Tam Gray
-
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…
-
Kilauea Volcano Erupts; Alert Levels, Hazards, US Geological Survey Monitoring, Lava Maps
This is a developing story, so please keep checking the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory Kīlaueastatus website for daily activity updates. In addition to status updates, public-domain current photos, videos, and maps are also available. You can also visit the USGS home page, the USGS Facebook page, and the USGS Twitter feed as updates become available.…
-
Little Women, Masterpiece Theater: “I detest rude, unladylike girls!” “I hate affected, niminy-piminy chits!” “Birds in their little nests agree,” sang Beth, the peacemaker
She is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, near Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau, on a hillside now known as “Authors’ Ridge”. Her Boston home is featured on the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail. Her childhood home Orchard House is now a museum that pays homage to Louisa May Alcott and her family that focuses on…
-
The Looming Threat to Sex Education: A Resurgence of Federal Funding for Abstinence-Only Programs?
“Abstinence-only programs violate adolescents’ rights, ignore their needs and do not work. Adolescents have a basic human right to complete and accurate information about their sexual and reproductive health. The abstinence-only-until-marriage approach withholds comprehensive information on effective ways to reduce the risks of unintended pregnancy, HIV and other STIs, which violates adolescents’ right to information…
-
Secret Cities: The Architecture and Planning of the Manhattan Project
Secret Cities examines the cities as case studies in modern urban planning and building technology, while revealing the distinct way of life that emerged at each site. The exhibition also explores the architectural and planning legacy of the Manhattan Project, including its role in the emergence of multidisciplinary corporate architecture and engineering firms. The exhibition…
-
Updated: Who Is Gina Haspel: The CIA’s Biography of the First Woman to be Nominated as CIA Director; Recording of Live Testimony Before Senate Intelligence Committee
So she studied up on CIA, typed up a letter on her college manual typewriter, and sent it off. On the outside of the envelope she wrote simply, “CIA, Washington, D.C.” “I wanted to be part of something bigger than just me,” she says. “I think with my dad’s service in the military, I saw…
-
Stateline: Why Most States Are Struggling to Regulate Airbnb
About 15 states debated bills to regulate the short-term rental industry this year. Only one, Indiana’s, was signed into law. Nebraska’s governor vetoed a bill approved by that state’s Legislature. A bill to regulate the industry also died in Hawaii. Home-owners and hotels have different business models, different perspectives and different agendas. These competing constituencies…
-
Art Nouveau In the Netherlands, a Quest for the ‘Truth’, the ‘Genuine’, the Original; Leaving in Architecture and the Decorative Arts
A new art for a new, improved society. That is what many artists and designers were looking for around 1900. After a century of styles that literally quoted the past, new forms language emerged, based on asymmetry, curved lines and organic decorative motifs. The Netherlands played its own unique role in this artistic quest. The…
-
The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration Near a Prominent Slave Auction Place In the United States
“The American criminal justice system is compromised by racial disparities and unreliability that is influenced by a presumption of guilt and dangerousness that is often assigned to people of color. For more than a decade, EJI has been conducting extensive research into the history of racial injustice and the narratives that have sustained injustice across…
