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  • What Does a Nonsectarian Organization Look Like in Print?

    Originally published in Connections

    La Leche League is a nonsectarian organization, meaning we are not affiliated with and do not advocate any one religion, denomination, sect, or set of spiritual beliefs. But what does that mean in print? For Area Leaders’ Letters (ALLs) and other LLL publications it means:

    • Religious holidays are not referred to specifically or casually. We cannot assume that all Leaders celebrate the same holidays or understand a particular holiday’s reference. Instead, use a neutral, non-religious reference such as the date or season. Examples:

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  • Storm in the Desert

    Originally written for a Westminster College writing class, spring 2006.

    Rudolph “The Sheik” Valentino married his second wife—a great-granddaughter of Mormon patriarch Heber C. Kimball—in 1922 and then again, legally, in 1923. Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy took it from there.

    “He does not look like your husband. He is not in the least like your brother. He does not resemble the man your mother thinks you ought to marry.”
    —a 1920s fan magazine describes Rudolph Valentino

    Women fainted in theaters during Rudolph Valentino’s movies, and his premature death in 1926 provoked thousands of rioting fans to break out windows in the funeral parlor to see his corpse. A modern-day equivalent would be if Leonardo DiCaprio had died soon after appearing in Titanic. A mysterious, heavily veiled “Woman in Black” appeared every year on the anniversary of Valentino’s death to leave roses at his crypt in Los Angeles. Who was this “sheik,” the “male Helen of Troy,” “the Phantom Rival in every domestic establishment”? And what was Valentino’s connection to the Beehive State?

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  • Women travel writers

    Letters, narratives, location memoirs, stories, and diaries; ethnographies and monographs; adventure and misadventure journals; and celebrations of food, culture, and place. Arranged alphabetically by author’s—often husband’s— last name. Compiled by Kathy Grossman. Last updated November 2006.

    Anonymous (1770?– )
    Maiden Voyages and Infant Colonies: Two Women’s Travel Narratives of the 1790s. Edited by Deirdre Coleman

    Anonymous. (1920?– )
    A Woman in Berlin: Eight Walks in the Conquered City. A Diary. 2000.

    Abu-Jaber, Diana.
    Arabian Jazz. 2003.
    The Language of Baklava: A Memoir. 2005.
    Crescent. 2005.

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  • Strolling Olvera Street

    Originally written for Westminster College’s Travel Writing class, Fall 2006

    The sharp pork, corn, and chili aromas from tamales filled the air as the tour group stood in front of Los Angeles’ Union Station looking over at Olvera Street. “Let’s meet back at El Paseo at 11:30 for lunch,” said Janice, our guide. “El Paseo,” a woman on the tour said, deep in reverie. “I used to dance there in the ‘50s.” Maria Morca was in her 70s, but she kept the elegant posture of a flamenco artist. “Olvera Street was a prestigious place to dance 50 years ago, “she added.

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  • Greece in Bloom

    Originally written for Westminster College’s Travel Writing class, Fall 2006

    “You can fall in love at first sight with a place as with a person.” Alex Waugh

    This isn’t the Greece of my 2006 calendar. The Greece of island beaches, Melina Mercouri swimming in her underwear, little white houses with blue roofs, Zorba dancing with his arms up. Where I’m now standing is a forest of rock, gray-and-yellow stone pinnacles that are streaked with rain, age, and bird excrement. And many of the pinnacles are topped by monasteries.

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  • Beneath Ireland

    Originally written for Westminster College’s Travel writing class, Fall 2006

    I had our 25th wedding anniversary all planned out. Tom and I, our three sons plus a girlfriend, would head off to Ireland for two weeks, rent a van, shop, research our family tree, visit megalithic dolmens and the Cliffs of Moher, eat big Irish breakfasts . . . “. . . and go caving,” said Tom.

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  • ‘On Golden Pond’ It Ain’t

    Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995

    I always thought it would be ideal to live six months of the year in one place and the other six months of the year in another place. I’d have a trailer down in Tucson for the winter and I’d have a summer cabin in a lovely northern, wooded place. You know, something like in the movie “On Golden Pond.”

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  • The Recipe for a Real Blueberry Pie

    Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995

    Blueberry season is almost over in Nome. It hasn’t been an easy berry-picking season for us Nomeites with weeks and weeks of rain. You could hear it in the murmurs at the post office, you could see it in the listless faces on Front Street. We
    were teased with one sunny day and then plunged into dark storm for weeks. Berry buckets hung on nails, berry dreams were dreamt as we tossed and turned. And for me, day after day in a small apartment gets longer and smaller with three small boys.

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  • Rosebud

    Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995

    It’s been a quiet week in Nome. The sun’s coming up closer and closer to lunchtime now and it’s risky business walking downtown. We got a little bit of snow and then it got cold, the powder blew away, and a slick hard film coated the entire town: black ice. Chiropractor weather. Lousy footing for trick-or-treating. I’m probably not the only Nomeite who’s taken a bad fall on the ice, either. I had the right boots. I was taking the proper mincing steps. But I fell hard on my left hip just the same right in the middle of the street where the taxis and ATVs had rubbed the ice down silky smooth. I’ll admit that at that moment I was feeling a bit depressed about living in this little town by the sea. But for under $20 you can get some items in our stores that can push those cold-town blues away. They’re plastic. They come in purple, lime green, neon yellow, and bright pink. They’re sleds!

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  • Russian Ballet

    Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1995

    As you read this, I’ll be unpacking in an apartment in Anchorage. And while the family is looking forward to malls and Kentucky Fried Chicken for six months, my heart tells me we’re doing the wrong thing for winter. We should have stayed put in Nome. “But there’s more to do in the winter in Anchorage,” I’m hearing. And, “You get great concerts and shopping and there’s always the zoo!”

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