Book Reviews

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

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: 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
More Women On UK Company Boards; Could It have Made a Difference in the Banking Crisis?

“We believe the lack of diversity on the boards of many, if not most, of our major financial institutions, may have heightened the problems of ‘group-think’ and made effective challenge and scrutiny of executive decisions less effective.”
Love Your Library

A child who loves to read may beg for just a few more minutes so that she can finish the chapter before lights-out. If you refuse her, she may well sneak a flashlight and her book under the covers. It’s a minor dilemma, but a parent must ultimately decide: do you punish the deception, or…
VA Has Taken Steps to Make Services Available to Women Veterans, but Needs to Revise Key Policies and Improve Oversight Processes

For example, officials at VA medical facilities reported that space constraints have raised issues affecting the provision of health care services to women veterans, particularly related to ensuring their privacy and safety.
Cancer and the Media; How Does the News Report on Treatment and Outcomes?

News reports about cancer frequently discuss aggressive treatment and survival but rarely discuss treatment failure, adverse events, end-of-life care, or death.
Resolving Work-Life Conflicts; It’s Time for Policies to Match Modern Family Needs

Families have for too long struggled to make their jobs fit their family life as the institutions around them continue to assume that the typical worker has a stay-at-home spouse and that the typical caregiver has a full-time breadwinner for income support.
Woman of Note: Nancy Pelosi, the woman referred to as having a spine of steel and a love of dark chocolate

“Pelosi began an unbelievable marathon of meetings that would last two months. She hunkered down with the House Progressive Caucus, the Conservative Blue Dog Coalition, regional groups, anti-abortion lawmakers. Van Hollen says she would gather people in a room and keep them there until they reached agreement.”
Review: Field Notes From Elsewhere by Mark C. Taylor

From the razor’s edge between what we know and what we absolutely cannot know and the coping with dread draws the reader to viewpoints often far from ordinary consideration, though no distance at all from what is vital to humanity.
An EPI Paper, Unfair China Trade Costs Local Jobs

n terms of total jobs displaced, California was first, with 370,000 jobs lost, followed by Texas, New York, Illinois, and Florida, which all lost more than 100,000 jobs.”
The NRDC asks: How Green Are Your Jeans? We Ask Do You Use Them for Insulation?

The average woman has eight pairs in her closet. Chances are that to make those jeans, cotton crops were drenched in pesticides; fibers were stained with toxic dyes …
Untangling the Web — Patients, Doctors, and the Internet

This perspective is written by MDs Pamela Hartzband and Jerome Groopman for the New England Journal of Medicine: But many patients have not fared so well. One woman with recently diagnosed lupus told us, “I really don’t want to read what’s on the Inte…