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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…
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…
Congressional Bills Introduced: Zika, Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, Sex Trafficking, Incarcerated Mothers, Victims Of Federal Sex Offenses

A bill for fiscal year 2016 to respond to Zika virus; establish, expand, and support programs to train school staff to recognize and respond to signs of labor and sex trafficking; establishing a pilot program of developmental nurseries in federal prisons for children born to inmates; increase outreach for women- and minority-owned businesses under the…
National Museum of the American Indian: Kay WalkingStick’s Retrospective

WalkingStick’s biography is inextricably intertwined with her art. The exhibition examines key moments of her life, which further illuminate the artist’s methods and motivations. Her entrance into the male-dominated New York art scene in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with her exhibition of vivid, playful explorations of the body, set the pace for a…
Pew’s Analysis of Growth in Personal Income Shows Uneven US Recovery

States have recovered at different paces. Adjusted for inflation, personal income in 21 states has grown faster than in the nation as a whole since the start of the recession. Only in mid-2015 did the final state — Nevada — recover its personal-income losses and return to its pre-recession level.
Learning to Ride – or Not: A Permanent ineptitude With Regard to Two Wheels

Joan L. Cannon writes: I learned to swim at six. I learned to ride horses by the time I was seven, even won a couple of blue ribbons for equitation, passed my lifesaving tests and had some medals for swimming. Handling a canoe, executing a jack-knife from a springboard, target shooting with a longbow or…
It’s a Prototype! 2016 White House Science Fair

“As a society, we have to celebrate outstanding work by young people in science at least as much as we do Super Bowl winners. Because superstar biologists and engineers and rocket scientists and robot-builders … they’re what’s going to transform our society. They’re the folks who are going to come up with cures for diseases…
What is the Status of VA Primary Health Care Scheduing? Actions Needed to Improve Access to Primary Care for Newly Enrolled Veterans

“… ongoing scheduling errors, such as incorrectly revising preferred dates when rescheduling appointments, understated the amount of time veterans waited to see providers. Officials attributed these errors to confusion by schedulers, resulting from the lack of an updated standardized scheduling policy. These errors continue to affect the reliability of wait-time data used for oversight, which…
Regrets, I’ve Had a Few

Rose Madeline Mula writes: At the risk of sounding immodest, I did become a fantastic secretary, but that turned out to be one of my biggest regrets. We secretaries didn’t have glass ceilings. Ours were reinforced steel. In those early days, the only women I knew who managed to get ahead were those who were…
Medicare Delays Plans For New Star Ratings On Hospitals After Congressional Pressure

Bowing to pressure from the hospital industry and Congress, the Obama administration on Wednesday delayed releasing its new hospital quality rating measure just a day before its planned launch. The new “overall hospital quality” star rating aimed to combine the government’s disparate efforts to measure hospital care into one easy-to-grasp metric. The new star rating boils…
Bills Introduced and Hearings: Examining Sexual Abuse by UN Peacekeepers and Pricing of Fetal Tissue

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) introduced a resolution expressing the sense of the Senate that the US should support and protect the right of women working in developing countries to safe workplaces, free from gender-based violence, reprisals, and intimidation. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) A bill to place limitations on the possession, sale, and other disposition of…
The Wonder of Will; 400 Years of Shakespeare From the Folger Library

How do we know Shakespeare’s plays? For many of them, the answer is one book: the 1623 First Folio. Without it, 18 plays, including Macbeth and The Tempest, could have been lost. In 2016, First Folio! The Book That Gave Us Shakespeare brings the First Folio to 50 states, Washington, and Puerto Rico. Just like…