What's New
The Federal Reserve Raises Federal Funds Rate For the First Time in Nine Years
"The Federal Open Market Committee judges that there has been considerable improvement in labor market conditions this year, and it is reasonably confident that inflation will rise, over the medium term, to its 2 percent objective. Given the economic outlook, and recognizing the time it takes for policy actions to affect future economic outcomes, the Committee decided to raise the target range for the federal funds rate to 1/4 to 1/2 percent." more »
Seeing Nature In Landscape Masterworks and the Artists' Collaboration, Fallen Fruit
Masterpieces spanning nearly four hundred years from Jan Brueghel the Younger's series devoted to the five senses to Canaletto's celebrated views of Venice; landscapes by innovators ranging from Joseph Mallord William Turner, Paul Cézanne, and Gustav Klimt to David Hockney and Gerhard Richter. Paintings by Thomas Moran, Edward Hopper, and Georgia O'Keeffe, and others provide an American perspective on landscapes at home and abroad. more »
My World Interrupted: It Is More Than a Loss of Place, It Is a Loss of Identity
"Over the past 35 years, we've lost 2,500 to 3,000 feet of land to coastal erosion. To put this in perspective: I was born in 1997, and since then, Shishmaref has lost about 100 feet. In the past 15 years, we had to move 13 houses — including my dear grandma Edna's house — from one end of the island to the other because of this loss of land. Within the next two decades, the whole island will erode away completely." more »
Culture Watch Review By Joan L. Cannon: The Social Sex, A History of Female Friendship
This book reminds us how far we have come when there are more highly educated women everywhere than at any other time in history. Still unresolved is the question of friendships between women and men. The difficulty of engaging in this fashion is emphasized by the need repeatedly to declare to doubters that sex is not a component of such a relationship. more »