Marin Alsop, conductor and violinist, is currently the music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the first female music director of a major American orchestra.  She was born on October 16, 1956 in New York City and her parents were professional musicians.  After briefly attending Yale University, she transferred to the Juilliard School where she earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in violin performance.  A winner of the Koussevitzky Prize for outstanding conducting, she has studied with many of the twentieth and twenty-first century’s most famous conductors, including Leonard Bernstein, Seiji Ozawa, and Gustav Meier.  Besides conducting the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Alsop also guest conducts the most prominent American and European orchestras including New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the Orchestre de Paris.

Before making history as the first female music director of an American orchestra, Alsop served as Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony in the United Kingdom from 2002-2008 and Conductor Laureate of the Colorado Symphony for over twelve years.  She also served as the music director for the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music in Santa Cruz, California.  Every year since her initial appointment in 1992 at the Cabrillo Festival, Alsop has won the ASCAP award for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music.

In addition to winning the ASCAP Adventurous Programming award for nearly two decades, Alsop has also received Gramophone’s “Artist of the Year” award, the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Conductor’s Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, and is a fellow to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Although women have been conducting major American orchestras for over two decades, women in the conducting field are still relatively rare.  This is often attributed to symphony orchestras being more conservative than other musical genres as well as women’s initially slow entry into the professional orchestra scene.  Marin Alsop, however, has not only broken the gender line for women conductors, but has thrived in the field, serving as a role model for young women conductors and musicians everywhere.

Female instrumentalists have been a rarity in jazz music, but Esperanza Spalding, only 25 years old, is an irresistible and intriguing performer who is forging new paths in the jazz world.  With the ability to not only play double bass, sing, and compose music, but also to do all of these things simultaneously in performance, Spalding is often referred to as “the hope for the future of jazz and instrumental music.”

Spalding was born on October 18, 1984 in Portland, Oregon and was raised in a single-parent, multi-lingual household.  Spalding says her mother’s strong-willed, independent nature, was an important aspect of her development as a musician: her mother was her role model and taught her the value of perseverance, moral character, and work ethic.  Spalding did not excel in school and also suffered from childhood illness; however, causing her to be home-schooled for several years and eventually drop out of high school by age sixteen.

Despite her struggles, music spoke to Spalding.  At age five, Spalding taught herself to play the violin, and by age six, she won a position in the Chamber Music Society of Oregon.  But Spalding was truly fascinated with the double bass, and its ability to play classical music as well as jazz, funk, blues, and hip-hop.  By age fifteen, in addition to fulfilling her position as concertmistress with the Chamber Music Society of Oregon, Spalding was playing double bass and writing songs in local clubs.

After leaving high school but receiving a GED, Spalding enrolled as the youngest bass player at Portland State University and finished her degree in three years.  She then became the youngest faculty member in the history of the Berklee College of Music.

Aside from being a modern day Mozart-like prodigy, Spalding’s performances and recordings exhibit her most intriguing and inspiring talents.  Composing songs that cross boundaries between classical, jazz, hip-hop, and funk music, singing lyrics or scat, and playing bass simultaneously, Spalding is a visionary performer.  Listen to and watch Esperanza Spalding’s performances at www.esperanzaspalding.com.

Jane Austen was born December 16, 1775 at the Steventon rectory in northeast Hampshire in Great Britain. Her romantic fiction books, complete with social commentary and harsh realism, have allowed her to be regarded as one of the most important British novelists.

Austen was the seventh of nine children born to Reverend George and Cassandra Austen.  Austen’s parents were encouraging of her development as a writer, and at age eight, she and her sister were sent to Oxford boarding school for their formal education, French, and music.  After Austen nearly died from typhus, she finished her education at home, reading, writing, and drawing avidly.  According to one of Austen’s biographers, Park Honan, Austen lived in “an open, amused, [and] easy intellectual atmosphere,” where politically or socially controversial topics were discussed openly.

Austen began writing poetry, stories, and plays by age twelve, and by age, eighteen, she compiled 29 of her earliest works into three bound volume, calling it Juvenilia.  Juvenilia and Austen’s other early works were daring for a woman of the late eighteenth century, including historical parodies and satires that poked fun at social and historical traditions.

Austen’s earliest serious work, Lady Susan, a novella finished in 1795, tells a story in letters of an intellectual sexual predator who uses her wit and charm to manipulate and betray her lovers.  After Lady Susan, Austen wrote some of her most famous novels, including Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Mansfield Park.

Austen’s novels were generally well received.  Sense and Sensibility received encouraging reviews from critics and the first edition sold out within two years of its first publishing in 1811.  Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813 was immediately successful; and Mansfield Park, while more or less ignored by the critics, was extremely popular with the public.

