Elaine Soloway

Elaine Soloway’s Author Page

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…
Rekindling Their Power: The Comeback Governors of California, Iowa and Oregon

The trio, whose average age is 67, consists of California’s Jerry Brown, Iowa’s Terry Branstad and Oregon’s John Kitzhaber, representing insider experience and familiarity in a year more commonly associated with barn-storming newcomers like Malloy, Haley and the Tea Party.
To Submit, or Not to Submit? That Was the Right Question – But Was It Sexist?

During the Republican debate conservative columnist Byron York asked candidate Michele Bachmann: “As president, would you be submissive to your husband?” Bachmann evaded the question, saying that submissive really meant respect, and that both she and her husband respected each other.
Magical Jewelry on Display: A Nubian conch shell amulet, Egyptian Pectoral and a Hathor-headed crystal pendant

Ornaments made of ivory, shell, and rock crystal were prized in antiquity, while jewelry made of diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, rubies, and pearls became fashionable in later years. Amber could cure maladies, coral could safeguard children, an animal’s tooth or claw could invest the wearer with strength and ferocity, and gold and silver invoked the cosmic…
John Muir’s A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf and the A Walk in the Wild Exhibit

I Had long been looking from the wildwoods and gardens of the Northern States to those of the warm South, and at last, all draw-backs overcome, I set forth [from Indianapolis] on the first day of September, 1867, joyful and free, on a thousand-mile walk to the Gulf of Mexico.
CultureWatch Review — In Defense of Women

Reviewer Jill Norgren writes:In this season of television re-runs, devotees of Law and Order or The Good Wife would do well to turn off the tube, and sit down with Gertner’s book, In Defense of Women: Memoirs of an Unrepentant Advocate. They might pull an all-nighter
Women in STEM: A Gender Gap to Innovation

Women with STEM jobs earned 33 percent more than comparable women in non-STEM jobs — considerably higher than the STEM premium for men. Although women fill close to half of all jobs in the US economy, they hold less than 25 percent of STEM jobs.
Driving Miss Daisy: Providing Alternative Transportation Services for Seniors

Many of the drivers who volunteer to help seniors in the ITN program are themselves elderly. By participating, they earn credits that they can store and use later as they grow older, or donate to family members or the poor. Seniors who use the service pay an annual membership fee of $40 for an individual,…
I Love Lucy: An American Legend

In celebration of the 60th anniversary of the show’s debut, the Library of Congress presents a new exhibition, I Love Lucy: An American Legend. Ball’s biographer, Kathleen Brady, relates her training by Buster Keaton who “drilled her in the mantra that was the foundation of her fabled comic timing: Listen, React, then Act.”
A Book-length Soapbox for Poets

When poetry press Canarium Books found itself sold out of two of its most recent titles, it was a little surprised. When those books won majorliterary prizes from the Poetry Society of America and the Griffin Trust, Canarium’s founders were ecstatic. (Photo: Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service) This morning the police came for…
Nature or Nurture: What More Likely Determines Your Longevity?

People with exceptional longevity did not have healthier habits than the comparison group in terms of body mass index, smoking, physical activity, or diet. However, for women, 9.6 percent of centenarians were obese versus 16.2 percent of the ‘control’ group.