Articles
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Rose Madeline Mula: If You Can’t Stand the Heat
Rose Madeline Mula Writes: “It was with considerable trepidation, therefore, that I entered the kitchen of my hostess, the legendary actress, Joan Fontaine, one long-ago Thanksgiving morning, to offer my assistance. Acting was not Miss Fontaine’s only talent. Not by a long shot. She was also a hole-in-one golfer, a prize-winning fisherwoman, a hot air…
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An Undocumented Childhood by Rose Madeline Mula
Rose Mula Writes: Some people never leave home without their American Express card; I never leave home without a camera. Digitized pictures of the twenty-five countries and forty-plus states of America that I’ve visited since my first tour of exotic New Hampshire constantly flash on my computer monitors and digital frames throughout my home, helping…
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Julia Sneden Wrote: Love Your Library
Julia Sneden Wrote: My mind’s eye can still see the face of the Children’s Librarian, although I have long since forgotten her name. We will be wise to continue to back up our knowledge of history and literature and art and science with hard copy. She kept up with my reading level, suggesting writers and…
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Julia Sneden Wrote: If The Shoe Fits … You Can Bet It’s Not Fashionable
Julia Sneden Wrote: My mother was a mini Imelda Marcos. She kept upwards of 40 pairs of shoes well into her 80’s, and was crushed when she had to give up high heels following a heart attack at the age of 89. Her sole criterion in buying shoes was style, not comfort, and she was…
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Joan L.Cannon Wrote: A Family Inheritance: More Than ‘Things’ … Emblems of Our Lives
Joan Cannon wrote: As one advances in years, one accumulates possessions the way a caddis fly larva accumulates grit. The glue that makes us carry it all along with us is in a way self-secreted as well. However, it’s psychic rather than physical — emotional rather than material. Perhaps the most obvious example is a…
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Julia Sneden Wrote: Old Dogs, New Tricks
Julia Sneden wrote: At the age of 37, I started a new career as a kindergarten teacher. My first day on the job, the lead teacher, who was in her 70’s and scared me every bit as much as she scared the children, watched me writing a note. “You’ll have to change the way you…
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Joan Cannon Writes: Finding the Right Excuse; Committing Words to Paper Because …
Joan Cannon Writes: Think of the poets and novelists and playwrights whose words sink into the consciousness of thousands and even millions and remain there, as emblems, guides, beacons of hope or warnings of disasters, and the excuse (as if one is needed) presents itself. Maybe there’s information or a revelation for some unknown viewer…
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Joan Cannon Asked: What is a Book Club? An Old-Fashioned Book Report? A Program Given By an Author? What Is the Accepted Practice?
Joan L. Cannnon wrote: A year or so ago, I was invited to attend a tea given by the combined membership of all the book clubs in the town where I now live. A presentation was scheduled for the proprietor of the much-loved local independent book store cum gift shop. She is a legend in…
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Face Value, Portraiture in the Age of Abstraction: A Startling Freshness and A Touch of Defiance
The National Portrait Gallery is featuring mid-20th century artists who were reinventing portraiture at a moment when almost everyone agreed that figuration was dead as a progressive art form. The Gallery has gathered more than 50 paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture from approximately 1945 to 1975 to demonstrate the innovations of American portraiture despite the…
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Gatsby to Garp: Our Doubt Is Our Passion, and Our Passion is Our Task. The Rest is the Madness of Art
Gatsby to Garp examines the vibrant American literary landscape of the twentieth century, a period that encompassed a remarkable explosion of creativity, and explores such topics as language and style, geography and setting, literary identity, and relationships among writers. By looking at the literary output of the entire century through a series of vignettes, connections…
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Online Food Reviews Reveal Addiction Metaphors and Sensual Imagery
Stanford scholar Dan Jurafsky found that the words used in online restaurant reviews provide a surprising source of insight into human psychology. While positive reviews of expensive restaurants were rife with sensual and sexy metaphors, the good food at cheap restaurants prompted references to drugs.
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Net Curtaining, Upholstery Fabric and Parachute Silk During WWII: Wedding Dresses 1775-2014
The V&A’s exhibition traces the development of the fashionable white wedding dress and its interpretation by leading couturiers and designers over the last two centuries. The exhibition features some of the earliest examples of wedding fashion including a silk satin court dress (1775) and a ‘polonaise’ style brocade gown with straw bergère hat (1780. The…
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The Scout Report: Folger, Math, Yale Writing, Portraiture & Art Techniques, British Colonialism Images and The Quabbin Reservoir
Can you use a popular book to explore interfaces between science, citizen action, public health, and the US Legal system? The Science in the Courtroom makes it possible; Interested in integers? Fascinated by fractals? Consult MIT’s OpenCourseWare Math website; Folger Digital Texts visitors will find a source code that allows new noncommercial Shakespeare projects and…
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What is a Gender Mainstreaming Pilot District? Transforming Housing and Neighborhood Design
Traditional urban design tends to separate living spaces and commercial spaces into separate zones, which results in large distances between homes, markets, schools, and other urban spaces. Some urban designers have created housing and neighborhoods with on-site child-care and elder-care facilities, shops for basic everyday needs, and often primary-care medical facilities. “When we consider gender…
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Boots and Moccasins: An Unlikely Alliance Against the Keystone Pipeline
Thousands of people joined the farmers, ranchers, and tribal leaders of the Cowboy and Indian Alliance for a ceremonial procession along the National Mall to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. The procession was the largest event yet of the five-day Reject and Protect encampment. “Today, boots and moccasins showed President Obama an unlikely alliance has…
