What’s New

  • 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…

  • How Gender Stereotypes Influence Emerging Career Aspirations

    Whether we look at metrics in the workplace such as the gender gap in wages, or the participation of women male dominated fields, the paid labor market, and state-level politics, measures of equality have remained relatively constant since the mid 1990s

  • Progress – You Gotta Love It! (Or Not)

    My friend Abigail was born in the wrong era and place. She would have been much happier living in an age uncontaminated by technological abominations; she thinks ATM machines are an invention of the devil

  • Where Are the Women? The Old Boys Club Meeting and Deficit Talks

    The Older Women’s Economic Security Task Force in a letter to President Obama called for the concerns of women to be considered in budget talks to reduce the deficit. “It is simply not enough to send a few privileged men to the table to ‘solve’ the nation’s budget problem”

  • Expedited Entry and Screening While Traveling

    We used our Global Entry RFID-enabled card for expedited entry for the first time: “Enrolled users must present their machine-readable Passport or permanent residency card and submit their fingerprints to establish identity. Users then complete a computerized Customs Declaration, and are issued a receipt …

  • Examining Proportion of Women Who Survive Following Detection of Breast Cancer Through Screening

    A new report’s conclusion: Most women with screen-detected breast cancer have not had their life saved by screening. They are instead either diagnosed early (with no effect on their mortality) or overdiagnosed.

  • Mysticism: Yearning for the Absolute

    Zuirch’s Museum Rietberg presents a culturally comparative exhibition on mysticism, illustrated by the example of forty male and female mystics: their lives and writings demonstrate how richly varied spiritual experience can be

  • Government Could Hide Existence of Records under FOIA Rule Proposal

    A proposed rule to the Freedom of Information Act would allow federal agencies to tell people requesting certain law-enforcement or national security documents that records don’t exist – even when they do, writes ProPublica

  • Gotham Radio Theater’s Broadcast of Lady Windemere’s Fan and Sorry, Wrong Number

    Inspired by the Lux Radio Theatre of the 1930’s and 40’s, Gotham Radio Theatre brings the experience of actors performing in vintage radio style. Masterpiece plays and screenplays are performed live, by an ensemble of actors and sound performers as if you were in a radio sound stage

  • Las Vegas: Taxes, Lawn Mowing and Job Creation Myths and Realities at the Republican Debate

    Romney went too far in claiming that government insurance didn’t play a role in the health care overhaul he signed into law as governor of Massachusetts; the plan expanded Medicaid. Perry was wrong that his state created more jobs in the last two months than Massachusetts did in four years under Romney.

  • Rose of Sharon

    There are so many reasons in our world to focus on the negative, to allow joy to withdraw or wither. These bushes thrive no matter what and express themselves in beauty and persistence. They are a vibrant life-force, as enticing as I remember.