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  • Puzzling

    by Julia Sneden

    As a lifelong addict of puzzle-solving, or at least of taking a whack at it, I’ve been delighted to note that nowadays neurologists and gerontologists recommend that we seniors keep our minds sharp by doing crossword puzzles. To me, that’s a bit like giving a chocolate lover the key to the Godiva factory.

    Give me almost any kind of word puzzle: jumbled words, anagrams, crosswords, cryptograms, acrostics; I love them all. I do avoid those “puns and anagrams” things, perhaps because I suffered mightily from an older relative who made a groan-worthy pun out of almost any utterance, as in:

    (me) “Good morning”

    (he) “Who died?” (i.e. good mourning)

    Those puns were his only sin, as far as I know, and we all loved him so dearly that we endured his excesses. But an entire puzzle based on that kind of cleverness doesn’t appeal to me at all.

    In any event, back in my sixties, when I read the advice of those who are experts in the elderly mind, I figured that as a word puzzle addict, I was well set to keep myself mentally fit. I come from a family whose women have remarkable (and some would say dreadful) genes for living long. All my older female relatives have died in their 90’s, and both grandmothers and a great aunt came close to a hundred. If you’re likely to live that long, you need to do everything you can to take care of your mental agility.

    So why, please tell me, did I, so well-armed for bear, reach my current age of 74 only to find that what used to be a remarkable memory has suddenly gone south on me? In the past couple of years I have had to admit that I’ve fallen prey to almost every cliché concerning old age/memory loss.

    Oh, I’m not talking deep memories. Those lie buried under the dross of many years, but they’re there. They seem to come in two types: those that pop up at need unaided, and those that take their own sweet time. The latter may not be readily accessible, but eventually they do float to the surface, usually in the wee hours of the morning. My husband and I refer to them as “the 2 a.m. elbow-jab type,” something which happens in answer to a blank moment at the dinner table, when neither of us can recall a name or event, but which then pops up with a blaze of triumph at an ungodly hour.

    “It was (fill in the blank),” one of us will say with an elbow nudge. The only possible response is a muttered “Right. Thanks.”) as one turns over and goes back to sleep. Both of us may have forgotten the answer by morning, but at least we’ve had our moment of glory.

    But what of the more immediate kind of memory trouble? I’m referring to the sort that finds me standing in front of the refrigerator, suddenly wondering why on earth I opened the door, or going down to the basement pantry for paper towels and coming up with a jar of salsa instead. Those things are, I think, more a matter of losing focus than of true memory. I’ve always been distractible, but these days it’s as if the problem has gone onto steroids. It does help to stay calm and try to recreate the moments just before I undertook whatever it was I’ve forgotten, but while I can often repair the damage to the errand, it’s harder to repair the damage to my self-esteem.

  • HBS’s Working Knowledge, Terror at the Taj

    The following paragraphs were taken — with permission — from the Harvard Business School’s article in Working Knowledge, Terror at the Taj, that previews the business school’s case and faculty research.

    On November 26, 2008, 175 people died in Mumbai, India, when 10 terrorists simultaneously struck sites. Of the five locations — all well-known landmarks — the beautiful domes of the hotel known as the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower would become most closely associated with the horrific attacks in the world’s collective conscience.

    A new multimedia case by HBS professor Rohit Deshpandé offers a flip side to the nightmarish scenes that unfolded in real time on television screens around the globe. Produced in collaboration with Ruth Page and David Habeeb of the HBS Educational Technology Group, “Terror at the Taj Bombay: Customer-Centric Leadership” documents the bravery and resourcefulness shown by rank-and-file employees during the siege. (The case is not yet available to the public.)

    Video interviews with hotel staff and senior executives, combined with security footage of the attack, create a documentary-like account of events that took place over the course of 59 hours. The case also covers the hotel’s history, its approach to training employees, the “guest is God” philosophy inherent in Indian culture, and the question of how the hotel will recover after the attacks.

