole). The hack saw blade and the compass, along with a map, were hidden inside Journet puzzles that were sent to British soldiers in German prison camps during WWI to help them escape.”

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  • Are Those Two Senior Women Models We Spy?

    We forget (uh,oh) exactly how we arrived at England’s The Guardian today, but nevertheless, it’s a favored publication. After reading an article on why older women are paying more for car insurance because of a higher number of claims, we migrated to thoughts of making a soufflé and then this:

    Fashion for all ages: The one must-have item for all occasions

    No apologies for those two older women, no explanations as to why they were part of the content and even more important, no pats on the back for including them … such as a special AGE issue that reluctantly includes a few very glamorous models and super-successful women in pricey outfits. Or a special section of the old dames, segregated in the ghetto of ‘oh well, guess we have to include some over-the-hill (fashionwise) women.’

    If older women are part of editorial fashion content, they’re usually on the cusp of old age and heaven forbid, if they were ever referred to as … gasp!… elderly. We like that they’re fashionably dressed from top to high-heeled toe or smart flats, with attractive jackets. They look as smart as the younger women they’re surrounded by. Perhaps US fashion editors might take a tip from their British counterparts.

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  • My Mother’s Cookbook: Val’s Refrigerator Rolls, Vernie’s Brunch Casserole, Cherry Pie with Crisco Crust and Danish Puff

    Margaret Cullison writes: Mom had always enjoyed her female friends; they mattered even more after my father’s death. Two of them were sisters who never married and lived in their Danish grandparents house. As Mom adapted to being a single woman, her friendship with them deepened.

  • Traveling With Living Gold Press and Adventuresome Women

    We happened on The Living Gold Press library of history and travel books that highlight, among other landscapes and characters, some adventuresome women. The page, What Phillip Marlow Saw Along Highway 99, makes the introduction to one of them:

    “Now oranges had been around since the mission days, but those were seedy and sour. In 1871, Eliza Tibbets, one of the very early colonists coming to Riverside, brought west with her (besides her husband Luther) cuttings of the Washington Navel orange. The navel orange came from Brazil by way of the US Dept. of Agriculture in Washington DC, hence its name. In their new home, the fruits of these cuttings were found to be meaty, sweet, and seedless. They were an immediate sensation.”

    And then we make the acquaintance of Mary Arnold and Mabel Reed In the Land of the Grasshopper Song: “A classic tale of two women school teachers in the early days of the rough and remote Klamath River country of northwestern California. Hired by the Indian Service to teach for the Karuk tribe in 1908, on arrival they found themselves to be the only white women in sixty miles.”

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  • CultureWatch: Talking About Detective Fiction and The Museum of Innocence

    CultureWatch:  P.D. James, in Talking About Detective Fiction, writes “if it is true, as the evidence suggests, that the detective story flourishes best in the most difficult of times, we may well be at the beginning of a new Golden Age.”  The Museum of  Innocence Orhan Pamuk is from the outset a book arranged by artifice.  The reviewer notes that “It is the first book I’ve read where the author inserts himself so directly.”

  • Cinderella Needs a New Narrative

    Nichola Gutgold writes:  If Cinderella only had had access to the Internet! She wouldn’t have needed a Fairy Godmother, and she probably would have operated a Web business that would have given her enough confidence (and capital) to tell that mean stepfamily where they could shove their broomstick.

  • Why Are Some Drugs Doubling in Cost?

    “A 2008 congressional hearing by the Joint Economic Committee drew attention to some small market prescription drugs that had an extraordinary price increase — a price increase of 100 percent or more at a single point in time. GAO was asked to examine extraordinary price increases for brand-name prescription drugs.”

    What GAO Found

    From 2000 to 2008, 416 brand-name drug products — different drug strengths and dosage forms of the same drug brands—had extraordinary price increases. These 416 brand-name drug products represented 321 different drug brands. The number of brand-name drug products that had these extraordinary price increases represents half of 1 percent of all brand-name drug products. The number of extraordinary price increases each year more than doubled from 2000 to 2008 and most of the extraordinary price increases ranged between 100 percent and 499 percent. Almost 90 percent of all brand-name drug products that had an extraordinary price increase sustained the new higher price — by either having another increase in price or remaining at the increased price.

    More than half of the brand-name drug products that had extraordinary price increases were in just three therapeutic classes — central nervous system, anti-infective, and cardiovascular. These therapeutic classes include drugs used to treat conditions such as fungal or viral infections, and heart disease. About half of the extraordinary price increases were for brand-name drug products that were purchased from drug manufacturers or wholesalers, repackaged, and resold in smaller packages to health care providers such as hospitals or physicians. However, some drug repackagers serve a niche in the drug market, and therefore may have a small share of the market in a therapeutic class. The majority of all extraordinary price increases were for drugs priced less than $25 per unit; however, a full course of treatment for some of these drugs could total several thousand dollars.

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