Thoughts about playing bridge

I'm not a bridge player. In fact, I have some negative feelings about bridge players. You see, when I was very young, living in a small town on Crete, among the ex-pats there were three avid bridge players -- one of them my now ex-husband. They were desperate for a fourth and I was pressured into learning the game.

For love, peace, and to please my friends I worked hard at learning the game. Everyday they cajoled, coached, and took turns suffering as my partner. Until the day it happened. Yes, the doors to the once-daily bus opened and, wonder of wonders, a bridge player emerged.

I'll never know how they recognized him as a bridge player within five minutes, although I suspect they took turns meeting the bus and interviewing any likely candidate..."Excuse me, but do you, by any chance play bridge?"

My brief life as a bridge player was over. I was summarily dismissed, never to have a seat at the table again. I felt... well, a strange combination of relief and rejection.

But this article in the Wall Street Journal started me thinking about it again. Our AAUW branch has both a morning and evening bridge group.

I wonder if they'd offer an opportunity for beginners?

in reference to:

"My ideal bridge four? W.H. Auden, me, Woody Allen and Barack Obama, who strikes me as being the sort of person who is considerate—and a listener. I'm not sure whether the current president plays bridge; he has other things to do, I suppose. And my least ideal bridge four? Saddam Hussein (an unforgiving partner), me, Marilyn Monroe (bad memory for cards), and Gandhi (not competitive enough).
— Alexander McCall Smith is the author of more than 60 books, including the "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series."
- Alexander McCall Smith on Bridge - WSJ.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

The WSJ article offers some links for new and experienced bridge players and some interesting observations on the game, its history, and it's players. It's good reading.

Photo: Associated Press  Warren Buffett and Bill Gates play bridge at the Nebraska bridge regional in Omaha in August 2005.

Let the Conversation begin -- What does the Shriver Report mean to us?

The Shriver Report has received a lot of media coverage, but now it's up to us to move the conversations forward.

Next steps?

in reference to:

"Among the findings, is what often happens in the face of sweeping change: Some of our institutions lag behind and don’t yet reflect this new dynamic. Government, business, the media and our faith communities, in many cases, still cling to outdated models of who works and who cares for our families.

For example, men now agree with women that government and business need to provide flexible work schedules, better childcare, family and medical leave and equal pay.

And over 80 percent of men and women agree businesses that fail to adapt to the needs of modern families risk losing good workers.
Only by examining this fundamental shift in how Americans live and do business -- and acknowledging the profound changes it has wrought -- can we grow and flourish.

Let the conversation begin."
- The Shriver Report || A Study by Maria Shriver and the Center For American Progress on How We Work and Live Today (view on Google Sidewiki)

AAUW Member Wins Nobel Prize

AAUW Member Wins Nobel Prize

Carol Greider Shares Prestigious Award for Physiology or Medicine

WASHINGTON, D.C. – AAUW celebrates Carol Greider, AAUW member-at-large and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with her two colleagues, Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak. Greider has been a member of AAUW since 2002.

Greider, Blackburn, and Szostak “discovered that telomeres are made up of simple, repeating blocks of DNA building blocks and are found in all organisms,” according to a Johns Hopkins University announcement. Understanding this biological process has paved the way to deeper knowledge of cancer and cellular aging.

“AAUW has a long history of supporting women in the sciences, and we are thrilled to count another Nobel Prize winner among our ranks,” said AAUW Executive Director Linda D. Hallman, CAE. In 1920, AAUW awarded two-time Nobel Prize recipient Marie Curie a grant to assist with her groundbreaking research on radium. AAUW member Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, was nominated for the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for his work supporting education for girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Greider, who holds a doctorate in molecular biology from the University of California, Berkeley, currently works as the Daniel Nathans Professor and Director of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences. She, Blackburn, and Szostak will attend the Nobel Prize awards ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden, on December 10.

“Greider and Blackburn have shown that women can break through barriers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics,” said AAUW President Carolyn H. Garfein. “Their accomplishment serves as an excellent example of women making valuable contributions and the need that exists for supporting and encouraging great female minds, as AAUW does with our fellowships, grants, and community of successful women.”

In 2009 a record five women were awarded Nobel Prizes. Prior to this year, only 35 women had ever received the honor. Greider and Blackburn were the first two women to simultaneously win the prize in medicine.

The three other 2009 female laureates include Ada Yonath, who is sharing the Nobel Prize in chemistry; Herta Mueller, who won the prize in literature; and Elinor Ostrom, who is sharing the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Ostrom is the first woman to win the economics prize.

To read what AAUW said on our blog about this year’s Nobel Prize winning women, please visit http://blog-aauw.org/2009/10/12/aauw-member-awarded-nobel-prize/

To view Marie Curie’s page in AAUW’s online museum, please visit https://svc.aauw.org/museum/history/1920_1929/index.cfm

NYTimes Mag Special Issue on Women

This issue, Saving the World's Women, August 23, 2009, keeps coming up in discussions at our AAUW meetings. For those who missed the issue, here's a gateway to the articles and resources on-line.

There's plenty of discussion material here.

in reference to: The Women’s Crusade - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

AAUW ED Attends VAWA Event with Vice President

Image via Wikipedia

AAUW Executive Director Linda Hallman attended an event at Number One Observatory Circle, the residence of the vice president, on Tuesday to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the landmark Violence Against Women Act.

Vice President Biden wrote the act, which provides funding for victim services and stronger enforcement efforts, while serving on the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1994, and AAUW's advocacy was instrumental in the enactment of the law. Although much progress has been made, AAUW and our coalition partners are working to support the International Violence Against Women Act, as well as the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act in 2011.