    Underlying this framework is a central conundrum: Why did the Taj employees stay at their posts, jeopardizing their safety in order to save hotel guests? And is this level of loyalty and dedication something that can be replicated and scaled elsewhere?

    “Not even the senior managers could explain the behavior of these employees,” says Deshpandé. “In the interview, the vice chairman of the company says that they knew all the back exits — the natural human instinct would be to flee. These are people who instinctively did the right thing. And in the process, some of them, unfortunately, gave their lives to save guests.” A dozen employees died.

    Executive Summary:

    Under terrorist attack, employees of the Taj Mahal Palace and Tower bravely stayed at their posts to help guests. A new multimedia case by Harvard Business School professor Rohit Deshpandé looks at the hotel’s customer-centered culture and value system. Key concepts include:

    • Underlying the case is a central conundrum: Why did the Taj employees stay at their posts, jeopardizing their safety in order to save hotel guests? And is this level of loyalty and dedication something that can be replicated and scaled elsewhere?
    • Taj employees carry a sense of loyalty to the hotel, and a sense of responsibility to the guests.
    • In India and the developing world, there’s a much more paternalistic equation between employer and employee that creates a kinship. Long length of service is recognized and rewarded by top management.

    The above was taken with permission from Julie Hanna’s Working Knowledge article, HBS Cases: Terror at the Taj, for the Harvard Business School, which reflects faculty research. Read the rest of the article at Working Knowledge’s site.

  • Between Dusk and Bedtime: Suppressing a Sleep Hormone

    Editor’s Note: Although most of us at an earlier age would have proclaimed that we had little or no trouble falling asleep at bedtime, we’ve learned that, later in life, certain factors are influential in that ability to fall asleep. The details of our sleep setting may be seemingly insignificant. Minor, yes, but with a substantial impact on our health.

    Room light before bedtime may impact sleep quality, blood pressure and diabetes risk; new study shows indoor lighting has profound suppressive effect on the hormone melatonin.

    According to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM), exposure to electrical light between dusk and bedtime strongly suppresses melatonin levels and may impact physiologic processes regulated by melatonin signaling, such as sleepiness, thermoregulation, blood pressure and glucose homeostasis.

    Melatonin is a hormone produced at night by the pineal gland in the brain. In addition to its role in regulating the sleep-wake cycle, melatonin has been shown to lower blood pressure and body temperature and has also been explored as a treatment option for insomnia, hypertension and cancer. In modern society, people are routinely exposed to electrical lighting during evening hours to partake in work, recreational and social activities. This study sought to understand whether exposure to room light in the late evening may inhibit melatonin production.

    “On a daily basis, millions of people choose to keep the lights on prior to bedtime and during the usual hours of sleep,” said Joshua Gooley, PhD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass. and lead author of the study. “Our study shows that this exposure to indoor light has a strong suppressive effect on the hormone melatonin. This could, in turn, have effects on sleep quality and the body’s ability to regulate body temperature, blood pressure and glucose levels.”

    In this study, researchers evaluated 116 healthy volunteers aged 18-30 years who were exposed to room light or dim light in the eight hours preceding bedtime for five consecutive days. An intravenous catheter was inserted into the forearms of study participants for continuous collection of blood plasma every 30-60 minutes for melatonin measurements. Results showed exposure to room light before bedtime shortened melatonin duration by about 90 minutes when compared to dim light exposure. Furthermore, exposure to room light during the usual hours of sleep suppressed melatonin by greater than 50 percent.

    “Given that chronic light suppression of melatonin has been hypothesized to increase relative risk for some types of cancer and that melatonin receptor genes have been linked to type 2 diabetes, our findings could have important health implications for shift workers who are exposed to indoor light at night over the course of many years,” said Gooley. “Further research is still needed to both substantiate melatonin suppression as a significant risk factor for breast cancer and determine the mechanisms by which melatonin regulates glucose metabolism.”

