Book Reviews
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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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Testimonies: Choosing to Work During Retirement & Extending the Bush Tax Cuts
Baucus pressed witnesses on the need to ensure that tax rate cuts intended to benefit small businesses really do benefit small businesses and not a small number of extremely wealthy individuals receiving income from large businesses.
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Scandal Sandals and Lady Slippers: A History of Delman Shoes
A pair of suede, instep strap sandals from circa 1939 sport red, white, green, and blue color sections, four tiny bows are sequenced delicately down the vamp while a narrow ankle buckle strap, oval toe, and triangular heel maintain the shoe’s elegant silhouette.
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A blonde’s dark secret: How a seductive beauty changed into a demure lady, 300 years after she was painted.
The painting that was revealed was hardly a likely portrait of an artist’s daughter. (It might even be a courtesan.) Nor does the painting look much like a work by Palma Vecchio. It is now attributed to an unknown Italian artist.
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New Overdraft Rules, Credit Card Rules and Home Mortgage Public Hearings
If you do not opt in (agree), beginning August 15, 2010, your bank’s standard overdraft practices won’t apply to your everyday debit card and ATM transactions. These transactions typically will be declined when you don’t have enough money in your account, but you will not be charged overdraft fees.
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A guide to what the state ballots will be presenting to voters in 2010:
“Voters in Missouri will get the nation’s first chance to weigh in on the federal health care law when they take up a measure August 3 that takes aim at the new mandate that everyone have insurance. Nationwide, more than 120 questions are slated to appear on statewide ballots this fall on topics ranging from…
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The Volcker Rule: Proposals to Limit “Speculative” Proprietary Trading by Banks
The bills would limit the ability of commercial banking institutions and their affiliated companies and subsidiaries to engage in trading unrelated to customer needs and investing in and sponsoring hedge funds or private equity funds. Such an approach has been referred to as the “Volcker Rule”
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A Discussion of To Kill a Mockingbird
Horton Foote: “I just felt it could have been set in my little town in Texas. We had a large black population. We had all the prejudices that the book exposes and, I think, a lot of the virtues which were Southern virtues that were this sense of place, this sense of really belonging to…
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What’s Going on with Young People Today? The Long and Twisting Path to Adulthood
In the United States, in particular, parents contribute sizable material and emotional support through their children’s late twenties and into their early thirties. Such flows are to be expected in more privileged families, but what is now striking are the significant flows — and associated strains — in middle-class families at a time when families…
