Entries Tagged 'Article' ↓
April 22nd, 2010 — Article, Health
Organic: What it means on different products
You see the word more and more, but what does it say about what it’s on? Here are tips for fruits and vegetables, dairy and meat, cosmetics, processed foods and cotton and coffee. By Julie Deardorff
Some consumers are more than willing to pay higher prices for organically grown food and other products. But is the extra dollar worth it? The answer may depend upon personal priorities.
By definition, organically grown foods are produced without most conventional pesticides, fertilizers made with synthetic ingredients or sewage sludge. Livestock aren’t given antibiotics or growth hormones. And organic farmers emphasize renewable resources and conservation of soil and water.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which runs the National Organic Program, says organic is a “production philosophy,” adding that an organic label does not imply a product is superior. Moreover, some nutrition experts say, there’s no need to eat organic to be healthy: Simply choose less processed food and more fruits and vegetables.
To compare the nutrient density of organically and conventionally grown grapes, researchers would have to have matched pairs of fields, including using the same soil, the same irrigation system, the same level of nitrogen fertilizer and the same stage of ripeness at harvest, acknowledged Charles Benbrook, chief scientist at the Organic Center, a pro-organics research institution.
Last summer, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a comprehensive review concluding that organic and conventional food had comparable nutrient levels.
The study outraged some members of the organic community, who criticized the study for not addressing pesticide residues, a major reason people choose organic. Nor did the study address the effect of farming practices on the environment and personal health.
Maria Rodale, a third-generation advocate for organic farming, urges consumers to look beyond nutrition to the chemicals going into our soil, our food and our bodies. “What we do to our environment, we are also doing to ourselves,” said Rodale, chairwoman and chief executive of Rodale Inc., which publishes health and wellness content.
Here’s a closer look at some of the factors that may influence your decision whether to buy organic products.
Fruits and vegetables
Farmers using conventional practices treat crops with pesticides that protect them from mold, insects and disease but can leave residues. Organic fruits and vegetables have less pesticide residue and lower nitrate levels than do conventional fruits and vegetables, according to a 1996 scientific summary report by the Institute of Food Technologists.
The bottom line: Pesticide residue poses little risk to most consumers, health experts say. But fetuses and children are more vulnerable to the effects of synthetic chemicals, which can be toxic to the brain and nervous system, said Dr. Philip Landrigan, director of the Children’s Environmental Health Center at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City.
The Environmental Working Group, a public health advocacy organization, recommends buying organically grown peaches, apples, bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, kale, lettuce, imported grapes and pears because conventionally grown versions are the most heavily sprayed. Onions, avocados, sweet corn and pineapples have some of the lowest levels of pesticides.
As for nutrition, one French study found that, in some cases, organic plant products have more minerals such as iron and magnesium and more antioxidant polyphenols. But although mounting evidence suggests that soil rich in organic matter produces more nutritious food, “we are never going to be able to say organic is always more nutrient dense; that’s going beyond the science,” said Benbrook of the Organic Center.
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April 14th, 2010 — Article, Wives
The rare beauty and stunning self-possession that propelled Grace Kelly into the Hollywood pantheon, onto the Best-Dressed List, and ultimately to Monaco’s royal palace were more than captivating—they were completely genuine. As London’s Victoria and Albert Museum unveils an exhibition devoted to Kelly’s style, which still inspires fashion from Hermès to Tommy Hilfiger to Mad Men’s costumer Janie Bryant, the author looks at the intertwined qualities of an icon: white-gloved ingénue, elegant goddess, passionate—and frankly sexual—romantic. By Laura Jacobs
It may be the softest kiss in film history. The sun is setting over West Side rooftops, the sky persimmon. A man, his leg in a cast, sleeps near an open window, undisturbed by a neighbor singing scales. Just after the highest note is reached, a shadow climbs over the man’s chest, shoulder, and chin. We see a face: blue eyes, red lips, skin like poured cream, pearls. Then he sees it. The kiss happens in profile, a slow-motion hallucinatory blur somewhere between myth and dream, a limbic level of consciousness. The director, Alfred Hitchcock, liked to say he got the effect by shaking the camera. In truth, this otherworldly kiss comes to us by way of a double printing. Has any muse in cinema been graced with such a perfect cameo portrait of her power?
