Senior Women Web

Joan L. Cannon writes: My father's desk would be glittering with snippets of gold foil, spools of brilliantly colored silk, as resplendent as a jeweler's tray with iridescent peacock and pheasant feathers, tiny bits of deer and badger and elk hair, and puffs of down. more »

High unemployment has attracted much attention, but there has been less consideration of how older workers have fared. In past recessions unemployment has remained relatively low for older workers, whose seniority often protected them. However, age might not protect older workers as well as it once did, because workplaces are now less regularized and labor unions are less powerful. For women, the 2009 unemployment rate was 6.0 percent at age 55 to 64 and 6.1 percent at age 65 and older. The aging population will increase the number of workers age 55 and older by a third over the coming decade. more »

Jo Budd’s diptych was bathed in soft light, accentuating the stitches and ripples, the shadows and softly curvaceous contours of ‘Female/Summer’. In ‘Virtue and Virtuosity’, Dinah Prentice was installing ‘Billowing Maenads’, seductively draping and illuminated against the peachy tones of the walls. We have won over the lighting engineers who want to know more about the Mary Parker quilt made from silk ribbons from the 1720-40s. more »

I sensed this out on the distant horizon several months ago, but not even in my wildest imagination the exact form it would take. (I catch myself vacillating between laughter at the bizarre and tears of frustration.) Something was in the air, like a foreboding atmospheric change signaling a storm. When the weather report warns people to evacuate or run for cover from a hurricane or tornado, that’s exactly what you are expected to do. Yet, in stark contrast, when a crisis in the family tree begins to brew we race headlong into the storm, understanding fully the emotional trauma at risk. more »