IT’S HERE, FINALLY, Sister Marion says. You think she means Spring, or gardening season, or prepare-to-get-into-bathing-suit season? Nope. Not that. Or, more to the point, all that plus this one other altogether totemic annual moment: that first run of holidays (as opposed to the November-December sleigh ride) during which memoir writers are given ample opportunities to take notes. Get out your notebooks, sisters: Your family is on its way to your holiday table! Good fodder coming right up. How to get ready to write it.
From the category archives:
For Better or Worse
TSP SISTER MARION IS NOT the only one who’s got Oscars, and Oscar hairstyles, on the brain. The impending threat of a weekend of red-carpet coverage of a zillion visions of celebrity loveliness has Sister Paige thinking, too, about yes, her hair. “My hair, it seems, is a metaphor for grown-up life, which is messy and unpredictable and full of twists and turns,” she says. Read on, sister.
THE NEW MAMMOGRAM GUIDELINES are confounding, TSP’s Sister Marion says; she thinks we can agree on that. Ever since that government task force reported last November that most women don’t need mammograms in their 40s, that they should get one every two years starting at 50, that breast self-exams do no good, and that women shouldn’t be taught to do those exams, Marion has been dismayed as well as confused. But after developing some pain and tenderness, she scheduled a scan and, as if in response to all this unsteadying noise, a steadfast sisterhood was there to greet her. Read her story of the sisterhood of the breast.
SISTER MARION WAS ON AMERICAN IDOL. Did you know? Did you catch her? No? Well, she recorded it for you. “I think you’ll be really proud of me, sisters,” she says. “It went really, really well, like this:”
PAIGE’S GOOD FRIEND told her that Mary Karr’s Lit was the best non-fiction she’d read in years, that while she couldn’t bear to put it down, the prose was so divine it made her want to stop after each passage just to savor it. This friend is no easy sell when it comes to writing and reading, so OK, said TSP’S Paige: “add that book to my reading list, stat, and here’s why.”
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DANCING ON TABLETOPS? And why not, says TSP’s Sister Marion. On February 5, 1959 Marilyn Monroe, Karen Blixen, and Carson McCullers had lunch. Oh yeah, Arthur Miller was there, too. Taking place in Nyack, New York, the event was hosted by McCullers in honor of the great Karen Blixen, whose pen name, of course, is Isak Dinesen (Out of Africa). The menu consisted of soufflé, oysters, grapes and champagne. After lunch there was dancing. On the table top. On the solid marble table top, to be specific. Or so Marion has read. And she loved every word.
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THE EXPLANATION FOR THIS POST IS SIMPLE: I just couldn’t help myself. Yes, we have the all-girl version here (a Christmas tradition on The Sister Project) but oh boy, this “alt” version is pretty swell, too, isn’t it? Welcome to the sisterhood, Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.
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THANKS TO MARION, TSP’S PAIGE IS facing a challenge this week: to put together her own personal playlist, a measuring out of her life in coffeehouse tunes, if you will. This isn’t quite as easy as it sounds, she says, but Joni and Joan figured into her mix. The hits from Paige’s soundtrack (come add yours).
STOP FORWARDING HER EMAILS composed by some anonymous person about how much women love their sisters-friends, Marion says. If you want to tell a sister you love her, fill her heart with song. Send her the song that you shared, stomach down, ankles crossed, lying on her canopied bed while you wondered aloud if someone would ever ever ever love you, or the song you learned to teach one another your dance steps, or while you practiced making out against the mirror, or driving back to college. Or…(get Marion’s full list, and add yours).
IS THERE ANYTHING more tragically hilarious than dated dating advice for women? A photo series from 1938 she saw on the Sad and Useless site had TSP’s Anastasia in stitches. From passing out before the date is over (like the poor gal above) to smearing too much lipstick on a man’s handkerchief, all the dating “donts” you’ll ever need are right here.
WHILE THAT PATRICIAN gentleman above may not look like Dr. Spock or Dr. Sears, he was way ahead of his time when it came to advice for moms and dads. He’s Henry James, the august novelist, and if our Sister Paige had only had the sense to follow his rules, she wouldn’t have ended yesterday evening by yelling at her daughter…to stop yelling. Read the full story.
Marion, on the swim team, before she knew the 15 Rules.
OUR MARION BROKE THE RULES, she admits. In her defense, she must say that she did not break all of them–just one, though it was the most important of all 15 Rules for Us Girls to Live By. Driving the car, there she was screaming at herself for having forgotten something, calling herself stupid. And then she remembered: No sister would let her do that. Would you? A refresher course on rules for all of us.
BOOT CAMP IS NOT A PHRASE that previously would have caught our sister Marion’s eye, but after reviewing her finances, and her butt, she says she realized that while personal training was no longer an option, the workouts must continue. What she never expected was to discover a brand new sisterhood in the bargain. Her kick-ass story is here. Shake your booty, if not your boot camp, Sister Paige agrees, but she prefers dance-like steps set to music, and the delightful company of a newfound sisterhood of senior women. (Speaking of music, her kids’ conflicting tastes are driving her mad.)
First time here? Here's the idea: TSP is a network of blogs about the many facets of the word sister, and the concept of sisterhood. A sisterhood of sister blogs, you could say. Whatever sister means to you, from identical twin to sister-in-law (or in-friendship or in-feminism), we’ll make room to listen in about it or express it on TSP. Like the slogan up top says, “Don’t you have something to say to your sister?” We've got galleries of art and literature by and about sisters, and a Sisterpedia of sisterly trivia...but now we're getting ahead of ourselves. The quick study: 
As the suffix of its name suggests, 
No surprise, really, that sisterhood, often life’s longest relationship and always one of its most important, has been the Muse for so much creative self-expression by women, and also by men. 
