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  • Via the White House: The Council on Women and Girls Blog

     

  • Relive 2010 Through the Year in Pictures – and Look Ahead to 2011

    The Year in Pictures is a venerable and always interesting editorial concept. Having started my career at Time Magazine in the Picture Department, I’m always drawn to those compilations — and to the process of choosing, a difficult one winnowing down the immense collection of marvelous pictures taken by many of the best photographers in the world.

    Photographers always have to be there. There’s no sitting behind a desk at a computer and creating some fabric of news from that vantage point. The person with the camera has to be on the scene to capture the moment, whether they sort through the results for the prized frame themselves or an editor does at a distance. Now it’s possible to scan and send pictures digitally; years ago it was a struggle to get film on planes, boats or cars to reach a lab, an editor and, finally, have unknown editors making final selections.  Regardless of new technologies and systems to send the pictures, the trek (and talent) to photograph the event, the gathering, the individual, still is necessary whether the subject is just around the corner or thousands of miles away.

    Start with the Year in Pictures at the White House:  The Year in Photos: 2010. Pete Souza, Director of the White House Photography Office, introduces a new photo gallery of his favorite shots from the last year.

    Travel abroad with the BBC Year in Pictures (Note: there’s a warning about some pictures might be found disturbing) and The New York Times Year in Pictures.

    Finally, Magnum Photos — the great photo agency — looks ahead by celebrating such 2011 events as the 50th Anniversary of JFK’s inauguration on January 6th, 40 years since the divorce of Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller and15th year anniversary of the last northeast blizzard. In February, the 80th anniversary of James Dean’s birth, March 21’s  World Poetry Day and Yuri Gagarin’s first space flight in April. May brings the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides.

    And at last, New Year’s Eve Celebration pictures.

    But before we leave this year, take a listen to NPR’s  Science Friday with Ira Flatow. The program’s  Year in Science may not be illustrated but always well worth a listen:  From the Gulf oil spill and the earthquake in Haiti to the creation of synthetic life and the Icelandic volcano, many science stories made headlines in 2010.

  • A Child’s View: 19th-Century Paper Theaters

    Theatre Francaise
    The Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut is presenting  A Child’s View: 19th-Century Paper Theaters, which takes a novel approach to the Museum’s popular tradition of offering holiday shows featuring the world of miniatures. The exhibition is on view through January 30th and  showcases colorful, antique paper theaters plus related materials from the personal collection of Eric G. Bernard.

    Before the availability of children’s periodicals and mass-produced toys, a rather unique and enchanting entertainment for children emerged during the second decade of the 19th century. Small tabletop theaters constructed out of printed paper, adhered to cardboard and mounted on a wooden frame introduced a unique visual entertainment into homes. Marketed to children for their entertainment and educational values, paper theaters engaged young audiences, and from contemporary accounts, adults as well, with countless hours spent on intricate preparation and performance. More than a mere toy, the theaters allowed children to expand the limits of their imaginations, creating entertainments as good as their efforts and talents allowed

    Nearly every major European country as well as the United States developed its own tradition of paper theater during the 19th century into the early 20th century. It was Juvenile Drama in England, Papiertheater or Kindertheater in Germany and Austria, dukketeater in Denmark, teatro de los niños or teatrillo in Spain, and théâtre de papier in France. All of these versions to some degree were derived from the ability to mass produce the printed image, initially from engraved copper plates, followed by color lithography in the mid-19th century.Scenery and figures, Cendrillon

    The relative sophistication of the visual and theatrical elements of paper theaters makes it puzzling as a child’s plaything. Most paper theaters were complete with a stage front or proscenium, scenery, actors, and a small printed booklet with the dialogue, the scene setting for each act, and directions for the movements of the figures. These toys were challenging for young people, yet their popularity must have been widespread, given the large number of printers and publishers engaged in their manufacture.

    Today, these small theaters and their vast repertoire of plays remain valuable records of professional performances and theater design of the 19th century. Sometimes created from fantasy, often the scenery and costumes were faithful representations of actual stage productions, as recorded by sketch artists sitting in live theater performances, or designed exclusively for the paper theater by professional theatrical designers. There is even a sense of the style of 19th century acting from the attitudes and positions of paper theater figures and actors in theatrical portraits.

