John Malone

  • 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…

  • Medicare Investigates Misleading Mailings

    “We are concerned that, among other things, the information in the letter is misleading and confusing to beneficiaries, who may believe that it represents official communication about the Medicare Advantage program.”

  • History by the Thimbleful

    Managing to clothe eight children on a clergyman’s tiny salary must have been quite a feat. Mind you, this was in the days when mothers had to: (a) draw water from a creek or, if they were lucky, from a well; (b) cook on a wood stove, and keep the fire burning because it also…

  • The Hidden Art of Fore-Edge Book Painting

    “By the sixteenth century, a Venetian artist, Cesare Vecellio, devised a way to enhance the beauty of a book by painting on its edges. The images, mostly portraits, were easily viewed when the covers of the book were closed. A century later in England, Samuel Mearne, a bookbinder to the royal family, developed the art…

  • Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN)

    In addition to addressing coronary health, a paper entitled Sexual Functioning and Practices in a Multi-Ethnic Study of Midlife Women addresses women as they approach and begin the menopausal transition. There has been much debate on the relative impact of menopause on sexual activity.

  • Financial Markets and Real People

    “Now, part of this theme of democratization of finance is that we have to pay respect to behavioral finance. That’s because people don’t – especially the less educated or less capable people – don’t always make optimal use of financial instruments like, for example, insurance. If people don’t make use of risk management contracts, then…

  • Pixels to Textiles Exhibit

    “The main joy in weaving is to watch the article grow under your hands, to plan the colour schemes and the patterns and to watch them develop from row to row, to watch one’s colours combine as a painter watches his pigment form on the canvas the thoughts and the vision of his eye, to…

  • Books and Authors Worth Revisiting: Islandia By Austen Tappan Wright

    The outstanding characteristic of Islandia is that it will leave no reader unmoved, or even untouched. To make your way through this tour de force of imagination will change you, according to what aspect of it touches you most closely.

  • Focus On Green Communities

    The designers used new processes — printing text and images directly onto the panels and choosing materials with embedded colors and finishes — and old techniques, like silk-screening text directly onto the walls, to eliminate need for excess materials.

  • Off-Beat Travel Guides

    “Travelers need reliable, accurate, and immediate information when planning a trip. Standard guidebooks are often 12 to 18 months out of date as soon as they hit the stores. Our content is the most up-to-date because we have an enormous technology base of spiders and crawlers that find the best information on the internet, and…

  • What I Really Want Is … Staff

    Staff. I want a team of cleaners and interior designers to completely clean this house and then come up with all those things designers do to make my life less messy. But not too cute.Not the whole life. Just my domestic environment.