THE MIDDLE ROAD. Not a place I know well, am prone to explore, or even feel comfortable navigating. That’s not the sister I am. Never have been. And yet, that’s what I’ve just been told to do. What to do?

The advice this month from the TSP astrologer and pal, Sheilaa, is that I hove to the middle place. I’m not sure I even know how. An Aries and a redhead, I am all about extremes, even when being so exhausts and depletes me. Though as I age, I am also all about taking the wise counsel that is offered by the sisterhood. So I’ll try. Though I’m taking suggestions as to how one does this.

Yes I am.

And I had to look no further than TSP sister Paige, for some great reading tips on how another redhead and Aries is attempting to find the better, gentler, calmer place to live.

Thanks, sister.

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WE’RE ALWAYS LOOKING for sisters doing cool things. And when we find them, we love nothing more than to tell you about them, and get their sisterly endeavors out there for you to enjoy. This week, just as I began to wonder about what summer shows I’ll be enjoying on TV soon, I came across a website started and maintained by two sisters, whose topic is one of my favorite TV shows. Curious?

Roberta and Deborah Lipp have taken the Mad Men obsession to new heights, and among the many MM blogs, this is my favorite, hands down. Called Basket of Kisses (you remember the lipstick episode from which the title is taken), the blog by these sisters has been among the loudest of the howlers about the delayed start of MM Season 5.

Leave it to a pair of sisters to bring the right amount of attention to such a serious lapse in our TV pleasure.

If you don’t know the Lipps, let me introduce you. I’ll be reaching out to them soon to see if they’d like to do an interview with me for our gallery.

To know me is to know I love good, strong red-haired characters, and Mad Men never fails on this point, since while I adore Mad Men, my all-time favorite character of the bunch is Joan Holloway. I know I am not alone in this. But Joan and I, well, we  have that flame-thrower hair connection thing, and I celebrate it whenever I can, as I have previously on this blog. I also write about redheads in general from time to time though, of course, there is nothing general about any redhead.

My Mad Men mania got seriously flamed last year when I had the great good fortune –and fun — to guest host for an entire week on Morning Living on Martha Stewart Living Radio, and got to interview Janie Bryant, stylist for Mad Men, who was promoting her fabulous and gorgeous book, The Fashion File. And as part of the interview she “did” me and regular host, Betsy Karetnick. She told me I should wear a sheath. She’s right, of course, since red hair is not the only quality I share with Joan Holloway. To be appraised by Janie was a joy, and confirmed for me that all those sheaths in my closet are well worth keeping.

Love Mad Men? While we await the new season to start, catch up and keep up with the Lipp sisters. Enjoy.

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I’M IN FOR some necessary change. And you know what? Good for me. I’ve been feeling a little stuffed up recently, and not just in my nose with the ongoing winter in the northeast, but in my life. And necessary change is just what is called for, or so says Sheilaa, our TSP astrologer, whose predictions are always spot on. Have you read what she has to say about you?

I’m an Aries. No surprise, with my red hair and fiery nature. Did you know I write about red hair here? And that fiery nature? Well, I’m a memoirist, and maybe this piece is the very best place to read up on just how hot it can get around here and whose job it is to cool me down.

Sheilaa tells me that my wildest dreams will come true, but only if I do the work. Such a  great challenge. Speaking only of my professional life and my wildest dreams, as well as my efforts to achieve those dreams, all this will be given a real outing this year as my book on writing memoir comes out this June, published by Grand Central. And between now and then (and for a good long time after that) you can find me and that book on Twitter (mroachsmith@twitter.com), on Facebook (The Memoir Project), teaching at The Chautauqua Institute as well as at The Arts Center of the Capital Region, and launching a new how-to-write memoir website.

Follow along by watching this space, sisters.

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My other sister Margaret calls me Brenda, and you know what? I don't mind a bit.

While She Said/She Said is usually the exclusive reserve of the Roach Sisters, we also welcome the call-and-response from our readers. Mostly this comes in the form of comments, though this week our friend Margaret Lowrie Robertson sent this, reporting that she is “grateful to Margaret for allowing the “other” Margaret to borrow her space to provide the flip side of Marion’s post about me last week.”

