Doris O'Brien is a retired college Speech teacher and banker. She has published two books of humor (Up or Down With Women's Liberation and Humor Me a Little) and for many years contributed light verse to the Pepper 'n Salt column of the Wall Street Journal. She is an avid writer of letters to the editors.
Doris celebrated her 50th wedding anniversary in the same year she welcomed her first grandchild. She now lives in Pasadena with a great view of the San Gabriel mountains — and the annual Tournament of Roses Parade.
She can be reached by e-mail: witsendob at (@) gmail.com
Black Friday, Holiday Shopping and Beyond: Protect Your Identity Even Through the Means of Thwarting Dumpster Divers!
From Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA: Black Friday is one of the most lucrative shopping days of the year for retailers in brick-and-mortar shops and online, but shoppers aren't the only ones looking for deals. Malicious people may be able to obtain personal information (such as credit card numbers, phone numbers, account numbers, and addresses) by stealing your wallet, overhearing a phone conversation, rummaging through your trash (a practice known as dumpster diving), or picking up a receipt at a restaurant that has your account number on it. If a thief has enough information, he or she may be able to impersonate you to purchase items, open new accounts, or apply for loans. more »
Julia Sneden Wrote Napkin Rings and Saving Ways: Initials Engraved in Silver, Rings That Were Clearly Ours, Each One Different From Anyone Else's
A few years ago as I was strolling through the china department of a local department store, I came across a dining table display that set me to giggling. The linens, china, crystal and silver were all quite elegant and carefully coordinated. The flower arrangement was a stunner. What set me off was the sight of twelve perfectly matched napkin rings, each correctly placed on the napkin to the left of the forks. The fad for matched napkin rings has grown since then, and nowadays even the catalogues feature such sets. Excuse me, but doesn't anybody in this modern generation realize why we had napkin rings in the old days? more »
Serena Nanda Reviews Light in Dark Times: The Human Search for Meaning
Alisse Waterston is a cultural anthropologist; the inspiration for the book was her own emotional and intellectual development as an anthropologist and an activist, but her search for meaning goes far beyond cultural anthropology, which she describes only briefly in terms of its relevance as a source of light in dark times. The book is a work of art as well as a narrative, enlivened by the charming sketches of the co-author, Charlotte Corden, and is rooted in an interdisciplinary intellectual immersion in historical and modern literature, philosophy, poetry, and social science. Waterston’s fictional and nonfictional encounters are focused on the widespread current political, economic and humanitarian crises. more »
Winterthur's Digital Collections: Boston Furniture, Spode, Patriotic America, Silversmith's Marks, Garden Collection and Soup Tureens
In an effort to share library holdings with people who cannot come to Winterthur in northern New Castle County, Delaware as well as to respond to onsite users, library staff has selected a number of collections to digitize. Choosing to represent library strengths and materials frequently requested by researchers, we have scanned dozens of collections and thousands of images and offer them online. more »