Austen died on July 18, 1817, most likely of tuberculosis. Today, Austen’s works remain staples of British literature: her works remain required readings for high school and college literature classes and many of her novels, including Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, have become major motion pictures in both the U.K. and the United States.

Safety Girls, if you’ve started a new job on a construction or work site, or if you are just in really bad need of overhauling your gear, then Safety Girl’s Tool Belt Kits are just what you need to look snazzy on the job.  Safety Girl offers six different tool belt kits, with each kit including a tool belt, safety glasses, and a hard hat.  Each kit is only $30.99, a savings of almost $20 off the list price and an overall great value.

If pink is your color, you’ll be able to choose between MSA, North, or Pyramex hard hats, all excellent choices for safety, comfort, quality, and, of course, style.  You’ll also have the choice between Eva or Eva Petite safety glasses and a light pink or dark pink tool belt.  At an incredibly low price of $30.99, this three-in-one kit is the perfect way to outfit yourself for safety and a little workplace pizzazz.

If going all-pink isn’t your style, don’t worry!  Safety Girl sells these great tool belt kits in black, blue, and purple.  If you choose the Black Tool Belt Kit, you’ll receive Safety Girl’s signature suede tool belt, featuring nine pockets, two hammer loops, an adjustable waist, and of course, pink stitching.  You’ll also have the choice of a pink, blue, or purple hard hat and pink, clear, blue, or purple safety glasses.  With a sharp black tool belt and a colorful hard hat and glasses, you’ll be looking fantastically feminine on the job.

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Think about how often you stare at your fingernails everyday. If you do, do you notice how healthy they look?  Do you enjoy filing them, polishing them, or getting manicures?  Or do you notice how unhealthy and brittle they look?  Maybe you have dry cuticles or get a lot of hangnails.  Regardless of your nails’ condition, read this article to learn how to best take care of your finger- and toenails.

Our nails make it easier to use our hands, whether for picking up something, cleaning, scratching, or removing a key from a key chain.  Nails are made up of a protein called keratin, which begins growing just below the cuticle.  When new nail cells grow, they cause older cells to harden, compact, and move towards your fingertips.

Healthy nails are smooth nails.  Ridges, grooves, discoloration, or spots can be signs of disease; however, some irregularities, such as vertical ridges in the fingernails can be harmless.  Talk to your doctor of your nails are yellow, separate from the nail bed, have horizontal indentations, are opaque below the fingertip level, or curl.

Summer’s here for a little while longer, so here are a few tips to keep your manicure and pedicure looking great and prepare for dryer weather to come during the winter.

• Keep your nails moisturized by rubbing a small amount of petroleum jelly or olive oil into your nails.
• Keep your fingernails short and square shaped but slightly rounded at the top.  Cut your nails after you shower or bathe when they are softest and file when they are hardest (before bathing).  Always file in only one direction to avoid putting excess pressure on the nails.
• Trim your toenails straight across.  This will avoid ingrown toenails.
• Wear cotton socks and shoes that fit properly to allow your nails to breathe and for your shoes and socks to do their job absorbing moisture and keeping your toes comfortable.
• If your nails are brittle, try adding more zinc, biotin, calcium, or vitamins A and B.
• Never wear acrylic nails or use acetone- or formaldehyde-based nail polish remover.  Look for nail polish removers with acetate.
• Finally, take the time to protect your fingernails from damage by wearing rubber gloves when doing household chores or dishes.  Your nails will thank you for the extra protection from dirt and harsh cleaners.

Dorothea Lange was an American photographer and photojournalist born on May 26, 1895 in Hoboken, New Jersey. Despite her childhood hardships—she contracted polio at age seven and her father abandoned her family at age twelve—she took photography classes in New York City and moved to San Francisco in her early twenties, where she opened a portrait studio and married American painter Maynard Dixon.  Lange often accompanied her husband on his painting journeys to the American Southwest, where Native Americans became the subjects of her earliest documentary photography.

Lange is best known for the documentary photography she did during the 1930s Depression for the U.S. government’s Farm Security Administration.  These photos not only provided an intimate depiction of the human suffering caused by extreme economic hardships, but also advanced the development of photojournalism and documentary photography as an essential genre of photogrphay.  Working for the Farm Security Administration from 1935 through the beginning of World War II, Lange documented Dustbowl families that migrated west.  Lange found her passion in photographing everyday people and during and after World War II, Lange photographed Japanese Americans in internment camps, women working in wartime shipyards, the creation of the United Nations, and post-war industry in San Francisco.

