A network of blogs about sisters and sisterhoods of all kinds.
From the category archives:
WE ARE ALWAYS THRILLED WHEN ROZ LEIBOWITZ posts some new discovery on her Flickr photostream, and today is no exception. (Remember, it was Roz who introduced us to the Mystery Twins last year, one of our favorite TSP adventures ever.) Her latest offering includes the bathing beauties (above), whom we of course think are sisters, being The Sister Project and all. [click to continue…]
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SISTER PAIGE WAS COMPLETELY CHARMED the other morning by a profile she heard on NPR of Asha Bhosle and Lata Mangeshkar. Three guesses as to who they are. And if you’re a Bollywood connoisseur, sorry, you’re disqualified. Get the scoop from Paige.
OSCAR HAIR. C’MON, you know you want some, says TSP’s redheaded Marion. How many people do you think contribute to pre-Oscar lifting and spraying, mussing and fussing, and, more to the point, how do we get us some of that slavish attention? “I can picture me now after just a bit of it,” Marion says, “scrubbing out the slow cooker while looking ever so much more like Julianne Moore; appearing in front of my front-load clothes dryer with just a smidgen of Streep-like casual-ness to my coif. Are you in, sisters?” Get Marion’s hair do’s and don’ts.
YOU PROBABLY KNOW by now that here at The Sister Project, we can’t resist a good sister story, and we love the sisters known as nuns, but this particular piece of news took us by surprise. Bill Murray is one of our favorite actors and comedians (seen his hilarious turn as himself in last year’s Zombieland?) but we didn’t know that one of his eight siblings is a Catholic nun, and a dramatic one at that. Our Sister Paige has the story.
WE TRY to keep track of notable sisters’ birthdays, so that we can remind ourselves (and you, of course) of all the women we admire, and acknowledge them on their special days. But as we were putting together our plans for this month, we noticed that an awful lot of spectacular sisters were born this month. This Friday is the birthday of Indy car racing pioneer Janet Guthrie, and next week, we’ll be celebrating actress Lynn Redgrave, Civil War heroine Harriet Tubman, singer Liza Minnelli and photographer Diane Arbus. That’s a whole lot of talent packed into seven days. As with everything around here, Sister Paige has her theories about why.
NOT ONLY DID MEG WAITE CLAYTON WRITE THE BOOK on sisterhood, she’s done it three times–two already published novels and the third just sent off to her editor. “The emotional turf I seem to go back to again and again is sisterhood in the friendship sense,” Meg, the author of the national bestseller The Wednesday Sisters, told TSP’s Sister Marion. Marion’s profile of Meg is here to enjoy.
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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By Marion Roach Smith
OUR FAVORITE NEW BOOK is the exquisite Monday Hearts for Madalene by San Francisco disc jockey Page Hodel. The images in the video above are from a series of handmade hearts created by Hodel in memory of her partner, Madalene Rodriguez, lost to ovarian cancer. Each Monday, Hodel, 53, makes and photographs a one-of-a-kind valentine crafted from everyday objects, and then emails them to friends and family as a reminder and celebration of their love for one another. The result? This book and website, as well as other products, a portion of the sale proceeds going to The Women’s Cancer Resource Center in Oakland, California. Now that’s all heart.
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W HAT GOT ME STARTED LOOKING AT GEISHA PHOTOS, I do not know, but I suppose that all this sister talk on TSP has me seeing sisterhoods everywhere. When I first discovered the breathtaking vintage-photo collection of Rob Oechsle, or Okinawa_Soba as he is called on Flickr, including many images of geisha, I knew that without question the women depicted were a sisterhood: “the solidarity of women based on shared conditions, experiences, or concerns,” as defined by Merriam-Webster. Yes, the geisha definitely qualify on all fronts. See a geisha slideshow in vintage photos.
WE ARE SAD TO LEARN OF THE DEATH OF LUCILLE CLIFTON, an American treasure, a prolific poet and author, and a recipient of just about every major poetry award or fellowship we can think of. Some months back TSP’s Sister Paige posted Clifton’s poem “sisters,” saying it “just made me want to cry, dance and sing.” Let’s cry, dance and sing today for the loss of Clifton, 73, by reading it aloud: [click to continue…]
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IT WAS ‘BROKEN GIRL’ (ABOVE) THAT WE TSP SISTERS HEARD first from the new album, Crows, by Allison Moorer (sister to another of our favorite singer-songwriters, Shelby Lynne). We’ve written about Allison and Shelby and all the other sisters of country and alt-country fame here before, remember? Any of them speak to you the way that birds (Moorer’s last release was titled Mockingbird) apparently catch her ear–and have you heard her latest, released this week, yet? One more thing: I was fascinated to find a tiny link at the top of Moorer’s homepage to 1 Turtle Dove. Apparently we have another crafting genius in our midst, and there is even a shop.
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WHEN PARIS PRESS PUBLISHED THE ANTHOLOGY ‘SISTERS’ recently, we were thrilled. What a collection of writings, from de Beauvoir to Ephron, all on our favorite (if sometimes overlooked) topic: sisters and sisterhood. Now TSP sisters Marion Roach Smith and Margaret Roach have been asked by the non-profit press to do readings from the book and from their own work—and you’re invited. It’s all free—as are four copies of the book we’ll give away here the next month. The scoop: [click to continue…]
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RAISE A CUPCAKE today to Laura Ingalls Wilder, memoirist and chronicler extraordinaire, says Sister Paige, for whom the Little House books were a staple of childhood (and probably yours, too). More from Paige on this treasured “sister” on her birthday.
IN THE GALLERIES: Claudine Hellmuth collages.
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: Learn more about TSP, and how to find your way around. And oh—a giant, sisterly welcome.
As the suffix of its name suggests, TSP's Sisterpedia
is the reference section, one we’re hoping you’ll help us grow to maturity by adding your knowledge in the comments. Turn us on to new facts and figures, whether for the branch of our ‘library’ called Sistory (history from a sister point of view, from the Muses of ancient Greece to 60s Girl Groups and beyond) or the one called Sibling Science (what makes sisters tick, genetically and behaviorally). Or just click around and have a good read. See you there. 
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.
TSP’s Galleries were created to show off that outpouring of art and craft, poetry and prose. Come see a show or two—no ticket required, no lines to get in—and suggest others whose work we ought to showcase.
