Archive for the ‘Women’ Category
The Forgotten Garden has been compared to Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden; even author Kate Morton writes veiled references to it in her book. If you expect that
quality of narrative and characters you will be disappointed. However if you are looking for the perfect summer read that will whisper “make a glass of ice tea and take me outside for half an hour” this is the book for you.
The story has a charm that takes one from page to page effortlessly. The lives of Nell, Cassandra and Eliza weave around you as their stories unfold in three different time periods.
Morton also wrote some interesting male characters in Linus and Nathaniel and it is a shame that she didn’t allow them to play a more pivotal role in the story line especially as it drew to an end. Linus in particular would have made the conclusion more affective. Instead the ending was predictable and the last few pages insipid but you are so engaged by that point you suffer through the harlequin style dialogue between Christian and Cassandra. I get the romance but Christian was not crucial to the plot that we have been following for over 500 pages.
A woman’s search to find her real family, fascinating fairy tales and a walled garden at the end of a maze all play a key role in everyone’s lives. Underneath all this is the question “How is home defined?” It is the place where we are born? The house that we return to at the end of the day? Is it being with family or that certain someone? Will one unexpectedly discover home while travelling? As the book illustrates we know when we have found home, but we don’t know where or even how it may come into our lives.
Kate Morton talks about her book.
With Your Biscotti & Coffee
1 – An Interesting Woman: Maria Gunnoe
When you fight a big company, a town and a way of life the danger to one’s self and your family is real. Maria Gunnoe took on the big coal industry in Appalachia. Coal Country Crusade by Tamara Jones/More Magazine
2 - Nine of the most amazing bookstores in the world from The Huffington Post
3 - American Theatre Wing
An in depth look at what is playing on and off Broadway and behind the scenes.
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The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is currently showing “Renoir in the 20th Century” ; until May 9th when it moves to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In true Renoir style many of the women that he painted are voluptuous. While his paintings are a little vapid for my taste his female models are glorious in their natural and often nude beauty. One can only hope that families and schools take advantage of exhibitions such as these so that we can remember that the human body is really quite spectacular.
While this LA museum is celebrating the Renoir’s females down the highway television executives decided that a Lane Bryant plus size lingerie commercial should not appear on certain shows in specific time slots.
“According to Lane Bryant, the ad was rejected from a number of programs that would air at 9:00 p.m. including Dancing with the Stars, Game Shows, America’s Funniest Videos, Extreme Makeover, Home Edition and Wipeout …………..”
So why the puritanical censorship when it comes to this company? The model, lingerie and filming are all stunning. One must assume that they object to the plus size cleavage but if we ignore for a minute the sales pitch perspective are not commercials just another form of modern artistic expression?
In 2210 when the Philadelphia Museum of Art is exhibiting ‘Women of the Early 21st Century” will it truly reflect what we see as we dress every morning. For centuries art has been about the portrayal of the authentic female form but perhaps I am wrong and ABC knows better.
Written by a sublimely less than perfect woman
1. Buy really smelly cheese.
2. Replace your laptop on the dining table with a place setting for a person
3. Attempt to write something dazzling in cards to clients but end up with ‘best wishes’
4. Slip into your office to catch up on work and don’t answer the phone
5. Wonder why you keep buying boxes of crackers
6. Go to farmers markets and expensive bakeries for your ‘homemade’ baking
7. Curl up at 2pm with a book, hot cocoa and no guilt
8. Carry on whole conversations without any interruption
9. Feel like a kid again and actually enjoy the snow
10. Stop planning everything with military precision
…………. remember that the best moments are spontaneous.
In her recent article Mrs., Ms. or Miss: Addressing Modern Women , Nancy Gibbs ended with this statement
Feminists a generation ago fought for the title and dreamed of Freedom and Choice and Opportunity; maybe the surest sign that they’ve won is not which title we pick, but that we can have them all at once.
I also like the fact that how we choose to be addressed is now a matter of personal choice not societal mandate. I use Ms. for all things business; preferring the neutrality that it provides. Whether I am married or single is irrelevant in my professional life.
For business I also use my family name of Crossland and that decision had nothing to do with patriarchy. I like the name and am proud of the English heritage behind it -
English (chiefly West Yorkshire): habitational name from a place in the parish of Almondbury, West Yorkshire, named Crosland, from Old English cros ‘cross’ + land ‘newly cultivated land’.
(English or Scandinavian) Belonging to Crosland/Crossland (Yorks) = the Land of the Cross [Middle English cros, Old Norse kross + land].
Early records of the name mention CROSLAND (without surname) who was recorded as a tenant in the Domesday Book of 1086.