“How’s your leg?” she murmurs. “It hurts a little,” Jimmy Stewart answers. Another soft kiss, more teasing questions. “Anything else bothering you?” she asks. “Uh-huh,” he says. “Who are you?”
Who, indeed! In 1954, when Rear Window premiered, Grace Kelly had been in only four films. She was hardly known to the public, and then she was suddenly known—a star. In her first film, Fourteen Hours, she played an innocent bystander, on-screen for two minutes and 14 seconds. In her second, Fred Zinnemann’s High Noon, she co-starred as the pacifist bride of embattled sheriff Gary Cooper. In her third movie, John Ford’sMogambo, she was the prim wife of an anthropologist (Donald Sinden) and Jane to big-game hunter Clark Gable’s Tarzan. It was a steep and impressive learning curve, straight to the top. By the time Hitchcock got his hands on her, figuratively speaking, casting himself as Pygmalion to her Galatea, Grace Kelly was ready for her close-up. Hitchcock gave her one after another, in three films that placed her on a pedestal—Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief—enshrining her as an archetype newly minted. “A snow-covered volcano” was how he put it. She was ladylike yet elemental, suggestive of icy Olympian heights and untouched autonomy yet, beneath it all, unblushing heat and fire. By 1956, two years, six films, and one Academy Award afterRear Window—while the country was still wondering, Who are you, Miss Kelly?—she was gone, off to Europe to marry a prince, whence she would become Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco.
he appearance and then sudden disappearance of gifted, beautiful blondes is not unknown to Hollywood. Before Grace Kelly’s five-year phase of radiance in the 50s, there was Frances Farmer, whose brilliance roused the industry for six years, from 1936 to 1942. Like Kelly, Farmer was intelligent, her own person, and a serious actress wary of binding contracts. In 1957, only a year after Grace Kelly’s departure, Diane Varsi took the baton, making a big impression as a sensitive ingénue inPeyton Place. Varsi, too, was both smart and skeptical of Hollywood, and fled the industry in 1959. (She returned in the late 60s, but without momentum.) Farmer and Varsi left, respectively, in mental and emotional disarray. The word “disarray,” however, would never find its way into a sentence that included the name Grace Kelly. She was always in control. Always prepared. Always well groomed and well mannered, delightful and kind. And always, eternally it seems, beautiful.
Though it is in Rear Window where Grace Kelly achieves full iconic stature, answering Stewart’s question by circling the room in her pure-white snowcap of a skirt, there is nothing “rear window” about her. She states her full name as she switches on three lights, and her picture-window, Park Avenue perfection is itself a kind of incandescence. Here was a white-glove glow to make men gallant and women swoon, and it was present whether she was dressed in dowdy daywear (her beloved wool skirts and cashmere cardigans) or in the confections of Hollywood designers and Paris couturiers. Hitchcock goes so far as to make a joke of it. “She’s too perfect,” Jimmy Stewart complains. “She’s too talented. She’s too beautiful. She’s too sophisticated. She’s too everything but what I want.” And it was true, except for that last, because at the moment when Miss Kelly left Hollywood the whole world wanted her.
