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
Moving ... Forward? Highlights From a Fairly Long-Running Sitcom
Joan L. Cannon writes: Several hundred pounds of bookshelves that were to be left behind for Habitat, and one for a friend, arrived here where I have no place to put them. Such treasures as all my baking pans, including the ones that fit my toaster oven, are somewhere between here and North Carolina. How could they have lost the smallish box with my (expensive) no-line bifocals I use to watch TV? Ditto the basket of un-ironed tablecloths I left to await pressing after they got here.
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States Make 'Historic and Disturbing Cuts' to Unemployment Benefits
For now, emergency federal benefits have mitigated the state cuts. During the depths of the recession, Congress approved federally funded aid for unemployed people who exhausted their state benefits. But as a state’s jobless rate goes down, the federal government gives its unemployed residents fewer weeks of benefits. In states with the lowest rates, the federal government provides just 14 weeks of additional coverage. more »
Elaine Soloway's Caregiving Series: Crime Scene Investigation Chicago
My husband and I had already yanked inside-out all the pockets of his clothing. Had already peered under the bed, under the nightstand, under the couch cushions, under the couch. When all of these turned up empty, a dark thought entered my head: Tommy must have left them in the front door and some miscreant absconded with them. It was like an episode of CSI when the team prepares to search a dumpster for some vital clue. more »
A Trip to New York City: The ABC of It; Why Children's Books Matter
Adventurous avant-garde picture books from Bolshevik Russia; a Civil War-era patriotic reader published for children of the Confederate States; a Noah Webster speller aimed at teaching a uniquely American English to the schoolchildren of the newly formed US; the manuscript of James Stephens’s Irish Fairy Tales to help preserve Irish tradition in a time of English rule; Japanese comic books meant to teach children English during the post-war Allied Occupation; a fascinating recent picture book from post-colonial Francophone Africa. more »