    Other researchers working on the study include: Kyle Chamberlain of the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom; and Kurt Smith, Sat Bir Khalsa, Shantha Rajaratnam, Eliza Van Reen, Jamie Zeitzer, Charles Czeisler and Steven Lockley of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass.

    The article, Exposure to room light prior to bedtime suppresses melatonin onset and shortens melatonin duration in humans, appears in the March 2011 issue of JCEM.

  • Women and Retirement Risk

    While half of women at age 65 will likely live beyond age 85, 92 percent of female retirees and 89 percent of female pre-retirees do not plan far enough in the future to cover this 20-year period. A new report from the Society of Actuaries (SOA) highlights these gaps in planning and offers an actuarial perspective on techniques for addressing these retirement concerns. The report, The Impact of Retirement Risk on Women, identifies findings from the 2009 Risks and Process of Retirement Survey Report, and focuses on issues in the survey specifically as they relate to retirement concerns for women.

    Given the fact that women outlive men on average by three or four years, women need to better plan for various risks, such as inflation, outliving assets and the need to cover long-term care costs. Despite similar perceptions of retirement risks between men and women, actuaries caution that the affects of risks on women can be quite different, and therefore an understanding of post-retirement risks women face is particularly important. For example, the expected average value of the cost of lifetime long-term care services is $29,000 for males and $82,000 for females, in 2000 dollars, which highlights the need for women to better prepare for the risk of incurring long-term care costs in retirement.

    “Many women approaching retirement are not focused on the long-term, and the economic crisis of the past few years is only going to add further challenges in retirement security for women in the Baby Boom generation,” said Anna Rappaport, FSA, MAAA and co-author of the report. “Our study on the impact of retirement risks for women is meant to be a call to action for women to educate themselves on retirement-related risks, better prepare for the long-term and, hopefully, avoid financial shortfalls.”

    The SOA report reveals many gaps in understanding of retirement risks. In particular, the report highlights five key risks affecting women in retirement, including:

    Outliving Assets
    Among men and women, there is often little focus on the variability of life expectancy and the financial planning horizon is relatively short when compared with life expectancy. While men and women have similar planning horizons, women have significantly longer life expectancies. Coupled with the fact that women traditionally have tended to marry men older than themselves, these facts emphasize the critical need for much more sophisticated financial literacy and retirement planning among women.

    Four out of 10 women over 65 living alone depend on Social Security for virtually all of their income.

    Loss of Spouse
    Because women have longer life expectancies than men and traditionally are younger than their husbands, periods of widowhood of 15 years or more are not uncommon. For many women, the death of a spouse is accompanied by a decline in standard of living.

    Eighty-five percent of women over age 85 are widows, compared to 45 percent of men.

    Decline in Functional Status
    Women are likely to have a longer period of chronic disability and are more likely to need care in a long-term facility or from a paid caregiver. This is compounded by the fact that women are more likely to be alone in old age and less likely to have a family caregiver.

    Forty-six percent of retired women are more likely to expect to pay for assistance than retired men (34 percent), during the less active, somewhat limited stage of retirement. Additionally, 70 percent of retired women are more likely to rely on family or community services for help than retired men, during the least active stage of retirement.

    More than two-thirds of women pre-retirees are likely to rely on family or community services (69 percent) than male pre-retirees (48 percent), in the less active stage of retirement.

  • Travel: Vietnam Today

    by Ferida Wolff

    It was in the sixties. I was recently married and worried that my new husband would be drafted and sent to Vietnam. I thought the war was wrong and I spent time protesting, marching, and writing letters. The pictures of the US military’s eventual withdrawal, particularly the photos of the frantic rooftop evacuation in Saigon, were seared into my mind. I ended up working with organizations helping the people who managed to escape by boat to establish themselves in a new life here. It was a traumatic time for both our peoples.

