Liz Flaherty
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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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Seafood Safety: FDA Needs to Improve Oversight of Imported Seafood
About half of the seafood imported into the US comes from farmed fish (aquaculture). Fish grown in confined aquacultured areas can have bacterial infections, which may require farmers to use drugs like antibiotics
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Television, Music and Playwrighting: “Women Today Don’t Go Away”
Maureen Dowd’s NY Times column said it all about the upcoming television season quoting a TV producer. “All the big, corporate men saw Christina Hendricks play the bombshell secretary on Mad Men and fell in love. It’s a hot fudge sundae for men: a time when women were not allowed to get uppity or make…
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Report of the Preliminary Inquiry Into the Matter of Senator John E. Ensign
“Further, although concealment is part of the anatomy of an affair, the concealment conduct in this case by Senator Ensign exceeded the normal acts of discretion and created a web of deceit that entangled and compromised numerous people, including a loyal Chief of Staff, was an abuse of the Senator’s power, and raised serious issues…
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PBS’ Frontline Presents Kill/Capture
Behind the strike that killed Osama bin Laden on May 1st was one of the US military’s best kept secrets: an extraordinary campaign by elite US soldiers to take out thousands of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. A six-month investigation by Frontline has gone inside the “kill/capture” program to discover new evidence of the program’s…
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No Taypayer Funding for Abortion Act and Repealing Funding for State Health Exchanges
Abortion Funding Bill Clears House Floor after defeating, 192-235, a motion to recommit by Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) to prevent federal officials from reviewing the the medical records of victims of rape or incest
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Woman of Note: Charlotte Salomon’s Life? or Theatre?
A 23-year-old Jewish artist who fled to the south of France spending two years feverishly painting the history of her life, a sort of autobiographical operetta on paper. One year after she completed it the pregnant 26-year-old was transported to Auschwitz and killed
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Dollars for Doctors, Pro Publica’s Investigation: Financial Ties Bind Medical Societies to Drug and Device Makers
Concerns about the influence of industry money have prompted Stanford and University of Colorado-Denver to ban drug sales representatives from the hospital halls and bar doctors from paid promotional speaking. One area of medicine still welcomes the largesse: societies that represent specialists
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A Day in the Life of a Fashionable Parisian Townhouse at the Getty
Through constellations of art and related artifacts, the exhibition follows the conventional activities in the cycle of a Parisian day, such as dressing, writing, collecting, eating, and evening entertainment — allowing visitors to envision the activities and accessories of quotidian life, in order to find resonances with their own daily lives
