Senior Women Web

Author: SeniorWomenWeb

  • Book Review: Women Making America

    Jo Freeman reviews Women Making America,
    covering women’s history from the Revolution to the present day. Chock
    full of colorful images, it swoops high and low, sometimes mapping the
    forest and sometimes looking at a tree.

  • The Green-Eyed Monster as Constant Companion

    Julia Sneden writes:
    "Perhaps it’s human nature to look around and wish for something you
    don’t have. The alternative would lend to a kind of smugness that is at
    the very least unattractive, and at the most, would lead to a kind of
    stasis. If there were nothing to envy, there would be no reason to grow
    and change."

  • Sightings, Victory Gardens

    Tam Gray writes: "Tennis Ball lettuce, Moon and Stars watermelon and Telephone peas in
    1943; Ernest’s garden in Garden City, LI; the First Lady’s kale,
    shallots and fennel and a culinary historian’s theory, ""The more
    democratic our Presidents have been, the more attention they paid to
    their meals."

  • L’Antico, the Sicilian Confucius

    Rose Mula writes, "No one who has ever heard it can forget the poignant, Passau du tempu ca Berta filava,
    or "The time for Bertha to weave is ended,” roughly equivalent to “Make
    hay while the sun shines,” but probably means that synthetic fibers and
    automated machinery have replaced the loom, so Bertha had better take a
    crash course in computer programming if she expects to find another job."

  • Europeana: Think Culture

    The Europeana website was so overwhelmed by viewers wanting to connect with this site, that it crashed last November. Finally, it is (almost) ready for prime time. Actually, it won’t be until 2010 that it will be officially a complete site. Here’s what it’s about:

    "Europeana.eu is about ideas and inspiration. It links you to 4 million digital items. There are images (paintings, drawings, maps, photos and pictures of museum objects), Texts ( books, newspapers, letters, diaries and archival papers), Sounds (music and spoken word from cylinders, tapes, discs and radio broadcasts), and videos (films, newsreels and TV broadcasts). Some of these are world famous, others are hidden treasures from Europe’s museums and galleries, archives, libraries and audio-visual collections. "

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  • Alaska: “You don’t land at the end of the road without a reason”

    Kristin Nord writes: Drifters, gamblers, adventurers, dreamers and an astonishing roster of
    wildlife. This is the last great frontier, to a great extent, and it
    lives up to that billing with its unfolding stories.

  • CultureWatch, March 2009

    The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry should appeal to all readers of literary fiction; Roseanne McNulty’s story becomes an alternative, secret, history of Ireland. Henry Alford
    is witty and literate, but somehow he has allowed his talents to be
    diffused, by mixing the intensely personal with the reportorial in How to Live; A Search for Wisdom from Old People. Bailey White’s Quite a Year for Plums
    setting is southern Georgia; the characters are a collection of
    psychologically peculiar scarred individuals their inventor has endowed
    with flaws that in spite of being exaggerated don’t become burlesque.
    Online attendance at Shakespeare’s Staging is a feast of images and videos

  • Hydrate Skin to Soothe Winter Itch

    Dermatologist Cynthia Bailey begins a quarterly column: If you give the skin a little extra attention in the winter and employ some simple tips, it will be as soft and hydrated as it is during the warmer and more humid weather of summer

  • Interesting Garden Shopping Web Sites

    Please refer to Linda Coyner’s articles for many more links

    • Blue Poppy Garden – The store and B&B is located in Sedgwick, Maine, overlooking the Benjamin River and Eggemoggin Reach and sells gardening books, tools, garden antiques and objects for the garden, as well as a wide variety of linens, pottery, soaps and other imported items. The store also mail-orders blue poppy plants and seeds to its customers and does flower arranging, too. Their pots are varied and interesting. For example, Mrs. Gaskell’s Wide-Bottom Seedpan and frillies. The bookstore filled with instructive and hard-to-find books in addition to the Taylor’s Guides.

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  • With Hammocks in Mind

    Ferida Wolff writes,  It is winter, now, and the maple branches are bare of
    leaves. I have been yearning for a step-back-in-time hammock, a return to a
    place of beginning and exploration, where one hammock could embrace a whole
    family and that family’s dreams