    Now, half a century later, my husband and I decided to visit the country we had so long ago feared. When I told our friends that we were going to Vietnam I could see the question in their eyes. Why, of all places, did we want to go there? They had painful memories, too. And to be honest, I was concerned about how Americans would be viewed all these years later.

    What I found was a friendly welcome. There are museums and monuments that refer to our war involvement and some of that is hard to look at. Yet, for the most part, Vietnam is a country that is putting aside the past for a vibrant future. It is a communist country but one that is enjoying peace, a change from an often war-torn history.

    I had imagined a land of flat fields and much of it is that, a countryside where rice fields abound. Rice is a staple in Vietnam, with several crops a year harvested. There are other parts, though; a UNESCO World Heritage site at Halong Bay where islands shift in and out of view in the morning mists and hide treasures like magnificent caves, and the winding road through the dense green hills in the center. There are also fishing villages and fish farms and islands in the Mekong Delta where coconut and banana trees are plentiful. How lovely to swim in the coral coves off the South China Sea.

    But this is not a languid country; Vietnam is on the move — literally. It isn’t easy for a westerner to figure out the traffic rules (are there any?). There aren’t too many cars on the road yet — too expensive — but motorbikes abound and they are all traveling at breakneck speed wherever there is room. Six vehicles in the space of two lanes? Sure, why not if they fit? Can’t wait to get through? Move into the opposing lane. Stuck in a traffic jam? Drive on the sidewalk!

    You literally have to step into the line of onrushing vehicles to cross the street. We were advised to walk slowly and steadily, be aware of the traffic coming at you but don’t make eye contact. We found the best way to get across was to wait for a native to go first and we would follow close behind. Once, while we hesitated at a curb in Saigon, a woman took pity on us. She indicated that we were to follow her and then, in a moment of compassion, reached behind her to take my hand and lead me across. I didn’t know if I felt two years old or eighty but I made it safely to the other side. I thanked her as she waved goodbye and continued on her way. We felt blessed after each successful crossing because we made it alive! But we still had the sidewalks to contend with. There was to be no slacking off in our traffic awareness.

  • Managing Financial Goals: Study on Investment Advisers and Broker-Dealers

    We have to admit that we’ve read only a small portion of the Study on Investment Advisers and Broker-Dealers issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission. We have excerpted a  section of the Executive Summary in order to reveal the breadth and subjects covered in study. It was prepared “As Required by Section 913 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform.”

    The Summary sets the stage:

    “Retail investors seek guidance from broker-dealers and investment advisers to manage their investments and to meet their own and their families’ financial goals.  These investors rely on broker-dealers and investment advisers for investment advice and expect that advice to be given in the investors’ best interest.  The regulatory regime that governs the provision of investment advice to retail investors is essential to assuring the integrity of that advice and to matching legal obligations with the expectations and needs of investors. “

    “Broker-dealers and investment advisers are regulated extensively, but the regulatory regimes differ, and broker-dealers and investment advisers are subject to different standards under federal law when providing investment advice about securities.  Retail investors generally are not aware of these differences or their legal implications.  Many investors are also confused by the different standards of care that apply to investment advisers and broker-dealers. That investor confusion has been a source of concern for regulators and Congress. “

    Furthermore, the SEC has laid out the upcoming activity surrounding the implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. This activity will cover derivatives, oversight, credit ratings, asset-backed securities and corporate governance and disclosure.

    “The following recommendations suggest a path toward implementing a uniform fiduciary standard for investment advisers and broker-dealers when providing personalized investment advice about securities to retail customers: “

    • Standard of Conduct:  The Commission should exercise its rulemaking authority to implement the uniform fiduciary standard of conduct for broker-dealers and investment advisers when providing personalized investment advice about securities to retail customers.  Specifically, the Staff recommends that the uniform fiduciary standard of conduct established by the Commission should provide that:

    the standard of conduct for all brokers, dealers, and investment advisers, when providing personalized investment advice about securities to retail customers (and such other customers as the Commission may by rule provide), shall be to act in the best interest of the customer without regard to the financial or other interest of the broker, dealer, or investment adviser providing the advice.

