Senior Women Web

Author: SeniorWomenWeb

  • The Needs of Women Veterans Addressed

    Women’s Policy Inc provides a newsletter called The Source, reporting on the legislative issues that impact women and their concerns. What follows are excerpts from one issue covered by Women’s Policy’s monitoring:

    “On June 10, the House Veterans Affairs Committee approved, by voice vote, the Women Veterans Health Care Improvement Act (H.R. 1211). The House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Health approved the measure on June 4, The Senate Veterans Affairs Committee approved a bill with similar provisions (S. 252) on May 21; on May 20, the House Veterans Affairs Committee convened a panel to address the need for specialized services for women veterans.”

    (more…)

  • Risks of Sharing Personal Genetic Information

    A news release from Stanford University’s School of Medicine highlights the ethical issues involved in revealing genetic information online. Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, PhD, senior research scholar at the school’s Center for Biomedical Ethics:

    “Genetic information is unique in that it’s not only relevant for the individuals who receive the information, but also for their family members, their children and even their children’s children.”

    (more…)

  • Zahra Rahnavard demands apology from Iran’s President Ahmadinejad

    Times of London Online – A diminutive 64-year-old grandmother who refuses to be bound by the rigid constraints imposed on women in Iran proved more than a match for the President of the Islamic Republic …

    (more…)

  • Investigating a Reverse Mortgage; The GAO Issues a Report

    The GAO (Government Accountability Office)issued a June 2009 report concerning reverse mortgages. In addition, read an October 2010 posting about a new Reverse Mortgage product, Saver. A New Reverse Mortgage Product and NCOA’s Use Your Home to Stay at Home Booklet:

    REVERSE MORTGAGES Product Complexity and Consumer Protection Issues Underscore Need for Improved Controls over Counseling for Borrowers

    HECMs can provide borrowers with multiple benefits, but they also have substantial costs and are relatively complex. HECMs allow seniors to convert their home equity into flexible cash advances while living in their homes. Additionally, the borrowers or their heirs can fully pay off the HECM by selling the home, even if the amount owed exceeds the current home value. However, HECMs also have large insurance and origination costs. Furthermore, the long-term financial implications of a HECM can be difficult to assess because the borrower’s remaining home equity depends on the amount of cash advances and interest rate and house price trends.

    (more…)

  • Wedding Traditions from Victoria to Diana

    An exhibit from Ohio State University’s Historic Costume and Textiles Collection centers on the wedding dress. The exhibit is divided into seven sections, covering what women (and men) wore beginning with the Early Victorian period and ending with the late 1990s. “Queen Victoria’s marriage in February 1840 is often cited as the marker which began our white wedding dress tradition. Her choice of a plain white satin dress and orange blossom wreath headdress with lace veil was shockingly plain by royal standards and a significant departure from the royal tradition of a dress embroidered with silver and encrusted with jewels, a jeweled crown, and velvet robes trimmed with fur.” (more…)

  • Decor Shopping Using Surface Graphics

    We were thinking about the decor transition that children go through, moving from the under ten period of primary colors and themes to something more sophisticated. Blik is a standout example of the decal used as a decorating technique that’s removable.

  • It’s a Gray Area, Part II

    Roberta McReynolds writes: One section of the aisle was devoted to ending the ‘brassiness’ problem. I didn’t even know what brassiness was before walking into the store. Now I stood the risk of losing sleep over the fear my hair might look like an alloy of copper and zinc

  • The Woes of the Single Humor Writer

    Every trade has its tools. For a humor writer, the three most important requirements are a sense of the absurd, a computer or word processor, and a spouse — not necessarily in that order. Though the first two are key, without the last one, a humorist is truly handicapped. Not only are mates a treasure trove of comic ideas just by themselves, they can also provide children, who are an endless source of hilarity (as long as you keep that afore-mentioned sense of the absurd.)

    (more…)

  • Now that We’ve Taken Back America, What Do We Do With It?

    Jo Freeman writes: The big story at the eighth annual conference of progressives is that it changed its name from “Take Back America” to the oxymoronic “America’s Future Now.” Organizers of the Washington, DC meeting feel that with the election of Barack Obama and the return of Congress to the Democratic Party, progressives have taken back America. The next question is, what to do with it? (more…)

  • The Judge, the Girl Sleuth and Scorned Literature

    “I would start waiting with great anticipation for the newest [Nancy Drew mystery] one, but mine was a local branch and they didn’t get the new one right away. That’s when mom began to buy me them, because she saw how enamored I was with them … I had like two shelves of them before I turned to other reading.”

    — Circuit Court Justice Sonia Sotomayer

    Although Nancy Drew was certainly not politically correct at times, the University of Maryland’s Girls’ Series Books Rediscovered exhibit, Nancy Drew and Friends, demonstrates (and denigrates) the series’ appeal. Today some of its conventions would not be employed in teen fiction:

    (more…)