FP, Speaking of school…you and Frannie and I got spanked.lol.

Diana, That’s heartwarming.

JMK, I loved the nuns too. Although glad I never saw them without their garb. One of my sisters is a long time school psycologist. She’s like that, can be very generous, fun and kind, she doesn’t have children and really loves ‘her kids.’ At the same time she has definite parameters because of her concern that if the kids don’t learn discipline they won’t get in college. She sees a lot of horrible cases and says she often feels she is the only one standing in the way of death, prison or the streets. She has over a one hour drive each way from her upscale bucolic neighborhood to one of the roughest in LA. She started out going to the Fashion Institute and worked for a major designer. Then moved to the Carribean with her firest husband, when he died she went back to school for a grad degree. She is extremely hard working and dedicated. Proud of her. And has a garden worthy of Sunset Magazine…that’s her ‘therapy.’

Beautiful, Phyllis, and so true. So many remember with such fondness. And my aunt too who was a nun and the president of a very large girl’s school. It was set in a huge old mansion with a swimming pool, with another large house where the nuns lived, and a chapel. During holidays when the girls were all gone my older sister and cousin and I would go stay in the convent. Sister Borgia played the guitar, my aunt the piano, we sang, drank Constant Comment tea, played scrabble and baked dozens of special filled and decorated large pastry rings for poor people, and we delivered those with our aunt. They were beautiful looking, and some nutrition as filled with nuts, dates, figs, raisins etc. We thought it was a blast being there. The nuns were such fun.

No…just what cemented it. My friends and I weren’t very saintly. In fact you made think of a funny/bad girl short piece I wrote about our acting up at practice for father-daughter dance. Poor Sister Cabrini, I bet we put her in the nun’s home early. Haven’t read that in a year…sheesh my friends and I haven’t changed much from then, still doing the same dumb stuff. Oh, that’s sad. http://ezinearticles.com/?Catholic-School-Girl-Performance-Art-ala-Maril…

Cracks me up at the end when she pops open the beer can.

Tina Fey this past Sat Night doing Palin at the VP Debate. Scroll Down. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/04/tina-fey-as-sarah-palin-i_n_131…

Joni- When I worked in a man’s field that took me all over the US I did it in Chanel suits, high heels, $300 haircuts, etc because polish goes along with the territory, man or woman, if you want to be at the top of the heap. Coverage of powerful men includes mentioning the Brioni suit, Joaillerie 101 Manchette watch, the type of car, etc if it applies. Whether people care to believe or disbelieve that image matters in America, doesn’t change the fact that it does. If there is discordance in the image and position that’s a problem. Obviously different industries have different cultures. Steve Jobs can get away with geek-chic, Mayor Bloomberg cannot. Andy Warhol or Truman Capote had artistic looks, but would never have been accepted as newcasters. A woman running a corporation isn’t going to garner respect if she dresses like a nursery school teacer. Looks need to be compatible with the role because people form 85% of their opinion based on visual clues. The conference was held at the Four Seasons, not at Hamburer Hamlet. Anyone walking into a Four Seasons not looking polished is going to be out of place. I do not care to join the stampede to mediocrity. ‘Elite’ in anything means caring about and attaining some excellence, which often translates into power, and/or money. An elite musician, athlete, school, business person, etc. I want an elite pilot flying the plane I’m on and and someone with elite brains running the country. I’m definitely interested in the visual clues, tone of the people and place conveyed in an article, and went to Fortune to read through the entire list of women, including the list of 25 highest paid and compared that with the 25 highest paid men. What a gulf. What I got out of your piece, Joni, was a good deal of information that then had me checking eleswhere and confirming my values. Because when I went to Fortune I saw the group I’d be more interested in: The Silicon Valley ‘girls.’ And a number of them are among my 1,050+ Face Book ‘friends.’ More power to the ladies who run Kraft and other American mainstream corporations. I am most interested in the Web 2.0 people. They will shape the future to a greater degree than traditional corporations. A decade ago the founders of Google were in their dorm room at Stanford, and JK Rowling was hunched over a notebook in a coffee shop. All three became billionaires, but the Google founders require a massive physical global infrastructure to sustain them, while JK Rowling just needs a laptop or a pen. We are transitioning with greater speed, scope and intensity than in any other time in history. Dangers and opportunities abound. Whatever aids in one’s strategic battles in whatever area—I say go for it, including dressing the part.

Can imagine few things less appealling than being a politician. Waking up looking like Amy Winehouse and discovering your profession is bikini mud wrestling—perhaps. For starters, you must become a permanent fundraiser, which means unending chicken dinners in tacky hotels, and being around other politicians, including sleeping in the same home once occupied by Dick Cheney. The list of unattractive aspects is pretty endless. Including living in WDC. Am very happy in San Francisco.

Exactly, Frank. She is a total manufactured story from a state with a tiny population and the highest HS drop-out rate, a liar, phony and an imbecile….who was been roundly trounced by so many of our top national writers, including conservatives, but people see what they want to see. The GOP has now gone to the AK Supreme Court to prevent the Troopergate investigation findings from becoming public. I agree with you completely, the list of what’s wrong with her is so very long, and not worth repeating. Hopefully we’ll seen the end of her in 30 days.

Gulliver, My son went to undergrad at USF, too. And Jesuit grad school in Paris, too. “The fairy, Ariel” too funny, love Midsummer’s Night Dream. But the other kids must have been thinking ‘nightmare.’

I have many favorites but the one who dazzled me was, Sister Cabrini, my girl’s priory art teacher. Tall, thin, with immaculate posture and a supremely radiant face, she’d stride into the room with her traditional black nun’s garb sailing out behind her. She seemed like a misplaced wizard who’d flown in a window of that hilltop small school by mistake. She’d clap her hands together to announce our magnificent new project. Something like learning the archaic art of calligraphy, but was glad to have learned it. For over the years calligraphied numerous gift books for friends and family and illustrated the books with watercolor sketches, too. Very gratifying to be able to do. She instilled the idea to devote your upmost to the smallest task. This translated into developing tremendous drive for a range of things. If taking a picnic to the Hollywood Bowl for a concert, packing good dishes not paper plates, and fresh flowers, candles and champagne. Or when in college staying up all night to complete assignments as perfectly as possible, the same with work, and around the house. I realize thinking about her how much have diverted from that in the past year. Her favorite person was Jackie Kennedy. She ran a cult of Jackie out of the art room. On the wall to the right of the door when you entered were two smalls picture of the pope and Jesus and then a massive one of Jackie. She was also in charge of dress and deportment and we had very chic uniforms that included matching berets set at an angle. And many of our art projects were based on things Jackie had done. I made her a secondary character in my book, keeping her name and dauntless, witty personality, which serves her well because this Sister Cabrini takes one heck of a ride.

Incredible that he spent a long time in jail cells during first trial, would think he’d avoid a repeat. His new home is quite a come down from the beautiful Rockingham mansion he lost after killing Nicole/Ron. Per CBS News: http://wwwimage.cbsnews.com/images/2007/09/18/image3272053g.jpg

Can’t help feeling slightly sorry for him that he had everything, including a second chance, and threw everything away.

He cracks me up….and he sure doesn’t let up!