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  • Packing for a La Leche League Meeting

    Originally published in LLL of New Mexico’s Enchantment, 1987

    La Leche League Leaders are bag ladies. They can be counted on to bring in boxes, files, suitcases, shopping bags, and trays of all kinds of stuff to an LLL meeting.

    Some Groups don’t have official librarians, reprint people, treasurers, or greeters. So the library, reprints, books for sale, and name tags and markers have to come with a Leader. Then there are the posters, big puzzles, the B-R-E-A-S-T-F-E-E-D-I-N-G chart, series announcements, and the books you’re going to lend another Leader. It can result in quite a stack. And quite a headache on meeting day.

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  • If My Husband Ran Christmas

    Originally published in LLL of New Mexico’s Enchantment, 1987

    Las winter, as I was pushing our grocery cart up to the checkout stand, my husband pointed to a display of bakery-made pumpkin pies on sale for 99 cents and said, “Why don’t we just take some of these to the party?” As I pulled out $10 worth of ingredients for a homemade pumpkin pie, I said, “And deny myself the pleasure of hours of work and shooing children out of the kitchen?” We laughed.

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  • Breaking Stones on the Road to Giverny

    Written July 2003

    The works of Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, and Claude Monet reflected French social, political, and economic conditions as well as artistic breakthroughs in the nineteenth century Realism and Impressionist movements. As the upper classes were attempting to stay in control and only valued art done in the academic tradition, these three painters pushed aside artistic boundaries and responded to a fading agrarian lifestyle, urban social unrest, and new awareness of the artistic reaction.

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  • Almost Safe in Dover

    When can you let down your guard when you travel? In your hotel room? At passport control? Never?

    The tea was hot, the cream seemed fresh as I shared my digestives with Alec, the terrorist. I’d been waiting for him in the Dover tea shop for twenty minutes, and now we sat huddled at the table, eating biscuits like grateful refugees.

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  • 101 Facts about Me

    ANCESTRY
    I am of German, Dutch, Scottish, and English ancestry.
    My father and mother were from Lakewood, Ohio, a Cleveland suburb.
    My parents met in the Lakewood High School band.
    Grandfather Fruend owned a hardware store. He was born in Toledo.
    Grandfather Grossman was a symphony conductor. He was born in Cleveland.
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  • Books about and set in the Arab world, India, Iran, and Turkey

    Listed by country
    AFGHANISTAN

    Abdullah, Morag Murray. My Khyber Marriage: Experiences of a Scotswoman as the Wife of a Pathan Chieftain’s Son, 1990. Valley of the Giant Buddhas, 1993.
    Armstrong, Sally. Veiled Threat: The Hidden Power of the Women of Afghanistan. 2003.
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  • The Desert in Your Air-conditioned Living Room

    One movie a week for a year in the heat, whether it’s in Dubai, Jeddah, or Tucson. In English unless otherwise noted. All available on VHS and/or DVD. Arranged by movie release date.

    Intolerance. 1916. 178 minutes. Silent. D. W. Griffith, director. Four stories of life and history, notable for Babylonian sequences.

    The Sheik. 1921. Silent. Rudolph Valentino. For its time, Rudy’s sensuality (despite the stiff acting) caused a sensation. Arabian decorating also became popular.

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  • A Silent Sheik Lives On

    An Italian-American’s portrayal of the Anglo-Spaniard adopted by an Arab sheik in two silent movies may yet still provide many Americans with vivid, romantic, and ridiculous images of Arab men

    Rudolph Valentino still colors the American myth of the Arabian man. I might not have believed this if I hadn’t heard this myth spouted from the mouths of young American women living in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Being stolen and locked up in a palace or desert tent at the hands of a dashing Arab on a galloping horse was on the minds of Karen, Sarah and me as we sipped mochas and picked at scones at the bustling Starbucks in the Mercato Mall along Jumeirah Beach Road. “Doesn’t that sound exciting! Karen gushed as we perused her shopping treasures from the spice souq that afternoon. “I may have a great business development job here, but I’m still looking for my sheik!” Those images came from Valentino’s iconic Jazz Age movies The Sheik and Son of the Sheik. Not even the events of 9/11 seemed to intrude on those young women’s fantasies. Whether or not they had even heard of Rudolph Valentino, I couldn’t be sure.

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  • Giving the Gift of Appreciation

    Originally published in Connections. Reprinted in LEAVEN.

    It was a dark and stormy afternoon at Pittsburgh’s autumn crafts fair, “Penn’s Colony.” As my mother and I strolled up to the entrance, the rain started so we huddled with other shoppers under a large picnic pavilion. The rain eventually turned to dry gray skies, and Mom went looking for baskets while I found myself in a tent looking at the original works of an artist whose prints I’d long admired in a gallery near my North Hills home.

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  • What a Conference Means to a Leader Who Can’t Attend

    Originally published in Connections

    When I became accredited as a Leader in 1985, I couldn’t even dream of attending conferences. My kids’ ages and temperments, our finances, distance, and my husband’s shift work schedule in a potash mine made attendance seem impossible. However, the fact that there was a conference available to attend was very important to me. Every Area and International Conference is important to every Leader and Leader Applicant, even those who can’t attend. A La Leche League conference:

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