    The plays, adapted into small playbooks for the paper theater from which the children recited, could hardly be considered children’s stories. They were melodramas or stories from history or pantomimes, or even the great works of the celebrated writers of each country, including Shakespeare, Sir Walter Scott, Goethe, Schiller, Cervantes, and Hans Christian Anderson. Even the popularity of opera is apparent from the number of composers represented, including Mozart, Spontini, Beethoven, Rossini, Weber, Wagner, Auber and Donizetti. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published as a paper theater play in both England and Germany, an indication of its great international popularity.Teatro de los Niños

    For all of its wide-ranging manufacture and influence, the paper theater was primarily a 19th century phenomenon, with occasional minor resurgences in popularity in the 20th century. Fortunately, the wonder of paper theater has been preserved through collectors and a very few, but fine, players performing with traditional paper theaters and in contemporary interpretations of miniature theaters made of paper. To this day, there remain organizations in England, Germany, and Denmark dedicated to the study and performance of paper theater.

    Catalogs for this exhibit and others can be viewed at the Museum’s shop.

    Illustrations:

    Top, Paper Theater Facsimile: Théâtre Francaise, Scenery and figures, Cendrillon; France, ca. 1866, Collection of Eric G. Bernard

    Middle: Publisher,  Imagerie Pellerin, Proscenium, Théâtre Francaise, Scenery and figures, Cendrillon; France, ca. 1866. Facsimile, Collection of Eric G. Bernard

    Bottom, Publisher, Seix y Barral, Teatro de los Niños,  Teatro-Escenario, Modelo M, Back stage view; Spain, ca. 1918. Color lithograph. Collection of Eric G. Bernard

  • Mojo: Interactive Calendar of Motion Picture and DVD Release Dates

    One of our favorite sites (ResourceShelf created by and for librarians, primarily) tipped us off to a site named Box Office Mojo, whose parent company is IMDb, International Movie Data Base. The publication was founded  in 1999 by movie analyst Brandon Gray,  the same year SeniorWomen.com was created.

    Here’s ResourceShelf’s brief critique for *Mojo’s features: “Impressive, interesting, and useful.”

    Direct to Interactive Calendar from Box Office Mojo

    + US Release Dates

    View by Date (Data for 2012 and Beyond Now Available)

    Also available, view entries:

    + Alphabetically
    + By Distributor
    + By New Dates/Changed Dates
    + By Title Changes
    + By MPAA Ratings

    Selecting/Clicking a title takes you to a summary page (rating, production budget, actor info, images, etc.)

    Box Ofice Mojo is an IMDb Company. IMDb is part of Amazon.com

    Direct to Interactive Calendar from Box Office Mojo

    Editor’s Note: If you’re subscribed to Netflix or Blockbuster, it’s easier to know now when  to expect release of a DVD and to add it to your SAVE Netflix or Blockbuster list. For instance, Image from Amazon
    The Social Network (Two-Disc Collector’s Edition)     is being released on Tuesday, January 11. This,  in all probability,  is timed for release after the Academy Award nominations are announced.

    And it’s not just for new movies/DVDs; older movies are noted, such as Blade Runner which is being released in Blu-ray in February, and Image from Amazon
    Justified: The Complete First Season. We’re discovering series that we were not aware of previously or we had skipped. We have found that we would rather watch TV series in multiple episodes at one time rather than waiting for each week’s episode, either live or recorded.

    (*Mojo has many meanings. Refer to Wikipedia’s page on Mojo.)

  • Music: New York Philharmonic’s New Year’s Eve Gala

    Live From Lincoln Center, featuring the New YorkPianist Lang Lang photographed by tk Philharmonic’s New Year’s Eve Gala celebrates the music of Tchaikovsky, conducted by Music Director Alan Gilbert with star pianist Lang Lang.  This televised evening features Tchaikovsky’s second act of The Nutcracker, his Polonaise from Eugene Onegin, and Piano Concerto No. 1. The program will be presented on Friday, December 31, 2010 at 8:30 pm on PBS*.

    Heralded as the “hottest artist on the classical music planet” by The New York Times, 28-year-old Lang Lang, has played sold out recitals and concerts in every major city in the world and is the first Chinese pianist to be engaged by the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, and all the top American orchestras.

    In 2008, a reported five billion people viewed Lang Lang’s performance in Beijing’s opening ceremony for the Olympics, which may have inspired millions of Chinese children to learn to play classical piano and termed by The Today Show as “the Lang Lang effect.”

