Sharon Kapnick

  • Joan Fontaine

    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

    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: 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…

  • high heels

    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…

  • Vintage jewelry, Wikimedia Commons

    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…

  • ways to grasp a pencil

    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…

  • Captain Charles E. Yeager

    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…

  • stack of books

    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…

  • Exploratorium’s Science of Baseball; The Girls of Summer

    In the 1870s, an American woman could not vote. She could not own property in her own name after marriage. But she could play ball — as well as it could be played in an outfit that weighed as much as 30 pounds and included a floor-length skirt, underskirts, a long-sleeved, high-necked blouse, and high…

  • Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera at the Tate Modern

    Aided and abetted by the camera, voyeurism and surveillance provoke uneasy questions about who is looking at whom, and whether for power or for pleasure. The show examines the history of what might be called invasive looking surreptitiously or without the explicit permission of those depicted.

  • Numbers of Unauthorized Immigrants Into the US Reduced

    The PEW Hispanic Center released the following report: US Unauthorized Immigration Flows Are Down Sharply Since Mid-Decade by Jeffrey Passel and D’Vera CohnInteractive Map: Unauthorized Immigrants in the US The annual inflow of unauthorized immigra…

  • NEJM Perspective: Indoor Tanning — Science, Behavior, and Policy

    A dramatic association has been found between exposure to UV radiation and non-melanoma skin cancers.Although most of these lesions are successfully treated at an early stage, metastasis persistently occurs in a small minority of such lesions, at which point cure is rare.

  • Love, an Inspiration … or Not?

    Finally we have the meaning that leaps first to modern minds for the Greek eros. It may be interesting to note how our current reaction to “Love” is either to its insignificance as in, “I love spaghetti,” or to the assumption that sexual attraction is what is meant

  • FTC and the Clean Credit Report Repair Court Order

    They told consumers they would help remove all the negative remarks from their credit reports, as well as current debt. Clean Credit often debited $400 from consumers’ bank accounts before receiving a signed contract, and then did little, if anything, to fulfill its promises

  • Problems with State-Local Final Pay Plans; Options for Reform

    Final pay plans suffer from serious shortcomings: they (1) severely “backload” benefits; (2) treat very differently workers on different career trajectories; and (3) invite mischief in terms of sudden late-career promotions. They are also riskier for workers than they appear.

  • Too Good to Miss: 2009 Beaujolais – A Once-in-a-Lifetime Vintage

    This year there’s a very special reason to buy Beaujolais: Although 2003 and 2005 were excellent vintages, 2009 is thought by many to be the best vintage since 1947. Everything — cooperative weather, perfect harvest conditions — seemed to come together perfectly to produce ripe, healthy Gamay grapes.

  • Website Houzz, Home Design

    Browse photos, get ideas from hundreds of designers from around the world, and save it all in your virtual idea book. It’s the online version of cutting pages out of magazines and stuffing them in a folder, which makes it much easier to search, save, and share.

  • Socially Networked? Older users flocking to Facebook, Twitter

    Internet users ages 50-64 who said they use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn grew 88% and those ages 65 and older grew 100% in their adoption of the sites, compared with a growth rate of 13% for those ages 18-29.