Cynthia Bailey M.D.

  • Joan Fontaine

    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

    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: 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…

  • high heels

    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…

  • Vintage jewelry, Wikimedia Commons

    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…

  • ways to grasp a pencil

    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…

  • Captain Charles E. Yeager

    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…

  • stack of books

    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…

  • Worms Deserve Respect; A Banner Year for Them

    Worms are great recyclers. Redworms are industrious creatures. Vermicomposting is becoming more widespread. Why not use worms to eat our garbage and transform it into usable addition to our gardens? It’s a win-win situation. It seems to be a banner year for worms.

  • Stand Your Ground: The 23 States That Have Sweeping Self-Defense Laws Just Like the State of Florida

    Many of the laws were originally advocated as a way to address domestic abuse cases — how could a battered wife retreat if she was attacked in her own home? Such legislation also has been recently pushed by the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights groups.   

  • Behind the Scenes: White House State Dinner in the Making

    “White House pastry chef William Yosses and his team have prepared a lemon sponge pudding in the British style, which they are serving with Newtown Pippin Apples, a variety that was grown by some of our founding fathers, and was even sent as a gift to Queen Victoria in 1838”

  • Turning to Fairness: NWLC Report on Insurance Discrimination Against Women Today & Affordable Care Act

    Even with maternity coverage excluded, nearly a third of plans examined charge 25- and 40-year-old women at least 30% more than men for the same coverage and in some cases, the difference is far greater. For example, one company charged 25-year-old women 85% more than men for the same coverage, again excluding maternity coverage altogether

  • Consider When Doing Your Taxes: GAO Notes IRS Needs to Enhance Internal Control over Financial Reporting and Taxpayer Data

    IRS implemented numerous controls and procedures intended to protect key financial and tax-processing systems; nevertheless, control weaknesses … continue to jeopardize confidentiality, integrity and availability of the financial and sensitive taxpayer information

  • In the Company of Animals: Art, Literature & Music at the Morgan

    Whether it is Albrecht Dürer’s iconic Adam and Eve, Edgar Allen Poe’s unforgettable The Raven, or such seminal stories from our childhood as Jean de Brunhoff’s Babar and E.B. White’s The Trumpet of the Swan, artists have employed animals throughout history to communicate important ideas and themes.

  • Elaine Soloway’s Caregiving Series: Matching Bands

    Our gold wedding rings still encircle our fingers, but we’ve added an accessory just a few inches below these symbols of our union. We wear matching black flex bands with 2-inch-wide stainless metal plates. The engraving on the the inside of Tommy’s reads: “Call Wife, Elaine Soloway,” and my cell phone number.

  • Making Us Into Make-Believers: Hype and Hope; Before and After

    What did women do before such hype and hope? How did our aging female ancestors cope when they looked into a glass darkly? By what right did a weathered face go from possessing “character” to pleading for revitalization? And when did we buy into the expectation of living longer, while not looking as though we…

  • In Case The Word ‘Energy’ Comes Up, This Is Not Drill, Baby, Drill

    We do occasionally list GAO reports for our audience, but generally they focus on retirement and health issues. Today’s report by the ‘watchdog’ listed the number of energy-related initiatives that were implemented in the fiscal year of 2010.

  • Culture Watch Reviews

    Daniel Handler specializes in a light-semi-irreverent tone that manages also to be perceptive and truthful, even as it entertains, in Why We Broke Up, a story of teenage love gone awry. Richard Morgan has crafted a story of the life of Daniel Boone in Boone, A Biography, to rival the best fiction, while demonstrating the…