Magdalena Grodzka-Guzkowska - A Lucky Woman

From CBS News:

Magdalena Grodzka-Guzkowska's journey of self-discovery is pieced together from interviews with her and people close to her, emails made available to The Associated Press, information provided by Yad Vashem, her memoir "Lucky Woman," and documentary footage.

Decades after she helped save the rabbi and about a dozen others, mostly children, by teaching them Christian customs, Grodzka-Guzkowska discovered documents in an old suitcase showing that her father and other close family members were Jews. Growing up she knew vaguely that one of her great grandmothers was Jewish but nothing more about those roots.

Why Women Need Fat

From Salon:

On any given day, more than half of women in the U.S. are on a diet. In hopes of slimming their figures, millions take on Atkins, South Beach, Lean for Life or Hollywood 48. Some never eat after 5 p.m.; others only eat Subway sandwiches. While the diet industry has a less than noble reputation, it’s clear that American women, far more than men, remain obsessed with dieting. But what can evolutionary biology tell us about gender difference and eating habits?

In a new book called “Why Women Need Fat,” Steven J.C. Gaulin, an evolutionary biologist, and William D. Lassek, a retired doctor of public health at the University of Pittsburgh, explain the science behind women’s unique relationship to their diet. In the book, Lassek and Gaulin make a surprising argument for a more positive outlook on fat and illustrate the differences between the ways women and men gain weight. Think of it as the evolutionary biology diet.

What Glass Ceiling?

From the Sunday Times:

Women of Power transcend these petty insecurities of gender hierarchies and the ceilings that are set through semantics and other cultural cues. Silly stuff in a scheme of things that are predestined on a grander scale. Success is after all a mind game; even in the older order where career woman straddled work life with greater balance and less sexual power play.

In "What glass ceiling?” Michelle Gunawardana deftly establishes at the outset , in a tone setting exchange, the no-nonsense, let's-get-cracking approach to life and circumstance that Rohini Nanayakkara adopted in the male bastions of power, as an equal and often path-finding player. Rather than a statement on gender discrimination, the title of the book itself is a telling reflection of her attitude to any and all obstacles in her path.

The intriguing and nonlinear biography of Rohini the corporate persona is captured through a small but immensely readable set of interviews and commentary. They trace the journey of this woman of purpose and leave in their wake a portrait of an immensely capable leader in our financial and corporate community.

Author - Alice Hoffman

From the Alice Hoffman website:

"Alice Hoffman was born in New York City on March 16, 1952 and grew up on Long Island. After graduating from high school in 1969, she attended Adelphi University, from which she received a BA, and then received a Mirrellees Fellowship to the Stanford University Creative Writing Center, which she attended in 1973 and 74, receiving an MA in creative writing.  She currently lives in Boston. "

The Dovekeepers

AD70 Roman troops sacked Jerusalem, destroying the Second Temple and hunting down those few who managed to flee the city. Some took refuge with the Sacarii, Jewish rebels led by Eleazar ben Ya'ir in Herod's hill fortress of Masada, with the settlement eventually swelling to accommodate more than 900 fighters and refugees.

The Red Garden

Beautifully crafted, shimmering with magic, a transforming glimpse into small town America, presenting us with 300 years of passion, dark secrets, loyalty and redemption in a web of tales where characters lives are intertwined by fate and by their own actions.

Salem or Saudi Arabia

From CBS News:

Even for the late 17th century, the witch trials at Salem were egregious: the last hurrah of an early-modern culture of superstition and retribution that was stopped dead in its tracks by the early sparks of the Enlightenment. By the time, in 1692, that Abigail Williams and her friends wrought havoc across three counties on the Massachusetts frontier, it was widely considered that “sorcery” was, if not whimsical in itself, at least a matter unsuited for the courts. Indeed, so keen was the horror at the hysteria that had taken hold in Salem that the mere mention of the place was sufficient to cool any passions that looked in danger of spiraling into outmoded and dangerous thaumaturgy. For America, it was the witch-hunt to end all witch-hunts.

The news that Saudi Arabia executed a woman for “witchcraft and sorcery” on Monday is thus made all the more heartrending when one considers that the practice was last seen in America just one year before the Dodo was reported missing, and 100 years before the passage of the Bill of Rights. As is so often the case, Mecca is at least 300 years late to the punch and, worse, its government seems steadfastly determined to ignore the salutary lessons that the Western world learned at the cost of so much blood, sweat, and tears. Britain and America, without external examples to mimic, had at least some excuse for mistakes made while blazing a path to liberty, capitalism, and reason. The Saudis have none, and their myopia is appalling. For the steadfast refusal of the House of Saud to conform to liberal norms, a young woman paid the ultimate price.

