Ferida Wolff
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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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Floor Action, Hearings & Bills Introduced: Terrorist Financing; Terrorist Sanctuaries, Threat to US Homeland & Sexual Violence
This Week: The International Megan’s Law to Prevent Demand for Child Sex Trafficking (H.R. 515) and a resolution condemning the ongoing sexual violence against women and children perpetrated by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria militants (S. Res. 310); Floor Action: Health – This week, the House is scheduled to consider S. 799, the Protecting…
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Have You Heard the Term Daesh for ISIS, ISIL? Terrorist Designations of Groups Operating in Syria
“The Department will also add the following aliases to the ISIL listing: the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), ad-Dawla al-Islamiyya fi al-‘Iraq wa-sh-Sham, Daesh, Dawla al Islamiya, and Al-Furqan Establishment for Media Production. Furthermore, under the same authorities, the Department of State designated al-Nusrah Front…
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Law Professor Melissa Murray on the Darker Side of Marriage
“What the marriage equality movement really did not think about is that there is a kind of normalizing process that goes on in marriage,” says Professor Melissa Murray. “Marriage signals that these people — the sexual relations that they have — are respectable, are valued, are worthy.”
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Unveiling the Planning for Retirement Tool By the Consumers Financial Protection Bureau
Americans are eligible to claim Social Security retirement benefits without any reduction when they reach what the Social Security Administration calls the ‘full retirement age.’ For people born after 1942, their full retirement age ranges from 66 to 67, depending on the year the person was born. But consumers can begin to claim their benefits…
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Stories of Service: Debt of Honor on PBS, November 10
“There is a real necessity to bridge the gap between civilians and those who have served in the military. It is our hope that the film will encourage a candid discussion in communities across the country, and create understanding and awareness of the sacrifices involved in military service,” says Ric Burns, director of the film.
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Why Individuals Tend to Be Paired with Partners Who Have Similar Physical, Behavioral and Psychological Characteristics
Partners who become romantically involved soon after meeting tend to be more similar in physical attractiveness than partners who get together after knowing each other for a while. The level of match on attractiveness was not associated with relationship satisfaction for either men or women in a study. Both friends-first and stranger-first relationships seem approximately…
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Capitalist Culture in Bond Film Songs: Representations of Greed, Lust, Luxurious Lifestyles and Shaken Martinis
Stanford professor Kronengold says five decades of music makes the Bond canon “an interesting target for humanistic inquiry.” He says the odd allure of the Bond music is that it maintains an underlying sameness “in an age when everything is changing faster than you can imagine.” (That and stars such as Daniel Craig and Sean…