“The Migrant Mother,” taken in March 1936 in Nipomo California, is one of Lange’s most famous photographs.  The photograph depicts a thirty-two year old mother of seven children staring slightly away from the camera with two of her children huddling close to her, hiding their faces from the camera.  The pea crop that year had failed, so the mother and her children, along with the 2,500 people in the camp were destitute. Although Lange did not ask the subject her story, the mother told Lange that she and her children “had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed….She had just sold the tires from her car to buy foods.”  This image, along with other humanizing portraits of migrant workers, new settlers in the American West, and hungry children have contributed greatly to American sentiments about the Great Depression.

Dorothea Lange died on October 11, 1965 in Berkeley, California, of esophageal cancer.  Her works continue to be recognized in art museums around the country, including the Oakland Museum of California, which holds the largest collection of Lange’s works.  Lange’s compassion for humanity, her empathy for her subjects, and the importance she placed on ordinary people not only produced a personal collection of American photos, but also laid the foundations for decades of documentary photojournalism.

The effects of aging on body weight have been discussed in recent years, as the life expectancy of our population increases, along rates of diet- and lifestyle-diseases including obesity, type II diabetes, and heart disease. In addition, women’s metabolic rates slow as we age, particularly after menopause.

Luckily, there are foods that help combat this type of weight gain.  The most important reality to consider about incorporating particular anti-aging foods into your diet is that as we age, our bodies experience an increase in free radicals, molecules of oxygen that contribute to the onset of diseases often associated with aging (heart disease, cancers, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s).  By eating a diet rich in antioxidants, we can help reduce the chances of developing these diseases.

So what foods should we eat to combat aging?  In general, think about eating whole foods rather than processed foods and making meals a combination of a lean protein and a whole grain. Whole foods, particularly fresh fruits and vegetables, are loaded with vitamins, antioxidants, and fiber that improve cell function, reduce your chances of getting sick, and keep you feeling at your best.  Lean proteins, including white meat chicken, fish, legumes, and low-fat dairy products, provide your body with essential amino acids that aid in proper cell function and also boost your metabolism.  Whole grains, including whole wheat, oats, brown rice, whole grain pasta, keep you feeling full longer and they may also reduce your chances of developing diabetes, heart disease, or other cancers.

Looking for a few specific recommendations?  Here are a few anti-aging super foods:

• Blueberries contain incredible amounts of antioxidants, protecting your body against free radical damage.
• Garlic promotes healthy cholesterol levels, reducing the risk of heart disease.
• Avocadoes contain healthy monounsaturated fats to help regulate cholesterol, vitamin E to promote healthy skin, and potassium to prevent fluid retention and high blood pressure.
• Nuts are highly caloric, but contain valuable minerals that promote healthy aging, healthy skin, and a healthy metabolism.  Walnuts, for example, contain potassium, magnesium, iron, zinc, copper, and selenium.  Eat them in moderation to avoid weight gain.
• Bananas are rich in vitamin B a nutrient necessary for red blood cell function, immune system function, healthy brain activity, and estrogen processing.  If you don’t like bananas, try eating other foods high in B vitamins, including eggs, lean meats, milk, and potatoes.
• Finally, water is essential for ridding the body of unhealthy toxins, feeling good, and a healthy metabolism.  Drink at least eight glasses per day.

Safety Girl sells a lot of stun guns, and they can be great self-defense weapons, but what about the possibility of an attacker being prepared for the volt of your stun gun? Safety Girl’s Cell Phone Stun Gun is the answer to your concerns!

The Cell Phone Stun Gun delivers the ultimate surprise: it looks exactly like a cell phone, so your attacker won’t expect it to be a weapon used for your self-defense.  Stronger than most stun guns on the market, the Cell Phone Stun Gun delivers a 1,000,000 volt shock, disrupting brain activity, causing your attacker to lose his balance and muscle control and fall to the ground in confusion.  Your attacker will require about five minutes to recover from this blow, so you’ll have plenty of time to escape and seek help.

The cell phone stun gun works just like other stun guns, but the cell phone’s “stun” and “light” buttons, located where the “send” and “end” buttons on a cell phone would be, operate the gun.  Simply touch the phone to the attacker while pressing the “stun” button to deliver the shock.  The cell phone stun gun features a safety button to prevent accidental engagement.  Other features include an extra-bright LED flashlight, a red LED on/off indicator, cell phone case and belt clip, and 3 CR2 batteries.

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Frida Kahlo was born in 1907 in Coyoacán, Mexico, to a Hungarian-Jewish father and Mexican mother. Kahlo is famous for her bold and shocking images, many of them self-portraits with bright colors and a flattened, two-dimensional style. Kahlo’s images are said to reflect her unsettled childhood and adult life.  She survived polio during her childhood, and, at age fifteen, enrolled in a premedical program in Mexico City.  She was forced to drop out of the program after being severely injured in a bus accident.  The accident resulted in over thirty surgeries, causing Kahlo to spend the rest of her life in chronic pain.

