Perusing the Paper

I have read many interesting articles in the NYTimes over the last few days but have no time to devote a whole post to any of them, thought-provoking as they might be. And so, a compendium, with links, so you can check them out yourself:

• A Tough Cookie--read about this woman who makes 600 dozen cookies a year. And knits dog sweaters for her daughter's pets. She's wonderfully grumpy, reminding me of some of my favorite church ladies.
  
• "Mommy, is Santa real?"--read an article about what to say (and all the Santa-hating commentors arguing about it).
  
• What's a luxury you couldn't give up? I liked the mom of the new baby who writes about her diet coke addiction and the sense of community that it brings her. I feel the same way about my broadband connection.


• Ideas for de-stressing the holidays (come on, folks, we spend almost a quarter of our year getting ready for one morning! This is out of control. And I'm guilty too, but my sweet little Sis had a complete breakdown today from all the overwhelming excitement of grandparents visiting, Santa coming, and presents. It's too much).


• Just in time: an article about multi-cultural weddings. Maybe we should add a handfasting to ours?


• Check out this article on an exhibition at the Onassis Cultural Center on women in Classical Greek art. Makes me yearn for my Gender and Identity in the Ancient World class from undergrad. Athena and Artemis kick ass, even if their human counterparts had "no citizenship, no vote, little or no control over the use made of your time or your body. But the show is not making that argument. Instead it is using art to survey where, within a system of institutionalized restriction, areas of freedom for women lay." And Cotter quotes Sappho twice!
  
• Check out this year's list of "Medical Myths Even Doctors Believe"--on sugar, poinsettias, and hangovers. Also, a link to last year's list!
• Did you know that driving while multitasking decreases your driving performance to the same level as if you were legally drunk?
• Two posts from the "New Old Age" blog: one on dealing with end-of-life choices with parents and the three ways Americans generally die.
• Dana Jennings's continued examination of his experiences of prostate cancer have been inspiring and informative reading. Today, "10 Lessons of Prostate Cancer." My favorite? Don't sneeze after surgery. Been there, done that. Don't.
• A list of Lisa Belkin's (of Motherlode) favorite blogs. The ones at the end are heartwrenching. Oddly, besides the blogs of my friends and the NYTimes, I'm not much of a blog reader, though I followed about 10 of them when we were trying to get and then became pregnant (I'll post about those someday).
• Two pieces on mixing religions and cultures around the holidays, a challenge for many families: one from Motherlode and another article from LI (with links to 3 other articles, including a great one on a grandmother's take on Hanukkah). For us, it's what Unitarian Universalism is for!

Whew, I think that's it for tonight!