Marjorie,
Late start today. I find that the later I start reading the papers, the longer it takes me to get through them. Recently I’ve been getting up around 6 (sometimes earlier) and really zipping through the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Today I got up around 7:30, didn’t turn to the papers till after 10, and only just now finished them.
The best part of the Wall Street Journal 25-years-later update on dual-career couples concerns Sonia and Zia Fuentes. Sonia is a 70 year-old mom, and was a big shot at GTE, TRW, and HUD. Zia is her 26 year-old daughter. Both women talked to the Journal reporter, Ellen Joan Pollock, with what strikes me as extraordinary honesty about their rocky relationship. (Zia’s father divorced Sonia years ago, doesn’t appear to have played much role in raising Zia, and died in 1995.) Zia says Sonia “didn’t know me as well as the other moms. She didn’t have the time.” Sonia, who is now retired, says she told Zia to move out of the house when Zia was a teenager; the two, Pollock writes, were “at war.” Zia now says she will never have children: “I’m very career-oriented. Those are values that I got directly from her.” (She is a manager of sales support at Ameritech.) Sonia didn’t think Zia would remember her 70th birthday, but Zia threw her a big surprise party. It’s an engrossing, amiably messy story that has the whiff of real life, and Pollock does well not to try to reduce it to a Trend or Lesson about women and the workforce.
Yeah, I agree, the death of the Quinn boys in Northern Ireland does seem to be reinforcing the peace agreement (except for crazy Ian Paisley, who is quoted in the Times saying politicians are “dancing on these young fellows’ graves,” and that the IRA has committed “far worse crimes” against Protestants).
Meanwhile, in today’s Post Metro section (which I usually don’t read), there’s an interesting-looking story about an 88-year-old woman who just became the oldest person ever to be convicted of manslaughter in the state of Virginia. The story is maddeningly vague about how and why she offed her “male companion” last year. I assume this case has been written about before; what can you tell me about it?
Morbidly,
Tim
