Meeting Places and Romance

by Joan L. Cannon

There are a host of freighted words in our wonderful language. They include so many connotations in addition to simple denotations that they almost demand dissertations.

Think about reunion. Nowadays when the fashion is to press children into adult molds earlier and earlier in their lives, I've heard of kindergarten reunions. My own children were invited to eighth grade ones, and it goes on from there. I went to my own 40th high school reunion and my 50th college one. It was that one that made me swear off that kind of gathering.

The first problem is that we know (if we're honest about it) that we're in for surprises both pleasant and not so much. It seems these gatherings force an automatic exercise in comparisons. Every attendee has to face unstated competition as intense as that for college acceptance; it's just based on different criteria. How have I aged in appearance compared with my classmates? Can I match the average for marriage, number of children, implied income, social status, renown? Who will recall my mortifying gaffes and/or minor triumphs? Will old alliances survive? How about old enmities? Above all, what if no one remembers me?

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Social Network Effects on Divorce in a Longitudinal Sample Followed for 32 Years.

by Rose McDermott, Brown University; James H. Fowler, University of California, San Diego; Nicholas A. Christakis, Harvard University. Contact information is at the end of the study.

Abstract

Divorce is the dissolution of a social tie, but it is also possible that attitudes about divorce flow across social ties. To explore how social networks influence divorce and vice versa, we utilize a longitudinal data set from the long-running Framingham Heart Study. We find that divorce can spread between friends, siblings, and coworkers, and there are clusters of divorcees that extend two degrees of separation in the network. We also find that popular people are less likely to get divorced, divorcees have denser social networks, and they are much more likely to remarry other divorcees. Interestingly, we do not find that the presence of children influences the likelihood of divorce, but we do find that each child reduces the susceptibility to being influenced by peers who get divorced.

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To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain perpetually a child. For what is the worth of a human life unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?

- Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106-43 B.C.

We've referenced the National Archives and Records Administration a number of times* on SeniorWomen.com and want to remind you of the genealogical workshops and records research offered by the  Administration:

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation's record keeper. Of all documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the United States Federal government, only 1%-3% are so important for legal or historical reasons that they are kept by us forever.

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"One winter morning the President electrified his nervous Cabinet by bursting into a meeting with, 'Gentlemen, do you know what has happened this morning?'  They waited with bated breath as he announced,  'Just now I saw a Chestnut-sided Warbler and this is only February.' "
—  Corine Roosevelt Robinson (on her brother Theodore Roosevelt)

A birding walk on the Filoli estate in Woodside, California a few years ago and inspiration from an unknown warbler some weeks ago in our backyard, led us to this site. Regardless of your attachment to birding, the search might of be of interest to all who hear a song and wonder about the singer. Here are some of the new species entered onto the site:

Green Sandpiper
Canivet's Emerald
Yellow-throated Longclaw
Sharpe's Pied Babbler
Rufous-cheeked Laughingthrush

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