Ferida Wolff

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…
The Travel Bug Will Bite You If You Don’t Watch Out

I was thirty years old when I took my first trip to Europe, and I did so with reluctance and misgivings.I had never had any desire whatsoever to roam. I’m not sure why. Fear wasn’t stopping me. The word “terrorist” wasn’t yet part of the travel vocabulary in that innocent age, and the thought of…
A Lecture, What Motivates Us: Sex

sex is one of the sort of dicey ones from an emotional point of view. These are difficult issues because sex is, by definition, an intimate part of our lives, and it matters a lot. Moreover, sex is fraught with moral implications.
Current Reading: The Patients Doctors Don’t Know

“Yet there is no requirement for any clinical training in geriatrics, even though patients 65 and older account for 32 percent of the average doctor’s workload in surgical care and 43 percent in medical specialty care, and they make up 48 percent of all inpatient hospital days.”
Mass Layoffs & Psychological Effects

The Economic Policy Institute’s Economic Snapshot for July 1, 2009 concerns employment: Mass layoffs at highest level since at least 1995, by Anna Turner and John Irons. Mass layoffs — job cuts of 50 or more people by a single employer — are at th…
The Wedding Dress

She would smooth it gently with her hands and then press her hand to her nostrils. Perhaps she was inhaling the trace of her mother’s scent; perhaps she was simply remembering the feel of that slender body.
CultureWatch

Bridgetower put the moves on a waitress whom Beethoven had noticed and proclaimed as being a cut above the other serving wenches. Bridgetower made a silly bet that he could get her “to lift her skirt,” and succeeded in arranging an assignation later in the evening/
CultureWatch

Bridgetower put the moves on a waitress whom Beethoven had noticed and proclaimed as being a cut above the other serving wenches. Bridgetower made a silly bet that he could get her “to lift her skirt,” and succeeded in arranging an assignation later in the evening/
Will These Parents Destroy Your Family?

Couple by couple, family by family, gay men and lesbian women are settling down together and parenting children. And countless numbers, like our own daughter, want nothing more than to stop just living together and assume the rights and responsibilities of a legal marriage.
Home Shopping: Historic Styling

An Arts & Crafts destination provides fabric, wallpaper, cushions, metalwork, tiles and hardware. We liked the Voysey voile, MTV liked the wallpaper
Michelangelo’s First Painting; a little-known work has its American premiere at the Met

The painting’s provenance has been a matter of debate for hundreds of years. Ascanio Condivi, writes that the master’s first painted work was a depiction of Saint Anthony being riven by monsters, a painting in imitation of a 15th century German engraving by Martin Schongauer, a facsimile of which hangs alongside the exhibit’s main attraction.