    Implementing the Uniform Fiduciary Standard:
    The Commission should engage in rulemaking and/or issue interpretive guidance addressing the components of the uniform fiduciary standard:  the duties of loyalty and care.  In doing so, the Commission should identify specific examples of potentially relevant and common material conflicts of interest in order to facilitate a smooth transition to the new standard by broker-dealers and consistent interpretations by broker-dealers and investment advisers.  The Staff is of the view that the existing guidance and precedent under the Advisers Act regarding fiduciary duty, as developed primarily through Commission interpretive pronouncements under the antifraud provisions of the Advisers Act, and through case law and numerous enforcement actions, will continue to apply.

    • Duty of Loyalty:  A uniform standard of conduct will obligate both investment advisers and broker-dealers to eliminate or disclose conflicts of interest. The Commission should prohibit certain conflicts and facilitate the provision of  uniform, simple and clear disclosures to retail investors about the terms of their relationships with broker-dealers and investment advisers, including any material conflicts of interest.

  • GOP Introduces Four Anti-Abortion Bills Into Congress; Other Women’s Issues at Risk

    by Jo Freeman

    The Republican Party’s capture of the House of Representatives has feminists worried. As the 112th Congress convened, feminists held meetings and rallies all over the nation’s capitol where they spoke about Republican plans to reduce or dismantle programs that protect women.

    High on the Republican legislative hit-list (*see below) is abortion, as that is also an issue on which Democrats are politically vulnerable. A woman’s right to choose is the one feminist issue for which public support has declined over time. Even though a majority of the population still supports the 1973 Supreme Court decision, those who are opposed are well organized and vocal. Pro-life Democrats are more likely to be elected to Congress than pro-choice Republicans.

    On January 20, House Speaker John Boehner called for the permanent banning of federal funding of abortions, saying it had “the highest priority.” When the Republicans were campaigning in 2010 they said that jobs were the highest priority. His proposal was denounced that evening at a rally outside the Supreme Court, held annually around the time of the Roe v. Wade decision which legalized most abortions.

    Since 1976 Congress has attached a Hyde amendment (named for former Illinois Congressman Henry Hyde) to each appropriations bill, banning federal funds from paying for abortions except in case of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother. It primarily affects Medicaid recipients. Other laws deny federally funded abortions to military families, peace corp workers, federal prisoners, and other persons supported by federal funds. There is also a prohibition against federal funds going to any NGO that advises or performs abortions abroad.

  • CultureWatch, January 2011 Edition

    Cleopatra: A Life — In the end, we must ask ourselves if Stacy Schiff, one of the most gifted American biographers currently writing, has successfully peeled away two millennia of myth and propaganda or, rather, given us a new myth, a Cleopatra who fits modern, Western feminist thinking. In the Pursuit of Happiness —  To call Maria Kalman’s work idiosyncratic isn’t nearly powerful enough to describe what she has produced. It is an explosion of such brilliance that one scarcely knows where to start

    Books:

    Cleopatra: A Life (Amazon)
    By Stacy Schiff
    Published by Little, Brown and Company; Hardback, ©2010, 368 pp     Image from Amazon

    In the fourth century AD Alexandria, the capital of Egypt, was largely destroyed by the combined forces of earthquakes and tsunami. Nature’s fury took the material culture of the city down to Neptune’s kingdom. Tragic for the people of Alexandria, the devastation also ended any hope that the events and achievements of Cleopatra’s twenty-two year reign (51 BC — 30 BC) could, in the future, be reported with accuracy. Whatever writing might be ascribed to her, and those of her advisers and supporters, was lost. Historians were left with the accounts and opinions of distant savants and naysayers. In life, and following her famous suicide, Cleopatra VII, the last of the Ptolemy rulers, suffered a fate most unkind to a public figure, the inability to create a lasting record, much less set it straight. For all that she reputedly knew nine languages, she entered history with no authentic voice.

