Relationships and Going Places

Overall, the findings, just published in the journal Emotion, showed an increase in such positive behaviors as humor and affection and a decrease in negative behaviors such as defensiveness and criticism. The results challenge long-held theories that emotions flatten or deteriorate in old age and point instead to an emotionally positive trajectory for long-term married couples. “Given the links between positive emotion and health, these findings underscore the importance of intimate relationships as people age, and the potential health benefits associated with marriage.” more »

Bills Introduced: Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)/Judiciary (11/29/18) — A bill to make it a criminal offense for individuals to engage in sexual acts while acting under color of law or with individuals in their custody, to encourage states to adopt similar laws. A bill to provide coverage for custom fabricated breast prostheses following a mastectomy. A bill to allow the child tax credit with respect to stillbirths. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing, “BOP [Bureau of Prisons] Management of its Female Inmate Population and Other Challenges.” The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the Women’s Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Act, as amended. more »

Julia Sneden: We find that it an interesting process, looking back at books we read in our twenties and thirties. The books themselves haven't changed, but thanks to the varied experiences that another twenty or thirty years have added to our lives, we read them from a different perspective. Herewith, the first review of an old, beloved book (actually, three books):"'When you yourself had borne a child, Kristin, I thought you would understand,' her mother had said once. Now, she understood that her mother's heart had been scored deep with memories of her daughter, memories of thoughts for her child from the time it was unborn and from all the years a child remembers nothing of, memories of fear and hope and dreams that children never know have been dreamed for them, until their own time comes to fear and hope and dream in secret.'"     more »

The Bodleian exhibition aims to recreate Dickens’s world through these ephemeral items, taking visitors on a journey back to his time with themes such as Victorian London and its amusements, the coming of the railways, domestic entertainment and children’s school life. A number of Dickens's works have been recorded by the Libraries, bringing London to life. The Bodleian exhibition illustrates the relationship between the fictional worlds that Charles Dickens created in his novels and the historical reality in which he lived. He depicted the social realities of his time with what Henry James noted as his ‘solidity of specification,’ an extraordinary clarity and particularity. The actualities of life, especially life in London - the setting for almost all his fiction - were of singular importance to him. When we read Dickens we experience Victorian life. more »