Sightings
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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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A Stanford Study Finds Postmenopausal Estrogen Decline Largely Unrelated to Cognition Changes
This research is the first to investigate associations between sex hormones and cognition in both younger and older postmenopausal women, and to determine whether the hormones affect women differently based on their age and how much time has elapsed since they reached menopause.
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License Plate Readers Spark Privacy, Public Safety Debate
In the hunt for the Boston Marathon bombers, police used license plate reader data to establish where the Tsarnaev brothers had traveled and where they might be headed, based on places they’d already been. Police used license plate readers to track Dzokhar Tsarnaev to Watertown, Mass., where police found him hiding in a boat in…
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Beauty’s Legacy, Material Opulence and Personal Excess: Gilded Age Portraits
With the amassing of great fortunes came the drive to document the wealthy in portraiture, echoing a cultural pattern reaching back to colonial times. A brilliant generation of American and European artists rose to meet that demand. The exhibit examines those portraits of famous society beauties and powerful titans of business and industry.
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And Now for Something Completely Unstuffed: OrigaMIT, Paper Architects, Fairy Tales, Explorations in Personal Geographies and Stencil Styles
Tam Gray writes: The holidays may be absorbing our audience but there are readers who may not be gathering, shopping, cooking, conversing and socializing with others during most of these holidays. For you and all those who might be interested in an ancient art easily experimented with from MIT, here’s a video and craft books…
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How Do We Protect Private Information? Consumer Privacy Framework Needs to Reflect Changes in Technology & the Marketplace
In many circumstances, consumers also do not have the legal right to control the collection or sharing with third parties of sensitive personal information (such as their shopping habits and health interests) for marketing purposes. As a result, although some industry participants have stated that current privacy laws are adequate – particularly in light of…
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Dramatic, contemplative, violent, beautiful, dangerous and sublime: Turner and the Sea
The Battle of Trafalgar is his most complex tribute to Lord Horatio Nelson, of whom he was a great admirer. The falling mast bears Nelson’s white vice-admiral’s flag, while the code flags spelling d-u-t-y – both the last word of his famous Trafalgar signal and the last coherent thought he spoke (‘Thank God I have…
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Finally: Nearly A Million Consumers Have Completed The Health Insurance Sign Up Process; 106,185 Have Selected Plans
“Despite the low numbers, Sebelius touted the overall level of interest in buying health insurance. We expect enrollment will grow substantially throughout the next five months, mirroring the pattern that Massachusetts experienced,” she said in a release before the official announcement of the enrollment figures. The states with their own exchanges outperformed those in the…
