Art and Museums

Art and Museums stories for senior women and others

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…
Maryam Mirzakhani: “It’s like solving a puzzle or connecting the dots in a detective case”

The first woman to ever win the Fields Medal – known as the ‘Nobel Prize of mathematics’ – in recognition of Mirzakhani’s contributions to the understanding of the symmetry of curved surfaces. It has implications for the study of prime numbers and cryptography. Despite the breadth of applications of her work, she had said that…
A Scaffold of Silk Protein: Tufts Bioengineers Create Functional 3D Brain-like Tissue

As a first demonstration of its potential, researchers used the brain-like tissue to study chemical and electrical changes that occur immediately following traumatic brain injury and, in a separate experiment, changes that occur in response to a drug. The tissue could provide a superior model for studying normal brain function as well as injury and…
The Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec at the MoMA: Women From All Walks of Life

Lautrec’s work allows entry into many facets of Parisian life, from politics to the rise of popular entertainment in the form of cabarets and café-concerts. Lautrec made the venues and performers of late-19th-century Paris famous through his posters and prints, and in turn, it was his work for them that brought him the greatest acclaim.
Violence Against Women Act Next Steps: A Judiciary Hearing at the Request of Gabrielle Giffords

Dr. Jacquelyn Campbell: “In leaving out abusive dating partners, current federal firearm prohibitions ignore the perpetrators of a large and growing share of intimate partner homicides …S. 1290, the Protecting Domestic Violence and Stalking Victims Act, would expand our national domestic violence laws to include both former and current dating partners.”
Exploring Relationships and Social Networks: Marriage Satisfaction and Divorce

“This study explores the relationship between using social networks sites (SNS), marriage satisfaction and divorce rates using survey data of married individuals and state-level data from the United States. Results show that using SNS is negatively correlated with marriage quality and happiness, and positively correlated with experiencing a troubled relationship and thinking about divorce. These…
Defining Powerhouse Fruits and Vegetables: A Nutrient Density Approach

National nutrition guidelines emphasize consumption of powerhouse fruits and vegetables (PFV), foods most strongly associated with reduced chronic disease risk; yet efforts to define PFV are lacking. This study developed and validated a classification scheme defining PFV as foods providing, on average, 10% or more daily value per 100 kcal of 17 qualifying nutrients.
Celebrating a New Clark Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts

Sterling and Francine Clark began what is now a world-renowned collection of American and European art, including prints and drawings, sculpture, decorative arts, and paintings — most notably French Impressionist masterworks by artists such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, and Camille Pissarro. They also committed to the pivotal concept…
For Weekends, the Dark of Night and Beyond: Project Gutenberg’s Best Books Ever Listings

In mid-2014, Project Gutenberg volunteers undertook a significant revitalization of their bookshelves. These are groupings of eBooks on particular topics, or in particular genres, or otherwise having something in common. This can be a great way to discover books you were unaware of, and it is also an efficient way of finding some of the…
Overdrawing Your Account? Small Debit Purchases Lead to Expensive Overdraft Charges

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released a report that raises concerns about the impact of opting in to overdraft services for debit card and ATM transactions. The study found that the majority of debit card overdraft fees are incurred on transactions of $24 or less and that the majority of overdrafts are repaid within three…
Watching Schrodinger’s Cat Die: “Gently recording the cat’s paw prints both makes it die, or come to life”

If you put a cat inside an opaque box and make his life dependent on a random event, when does the cat die? When the random event occurs, or when you open the box? Though common sense suggests the former, quantum mechanics — or at least the most common “Copenhagen” interpretation enunciated by Danish physicist…