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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…
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…
Civil War at 150: Still Relevant, Still Divisive, Pew Reports

As the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War approaches, most Americans say the war between the North and South is still relevant to American politics and public life today. In a nation that has long endured deep racial divisions, the history of that era still elicits some strong reactions.
Hospital Compare Website Offers Data about Hospital Acquired Conditions

For the first time, Medicare patients can see how often hospitals report serious conditions that develop during an inpatient hospital stay that could possibly harm patients. This data about the safety of care available in America’s hospitals has been added to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ Hospital Compare website
Justice Elena Kagan’s First Dissent: Discriminating on the Basis of a Child’s Religion When Awarding Scholarships

From now on, the government need follow just one simple rule — subsidize through the tax system — to preclude taxpayer challenges to state funding of religion … Today’s holding therefore will prevent federal courts from determining whether some subsidies to sectarian organizations comport with our Constitution’s guarantee of religious neutrality.
FactCheck Examines a Politician’s Statements About Abortion and Birthrates

Santorum appeared on a New Hampshire radio talk show, blaming abortions for “causing Social Security and Medicare to be underfunded.” But he not only misstated the abortion statistic, he also got it wrong when he said that “our birthrate is now below replacement rate for the first time in our history.”
A Celebratory Lunch High in The Pyrenees

From an enchanting and inviting, vibrantly decorated, converted barn high up in the hills, so high that the Pyrenees are practically in the garden, an extraordinary woman invited me to celebrate Women’s Day. Lunch was quite simply stunning with seven nationalities at the table
Who’s That Girl? Georges Dambier: Fashioning the Fifties

For we women who remember the fashion of the fifties with fondness and nostalgia, George Dambier’s photographs on exhibit at the Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York City recall not only the style but the beauty of the models of that time.
As the Light Grows Stronger and Spring Is Upon Us

“The great bulk of song birds prefer open or partly brushed fields edged by tall trees, with water close at hand, and not too far from human habitations, for in spite of everything, they seem instinctively to trust to man rather than to their wild enemies”
Lifelong Pursuits: An Affair With A Creative Passion

The creative energy was absolutely electric. The passion of what these people had endured poured out in multi-media far beyond words. Here they could express themselves in ways they had never before discovered possible. I was lifted out of years of stagnation just by being with them and began to find the talent I had…
Life, Legend, Landscape: Victorian Drawings and Watercolours

The Courtauld’s exhibition features works by most of the major artists of the Victorian age, from the redoubtable Royal Academicians of the early years of Victoria’s reign, such as J.M.W. Turner, William Etty and Edwin Landseer, to Pre-Raphaelites such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and works of the 1890s by Whistler and Aubrey Beardsley.
Raising Medicare’s Eligibility Age to 67? Government Saves But Individuals, Employers & Medicaid Don’t

“Raising Medicare’s age of eligibility would obviously reduce Medicare spending, but would also shift costs onto seniors and employers, and increase costs elsewhere on the federal ledger.”