In my own way I keep the family name in a state of perpetuation and part of me imagines how proud my father would have been to see the name being branded in my company and as the byline to my writing.
Googling one’s name is always interesting. Jill Crossland, the pianist comes up first and frequently but I manage to hold my own somewhere on the first page of the search.
For those personal matters such as banking, legal documents. Mrs. Sadie married lady steps forward.
I have never liked the practice of hyphenating last names unless there is a cultural or social reason; as it gives one the impression of a need to try to please everyone. So this is the only time that you will ever see ……….. Jill Barbara Crossland-Pappageorgiou.
In an O magazine article Looking for Stillness author (Riding In Cars With Boys), Beverly Donofrio goes monastery-hopping (her words) and she discovers ‘peace, clarity, connection, grace and a kind of hush’. At the end of the article she returns to the Nada Hermitage in Colorado “Where you can hear your own bare feet on the floor”.
When was the last time you heard your own bare feet on the floor?
If you are anything like me noise is embedded into your life. I get up, turn on the news so that I can hear what has transpired in the world while I slept. Feed excited and hungry dogs/cats, water runs, the coffee pot beeps to let me know when the coffee is ready, the toaster dings, my computer says “Good morning, Jill”, a phone rings and the day is underway.
As the hours progress my heels will click on busy pavement or loafers connect with my office’s hardwood but somehow I missed that moment when my bare feet quietly set my life in motion.
In between the self-effacing attempts at humour and the ambiguous medical reports is a woman in menopause. I have used humour myself but the truth is, it is not all that funny. No woman enjoys the extreme mood swings, muddied thinking, hot flashes, and assorted other symptoms that ebb and flow over a span of years. Not to mention the affect that fluctuating hormones is having on our intimate relationships.
I am not asking for drugs, quite the contrary if you look in my medicine cabinet you would die from boredom. There is a jar of Vicks, pills for my Afib and some Bufferin.
It is the fact that nine years into the 21st century I would have expected more in the way of unbiased research and possible options.
Hormone therapy has been a roller coaster of benefits vs risks since the ‘60s this all culminated in 2002 with the Women’s Health Initiative study. Controversy continues to swirl around drugs such as Premarin and Prempro not the least of which is how it is obtained from pregnant mares’ urine.
Understandably weary of the whole HT approach of “we’ll get it right, even if we just lower the risks to your overall good health”; women started to look to the bioidentical option that has became part of the menopause fray. Suzanne Somers and Robin McGraw have marketed themselves as part of the next big menopause solution package. This is also equally unnerving. I mean you are probably lovely ladies (call me we’ll do lunch) but in reality you are just baby boomer women; the difference is you have the money and resources to get books published and garner media hype. However you are not experts in any field.
My concern is that menopause is quickly becoming another money making health condition. Once it reaches that status we the real women of menopause; will never be offered anything more than quick fixes, snake oil scams, self-help fluff and pharmaceutical companies trying to ‘cure’ us. Or are we already there?
Dare I say it but now that no one is commenting on her hair and clothes she looks great. Bold suits, chunky jewelry and the hair is just doing it’s own thing. She has found that she can play well with others and life is good all in all.
Yes, Hillary Clinton is a contented woman. History seems to have written itself in the right way, at least for now. We see her getting off airplanes in some foreign country ready for whatever and whoever awaits her. Sometimes the reception is a chilly handshake, sometimes a two cheek kiss and I have even observed a few bear hugs when the person at the bottom of the stairs knows her. She is taking it all in stride and relishing every moment.
Ms. Clinton has paid her dues time and time again in the court of public opinion and now she is rewarded for her perseverance and dignity but it is more than that; her approval ratings are high and she is the right person for the job.
Where’s Bill these days? Last time I saw his name it was on the guest list for the Rachael Ray Show. And I’m not touching that one!
I have recently read a number of articles by women who write that they suddenly feel invisible. They are the ‘beautiful’ women who had a somewhat charmed life; one in which they were accustomed to getting attention and being admired. For the rest of us there were different life lessons. How to walk into a room with confidence, what clothes work, the importance of being self-assured and that with a handshake, warm smile and eye contact you can connect with anyone. Over the years we didn’t just survive but we thrived and succeeded.
I want to remind those ‘invisible’ women; we are not the generation that ‘goes quietly into the night’. So shoulders back, head up and find your articulate midlife voice. I am not invisible in stores, people listen when I speak and last time I was in Starbucks I had a very engaging conversation with a young man when we both reached for the stirsticks at the same time, mind you it was a very good hair day.
