Roberta McReynolds

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…
Writing About Breast Cancer: From Books to Blogs

Ellen Leopold writes: It’s easy to forget that women’s writing about breast cancer is of relatively recent vintage. The first women to portray the patient’s perspective, to write about their own experience, were established writers and public figures before they took up the disease, with credentials persuasive enough to overcome their publishers’ reluctance. Today’s widespread…
At Least a Year For Enforcement: FDA Proposes to Extend its Tobacco Authority to E-Cigarettes

Products that would be ‘deemed’ to be subject to FDA regulation are those that meet the statutory definition of a tobacco product, including currently unregulated marketed products, such as electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), cigars, pipe tobacco, nicotine gels, waterpipe (or hookah) tobacco, and dissolvables not already under the FDA’s authority.
Ferida Wolff’s Backyard: Garden as Concept & A Golden Time of Year

Garden as Concept: Philadelphia’s Magic Gardens is not about botanical nature but more the nature of the spirit. It was created by mosaic mural artist Isaiah Zagar … A Golden Time of Year: Amid the sporadic raindrops, despite the temperature shifts from cold to warm to cool to hot, even with the uncertainty about the…
In Celebration of Poetry Month: To Read and To Write

Joan L. Cannon writes: POETRY is a big word, in both denotation and connotation. Hours of classroom time and reams of thesis papers have been wasted in the attempt to analyze, categorize, classify, and define it. Rhyme, rhythm, diction, subject … since before written language, from nonsense through ritual and history, folk songs, epics, in…
CultureWatch Book Reviews: Uprising by Sally Armstrong and Joan L. Cannon’s New Poems

Julia Sneden reviews: Author Armstrong notes that “The new wave of change isn’t about giving the ‘little woman'” a fair shake or even about pushing reluctant regimes to adhere to hard-won international laws relating to women. “Together men and women are the two wings of a bird – both wings have to be not wounded,…
We All Know That Anything a Man Can Do, a Woman Can Do Just as Well, Right?

Even when the interviewees had the chance to tell the employers about how well they expected to do on an upcoming arithmetic test, the economists found that the bias remained in place because men tend to boast and to inflate their abilities, which the hirers were willing to believe. The findings also suggest that both…
Wealth Track Women: Tax Planning, Tax Tips, Over 50 and Business Owners

Editor’s Note: We have, for decades, watched Consuelo Mack’s informative business programs on Public Television, helping investors to build and protect wealth over the long-term. During her tenure hosting the Wall Street Journal Report it won the Overseas Press Club award, the Gracie award and was nominated for a News and Documentary Emmy award for…
‘Small French Collection’, Intimate Impressionism in San Francisco

The exhibit at the Legion of Honor featuring the work of 19th century avant-garde painters such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Vincent van Gogh. The exhibition includes nearly 70 paintings from the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and features a selection of intimately scaled impressionist and post-impressionist still lifes, portraits and landscapes,…
Longer-Term Challenges for the American Economy: “The overall economic pie is expanding more slowly than before”

There is no single explanation for the rise in inequality and the decline in the share of jobs that provide a middle-class standard of living. Economists generally agree that technological change and globalization have played a role. Both of these forces have reduced the demand for workers whose jobs had involved routine work that can…
Sandra Smith

Sandi Smith retired in 2014 and moved from California to the beautiful Pacific Northwest in Washington where she plans to continue writing and enjoying her new photography hobby. Email pagesmith1948 at gmail.com.