    Alan Gilbert, now in his second season as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, is the first native New Yorker to hold the post. For his inaugural season he introduced a number of new initiatives: the positions of The Marie-Josée Kravis Composer-in-Residence, held by Magnus Lindberg; Artist-in-Residence, this season to be held by violinist Anne Sophie-Mutter. In the 2010–11 season Mr. Gilbert will lead the Orchestra on two tours of European music capitals; two performances at Carnegie Hall, including the venue’s 120th Anniversary Concert; and a staged presentation of Janáček’s opera The Cunning Little Vixen, among other highlights.Alan Gilbert by photographer Chris Lee

    Founded in 1842, the New York Philharmonic is one of the oldest orchestras in the world. Since its inception, it has played a leading role in American musical life, reaching out to audiences with touring that began in 1882; recordings beginning in 1917; and radio broadcasts since 1922, now represented by The New York Philharmonic This Week, syndicated nationally 52 weeks a year.

    Live From Lincoln Centeris in its 35th broadcast season. The series has received 13 Emmy Awards, most recently for the broadcast of New York City Opera’s Madama Butterfly.  It is the only series of live performing arts telecasts on American television today.

    *Check PBS local listings. Photographs are by Chris Lee.

     

  • Shopping for the Snowed In

    We did finally try our Shea Moisture Organic Raw Shea Butter Wash with …. wait for it … Frankincense & Myrrh! It gives off a marvelous aroma which, in the midst of winter, is comforting and appealing. It’s listed as Anti-Aging, (isn’t everything nowadays?), Hydrating & Rejuvenating. I found it in the large section in our local Target devoted to Beauty Products, but it’s available online and Amazon. Now I’m going to order the shampoo for my gray/white hair that could use some hydrating, actually.

    If you haven’t found calendars to your taste, we found two worth passing on:  Photographer Michel Tcherevkoff has produced 2011 Image from Amazon
    Petals.  Purses and Pumps 2011 Weekly Engagement Planner (Calendar) with “photographs of artfully designed shoes and accessories created from a variety of individual fresh flowers – a concept that is sure to put a smile on the face of shoe (and botanical) lovers everywhere. “

    Earlier this year we ordered a total of four Image from Amazon
    Alice 2011 Calendar — calendars illustrated by
    by Iassen Ghiuselev and published by SimplyReadBooks.com. And if you want to get ahead for a Image from Amazon
    Alice 2012 Calendar by Iassen Ghiuselev has created one already, though not available quite yet.

    Although we have mentioned Iris Hantverk previously we’ve seen their products appear on various sites but it bears repeating, especially since we self-gifted ourselves this season with two we had originally seen at Liberty a year and a half ago.  But you don’t have to travel to England to find them on the web.

    But don’t leave the Fjorn site until you look at the Design House Pleece collection for shawls and throws. Forgiving shapes, easy to don and layer. Another collection is that of  Numb clothing, all black, all easy shapes once more.

    While finishing up our latest jigsaw puzzle (so relaxing, especially after entertaining just the immediate family of eleven), Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergéres by Educa, we found a possible present idea for next year:  It’s magic-labs.com‘s Educa-quality puzzle made from a favorite photo. We did pick up at a Dicken’s Fair the eponymously-named Dickens Novels jigsaw puzzle, manufactured by Citadel. At the moment, it is difficult to find, so perhaps just find one of the novels to read, perhaps Great Expectations?

    I now have a Triton, mermaid and Pirate of the Caribbean figure from that master modeler, Papo,  to add to our collection for our grandchildren.  They do not need batteries, just imagination to play with. One of their competitors is Schleich, equally adept at creating low-cost imaginative figures. Our only complaint is that too many of the figures have a weapon in their hands (or paws).

  • Jo Freeman Reviews Reconstituting Whiteness: The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission

    A review of
    Reconstituting Whiteness: The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission
    by Jenny Irons
    Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2010, xviii, 260 pp

    by Jo Freeman

    On August 18, 1966, I was a civil rights worker in Mississippi when the Jackson Daily News devoted two-thirds of an editorial page to outing me as a “professional agitator” with Communist associations. Five photos accompanied the editorial. 

    Over 30 years later I learned that this material was prepared by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (MSSC), an official agency using taxpayer money to preserve white supremacy in Mississippi. In 1989 a federal court ordered what was left of the MSSC files to be deposited with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History for public viewing though legal challenges delayed their actual availability until 1998.

    Jenny Irons became intrigued with the MSSC in part due to her own Mississippi roots. Since she started going through the files, a few books and articles have been written about this agency and its activities, each of them lifting one more layer of mystery to see what’s underneath. 

    Irons is a sociologist, and her book is not a history so much as an attempt to put the MSSC into the context of Mississippi’s attempts to resist the federal government and retain segregation. As such it is less about what the Sovereignty Commission did to blacks and civil rights workers than to the internal struggles of whites involved in the Southern campaign of “massive resistance.” 