So now let me tell you about Marion Roach Smith, as seen through the eyes of my 21-year-old self: she is Brenda Starr, the brainy, glamorous redheaded Girl Reporter come to life.  All she needs is the exotic Basil St John with his black orchid serum to complete the picture.

I am awkwardly new in the newsroom, and marvel at this glorious golden creature, shuttling seamlessly the strata that separates copyboys from reporters and editors.  Yet from the moment of our first meeting on the newsroom floor, I know she is already a friend.

And because this is Marion, it is an unconditional friendship, like an “access all areas” backstage pass.  She is full of laughter and light, a rare and beautiful force of nature, juggling impossible elements – inhospitable working hours and the drive to achieve reporter status, a demanding social life with a vast array of friends, boyfriends, colleagues, admirers… and then, at home, a beloved mother slowly slipping away from the world.  Marion will eventually chronicle it, first in the Times Sunday Magazine and, later, in a milestone, best-selling book.  I wept when I read it, to realize what my golden friend and her sister Margaret had been through, because until then, I realized, I’d never really understood.

Something else struck me: while the rest of us were still trying to figure out how to make our mark, Marion already was writing in sky-high letters.

In those days, we are part of a charmed circle—among the last of the New York Times copyboys – along with our friends Suzanne, Mary and Marianne.  We each bring something different to this moveable feast and although we are all vying for the same prizes – a byline, a news clerkship, any recognition of the legwork/writing/reporting we are all already doing – there is, surprisingly, little sense of competition. Just a fundamental feeling we are all friends on this privileged journey together.

Here is one of my favorite memories of Marion from those days: we are dressed to the nines, in the heels and lipstick she has already told you about, shivering outside Studio 54 with dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other young hopefuls, trying to catch the eye of the burly bouncer blocking entry to the fabled disco kingdom.  Before long, his practiced eye falls on Marion.  He does a visible double take, beckons her out of the line, unclips the velvet rope and stands back.  She grabs my hand to take me with her.  One triumphant moment later, we sweep inside, where Marion once again proves an instant magnet, this time for young, expensive men proffering champagne.

We drink and dance and drink and dance.  Oh, we are happy!  We are young!  We are in Studio 54!  New York is ours — the world is ours– that night. More than thirty years later, I no longer remember where reality and memory collide and blur.  I just know this is the kind of memory everyone should have.

Life’s currents ultimately take us on our different adventures, in different directions. She is a well-known writer and broadcaster by the time we connect again. More than 25 years have passed since we last met, but our friendship is easily resumed, as if never interrupted, first by email, then in person.   The years – life– have only added to her radiance and the things she juggles are different now. But as you, her readers and friends will know, her passion, her generosity of spirit, are not.

I am lucky.  Marion is one of several women in my life with whom I bonded early on.  The others… well, you know who you are.  We may not see each other for ten, twenty, thirty years. But the bonds forged when we were young and the world was wide open, are only informed and enriched by our experiences.  Because we now know that true friendship is not a fleeting coincidence of youth but a tie remaining undimmed by decades and distance.

Marion is still Brenda Starr to me but other, more important things help define us.  We were always sisters; now we are wives and mothers as well.  She has found her Basil St John—the dashing newspaper editor Rex Smith – and her beautiful daughter Grace, for whom she literally went to the ends of the earth.  Our universes have expanded, exploded, new galaxies have formed, but our home lives are now the axis upon which our worlds spin.

We are, finally, who we are.

And yes, we are still friends.

We may not be front and center stage in each others’ every day lives, but we don’t need to be – because even when we are occupied  elsewhere with our own productions, we are nonetheless still there – sometimes applauding in the audience, sometimes backstage with a helpful whisper.  Sometimes just there.

But always – ALWAYS– there.

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WHAT’S A REDHEAD to do? We try to behave. Really we do. And we try to calm our tempers. But it’s no good, as little good as trying not to feel the sting of the pain at the dentist, or letting ourselves go under at the anesthesiologist; asking us to behave is like asking us well, it’s like asking a redhead not to blush. It’s just not going to happen, now is it? And why would it, when yet another American icon has gone and reinforced the idea that redheads are–how shall we say—hot?

