What’s New
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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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Chicago Celebrity and Style: Bertha Honore Palmer
Mrs. Palmer was the undeniable queen of Chicago society in the late-nineteenth century and into the twentieth, but her renown reached well beyond this city. This was a woman who entertained three American presidents at her home. She was the only woman in the United States’ official envoy at the Paris Exposition of 1900. She…
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NPR’s Program, Safe Driving For Seniors: Officials Get Creative
We want to preserve a senior’s dignity and their independence — but we want to have highway safety,” she says. “So if we can evaluate a senior — or anyone that’s a high-risk driver — and determine that they can go to the doctor, church, because it’s a safe driving distance, we can limit their…
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LuEsther Mertz Library, NYBG, Fruits and Flowers of Winter
Gardener, if you listen, listen well: Plant for your winter pleasure, when the months dishearten; Plant to find a fragile note touched from the brittle violin of frost.Vita Sackville-West, The Garden
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Making Thoughtful Plans For a Retirement Home
Some states have superior regulatory laws, some have few. Where we live in North Carolina, the Department of Insurance oversees the long-term care communities, thanks in large part to the work of an attorney who retired here and saw the need for oversight. If residents have legitimate conflicts with management, it’s a good thing to…
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Frontline’s The Card Game; An Examination of Credit Card Practices
President Obama and his team pushed through a credit card reform bill in May, and they’re now looking to establish a new Consumer Finance Protection Agency. But the banking and financial services industries contribute huge amounts of money to Congress – and the jury is still out on whether the new regulations can pass. From…
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Wet With Blood; The Investigation of Mary Todd Lincoln’s Cloak
The Chicago History Museum has a number of sources online for the viewer. This booklet, Wet With Blood, is one of them. “Being a full and graphic account from a reliable authority of the Bloody Evidence of President Lincoln’s assassination …”
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A New Museum Destination: Cafesjian Center for the Arts
From a mural by Armenian painter Grigor Khanjyan; an exhibit of photographs by Patti Boyd, the ex-wife of Beatle George Harrison and guitarist Eric Clapton; an installation of installation of 24 Swarovski light socks; and Dale Chihuly’s Ikebana installation, the newly opened Cafesjian Center for the Arts is a new travel destination.
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Does Exercise Contribute to Arthritis? Assessing and Improving Value in Cancer Care
The Harvard Medical School: If you’re putting off getting into a regular exercise routine because you’re worried that exercise contributes to arthritis, think again. An Institute of Medicine Workshop Summary report can be read online: Assessing and Improving Cancer Care
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Shopping for Children: Mahar Drygoods
On Mahar Drygoods’ site, there’s a quote from the Phantom Tollbooth which might sum shopping for children that’s inexpensive but charming:”So many things are possible,just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible.”- Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth
