Current Reading
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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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Study: Third of Big Groundwater Basins in Distress
About one third of Earth’s largest groundwater basins are being rapidly depleted by human consumption, despite having little accurate data about how much water remains in them, according to two new studies led by the University of California, Irvine (UCI), using data from NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites. Editor’s Note: We would…
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Congressional Bills Introduced: Abortion, Encouraging STEM Education, Affordable Birth Control and Child Care Credits
Issues Covered: A bill to provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception; a bill to protect pain-capable unborn children; a bill to strengthen the provisions relating to child labor; a bill to provide grants to eligible local educational agencies to encourage female students to pursue studies and careers in science, mathematics,…
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Flaming June Has Taken Up Residence in the Oval Room at the Frick
At the end of his career, the British artist Frederic Leighton painted the now-iconic image of a sleeping woman in a vivid orange gown. This nineteenth-century masterpiece embodies the modern philosophy of “art for art’s sake,” the belief that the value of art lies in its aesthetic qualities rather than in its subject matter. The…
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Linking Released Inmates to Health Care
An increasing number of states are striving to connect released prisoners to health care programs on the outside. Frequently, that means enrolling them in Medicaid and scheduling appointments for medical services before they are released. Some state programs — in Massachusetts and Connecticut, for example — provide help to all outgoing prisoners. Programs in some…
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Portraiture at the Morgan: While Wearing a Cape, Asleep, In A Fur-trimmed Coat, Holding a Skull and Tulip
The pieces range from early studies for paintings and sculptures to highly-finished drawings that stand alone as works in their own right. What all of the portraits share, however, is the image of a likeness of someone worth remembering, bearing testimony to the deeply human sentiment to leave a mark. Among the many extraordinary works…
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Rembrandt? The Case of Saul and David, a Patchwork of Canvases
Last year Ernst van de Wetering published the work as entirely by Rembrandt, executed in circa 1646 and circa 1652. The condition of Saul and David was not ideal. Although structurally sound, it certainly looked the worse for wear. The prominent vertical join and added piece were disfiguring. The paint surface was heavily flattened throughout,…
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Is the Queen Bee Lack of Effectiveness In ‘Availability’ to Blame? Bee Informed Partnership Releases Another Discouraging Report About Bee Colony Loss
Beekeepers do not only lose colonies in the winter but also throughout the summer, sometimes at significant levels. In the summer of 2014 (April – October), colony losses surpassed winter losses at 27.4% (total summer loss), with summer losses of 19.8% in 2013. Importantly, commercial beekeepers appear to consistently lose greater numbers of colonies over…
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“Being captured is not just for journalists”: A Hostage Policy Review Reportedly Near Completion
Editor’s Note: We missed this program when originally presented, but wish to highlight it now when there is reported a review of hostage policy is nearing completion: Diane Foley, mother of executed US journalist James Foley, and Debra Tice, mother of missing freelance journalist Austin Tice, talked with Judy Woodruff, co-anchor and managing editor of…
