Paper description Looting Adventures: about organized looting, whether indiscriminate destruction or acquisitive, during war. Concentrates on three countries: Sweden during the early 17th century (collected for wealth by King and Queen), France during the end of the 18th century (Napoleon – an art collector as a patriotic project, for glory and as symbol of civilized world, resulted in creation of the art market), and Germany of the 20th century (Hitler – an art lover who saw art as emblem of power and...

Paper description

The author explores the question "Who are the Canadians?" From her ringside seat in a 36' sailboat in 1997 traversing in one summer from Toronto through Montreal and the St. Lawrence River to Nova Scotia, she recounts the varied origins and history of Canada. She paints a picture of current day Canadian culture and political life, its tensions and charms.

Paper description The author of this paper writes extensively about the Smoky Mountains after moving to Denver and being asked by a friendly neighbor how she liked "their" mountains in comparison. She discovered that most people did not know much about "her" mountains in the Southeast. She describes the geology, vegetation, wildlife, history, language and music of the inhabitants, and current environmental problems. Her story depicting the catastrophes caused by increasing pollution make the reader grieve for...

Scope and Contents From the Series:

The titles, summary descriptions and commentary are supplied by the author / presenter of the papers, and by members of the Winnetka Fortnightly.

Paper description

The long ago story of a little girl named Ethel Annie who became an orphan when her parents died in 1903: her life and the family who adopted her, her education, her marriage at age 55 and the couple's long journey north to New Brunswick, ME, and into Canada to find out about her family of origin. Lines from the Poem, Dark Harbor, by Mark Strand, Poet Laureate in 1990, summarizes the experience: ... the time has come to embrace your origins as you would yourself ..."

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A quartet of "old biddies" take off for Tuscany for an adventure. "You bet!" At age 75 the author and her friends begin their trip by staying at a villa between two mountains, in the village of Caprese Michelangelo. They take off with wheel chair and a rented car and do just fine. Many details of their discoveries - beauty and history and fun.

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A young girl, whose family summers in Maine, rummages among dusty books in a back room of their cottage. She finds a 1790 account of Mutiny on the Bounty, written by William Bligh. The story is retold through her words and comments. (Topics: Samuel Eliot Morison, Fletcher Christian, Edwards Christian, Alexander Smith, Captain Folger, Pitcairn Island, Tahiti, breadfruit).

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The author relates stories about a Cape Cod style 3-car garage built behind her Prairie Style home in Glencoe. Most of the story is about a 27-passenger 1937 Yellowstone National Park tour bus with a white engine that her son and three friends drove from Wyoming to Chicago at 35 mph and parked in the garage. The object was to keep it running while preparing to sell it.

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The author writes of her life in a rehab unit over the Christmas holidays. She shares observations and the many new experiences that come in 1996 through the medical world inside an urban teaching hospital.

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A series of portraits of U.S. Presidents' wives - amusing and enlightening vignettes.

Paper description The author uses a lively fictional conversation between friends to write about the newest information on the lymphatic system learned from Scientific American. She covers T-cells and B-cells, cure ideas for colds based on research, autoimmune disease (what is known and the evolution of), AIDs and ideas for cures, histocompatibility and histoincompatibility (and mate selection), Bagel injuries (with knives), travel and susceptibility to microbes, problems with over doing hygiene, disease...

Paper description June Naomi Bliven writes in the New York Times :Whatever happened to old ladies? Those gray-haired, bunned and shapeless women with ankle length hems and sensible shoes. At about age 40, they surrendered all pretension of youthful allure. after all the life span was 58. What do those ladies do now? Women have longer life spans and better health. In the 1970s they began returning to school, like the author did in 1981. She writes a history of schools opening their enrollments to older...

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The author describes the experiences of an entire family after the diagnosis of a cancerous growth in the lung of her six year old grandchild. Medical treatment of the child and causes of cancer described as well as the impact of this shocking event on the child's sisters, parents, aunts and uncles and grandparents. It is a story of how family supports one another in many ways. Prognosis at the time good.