The latest victim of medieval thinking, Amina bint Abdul Halim bin Salem Nassar, was condemned in al-Jawf province, having been, according to the Saudi interior ministry, “convicted of what was accused based on the law.” What was accused was that Nassar was a “witch” who had been performing “sorcery.” What the “law” prescribed was that she be beheaded. Such language parodies the Western argot, but not the nature of our judicial tradition. Witchcraft is a “crime” intrinsically incompatible with the classical Western conception of justice, relying as it does on proof that will — nay, can — never be forthcoming. Nassar’s conviction was secured after authorities found in her possession books on sorcery, a selection of talismans, and glass bottles that were allegedly “used for the purpose of magic.”

Lady Elizabeth Dacre's Erotic Poem

From Huffington Post:

A crude love poem written almost 450 years ago by a Roman Catholic woman and sent to a Protestant scholar who served Edward VI has been discovered in the back of a book by a British academic.

When Professor Treharne took her class of undergraduates on a tour of medieval literature in the library of West Virginia University, she thought she was introducing another year of eager literature students to the familiar wonders of Chaucer.

Instead, tucked into a 1561 edition of the poet’s work, she was about to discover what she now believes to be the only known Latin love poem written by an Englishwoman until the 18th century.

After translating the poem Treharne discovered that the poem was penned by Lady Elizabeth Dacre, a married Catholic woman, and addressed to Sir Anthony Cooke, a Protestant and tutor to King Edward VI. During this time it was common for lustful Tudor men to pen verses to woo the objects of their affection but extremely unusual for a lady to do the same.

Peace Monument for Comfort Women

From the Hankyoreh:

A 130-cm bronze sculpture of a young girl was erected Wednesday on the road in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul's Jongno District.

The “Peace Monument” was designed to give shape to the spirit of the “comfort women” who have come to the area every Wednesday for the past twenty years to call for an apology from the Japanese government.

Dressed in a hanbok, traditional Korean outfit, the girl sits on a chair with her fists on her knees, looking quietly toward the embassy. The shadow hanging to the ground beneath the sculpture forms the shape of an elderly woman. A bird sits on the girl's left shoulder, and a butterfly is positioned on the shadow's chest. In addition to representing freedom and peace, the bird is also a spiritual bridge linking the women who have passed away with those who are still alive. The butterfly symbolizes rebirth.

Below the statute is a history of the Wednesday Demonstrations engraved in Korean, English, and Japanese. The empty chair to the girl’s right is a contribution from citizens to offer comfort to the survivors. The peace memorial was likewise made through the actions of citizens.

Book: The Virgin Cure

From The Star Phoenix:

The Virgin Cure is set in Manhattan in 1871, when 30,000 children lived in the streets of the city. It is the story of 12-year-old Moth, a poor girl but a survivor if there ever was one. Moth's mother sells her to a wealthy woman who abuses her, so Moth escapes to the Bowery, a place of beggars, thieves, prostitutes and freakshows. There, she is taken in by brothel-owner Miss Everett, who sells girls' virginity to the highest bidder. It's there that Moth befriends a woman doctor, Dr. Sadie, and learns about the virgin cure - the belief that having sex with a virgin girl will cure a man's syphilis.

By the Winter Sea

From Skegness Standard:

CAMERA crews are set to pop up all over the local area in the coming days after work got underway on a new short film about the life of an Anderby Creek land girl.

Wartime Lincolnshire and the experiences of ‘Ada’, who worked a Lincolnshire coastal farm during World War Two.

“The 10 minute film entitled ‘By the Winter Sea’, is being made on behalf of the Lincolnshire Coastal Country Park project by Red Dog Film,” said a spokesperson for Lincolnshire County Council.

“It shows how London city girl Ada found the rural life and hard physical work a shock initially, but she gradually overcame her inexperience and grew to love her life as a land girl.

“The film is based on actual events – director Phil Stevens discovered the story in a book called ‘Lincolnshire Women at War’.

“The book is a compilation of letters from women who came from all over the country to work in Lincolnshire during WWII,” they added.