Poetry Sunday: “En Route to Bolinas, A Rose,” by Brenda Hillman
“En Route to Bolinas, A Rose” takes us on a journey that is spiritual as well as physical that leads us to the edge of a precipice, offering a glimpse into the darkness and mystery of the terrible eternal. That it does this by mimicking the action of human thought in a poem that feels light, vivid, and as fresh as a watercolor still on the easel to dry, is its genius.
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Molly Fisk: Rag Dolls
I miss that glorious sense of wealth when I’d look at the seven dolls or 35 sweaters covering my kitchen table. Tangible things I made myself: clean and perfect and in multiples! There’s nothing like it.
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Barbara Corcoran, Positive Thinker—The Secret Sauce of Success
Striving to do your best is a worthwhile goal, but perfection in all things is impossible. Worse, it is a destructive goal.
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‘My Cousin Rachel’ — Black Widow or Frustrated Feminist?
'My Cousin Rachel' offers up a fascinating, if unfinished, portrait of a woman’s attempt to buck a system that affords her less autonomy than her intelligence and sensitivity demand.
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Heat Exhaustion and Heatstroke: Awareness, Prevention, Diagnosis and Treatment
Every year on average, extreme heat causes 658 deaths in the United States—more than tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, and lightning combined.
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Poetry Sunday: “Nothing Gold,” by Ethna McKiernan
Today’s poem is a sad one, but in it the speaker’s great love for her father shines through, and that makes it beautiful. In telling her story, the speaker shows how well she has been taught by her father, and his great love for literature lives on in her person and writing, a living legacy and a wonderful poem for Father’s Day.
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Molly Fisk: Naked Lady Pearsauce
Until I moved to this house, I didn't know what to do with a plethora of pears, but last fall some friends and I decided if you could make applesauce then you could certainly make pearsauce, and we spent a weekend in a steaming kitchen proving this.
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Channeling Your Career Narcissism
There’s a fine line between disruptive narcissism at work that breeds distrust, and healthy narcissism that spawns the creation of ideas and productivity.
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Psychiatric Medication Improves Lives
While many people may be too quick to turn to psychiatric medications, there are many others who let prejudice and misconceptions keep them from a valuable source of help, and that is a shame.
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‘Orange is the New Black’ Season 5: Inmates Running the Asylum
Season five picks up at the precise moment we left off, and the tension doesn’t really abate. The thirteen 60-minute episodes transpire over the course of just 72 hours or so, during and immediately after the high-stakes riot and prison takeover.
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Summer Sun and Skin Health
Now that we finally had some summer weather this weekend, it is time to think seriously about sun protection and other ways to maintain healthy and glowing complexions. We know that over 70 percent of UV radiation exposure occurs in the summer months so sun protection is essential.
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Poetry Sunday: “Quotidian,” by Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong
The simple everyday things—having a house to repair, a child who is alive and cooing, a glass of water to drink—here become paramount so we see them afresh for the gifts they are.
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Molly Fisk: In the Details
Part of my work is to remind us all, myself included, that the details matter. They have made us who we are, and will be with us through to the end.
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Women and the Opiod Epidemic: A National Emergency
Women have been particularly hard hit by the opioid epidemic. Across America, they are dying more often, and at younger ages, than ever before. This is especially true for white women—death rates for blacks and Hispanics are continuing to fall. There has been a 400 per cent increase in overdose deaths among middle-aged white females from 1994 to 2014.
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‘Wonder Woman’: Saving the World, One Woman at a Time
It’s thrilling that less than a week into its run, 'Wonder Woman' is enjoying the critical and commercial success that it is. But, in some ways it’s also unfair. There is more weight than one film by one director about one woman should bear.
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Perimenopausal Heavy Bleeding: Is It Normal?
Physiological change in the menopausal transition will cause many alterations in hormonal, physical and emotional aspects of life, but it is not the cause of every symptom in a woman past age 40. New symptoms must always be evaluated.
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Poetry Sunday: “Let Them Not Say,” by Jane Hirshfield
Whether or not we share the chagrin and distress felt by the speaker in “Let Them Not Say,” we are all undeniably part of a generation that will be judged by future generations. We all have skin in this game. That is a powerful message, regardless of which side of the current political controversy you now occupy.
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Molly Fisk: Choosing Community
One way I support the community is to go to weddings and funerals. Weddings used to make me jealous or cynical, and funerals made me too sad. But I've changed.
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Elizabeth Strout’s Luminous Short-Story Collection, ‘Anything Is Possible’
Interrelated stories by the most acute observer of human behavior writing fiction today.
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‘Paris Can Wait’: Travels with Diane
How refreshing to find a smart woman d'un certain âge as a romantic central figure in a mainstream movie.
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Memorial Day: A Day To Remember Those Who Died In Active Military Service and Those Left Traumatized
There are those of us who mourn those who returned to lives that were never fully lived due to post traumatic stress.These men, in their 80s and 90s, still talked about the recurring nightmares, the unexpected flashbacks, the isolation that they had endured after the war was over.
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Poetry Sunday: “End of the Line,” by Kate Peper
If literature and poetry are ways to remember our beloved dead, they can also be ways of mourning the unborn. Who will remember us after we are gone? It’s a question this poem asks and to which is itself its own answer.
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Molly Fisk: Unmatched Windows
So I wanted lots of windows in the new house but new windows, as you know, aren’t cheap.
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Suddenly, Menopause: Dealing With the Psychological Impact
A large-scale study conducted in Britain in 2008 concluded that “women who undergo hysterectomy at a young age are a defined group who may require more support than other women to maintain good psychological health.”
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