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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‘Castle Doctrine’ Laws Provoke Heated Debate
When Sarah Dawn McKinley, of Blanchard, Oklahoma, shot and killed a burglar breaking into her home on New Year’s Eve, she was spared prosecution by the state’s “castle doctrine” law, which protects people who defend themselves against intruders. Oklahoma has one of the nation’s most expansive castle doctrine laws
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MIT’s Agnes Suit, An Instrumented Aware Car and the Miss Daisy Driving Simulator
These tools can be used to trigger driver feedback systems that are under development. Sensing systems include: six video cameras for operator monitoring, measures of vehicle velocity, lane position, radar; driver physiology issues includes heart rate, respiration rate and eye tracking
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The Strange Life of Objects: The Art of Annette Lemieux
She paints, sculpts, manipulates found photographs and objects — she’s likely to spin us via a vintage school-room globe into a polka dotted galaxy, or line up a troop of helmets on wheels like fledglings being patterned along an intractable trajectory. There is stagecraft, mime, and performance art sometimes at work.
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Do Viewers Want to See Beautiful Politicians? Physical Attractiveness Has an Effect on TV Exposure
A study shows that physical attractiveness has an effect on television exposure: the better looking the politician, the more TV coverage he or she gains … for every additional score on the ‘physical attractiveness index’, the politician’s television exposure rises by 11.6%.
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Fed Reserve Governor Elizabeth Duke Suggests Some Some Housing Market Recovery Proposals
“Although there is no miracle cure here, these actions have the potential to help the economy recuperate more quickly than I currently expect it to, moving us closer to full employment sooner and improving the lives of many Americans.”
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States Struggle With National Sex Offender Law
Most states are continuing to voice their objections to what the federal law expects of them. It is expected that states will continue to press Congress for more discretion about which offenders to place on the three-tiered national registry, and for how long. cbsphilly.com Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett signed a bill last month making Pennsylvania…
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Rating the Other Person’s Attractiveness and Perceived Interest
In a new study that will appear in Psychological Science, men who thought of themselves as attractive overestimated a woman’s desire for them. The more attractive the woman was to the man, the more likely he was to overestimate her interest in him.
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CAP’s 20 New Jobs Ideas, Meeting the Jobs Challange
Launch a rehab-to-rent program to turn tens of thousands of government-owned foreclosed homes into affordable rental housing, stabilize neighborhoods, and put construction workers back on the job: 20,000 new jobs a year. Protect funding for community health centers over the next five years to provide health and related services at clinics and in the local…
