Senior Women Web

Julia Sneden wrote: "I was reared in a household that included both my grandmothers and a great aunt. Their mantra, designed to counter possible vanity, was: “If it’s clean, shiny, and combed, your hair will do.” My hair was usually clean, thanks to the swimming pool, and like most towheads, it shone in the sun “with more than oriental splendor,” like the Parsee’s helmet (per Rudyard Kipling)...Tidy was another matter. My skimpy braids never met a ribbon I couldn't lose. Hair spray helps to deal with its resistance to discipline, and while it has grown longer by fall, it is no help at all in terms of warmth, since by then I have started my annual reverse-season shedding." more »

The National Institutes of Health's duties include researching infectious diseases and administering over $30 billion a year in research grants. NIH uses IT systems containing sensitive data to carry out its mission. This GAO report is a public version of our June 2021 report on NIH cybersecurity. The agency has taken actions intended to safeguard the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of its systems. However, we found many weaknesses related to identifying risks, protecting systems, and more. We have made 219 recommendations for improvements. NIH has partially implemented more than half and fully implemented about a third of them. more »

Jo Freeman Reviews: “All citizens are created equal but some or more equal than others” is the message of this book. Women are not the only unequal citizens in this country, but they are the most numerous. The Equal Rights Amendment was an attempt to bring real equality to women’s legal status after the 19th Amendment gave women the right, but not always the reality, to the franchise. Focusing on the first 40 years of the struggle for the ERA, DeWolf divides proponents and opponents into emancipationists and protectionists... Although this book is on the ERA, it does go into other laws that affected women, especially their employment opportunities. Read it as a general review of public policy on women, especially at the federal level. Then imagine how different things would have been if the ERA had been ratified several decades ago." more »

The Moderna and Pfizer BioNTech vaccines prevented COVID-19 infection in cancer patients, particularly in those whose treatment concluded more than six months before vaccination, say researchers at Stanford, Harvard and the VA. The mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines are effective at preventing infection in most cancer patients, according to a nationwide study of veterans diagnosed with cancer in the past decade. But the researchers found that some vaccinated patients, including those who had received therapies that suppressed their immune systems within the six months before vaccination, were less protected than their peers from COVID-19 infection for the duration of the study.   more »