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…
Bills Introduced: Adopting Children in Foster Care; Enhancing Pre-& Post Adoptive Services, Adoptive Incentive Payments

A bill to remove barriers to the adoption of children in foster care through reauthorization and improvement of the adoption incentives program, and for other purposes; A bill to enhance pre- and post-adoptive support services; A bill to improve outcomes for youth at risk for sex trafficking, and other purposes. A bill to extend the…
Finding Fame and Fortune As A Writer (Ha!)

Rose Madeline Mula writes: When people learn that I write, they immediately assume I’ve got it made. Look at J. K. Rowling, they think. Didn’t she make a gazillion bucks (or in her case pounds) writing about that nerdy little wizard, Harry Potter? True. And my career does bear a striking resemblance to JK’s, up…
How Many Die From Medical Mistakes in U.S. Hospitals?

In 2010, the Office of Inspector General for Health and Human Services said that bad hospital care contributed to the deaths of 180,000 patients in Medicare alone in a given year. Now comes a study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety that says the numbers may be much higher — between…
Eye of the Beholder: Seeing the Vivid Color Pallet During Cataract Surgery

Adrienne G. Cannon writes: My eye is a little blurry and aches but I can already detect a change in the perception of my “new” eye. It is a bit disconcerting at first but the colors adjust themselves as the day progresses. And there is a depth of field I perceive when I look at…
A Gifting Idea: Using Engineering Skills With a DIY Dollhouse Kit

The creators of Roominate, Alice Brooks and Bettina Chen, didn’t grow up playing with traditional girl toys. When Brooks asked for a Barbie her father gave her a mini-saw. Chen adored Legos and built hundreds of extravagant creations with her brothers. Brooks majored in mechanical engineering at MIT, while Bettina studied electrical engineering at the…
An Anatomical Marker for Chronic Pain in the Brain

“Pain is becoming an enormous burden on the public. The US government recently outlined steps to reduce the future burden of pain through broad-ranging efforts, including enhanced research,” said Linda Porter, Ph.D, the pain policy advisor at NINDS and a leader of NIH’s Pain Consortium. “This study is a good example of the kind of…
House Hearing on Sex-Selective Abortion: India’s Missing Girls

“Even when they are not killed outright either in the womb or just after birth, this bias against girl children manifests itself in situations where family resources are limited and little food is available, in boys being fed before girls, leading to greater incidents of malnutrition among girls and a mortality rate that is 75…
Taylor Branch, Barbara Kingsolver, Katherine Paterson, Natasha Trethewey: Authors at the National Book Festival

Authors and poets Margaret Atwood, Marie Arana, Taylor Branch, Don DeLillo, Khaled Hosseini, Barbara Kingsolver, Brad Meltzer, Joyce Carol Oates, Katherine Paterson and Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey will be among writers speaking. New Library of Congress exhibits celebrate opera, the majestic art form that has transfixed audiences for more than 400 years, and the other…
The Cheater’s High: The Unexpected Affective Benefits of Unethical Behavior

“Many theories of moral behavior assume that unethical behavior triggers negative affect. We challenge this assumption and demonstrate that unethical behavior can trigger positive affect, which we term a ‘cheater’s high.’ We find that even though individuals predict they will feel guilty and have increased levels of negative affect after engaging in unethical behavior individuals…
Plutonium Mountain: Inside the 17-Year Mission to Secure a Legacy of Soviet Nuclear Testing

Some of these tests — particularly tests involving plutonium — did not vaporize the material in a nuclear blast. It remained in tunnels and containers, in forms that could be recovered and recycled into a bomb. In addition, the Soviet Union discarded equipment that included high-purity plutonium that would have provided materials and information that…