President Nominates Head of Women's Bureau

This week, President Obama announced Sara Manzano-Diaz as his nominee for director of the Women's Bureau in the Department of Labor.

Manzano-Diaz has served as Deputy Secretary for Regulatory Programs at the Pennsylvania Department of State and as Deputy General Counsel for Civil Rights and Litigation at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Latifa Lyles, who recently ran for president of the National Organization of Women, is expected to become the deputy director of the bureau.

For those unfamiliar with the Women's Bureau, it was created by law in 1920 to formulate standards and policies to promote the welfare of wage-earning women, improve their working conditions, increase their efficiency, and advance their opportunities for profitable employment.

AAUW looks forward to working with Ms. Manzano-Diaz and the Women's Bureau to continue to break through barriers for women and girls.

Another Woman Who Made a Difference: Wilma Cozart Fine

I'm always interested in reading about women who have made a contribution in a field dominated by men. Wilma Cozart Fine had an extraordinary talent.

This NYTimes obituary provides a good overview of her contribution to classical recordings.

in reference to:

"Mrs. Fine was one of the first women to excel at record production, a field that is still dominated by men. She brought sensitivity and taste to her work, which included notable recordings by the conductors Rafael Kubelik, Antal Dorati and John Barbirolli; the composer and conductor Howard Hanson; the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony; the pianists Byron Janis, Gina Bachauer and Sviatoslav Richter; and the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.

With Mr. Fine, an ingenious recording engineer whom she married in 1957, she developed recording techniques that, even in their early monaural recordings, seemed to capture not only the performance but also a sense of the space in which it took place. The Fines were among the first to make mass-market stereo recordings, and in the early 1960s they experimented with recording on 35-millimeter film instead of on magnetic recording tape. Among their productions were sonic spectaculars like a 1954 recording of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” by Dorati and the Minneapolis Symphony, with bells recorded at Yale University and a cannon recorded at West Point, and a 1958 remake, with different bells and cannon.

Mrs. Fine also had a brilliant marketing sense. One of the first things she did when she joined Mercury, in 1950, was persuade the label’s president, Irving Green, to sign the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, then floundering. Mercury’s first recording with that orchestra, overseen by the Fines, was Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” with Kubelik conducting, in April 1951. When the recording was released that fall, along with another recording of works by Bartok and Bloch, Howard Taubman wrote in The New York Times that “unless this recording has flattered the ensemble’s competence out of all recognition, one must welcome the Chicagoans back to the top rank of American orchestras.”"
- Wilma Cozart Fine, Classical Music Record Producer, Dies at 82 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

GRANDMA GOES TO WORK

Image via Wikipedia

We tend to think that gender inequity is an issue for the young. Wrong again.

Job counselors report growth in their "older women" clients category. Who makes up that category?

They're finding women in their 60's, 70's, and even 80's looking for work these days. Here are some of the reasons.

The Institute on Women: GRANDMA GOES TO WORK: "The economic challenges women face as they age are well documented; when compared to similarly aged men:

• older women workers are less likely to be living with a partner or spouse (62% vs. 80% for men), and are more likely to be on their own when it comes to household resources. (1)
• older women are less likely to have had continuous employment throughout their adult lives, affecting both their record of work experience and their contribution to Social Security or pension funds. (1)
• older women are more likely to be working part-time (25% vs. 8% for men), and not necessarily by choice: 16.9% of women age 60-64 report being underemployed, vs. 12.1% of men the same age. (2)
• older women (age 55 to 59) workers are more likely to have no expectation of retirement benefits (40% of women vs. 27% of men) and are more likely (43% of women vs. 30% of men) to report that they are working because they need the income to pay day to day living expenses. (3)
• older women employees generally live in households with lower family incomes than their male counterparts ($64,444 vs. $80,839). (1)
• for older female workers, the wage gap in hourly rates is 69 cents for every dollar earned by a man. (1)"

Hat tip to Christy Jones who posted this link.

A Million Here, A Million There. It starts to add up.

Image via Wikipedia

Here's an interesting NYTimes article about women and philanthropy. We're talking big money here. And, it's about time!

The Power of the Purse by Lisa Belkin

In general, women give differently than men. They are less likely to want their names on things and more likely to give as part of drives (large ones, like Women Moving Millions, and smaller ones, like living-room “giving circles”) that include other women. And they tend to spotlight different causes (women’s health, microfinancing of businesses owned by women) and for different reasons. A study of more than 10,000 large donors by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University suggests that while men describe their giving as practical — filling in the gaps that government can’t or won’t — women describe theirs as emotional, an obligation to help those with less.

Behind all this giving lies the theory that helping women and children is the way to change the planet. “Seventy percent of people living in poverty around the world are women and children,” says Christine Grumm, president and C.E.O. of the Women’s Funding Network. “If women have a roof over their heads and a home free of violence, and good and affordable health care, then so do children. In the larger picture, it’s not just about women, but entire communities. Women are the conduits through which change is made.”

Jean Semilof, Serving Our Community

Jean Semilof is gregarious, upbeat, and full of energy -- exactly what a membership co-chair needs to be.

A realtor by profession for over 3o years, Jean says she is currently devoting a great deal of energy to the Ulster County Board of Realtors' community service projects.

She says, "I believe strongly that realtors should give back to the community. Last year, I spearheaded a very successful coin drive to benefit the Helping Hands Soup Kitchen at the Clinton Avenue Methodist Church and I am currently involved in planning an upscale yard sale to benefit the STARS mentoring program at the Everette Hodge Center, which the AAUW Kingston Branch is also particpating in."

Jean is a past President of the Ulster County Board of Realtors and a REALTOR of the YEAR.

• Membership Committee co-chair with Suki Kerr, 2009-2010