Sharon Kapnick
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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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Online Shopping, Organized Retail Crime and E-Fencing
Each year organized groups of professional shoplifters steal or fraudulently obtain billions of dollars in merchandise to resell in an activity known as organized retail crime (ORC). These stolen goods can also be sold on online marketplaces, a practice known as “e-fencing.”
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The Woman Who Warned About the Financial Meltdown Ahead
Brooksley Born speaks on a re-broadcast of PBS Frontline program, The Warning, about her failed campaign to regulate the secretive, multi-trillion-dollar derivatives market whose crash helped trigger the financial collapse in the fall of 2008. “What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?”
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Out of this World: Science Fiction But Not as You Know It
“”There is no doubt that science fiction has split literary experts for decades and remains a source of debate and discussion across the world. What this exhibition shows is that science fiction is a way of asking questions about the world, its future, and our place in it that has roots in a number of…
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“Bake sales aren’t going to do this”: States Push to Convert Interstate Highways Into Toll Roads
In 1998, Congress created a pilot program under which up to three states can start collecting tolls on existing interstates to fund improvements on those roads. So far, though, no states have used it. Virginia and Missouri both have federal permission to move ahead with the idea, but neither has the tolls up and running
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Addressing Race and Genetics; Health Disparities in the Age of Personalized Medicine
It means the development of medicines and therapies tailored to patients’ unique genetic traits and risks. Individually tailored drugs based on a patient’s genetic makeup are far off, and the cost of developing drugs for genetic subpopulations with largely similar genetic traits for one or more diseases hinders developments in this arena.
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Wicked Plants: Botanical Rogues and Assassins
Paralysis, strangulation, derangement, a few of the misdeeds of the plant kingdom as chronicled by award-winning author Amy Stewart. Something wicked this way comes with mayhem under glass at the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers
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PBS Cooks Up Kings of Pastry
France’s oldest and most prestigious pastry competition, the Meilleurs Ouvriers de France, an epic three-day test of passion, perseverance, artistry, and technical skill is on view. The blue, white and red striped collar worn on the jackets of the winners is a dream and an obsession.
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Pew Research Looks At Older, ‘Attentive’ Americans and Opposition to Ryan Medicare Plan
Those ages 50 and older oppose this proposal, which is part of Rep. Paul Ryan’s deficit reduction plan, by a 51% to 29% margin. And this opposition is intense: 42% strongly oppose this kind of change, while only 19% strongly favor it.
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The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement 1860-1900 at the V&A
The exhibition traces its development from the romantic bohemianism of a small avant-garde circle in the 1860s to a cultural phenomenon, concluding with the final Decadent phase at the end of the 19th century.
