Jeanne Asher
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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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The Louvre’s Breguet Exhibition and the Marie Antoinette
When you glimpse the production ledger, page recording the stages of manufacture of Breguet no. 160, the grand complication watch known as the “Marie-Antoinette”, the prices these collectible watches can command become understandable.
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The GAO Testifies About Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Tests
Perhaps most disturbing, one company told a donor that an above average risk prediction for breast cancer meant she was “in the high risk of pretty much getting” the disease, a statement that experts found to be “horrifying” because it implies the test is diagnostic.
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Reprise of Elizabeth Warren, Woman of Note
As long as you had family, you had people who would make sure that you got fed one way or another. Family was about canning peaches, and canning peaches was about making sure that there’d at least be something come next November, when it was cold outside and there were no more crops coming in.…
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Pew Reports, How the Great Recession Has Changed Life in America
Blacks and Hispanics are more upbeat than whites. The young are more optimistic than middle-aged and older Americans. And Democrats are more upbeat than Republicans, even though Democrats have lower incomes and less wealth and have suffered more recession-related job losses.
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Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s Report to the Congress
Bernanke’s Good News, Bad News: Purchases of durable goods increasing especially rapidly; housing market remains weak, with the overhang of vacant or foreclosed houses weighing on home prices and construction
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Bedside Consultation and Ethical Issues
… doubts about what treatments are in the best interests of the patient, uncertainty about treatment choices that are based on religious or cultural imperatives, the extent to which non-medical facts and circumstances impact a decision to offer organ transplant for a particular patient, whether a patient is being made to suffer unnecessarily by reducing…
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Tracking Your METs in Exercise — Rethink Golfing
“METS for certain golfing activities were revised downward from 1993 estimates based on measurement of the activity using indirect calorimetry.” Uh-oh. Put down that putter and pick up that mop, ax (if you’re like the late President, Ronald Reagan, and like to chop wood while vacationing) or a jump rope.
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Shop for Home at HausInterior
HausInterior.com: For a shopping experience which relies on the out-of-the-ordinary gift, start with a blueprint pad for $11 and resin antlers for $38.50 apiece. Wallpapers are subtle in color and tone but amusing: polar bears, ibis, cricket bats, zebras and pink ostriches
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America On the Move (Including the Obamas)
The Cate family is on vacation at Decatur Motor Camp, York Beach, on the southern coast of Maine. It’s late afternoon and the Cates are settling down after their day. Mrs. Cate and her daughter are preparing dinner in the trailer; Mr. Cate is relaxing with a magazine in a sling chair. Visitors can peer…
