SISTERS ARE GOOD. More to the point, it has now been reaffirmed that sisters are good for you. Yup, you read it here first, and we’ve got another study to prove it. Want some sister stats to brighten up your day?
From the category archives:
Kinship
By Marion Roach Smith
THE BRA’S BIRTHDAY. Now there is something to celebrate, sisters. And a centennial birthday, at that. Imagine: 100 years have gone by since the first American woman said—now repeat after me, sisters—“How in the world am I going to these into that?” Oh, yes, sisters, let’s light some birthday candles and throw a few bras on the pyre, since it’s a birthday you don’t want to miss. We have a woman named Mary to thank for it. The full-figured story.
By Paige Smith Orloff
A FEW YEARS back, my family made its own venture into the wilderness, moving from the urban sprawl of Los Angeles to the expansive green hills of the Hudson Valley. It’s paradise, yet the climate can be wretched and unforgiving, the land hilly and full of stones. We marvel aloud at the tenacity and sheer strength of this area’s early settlers; we are awed by what they accomplished, and quite certain we, with our reliance on power tools, the internet, and central heating, would not have a prayer of replicating their achievements. Novelist and memoirist Gabrielle Burton shares her own amazement at the resilience of our forefathers and mothers in her lucid, provocative novel, Impatient With Desire. Here’s what I thought.
By Marion Roach Smith
THERE WAS A time when our dogs divided us. It happens in neighborhoods, and it did, in ours. Each of us lived behind our own electric fence, keeping our dogs in our own territories, allowing for no mixing of our pedigreed charges. The humans walked, we waved, but we knew little of one another’s lives, except, perhaps, that it was the woman in each home who walked the dog. That much was clear. And for a while that’s how it was: Not much contact, little to say, we walked our dogs along the perimeter of each other’s lives. One day last week was different.
By Paige Smith Orloff
CERTAINLY NOT PICTURES. Nope. As a friend told me a few weeks back, I’ve got a face for radio. And now, you can hear exactly what it looks like. As with everything, there’s a backstory…
By Marion Roach Smith
SISTERS UNDER PRESSURE is always a good place from which to plot a story. After all, with all that history between any set of sisters (you didn’t really think you are the only one who has issues with your sister did you?), it’s a good bet that if you squeeze the pair a bit, some interesting things will happen. They do, in a new novel by Susan Rebecca White called A Soft Place to Land, and they do it quite well, indeed. The scoop.
By Paige Smith Orloff
I THOUGHT IT WAS ONLY PARENTS who felt (with guilt aplenty, of course) that they wished their children, sometimes, you know, just for a moment, time to collect one’s thoughts, or maybe just form a thought…could you all, please, just for a second, BE QUIET? Apparently, this is a sibling issue, too. A tale of how my son feels about little sister’s latest soliloquies.
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By Marion Roach Smith
AND YOU THOUGHT your family home was strange. How about growing upon a “divorce ranch,” one of the famous places where women who once wanted out of their marriages could live as “residents” while awaiting a Nevada divorce? Here’s what got me thinking of this.
"Rather than come to blows with his sister over the missing Lego tree, he sat beneath his prayer flags and let the feelings wash over him." (Photo: Dave Lauridsen; Dwell)
By Anastasia Smith
THE HILARIOUS PHOTO BLOG Unhappy Hipsters posts photos from trendy design magazines along with little satirical captions. Why I especially love its captions about siblings.
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zzzzzzzzz...on the couch before we left and then on the shores of the river.
By Anastasia Smith
HOW LUCKY AM I to be able spend some quality time with my brother T on his birthday? It’s been way too long since we hung out. (Six months!) To celebrate his 29th year, we brought a picnic lunch to the Green River. In true T style, however, all he wanted to do was nap. What the birthday boy wants, the birthday boy gets, right?
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By Paige Smith Orloff
WHO COULD RESIST a book with the subtitle “My Life in a Harem”? OK, probably a lot of people. But I’m not one of them. Read all about it.
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By Paige Smith Orloff
ACCORDING TO THE Harvard Business Review, more women are managing, in their words, to actually “have it all.” Maybe I missed the memo, but I thought we had all agreed to agree that having it all is actually impossible. Here’s why.
By Marion Roach Smith
THERE’S CAMP, HIGH CAMP, and then there is sister camp, arguably the campiest-camp of all, certainly in the world of movies, where the reigning sister-camp pic is, of course, “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane.” Happily it is not alone in the genre. Oh yes, there are others, my new favorite of which is “The Queen’s Sister.” Up for some sister camp, sisters? Here’s your film.
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. 