Kahlo married Mexican painter and muralist Deigo Rivera in 1929 at age 21.  Both were passionate about Mexican politics and intensely admiring of the other’s works.  Despite Rivera’s numerous extramarital affairs, Kahlo loved Rivera obsessively, saying Diego was “my child, my lover, my universe.”  Although their marriage has become famous in the Mexican and American art worlds, they eventually divored.

Althoguh she lived a life in chronic pain from her surgeries, Kahlo painted over one hundred works and remains one of the most influential Mexican painters of the twentieth century.  Her works are deeply personal and autobiographical, reflecting both her physical and emotional suffering and feminist opinions.  Kahlo’s works are often described as surrealist, although Rivera argued that Frida’s works were realist.  Of her own works, Kahlo wrote: “Since my subjects have always been my sensations, my states of mind and the profound reactions that life has been producing in me, I have frequently objectified all this in figures of myself, which were the most sincere and real thing that I could do in order to express what I felt inside and outside of myself.”

Kahlo’s paintings are indeed graphic and have an element of urgent expression.  Kahlo graphically depicted heartbreak after divorcing Rivera in “The Two Fridas,” literally painting herself with a broken heart, and also in “Autorretarto con Collre de Espinas y Colibri,” depicting herself as a Christain martyr wearing a necklace of thorns with a black cat behind her.  Numerous other paintings depict abortion, miscarriage, and sickness.  Kahlo’s self-portraits incorporate a particular element of nature: her paintings exhibit images of vines growing out of her own body, nature surrounding her in an eerie way, or an x-ray-like view into her internal organs.

Kahlo died at age 47 in 1954 due to surgical complications.  Her paintings were well recognized during her lifetime, but her reputation became greater in the 1980s when the feminist qualities of her work began to be recognized and researched.  In recent years, more books, films, and plays have allowed Kahlo to be even more widely recognized as one of the great feminist painters of the twentieth century.

“All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children…. I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can’t build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out.”

–Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton was an American poet and playwright born on November 9, 1928 in Newton, Massachusetts. Sexton grew up in a middle-class family, but her father was an alcoholic and caused them a dysfunctional home life.  During her childhood, and into her adult life, Sexton developed a relationship with her great aunt Anna Dingley.  Sexton was not a successful student, and after several incidents of disobedience in school, her parents sent her to a boarding school, where she began writing her first poems.  At age nineteen, she eloped, marrying Alfred Sexton, although she was engaged to someone else at the time.  Sexton then began a career as a fashion model and had several extramarital love affairs during her husband’s service in Korea.  These incidents, followed by the birth of her daughters and Anna Dingley’s death, prompted Sexton to seek therapy for depression, a mental illness she combated for the rest of her life.

It was Sexton’s therapist, however, who encouraged her to begin writing poetry again.  At age twenty nine, Sexton enrolled in a poetry workshop at the Boston Center for Adult Education. Due to Sexton’s mental illness, her poems are deeply autobiographical, focusing on her personal feelings and experiences (including suicidal attempts, episodes of madness, and residence in mental hospitals).  Critics scrutinized the confessional style of Sexton’s early works, including To Bedlam and Part Way Back and All My Pretty Ones, arguing that Sexton’s poetry was too connected with her firsthand experience, lacked artistic control, and, as one critic stated, was “little more than a kind of terribly serious and determinedly outspoken soap-opera.”  Other critics felt Sexton’s raw, naked style indicated a lack of technical strength.  As one critic wrote for Punch magazine: “the recital of grief and misery becomes embarrassing…the poetic gives way to the clinical and confessional.”

Sexton’s Transformations represented a stylistic shift, possibly due to the intense criticism of her earlier works.  In this poetry, Sexton retold Grimm’s fairy tails, using them as a basis to criticize cultural formalities, particularly those that inhibit women.  Critics praised Transformations.  One critic argued that by using artificial plots and characters, Sexton was better able to draw her readers into the work, making them more vulnerable to Sexton’s personal nightmares.

Sexton’s later works, including The Death Notebooks, The Awful Rowing toward God, and 45 Mercy Street, returned to her earlier confessional style and were consequently criticized even more heavily by critics.  Bombarded by the critics and her inability to overcome depression, Sexton committed suicide in 1974.  Today Sexton remains famous for her raw and honest poems, bringing women’s issues, including menstruation, pregnancy, motherhood, and abortion, into public poetry and refusing to succumb to critics’ discouragement.