The Burrow

Chicago Booth Magazine, the alumni rag of the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, has a cover story on women in banking and finance.  Their balancing acts brought tears to my eyes. "..her younger son... in first grade suggesting that she change her career so she wouldn't have to travel."   "..she...worried that she was an absent mother, since her job took her away from home three or four days a week, to a different city each day." Time passes and nothing changes.  Social work and school teaching were good professions for young women when I was growing up.  You could take a few years off, raise your family, go back and continue to do the work you loved, and still be available for kith and kin.  Unless you are special enough to be one who "requested a yearlong sabbatical" and are able to live her next sentence: "When she returned to work....," most young mothers have neither the flexibility nor the financial resources to ...

Mad Men is back, and CTVW, my window into the world of the single-20-something-in-NYC, doesn't get the hype .  According to her Facebook status, she watched the previous seasons on DVD and the opening episode of Season 5 on Sunday, and she's unmoved.  How can that be? Good television is hard to find.  Rich content, thoughtful videography, stylish set decorations and sharp dialogue is a rare combination these days.  To my mind, Mad Men has all of that, and more.  What is my young cousin missing? Sally Draper, 14 in 1964 just as I was, wears pajamas just like I did.... pedal pusher pants with a row of faux lace at each cuff and a matching top with a cap sleeve and lace.  Her reaction to the curve of her step-mother's naked back in her father's bed - a long look, no words, no facial expression - was exactly what I imagine I would have done in her situation.  We were not empowered then, we teenage girls. I'm not talking about the sense of entitlement...

I became a Hot and Spicy Bowler. I bought bowling shoes, though that was more a matter of being too old and too ornery to wear someone else's smelly foot coverings. They are white with blue trim and have very flat soles and nice gushy laces. My fingers only got stuck in one ball (then I realized that I was in the kids' section) and I really liked tossing the swirly red sphere I chose. There weren't any teams, and our conversation was mostly giggling and taunting. The other lanes were peopled by more serious combatants who seemed to be aiming at points we were only pretending to find. I found out that big paper scorecards with little pencils don't exist in the modern bowling alley. Roll the ball and the electronic scorer puts your result up on the overhanging wall for all to see. It was a good thing we didn't really care - otherwise the humiliation would have been overwhelming. Bumpers in the gutters might have been a good idea for us; who says they're only for l...

{ *'s are defined at the end of the post for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about} ******************************* I haven't been in a "fastest growing" sector of a demographic in a long, long time. Now, however, I am apparently quite trendy. According to Inside Facebook , women over 55 are the fastest growing sector of the Facebook " audience" . Initially, Facebook was as foreign to me as Twitter is today. The Big Cuter was amongst the first to join, back when you needed a college email account to belong. The Little Cuter borrowed my .edu address and she, too, by her senior year in high school, was publishing information about herself on-line. TBG and I didn't do a very thorough job monitoring the content; we spent more time worrying about her social life in the real world than we did with her on-line activities. Facebook seemed "classier" than MySpace, and the problems with MySpace had not reached the criti...

So Phil only wants to coach home games . The screaming heads are screaming, predictably. "Who does he think he is?" (Uh, PHIL JACKSON ???) "No one has ever done that." "It can't be done." "What about continuity?" Phil, being Phil, didn't rise to the bait. It's being considered, talked about, looked at. Yawn. I mean, really. What's the worst that could happen? He wants it, the Lakers refuse, and he retires with 10 championship rings and his angioplasties, hip replacements and gout. He'd be happy to do it, but walking away wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. I feel his pain. After 3 phone calls, 5 email threads, and an in-person plea, I agreed to create the monthly newsletter for The Happy Ladies Club (actual name disguised to protect the guilty). Though open to everyone, the membership roster skews towards an older, technologically challenged demographic. One-third of the newsletters are printed and snail-mailed to m...