Paper description Saudale is a Portuguese word that can mean several things. Homesickness, longing, or nostalgia are appropriate for the author's story. In July, 1968, Marie Helena dos Santos Oliveira Liberato (called Lena), age 18, arrived to live with the Johnston's as an AFS student and attend New Trier with their daughter Molly. She said little and wrote long letters home. She only seemed comfortable with the family's young son, who learned her family's tragic history during World War II, when her parents...

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Misia Godebska, born in1872, was a pianist of Polish descent who hosted an artistic salon in Paris. She was a patron and friend of numerous artists, for whom she regularly posed. Her husband and his brothers founded the magazine, Revue blanche. during its 15 years of existence published some of the most important articles on modern thinking of any magazine of its time. The magazine strongly championed Dreyfus, wrongfully tried and imprisoned for treason in 1894.

Paper description The author writes about a 16-day, August 1996 vacation to Thailand, where she rides an elephant with a swishing tail on her 70th birthday. She describes the history: geographical; original settlement by humans in the 13th century by Chinese; the only Southeast Asian island never ruled by the West; King Mongkut (as in Anna and the King of Siam) and other rulers. It is not a travelogue, but the author' story of a special experience, brought alive through the people they met, the rules of...

Paper description The story of the author's connection to Friendship Hill, a house built in the 1760s at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers. She concentrates on the story of Albert Gallatin, who came to the New World from Geneva and became a prominent American about whom we hear little in the present. He knew Voltaire, Napoleon, and Lafayette, among others. He was Secretary of the Treasury for both Jefferson and Madison, actually convinced Jefferson to purchase the Louisiana Purchase, and...

Paper description What is the truth of the unicorn, sometimes described as fierce, sometimes as gentle, sometimes only to be subdued by a virgin? In art and literature, it has been a part of the cultures of ancient China, Egypt, Greece and Rome, as well as Jewish and Christian religions. Included in this paper is James Thurber's "A Unicorn in the Garden", Anne Morrow Lindbergh's poem "The Unicorn in Captivity," and descriptions of the unicorn tapestries at the Cluny Museum in Paris and the Cloisters in New...

Paper description The author uses a fictional setting to tell the stories of Galileo Galilei - his science, his writings, and his 17th century trial by the Catholic Inquisition. The fictional characters are reporters in Rome researching the pardon of Galileo (10/31/1992) by Pope John Paul II on the occasion of the 350th anniversary of his death. A French priest began the campaign for pardoning in the early 1960s. It took until the 1980s to gather all lost papers and to work through them to find the story...

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Referring, of course, to Shakespeare's poem from "Two Gentlemen of Verona" and Schubert's lovely lieder, "Who is Sylvia", the author proceeds to tell the story of the Sylvia in her life, namely her mother. Her mother was born on a Sioux Indian reservation, educated in a French convent, a Midwest public school (American and Indian), and graduated from Smith College.

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The tale of a fictional nephew of Admiral Richard Byrd, who was the first to fly over the North Pole in 1926. The author weaves the fictional adventures of the boy and the historical facts of Adm. Byrd's achievement into one story. Both men are outstanding heroes and charming individuals.

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Small, coed, liberal arts, Midwest colleges are proud of their old campuses and trees and of their high academic standards. Most began as religious colleges in the 19th century. Knox College (in Galesburg, Illinois), founded by George Washington Gale, was to founded to educate young ministers, especially poor ones who were accustomed to hardship, self discipline, and work - needed for living on the frontier. The author relates the history of its founding and the many obstacles.

Paper description The author writes a biography of Phineas Staunton, an artist and scholar who died in 1867 at age 50. He began his career as an itinerant portrait painter. Through marriage he became involved with Ingham University in Le Roy, NY (his wife was the 1857 founder of this first all women's university in the U.S.) He painted famous people and people along the road during his travels. Staunton was Claude Peck's (the writer's husband) great uncle. Among famous sitters were Henry Clay and Chief...

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The author's husband, Jack, had an aunt and uncle with an extensive collection of Japanese prints which she came to appreciate more and more as she learned about their history, especially in the 17th century under the Shogun, when a new entertainment world, ukiyo - or "floating world" - came into being. She traces the history of Japanese art and the family's prints, many of which made their way to a sale at Christie's.

Paper description

The search for information about Alice Kellogg and the hunt, discovery, and purchase of some of her paintings.