Authors

  • Joan Fontaine

    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…

  • An Undocumented Childhood by Rose Madeline Mula

    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…

  • Julia Sneden Wrote: Love Your Library

    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…

  • high heels

    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…

  • Vintage jewelry, Wikimedia Commons

    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…

  • ways to grasp a pencil

    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…

  • Captain Charles E. Yeager

    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…

  • stack of books

    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…

  • Cynthia Bailey, Dermatologist’s Tips: Restoring Soft Feet After Wearing Summer’s Sandals

    In my experience, the best skin care product to exfoliate and soften feet is Glytone Heel and Elbow Cream. (Available from your dermatologist or on some professional skin care product web sites like Dermstore.com.)

  • Nursing Homes With Serious Quality Issues

    This webpage offers a list of nursing homes that (a) have had a history of serious quality issues and (b) are included in a special program to stimulate improvements in their quality of care. Please take a minute to review this background information on our “Special Focus Facility” initiative. The background here will help you…

  • Shop at the Museum: The Well-Edited V&A

    The newly stocked and themed shop at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum has a wide variety of items that are inexpensive, light in tone and weight as well as, well, just fun. We bought small items for almost every member of the family at this shop recen…

  • Shopping for Home and Body: Iris Hantverk: How to Brush With Style

    While at Liberty’s bath shop in London we came across this line of brushes for cleaning and bath purposes. They were so appealing that we were delighted to find one for ourselves as well as grandchildren.

  • Craft in America, Part Two, a Virtual Look

    “From Eastern shipwrights to Navajo weavers; from those who work with needles to those who work with sledgehammers, from saddlemakers and banjo-builders to the potter who’s ‘always praying over the kiln’.”

  • Are Thousands Dying from a Lack of Health Inurance? FactCheck.org Examines the Question

    A 2004 study published in the journal Health Affairs looked at data for those age 55 to 64 in the Health and Retirement Survey. It controlled for socioeconomic factors and found the uninsured in the group had a 3 percent higher risk of dying over an eight-year period. The study called uninsurance the third leading…

  • JAMA’s Study of Online Posting of Unprofessional Content by Medical Students

    Violations of patient confidentiality were reported by 13% (6/46). Student use of profanity (52%; 22/42), frankly discriminatory language (48%; 19/40), depiction of intoxication (39%; 17/44), and sexually suggestive material (38%; 16/42) were commonly reported.

  • Women Winemakers: Big House’s Good-Value Selection Grows with Georgetta Dane at the Helm

    “Our goal,” according to Georgetta Dane, “is to trumpet the many underappreciated Mediterranean varieties that express such a rich and varied array of aromas and flavors.”

  • Cemetery Chronicles

    As a young woman, I had the good fortune to accompany my father and his life-long friend on a walk through our hometown cemetery. The warm summer evening, with the sun casting long shadows behind the grave stones, made me feel that life might never end, even though the location insisted otherwise.

  • Relaxing to the Internet

    When asked whether they used the internet to relax and help get their minds off of the recent economic or financial problems, three-quarters (74%) of online economic users said they had done so.