    Stacy Schiff is one of the most gifted American biographers currently writing. She has previously produced three well-received, prize winning biographies: Saint Exupéry: A Biography (1994); Véra (Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov: Portrait of a Marriage (1999); and Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (2005). Her choice of subjects demonstrates intellectual curiosity and a willingness to do the arduous work of researching the lives of people who come from very different times and circumstances. With her most recent book, Cleopatra: A Life, Schiff skillfully jumps from her earlier exploration of Franklin’s diplomatic role in France to the first century BC Queen of the Nile.

    The fundamental question chasing Schiff’s decision to write about Cleopatra, given the problematic nature of evidence and sources, is why? What would prod a gifted, serious biographer to tackle so elusive a subject, one that forces her to clothe her tale in speculation and resort often to “purportedly,” “we have no idea how or if … “or “we may assume.”

    Certainly one explanation is that readers are intrigued by accounts of monarchy, and this monarch is iconic. Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, William Shakespeare, and Elizabeth Taylor have made Cleopatra a household name, one that has become shorthand, in Schiff’s words, for “wanton temptress.”

    We may also speculate that rehabilitation figures in Schiff’s choice of projects. Woven through the pages of Cleopatra is Schiff’s conclusion that even as she was presiding over the twilight of Ptolemaic rule, this queen was no brainless sex-kitten but rather a smart, cunning, and competent political strategist. Schiff contends that the queen was “[A] capable, clear-eyed sovereign, she knew how to build a fleet, suppress an insurrection, control a currency, alleviate a famine.” As her biographer Schiff seeks to rescue Cleopatra from the conflated accounts of the Romans, who “saddled Cleopatra with the vices of other miscreants.” Yet, with limited exceptions  — for example, Caesar’s Civil War or Cicero’s caustic text — she must draw upon the writings of men who never met Cleopatra. Plutarch wrote a hundred years after the queen died, as did Appian. Dio Cassius parsed his information even later — all of them gathering accounts and analyzing events in a world without newspapers, telephones, the Internet, or, yes, even Twitter.

  • Short in Stature, Tall in Tone

    By Elaine Soloway

    “Hop on the scale, we have to weigh and measure you,” said the nurse. She kept her nose in my medical file when she gave the order and didn’t note my tremble.

    It wasn’t the reading of my weight that terrified me. After a lifetime of dieting (skip birth to age 10), for the past half dozen years I’ve held steady at 104. Poundage was not the problem. It was the ruler she was about to pull up, then down, then down again, to measure my height.

    Not surprisingly, as we age, we tend to lose height. That’s not a big deal if one starts off lengthy, or at least average. But, when this writer hit her tallest at four feet eleven and a half inches, then steadily slipped a few, it’s not a number she wants to advertise — even if the only audience is the doctor’s framed diplomas, prescription pad, and the uniformed autocrat.

    After measuring me, the nurse threw the ruler back up for the next normal-sized patient and entered my height in the file. She didn’t announce; I didn’t ask, for I knew that at the last exam, the number was four feet nine inches. I couldn’t bear to hear it lower.

    That scene isn’t the only humiliating reminder of my lack. My 14-year-old grandson lives in Los Angeles. On early visits, he and I would line up, tush to tush, and he’d gleefully report, “I’m almost as tall as grandma.” We have long since ceased the game; he has towered over me for the past several years.

    My 8-year-old Boston granddaughter now eagerly plays match-up. “Almost there,” her mother (my daughter!) reports. The girl smiles widely, I slink off.

    I fear the inevitable comparison with my 2-year-old Los Angeles grandson. Currently, he races through the house showing off his talent to be upright and agile. But there will come a time when he’ll be begging Grandma to measure up.