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February 21st, 2010 — Article, Domestic Goddess
I’ve been slightly enthralled with this book since discovering an antique copy in London. Isabel Beeton if you will was the Martha Stewart/Emily Post of her time. She published “Mrs. Beeton’s household management” in the late 1800’s, which was essentially a 1,112 page guide to properly caring for and running a Victorian home. Filled with everything from fashion, childcare, recipes and management of the help. Continue reading for the complete first chapter. – THE WIFE
Chapter One: The Mistress (Old fashion term for Lady of The House)
1. AS WITH THE COMMANDER OF AN ARMY, or the leader of any enterprise, so is it with the mistress of a house. Her spirit will be seen through the whole establishment; and just in proportion as she performs her duties intelligently and thoroughly, so will her domestics follow in her path. Of all those acquirements, which more particularly belong to the feminine character, there are none which take a higher rank, in our estimation, than such as enter into a knowledge of household duties; for on these are perpetually dependent the happiness, comfort, and well-being of a family. In this opinion we are borne out by the author of “The Vicar of Wakefield,” who says: “The modest virgin, the prudent wife, and the careful matron, are much more serviceable in life than petticoated philosophers, blustering heroines, or virago queens. She who makes her husband and her children happy, who reclaims the one from vice and trains up the other to virtue, is a much greater character than ladies described in romances, whose whole occupation is to murder mankind with shafts from their quiver, or their eyes.”
2. PURSUING THIS PICTURE, we may add, that to be a good housewife does not necessarily imply an abandonment of proper pleasures or amusing recreation; and we think it the more necessary to express this, as the performance of the duties of a mistress may, to some minds, perhaps seem to be incompatible with the enjoyment of life. Let us, however, now proceed to describe some of those home qualities and virtues which are necessary to the proper management of a Household, and then point out the plan which may be the most profitably pursued for the daily regulation of its affairs.
3. EARLY RISING IS ONE OF THE MOST ESSENTIAL QUALITIES which enter into good Household Management, as it is not only the parent of health, but of innumerable other advantages. Indeed, when a mistress is an early riser, it is almost certain that her house will be orderly and well-managed. On the contrary, if she remain in bed till a late hour, then the domestics, who, as we have before observed, invariably partake somewhat of their mistress’s character, will surely become sluggards. To self-indulgence all are more or less disposed, and it is not to be expected that servants are freer from this fault than the heads of houses. The great Lord Chatham thus gave his advice in reference to this subject:—“I would have inscribed on the curtains of your bed, and the walls of your chamber, ‘If you do not rise early, you can make progress in nothing.’”
4. CLEANLINESS IS ALSO INDISPENSABLE TO HEALTH, and must be studied both in regard to the person and the house, and all that it contains. Cold or tepid baths should be employed every morning, unless, on account of illness or other circumstances, they should be deemed objectionable. The bathing of children will be treated of under the head of “MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN.”
5. FRUGALITY AND ECONOMY ARE HOME VIRTUES, without which no household can prosper. Dr. Johnson says: “Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty. He that is extravagant will quickly become poor, and poverty will enforce dependence and invite corruption.” The necessity of practising economy should be evident to every one, whether in the possession of an income no more than sufficient for a family’s requirements, or of a large fortune, which puts financial adversity out of the question. We must always remember that it is a great merit in housekeeping to manage a little well. “He is a good waggoner,” says Bishop Hall, “that can turn in a little room. To live well in abundance is the praise of the estate, not of the person. I will study more how to give a good account of my little, than how to make it more.” In this there is true wisdom, and it may be added, that those who can manage a little well, are most likely to succeed in their management of larger matters. Economy and frugality must never, however, be allowed to degenerate into parsimony and meanness.
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January 27th, 2010 — Article
This is a great article that was posted in The New York Times. I would like to thank Erika for sharing with me! – THE WIFE
I am stricken with the peculiar curse of being a 21st-century woman who makes more than the man she’s living with — first with a husband for 13 years and now with a new partner. It’s an increasingly common situation, according to a recent Pew study that found that the proportion of American marriages in which the wife makes more money rose to 22 percent in 2007 from 4 percent in 1970.
I don’t know how it’s going for my sisters, but as my 40s and Verizon bills and mortgage payments roll on, I seem to have an ever more recurring 1950s housewife fantasy. In this magical Technicolor world, the breadwinner husband, Brad, leaves home (where his duties are limited to mowing the lawn and various minor home repairs) at 7 a.m. When he returns from work at 6 p.m., aside from a savory roast with mashed potatoes, his homemaker wife, Nancy, has pipe, slippers and a tray of Manhattans ready.