    Outraged by the May 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, Mississippians founded the White Citizens’ Councils in July. Two years later the state legislature created the MSSC, one purpose of which was to fund the WCC. Almost two hundred thousand dollars in state funds was given to the WCC by the MSSC before the latter was defunded in 1973 and officially closed in 1977. (The WCC became the Council of Conservative Citizens in 1988).

    Initially the MSSC was mostly an investigating agency, looking for “racial agitators” among blacks and exposing race traitors among whites. It cultivated informants of both races. When Ross Barnett became governor in 1960, the agency embarked on a massive public relations campaign to sell the Mississippi point of view to the country. 

    Barnett brought in Erle Johnston, his campaign publicist, to do this. By the time Johnston became MSSC Director in 1963, his primary program was promoting a more positive image of Mississippi. He wanted to end state funding of the WCC. 

  • New Year’s Peeve!

    by Rose Madeline Mula

    Am I glad I didn’t live in Babylonia four thousand years ago.There the New Year celebration lasted eleven days.One is bad enough.By the eleventh day, the Babylonians must have had prodigious hangovers.They probably weren’t even fully conscious for the first month of the new year.That’s not for me.It would mean missing all those great post-holiday sales.

    When I was young, I hated New Year’s — the whole shebang, beginning with New Year’s Eve.The forced gaiety.The pressure to be happy!It was all so depressing.

    The worst part was that if I didn’t have a date for New Year’s Eve, it cast a pall on the next twelve months.One year, to avoid the social ignominy of being dateless on the Big Night, a girl friend and I fled to Manhattan to mingle with the throngs in Times Square so no one could tell that we were unescorted.No one, that is, except a couple of sleazy characters who latched onto us and tried to entice us back to their pad to “start the new year off with a bang.” Did we really look that desperate?When we adamantly refused, a drunk who had been eavesdropping berated us for ““spoiling the boys’ New Year.”Give me a break!That was even more disheartening than being home with the old folks watching Guy Lombardo on TV.

    Now that I’m an “old folk,” I miss Guy Lombardo; and I don’t hate New Year’s Eve any more because I no longer feel pressured to party.Instead, I can go to bed early and sleep through the countdown.It’s wonderful!

    But when I wake up, it’s New Year’s Day, which is not so wonderful, because I feel compelled to make those cursed resolutions that I know are doomed to failure.If I didn’t lose those stubborn ten pounds last year, why will turning a page on the calendar help me shed them this year?(Could you hand me that last brownie, please?And don’t be stingy with the ice cream.)

    And why would I think that taking a new pledge to hike three miles a day is going to work when it never did before?It’s too cold to go out and walk anyway.It’s January in New England, for heaven’s sake!I’ll start in April when it warms up a bit.Or maybe not.What would be the point?I would have already blown three months.

    Don’t look at me like that.I know I really must cut down on sweets and ramp up my exercise.And I will.But making a resolution on January 1 and then giving up completely the first time I weaken isn’t going to do it.Eating a hunk of cheesecake and foregoing the mall walk on January 2 should not give me an excuse to stuff myself and flop on the couch every day for the rest of the year.

    On the bright side, I have stuck to at least one of my last year’s resolutions:I’vestopped wasting time playing computer Free Cell solitaire.Instead, however, I’m now addicted to Spider solitaire.Whenever I sit down at the computer to work, that insidious game draws me into its web and traps me there for at least an hour.I’d resolve to give it up, but I’m afraid something even more obsessive will replace it.

  • Census: Redistricting and Women-Owned Businesses

    Editor’s Note: The forms appeared in the mail, a Census representative may have appeared at the door — if you didn’t return the forms or filled them out adequately — and now the data has been collated and released. We’re just looking forward to being viable for one or two more census polling. However, the news generated about women-owned businesses may be of more interest to our audience.

    The US Census Bureau announced  that the 2010 Census showed the resident population of the United States on April 1, 2010, was 308,745,538.

    The resident population represented an increase of 9.7 percent over the 2000 US resident population of 281,421,906.  The most populous state was California (37,253,956); the least populous, Wyoming (563,626). The state that gained the most numerically since the 2000 Census was Texas (up 4,293,741 to 25,145,561) and the state that gained the most as a percentage of its 2000 Census count was Nevada (up 35.1% to 2,700,551).