    I suppose I should be accustomed to my skimpy height and its consequences by now. After all, I’m 72; have always been the shortest in a group. Early class photos are evidence: first row, first seat, and feet barely touching the floor.

    In the world of work, I recall two instances when my height caused a problem.

    The first was in 1980. As a press aide for the mayor of the City of Chicago, Jane M. Byrne. I was stationed at a ceremonial event, some ribbon cutting or unveiling. Along with distributing press kits, my job was to fend off reporters poised to attack Mayor Byrne with questions the moment she stepped from her limo. Her car pulled up. I extended both arms to my sides trying to push back the crowd of reporters. But it was as hopeless as stopping a wall of rushing water.

    Television cameramen, photographers, reporters with their microphones thrust before them, easily pushed me aside and descended on the diminutive Mayor.

    Back at City Hall, I overheard her tell my boss: “Don’t send Elaine to events anymore. She can’t handle it.”

    It took 20 more years before height again affected job performance. For a lark, I took a seasonal job at the Gap. Denims there were stacked to the ceiling: classic, boot cut, wide leg. Size two all the way up to fourteen. Thousands of blue jeans piled one on top of another. If my customer was a tiny two, no problem, but anything heftier, and I had to turn to another salesclerk or customer.

    “Could you please, would you mind?” I would gesture helplessly. And with a chuckle, they would comply.

    Fortunately, in my current public relations business, with the majority of my activities confined to office chair, and communication via the Internet, my size doesn’t hinder performance.

    Once though, when I lunched with a new friend that I had previously conversed with via email, upon meeting me, she exclaimed, “You’re so short!”

    Embarrassed at her gaffe, she quickly recovered,”You sound tall on the phone and even in your e-mails.”

    I smiled, thrust my shoulders back, looked up and reached for a hand to shake. As I pumped her palm, I conjured the tall image she had imagined of me. “Thanks,” I said. “Nice to meet you, too.”

    ©2011 Elaine Soloway for SeniorWomen.com

  • Knitting a Puppy? Stitches Events and Unravel 2011

    We haven’t added a new dog to our family since our last Puli had to be put down. But we were intrigued by the related items we found in the latest Selvedge Magazine, a pricey Christmas subscription present we received.

    For instance, the appealing aspect of knitting our own dog as a substitute for the real thing (do we really want to tackle house training for a fifth time?), as illustrated in a new book by Joanna Osborne and Sally Muir entitled Image from Amazon
    Knit Your Own Dog: Easy-to-Follow Patterns for 25 Pedigree Pooches. Perhaps by the time I finished all those projects, I’d be cured of the longing. Muir and Osborne’s website does offer kits to knit up those canines.

    Another English site that has marketed their wares over the pond has outposts in Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman is Mungo and Maud, so a call to those stores might produce an English look to your dog.

    We have noticed over the years that we’ve been petless, the emergence of more pets-wearing-clothes on the street, both to protect from the cold (and out here in the West), the rainy season. But the raincoat on Muttropolis seemed practical and colorful, as well as easy to put on. A squirmy dog resisting apparel …. hmmm. But I could always pop the pup into a ‘putting on the ritz’ bed, if he/she put their paw down and decided they didn’t need a walk in the rain after all.

    If  you’re interested in more practical matters relating to pets, healthypets.com is a site of  an international association of more than 42,000 veterinary care providers who treat companion animals: The American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA). The standby of all things to be rated, Consumer Reports,  has featured articles on such necessities as pet foods and the increasingly considered pet insurance policies.

    And if your real focus in on knitting rather than acquiring a pet, Selvedge is featuring a two-day festival of knitting with demonstrations, workshop and even a surgery for all your knitting blues, Unravel 2011. It’s in Surrey, England.

    However, if you’re not interested in a destination abroad, we’re heading to Stitches West in February. There are events at other times in the East, the Midwest and the South, too. Since there are three knitters in our family (and one a teacher of the craft), we may see you there.