The couple sink into easy chairs and get pleasantly soused while Brad recounts his workday battles. Through a dreamy mixed-bourbon haze, Nancy makes gentle cooing sounds like “Ah!” and “Oh!” and “Did the central manager really say that in the meeting? They don’t appreciate all the hard work you do! Oh, Brad!”
Nancy has her active-listener face on for several reasons. One is that her 1950s housewife day (stay with me, I admitted this was a fantasy) was an agreeable roundelay of kitchen puttering and grocery shopping and, once home, the placing of those comestibles in the icebox via the precise — or charmingly imprecise — geometry Nancy favors. She jokes that Brad, poor dear, couldn’t find the icebox if you asked him!
Aside from that, there was a leisurely trip to the hair salon, a spot of tennis and a lively game of bridge, where the girls shared tips on the making of this very roast. If there are children, let us say first they are in school, then afterward they ride their bikes freely around the neighborhood, settling their own disputes and devising their own entertainments. (Here we invoke the curious statistic that working mothers today spend about the same number of hours per week with their children as stay-at-home moms did four decades earlier.)
The point is that Nancy arrives at the end of her day so fully socialized with, she is ready to glaze over amiably during her husband’s evening Work Monologue, and perhaps even later, during their customary five minutes of intimate relations. Being mistress of her own domain much as Brad is master of his, Nancy enjoys total domestic authority and the job satisfaction that comes with it. Even more important, as Brad unambiguously earns all the money, Nancy has the relational contract of sheer gratitude to pull on, due to his clearly measurable value. If the mortgage weren’t paid, Nancy would have to live in the same house as, God forbid, her mother! By contrast, Brad is relatively low maintenance.
Fast forward to 2010. When husbands and wives not only co-work but try to co-homemake, as post-feminist and well-intentioned as it is, out goes the clear delineation of spheres, out goes the calm of unquestioned authority, and of course out goes the gratitude.
Aside from the irritation of never being able to reach the spatula (men tend to place items on shelves that are a foot higher than women can manage), I have found co-homemaking inefficient. With 21st-century technology, it’s a straightforward matter to run a modern home. Sheep don’t need to be sheared; the wash is not done on a board by the creek; nothing needs canning, because we have Costco. Even someone who works 40 hours a week can keep a home standing, and food in the fridge, by himself.
What can turn into a second shift is not just negotiating the splitting of this labor with another person, but the splitting of decision-making authority. Two co-workers in the home also have the opportunity to regularly evaluate each other’s handiwork, not always to a positive effect. (Suffice it to say, stacking food in the fridge with precise geometric elegance is apparently not among my talents.)
In short, as the Tupperware totters lopsidedly about, in the domestic equation, the work I do at home is no longer a gift, but the labor of a mediocre colleague whose performance could be better.
Still, a return to a life more like the 1950s, with one breadwinner and one homemaker, is an unreasonable expectation. It is particularly so since, as the breadwinner, I wish to be the husband, and hence what I’m looking for is a wife — a loyal helpmeet who keeps the home fires burning and offers uncritical emotional support when I, the gladiator, return exhausted from the arena. Who are the (actively listening!) men without money who can adapt to such a role?
One could ask, who are the modern women who are content with such a role? These are times when mothers with newborns watch “Oprah” episodes that feature a harried mom just like you who became entrepreneurial with her jam, and is now head of a multimillion-dollar company in addition to being a great mom!
In the end, we all want a wife. But the home has become increasingly invaded by the ethos of work, work, work, with twin sets of external clocks imposed on a household’s natural rhythms. And in the transformation of men and women into domestic co-laborers, the Art of the Wife is fast disappearing.
So in the meantime, I may need to settle for a man who can simply make a decent tray of Manhattans and, while you’re at it, pussycat, make mine a double. – THE NEW YORK TIMES
Sandra Tsing Loh, a contributing editor for The Atlantic and the host of the KPCC radio program “The Loh Down on Science,” is the author of “Mother on Fire.”