    Regionally, the South and the West picked up the bulk of the population increase, 14,318,924 and 8,747,621, respectively. But the Northeast and the Midwest also grew: 1,722,862 and 2,534,225. Additionally, Puerto Rico’s resident population was 3,725,789, a 2.2 percent decrease over the number counted a decade earlier.

    The apportionment totals were calculated by a congressionally defined formula, in accordance with Title 2 of the US Code, to divide among the states the 435 seats in the US House of Representatives. The apportionment population consists of the resident population of the 50 states, plus the overseas military and federal civilian employees and their dependents living with them who could be allocated to a state. Each member of the House represents, on average, about 710,767 people. The populations of the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are excluded from the apportionment population, as they do not have voting seats in Congress.

    “The decennial count has been the basis for our representative form of government since 1790,” Groves said. “At that time, each member of the House represented about 34,000 residents. Since then, the House has more than quadrupled in size, with each member now representing about 21 times as many constituents.”

    Beginning in February and wrapping up by March 31, 2011, the Census Bureau will release demographic data to the states on a rolling basis so state governments can start the redistricting process.

    Census information loading.

    Earlier in December, the department released this report about women-owned businesses:

    Census Bureau Reports Women-Owned Firms Numbered 7.8 Million in 2007, Generated Receipts of $1.2 Trillion

    In 2007, women owned 7.8 million businesses and accounted for 28.7 percent of all businesses nationwide, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Business Owners. These firms generated $1.2 trillion in receipts, about 3.9 percent of all business receipts nationwide.

  • Combat Stress In Women Veterans Receiving VA Healthcare and Disability

    Source: US Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Inspector General

    As directed by the Conference Report to Accompany the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2010, we conducted a review to assess the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) capacity to address combat stress in women veterans. We assessed women veterans use of VA health care for traumatic brain injury (TBI), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other mental health conditions, and whether the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) properly adjudicated women veterans’ disability claims for these conditions. We also assessed whether VBA developed and disseminated military sexual trauma (MST) training and reference materials and policies to claims processors and the feasibility of requiring MST training and testing as part of VBA’s claims processor certification.

    Based on the integrated data from VA and Department of Defense, we characterized the population of nearly 500,000 veterans discharged from active military duty between July 1, 2005 and September 30, 2006, and we described their experience transitioning to VA and using VA health care and compensation benefits through March 31, 2010. We observed that, with variations in degree, female veterans generally were more likely to use VA health care. They were also more likely to continue using VA health care services — even years after separating from active military service — and to use it more frequently. We noticed that VA generally diagnosed higher proportions of female veterans with mental health conditions after separation, but lower proportions were diagnosed with the specific mental health condition of PTSD and with TBI. These patterns corroborated our findings from our data analyses and from our review of claims files that higher proportions of female veterans generally were awarded disability for mental health conditions other than PTSD, and a higher proportion of men were generally awarded disability for PTSD and TBI.

    Our data analyses of the study population indicated that VBA denied females more often for PTSD, and denied male veterans more often for a mental health condition other than PTSD, although the denial rates for male and female veterans for all mental health conditions were almost the same. From our review of veterans’ claims files, we did not find any evidence that claims processors applied VBA’s current policies and procedures differently when evaluating male and female veterans’ disability claims.

    Our review identified several issues pertaining to MST that require VBA leadership’s attention. Because VBA does not retain historical data on its denial decisions, we were unable to fully assess how often VBA denied male and female veterans’ disability claims and if VBA reversed its denials on appeal more frequently for male or female veterans. We also found that most regional offices do not post signs informing veterans about the services available through the Women Veterans Coordinators. Furthermore, many of the Women Veterans Coordinators and claims processors we spoke with stated that they often felt unprepared to communicate effectively with veterans who may be distressed or emotional during discussions regarding their MST-related disability claims. These regional office employees stated that additional training would be beneficial.

    Lastly, we found that although VBA does provide some training on processing MST-related claims as part of its training on PTSD, it has not assessed the feasibility of requiring additional MST-related training and testing. We recommended the Acting Under Secretary for Benefits, in on-going efforts to modernize the Rating Board Automation data system, develop reporting capabilities to capture longitudinal data on veterans’ claims activity. We also recommended regional offices post signs making veterans aware of services and assistance provided by Women Veterans Coordinators, as well as military sexual trauma sensitivity training be provided to claims processors and Women Veterans Coordinators. Finally, we recommended an analysis be performed of military sexual trauma claims volume, and VBA assess the consistency of how these claims are adjudicated, which would then determine whether additional training and testing on processing these claims is needed.

    Review of Combat Stress in Women Veterans Receiving VA Health Care and Disability Benefits (PDF)