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By wvfc • 14 years ago

Mary Martello: What those princesses taught me

by Chris Lombardi

Last week, I saw Happily Ever After , a one-woman musical in Philadelphia that glimpses the possible futures of many beloved fairy tale characters.

Soon afterward, we sat down with Mary Martello, the powerhouse actor, comedienne and singer behind the project. We talked about her 50-year career on the stage; her own reinvention from ingenue to comic genius; about “the secret” of menopause, and how envisioning Snow White in menopause taught her what “happily ever after”really means.

By wvfc • 14 years ago

The New Healthcare Law: What It Really Means

by Susan Baida and John Mills

Susan Baida and John Mills are co-founders of www.eCareDiary.com, an online community for caregivers and seniors. The site includes free resources for those seeking and providing long-term care, including a singular set of tools called the Care Diary, designed to make coordinating care and sharing information easy among family members and other caregivers. Susan Baida is a former marketing executive with Starwood Hotels, Estee Lauder, and Avon. John Mills was a member of the Clinton Task Force on National Health Reform and legislative director to U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y. Susan and John are married and share a passion for empowering caregivers and seniors.

On Sunday night, March 21, 2010, the House of ...

by Susan Baida and John Mills

By wvfc • 14 years ago

Grassroots for Girls: My International Women’s Month Resolution

by Ainslie Jones Uhl

When the media party is over and the month long celebration of uplift and outrage has come to an end, when Gloria Steinem and Nicholas Kristof and Hillary Clinton have had their say and the United Nations task forces and the nonprofits have presented their research and policy papers on the global status of women: What will we do?

It’s easy to get swept up in the moment. High-tech video access has produced poignant evidence of the plight of women everywhere, connecting us emotionally with women and girls in dire circumstances around the world. Gritty camera work and tender music and fine editing make the stories that much more compelling.

Certainly all of us can agree politically ...

by Ainslie Jones Uhl

When the media party is over and the month long celebration of uplift and outrage has come to an end, when Gloria Steinem and Nicholas Kristof and Hillary Clinton have had their ...

By wvfc • 14 years ago

“Happily Ever After”: No fairy tale, but better

Ever hear that song "There’s Been a Change in Me," from the musical Beauty and the Beast , and wonder what that princess-to-be would think about the changes to come when youth was no longer on the menu?

Veteran actress Mary Martello, 57, sure did. She thought it not just about Belle, the character singing that song, but all the other Disney fairy-tale figures whose youth and beauty makes them seem immortal. The result of that question, years later: a play in which Martello, as Belle, leans against the bar of a place called Happily Ever After and confides to the audience: "You know what we have here at Happily Ever After?" She smiles. "Menopause." If that sounds ...

By wvfc • 14 years ago

Apps We Love #1: Food and Drink

By Susan Delson

For some of us, a hand without a smart phone in it is empty indeed. Others can’t conceive of being that wired. For still others, it’s a brave new world we’re just starting to explore. And not just brave and new—it’s big.

This past January, the number of applications offered through Apple’s online iPhone store reportedly topped 133,000. (For those without such a gadget: these programs are what makes a phone "smart," something that can help you get through your day.) The total in Google’s Android Market broke 10,000 last September. And there are thousands for BlackBerry and Palm users, too. Okay, but how many of them are even remotely interesting to someone over age 22? Worse, how ...

By Susan Delson

For some of us, a hand without a smart phone in it is empty indeed. Others can’t conceive of being that wired. For still others, it’s a brave new world we’re just starting to explore. ...

By wvfc • 14 years ago

Ursula Burns, Xerox, and the Grace of ‘Do For Self’

Among other things, many black women growing up in the 1950s and ’60s were instructed by their mothers to protect themselves, provide for themselves, and not rely on a shining prince to fight their battles.Ask questions, be prepared for the unexpected, and defend yourself.

‘Do for self’ was a fundamental commandment of African-American mother-love, circa 1950-70.Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox and the only African American woman helming a Fortune 500 company, credits her mother, more than anyone else, for having helped her become a corporate star.

According to Burns, despite the financial and social challenges her mother faced—she was a single mother and their neighborhood was dicey—she fostered fortitude, self-reliance, and a spirit of inquiry in Burns and her siblings. ...

By wvfc • 14 years ago

Half the Sky: Coming to a Theater Near You

If you’ve read Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide , you know that its authors, Sheryl WuDunn and Nicholas D. Kristof, make a powerful case that improving conditions for women is the most effective way to combat global poverty and extremism. The duo, who shared a Pulitzer Prize for their New York Times coverage of China, set an ambitious agenda; their website describes the plan as “unlocking women’s power as economic catalysts.” This coming Thursday, March 4, WuDunn and Kristof will appear in a video celebration showing at theaters around the country. The event is billed as a lead-in to International Women’s Day (next Monday). As Kristof described it ...

By wvfc • 14 years ago

Judith Jones and “The Pleasures of Cooking for One”

If you saw Julie and Julia —and by now, who hasn’t?—you may remember a short but vivid scene between Julia Child and her cookbook editor. Choosing, discarding, and rearranging words on a bulletin board, the two of them painstakingly arrive at the title for Child’s magnum opus, Mastering the Art of French Cooking . Fast forward some 50 years. Judith Jones, the editor in question, hasn’t lost her knack for artful wording.

But this time the cookbook is her own, and its title reflects not only her love of good food but where life has taken her. It’s called The Pleasures of Cooking for One. “After my husband, Evan, died in 1996, I was not ...