Roberta McReynolds
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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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Follow up to What Women Want: Equal Benefits for Equal Premiums
NWLC found that the individual insurance market is a very difficult place for women to buy health coverage. Insurance companies can refuse to sell women coverage altogether due to a history of any health problems whatsoever, or charge women higher premiums based on factors that include gender, age and health status.
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Dorothea Lange – “Just to Come in the Room Where She Was”
One rarely sees pictures of the photographer Dorothea Lange. The woman she photographed who became the face of the Depression is the migrant woman, Florence Owens Thompson. But it is the photo taken by Lange’s husband, the economist Paul Schuster Taylor…
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An American Ballroom Companion
The ballroom was the perfect setting for men and women to demonstrate their dancing abilities, to show their awareness of the latest fashions, and to display their mastery of polite behavior – qualities required for acceptance in society
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Forgetting and Remembering
I choose to forget anything that hinders my appreciation of life. I choose to remember all that makes being alive rich and wonderful.
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Gourmet’s Adventures With Ruth
The first episode takes Ms. Reichl to Blackberry Farm in Tennessee, the “cradle of American food.” Making cheese, preserving jam and vegetables, spending time with the butcher and fishing for trout with Frances McDormand (the star of Fargo)are ingredients of the segment.
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Academic Earth, Civil War and Alcott’s Hospital Sketches
“He lay on a bed, with one leg gone, and the right arm soshattered that it must evidently follow: yet the little Sergeant was asmerry as if his afflictions were not worth lamenting over; and when adrop or two of salt water mingled with my suds at the sight of thisstrong young body, so marred…
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Poetry: Off the Page [iTunes]
Off the Page, a review from the Scout Report, Computer Science Department, University of Wisconsin; Sponsored by University of Wisconsin – Madison Libraries. Listening to poets is always enjoyable, and this collection of poetry readings is quite a pip.…
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The States of Marriage and Divorce
“The proportion of Americans who are currently married has been diminishing for decades and is lower than it has been in at least half a century.”
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How Reverse Mortgage Lenders Put Older Homeowners’ Equity at Risk
“The greatest threat looms over millions of low income seniors with significant amounts of home equity. While some of these homeowners genuinely need access to their built-up equity, that need can make them especially vulnerable to bad advice from brokers and loan officers out to put the most money in their own pockets, and in…