January 10th, 2010 — Article, Dress Up
This is one of my very very favorite articles I’ve come to find in my monthly favorite, Vanity Fair. The article goes through the entire history of Haute Couture… How it used to be in the good ol’ days and how its transformed to what it has become today. Although the article is quite lengthly, any girl who flaunts her femininity and appreciates the art of a well made gown will just adore the following read. I’ve highlighted some of my favorite parts in what other color then…pink! – THE WIFE
With the house of Lacroix filing for bankruptcy, and Yves Saint Laurent gone, some fear that haute couture is finished. But Paris’s fashion phoenix has survived world war, cultural revolution, and economic meltdown, reshaped to fit the times. Tracing its lineage—Worth, Poiret, Chanel, Dior, and onward—the author describes the current incarnation: spectacular shows accessible to millions on the Internet and a new global client base in the Middle East, India, and China.
Every 10 years, The New York Times declared in 1965, as the youthquake shook the planet, “The doctors assemble at the bedside of French haute couture and
announce that death is imminent.” There was reason to call the undertaker; sex kitten Brigitte Bardot had rebuffed the venerable Coco Chanel’s proposal to transform her into an “elegant woman” (“Haute couture is for grannies,” the starlet said), and space-ager André Courrèges had just hung up his couturier’s scissors to mass-produce his “moon-maiden” go-go boots and minis.
Earlier, in 1945, Diana Vreeland had implored an assistant to bring back a fabric rose from Paris, as post-diluvian proof that couture had survived World War II. And again in 1973, when Vreeland mounted her elegiac Balenciaga retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Time’s diagnosticians determined that haute couture, a moribund institution, was “breathing very hard.” Now, with the revered maison of Lacroix having filed for bankruptcy protection, the death knell is being sounded once again. “Personally,” says Hubert de Givenchy, “I do not see a future for haute couture as I knew it. Haute couture means for me perfection.”
But perhaps the reports of haute couture’s demise are once again greatly exaggerated. At the end of January, reversing the direction of the plummeting stock market, the two grandest fashion houses in Paris, Chanel and Dior, were posting sales increases of 20 and 35 percent, respectively. Even as a mass was held to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Yves Saint Laurent’s passing (the official end of fashion, according to his partner, Pierre Bergé), a new name, Alexandre Matthieu, burst onto the lineup for the fall-winter haute couture shows. “Haute couture is still the best way for a designer to get noticed,” argues a Paris insider. “If you show during ready-to-wear, you’re one among a hundred, crowded into a nine-day week. During the couture shows, you are one among only 20, spread over just three days.”
What is this Persephone-like phenomenon called haute couture, which cyclically dies only to be reborn? “According to the bylaws of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture, a division of the French Ministry of Industry, an haute couturier is a designer who presides over the creation of hand-finished made-to-order clothing, in a “laboratory” that employs at least 20 workers in Paris. The haute couturier must present a minimum of 25 ensembles twice a year, in January and July, and construct a garment over the course of several fittings, directly on a client’s body or on a dress form replicating her physique”. (Hubert de Givenchy, for example, had a dummy built for Audrey Hepburn, whose 31½-22-31½ shape never varied.) From a peak of 200 before World War II, only 11 authentic haute couturiers remain; additionally, there are four correspondent members. (Giorgio Armani joined as one in 2004.) Just two Americans have ever been classified as haute couturiers—Mainbocher (retired 1971) and Ralph Rucci, who was accepted as a guest member in 2002. (After five years and 10 collections, a guest may advance to full membership.) “If someone is simply a couturier,” explains a Parisian expert, “all that means is that you are sewing.” And, the Parisian adds, if a dressmaker uses the term “haute couturier” without the Chambre Syndicale’s sanction, “he can be arrested.”
The origins of haute couture—an appellation contrôlée, or trademarked name, like “champagne,” and “equally a part of our DNA,” says one French fashion professional—date back to Louis XIV, whose finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert established France in the 1660s as the leading manufacturer of silk and other luxury items.
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