Have you seen the new Barbie? Specifically the Mad Men Barbie collectible of office manager Joan Holloway? Our dear friend Pam, at Retro Renovation, brought it to my attention (thanks, sister) and I’ve been laughing out loud ever since.

If you’ve seen it, you know what I mean. If not, well, get a load of this, my redheaded sisters, and then try to act like a brunette.

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OSCAR HAIR. C’MON, you know you want some. 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: 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?

Cyber hair consults. Oh yeah. Not a new idea, since some sites have been around forever: You pay a fee, and on your cyber head is popped some celebrity do. I’m not having any of that nonsense. What I want is for someone I like and trust to have a longer look than what I get at the salon. Whenever I get under that drape and into that swivel chair, I seem to lose the words to describe what I want, and end up with the same-old/same-old. Maybe like me, you too need a cyber hair sister.

For instance: Meet Kristy, of My Stylist, Kristy. Located in Hopkins, Minnesota, while she’s too far away for me to get to, I love her version of simply sending her a photo and getting online and talking about how to do the do you saw done at the Oscars–or in a magazine, or online, or any old place you saw it. She and I got to talking. She likes the way I see red, and I like the way she helps out a sister. She sent me the up-do pictured above. From a recent wedding party, it’s merely one of her ideas for what to do with a do. I think it’s only sisterly of me to share this idea with you.

Of course, if you’d like to try on Oscar hair at home, you can. There are myriad online videos of the how-to-do variety, one of my favorites being this stylist, who seems to know just how to do whatever you want. Make some popcorn, get your Oscar hair on, sisters, and let’s do it.

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Click here to view the embedded video.

1952 Vincent Black Lightning,
copyright Richard Thompson

Said Red Molly to James that’s a fine motorbike
A girl could feel special on any such like
Said James to Red Molly, well my hat’s off to you
It’s a Vincent Black Lightning, 1952
And I’ve seen you at the corners and cafes it seems
Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme
And he pulled her on behind
And down to Knoxville they did ride

Said James to Red Molly, here’s a ring for your right hand
But I’ll tell you in earnest I’m a dangerous man
I’ve fought with the law since I was seventeen
I robbed many a man to get my Vincent machine
Now I’m 21 years, I might make 22
And I don’t mind dying, but for the love of you
And if fate should break my stride
Then I’ll give you my Vincent to ride

Come down, come down, Red Molly, called Sergeant McRae
For they’ve taken young James Adie for armed robbery
Shotgun blast to his chest, left nothing inside
Oh, come down, Red Molly to his dying bedside
When she came to the hospital, there wasn’t much left
He was running out of road, he was running out of breath
But he smiled to see her cry
And said I’ll give you my Vincent to ride

Says James, in my opinion, there’s nothing in this world
Beats a 52 Vincent and a red headed girl
Now Nortons and Indians and Greeveses won’t do
They don’t have a soul like a Vincent 52
He reached for her hand and he slipped her the keys
He said I’ve got no further use for these
I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome
Swooping down from heaven to carry me home
And he gave her one last kiss and died
And he gave her his Vincent to ride

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AS SOMEONE WHO HAS PREVIOUSLY purchased Aristotle, you might like…” Thus began a recent email from Amazon.com. I’m thinking of printing it out and pinning it to my dress to wear while I watch The Simpsons, the combo of the two influences really kind of summing me up. Or does it? I’m not sure. Who am I, again? (Singalong now: “Who are you? Who, who, who who?”) Shall I ask Google, or ?

I think we can agree that life used to be simpler. You were a Democrat or a Republican, a city or country mouse, or, as I once sagely opined in my best Aristotelian noggin, either a burger or a burrito. These days, as we used to say in Queens: Fuggedaboutit. Online, offline, pin number-ed or not, keyworded, passworded, multi-tasking at a whiplash pace, we are so many more women than our mothers were, aren’t we?

I mean who are you? Have you looked recently? Since Google is the contemporary mirror through which we see all things, I thought I’d search for myself there, and can only now say conclusively that:

• I am not married to him.
• I did not publish this book.
• I am not on MySpace.

Adding to the confusion of who am not is the fact that I have two last names, so that when I go by my legal name, Marion Roach Smith, I am someone who serves as a trustee to my university, and is a mother. Under this name, I teach and chair a board. Oh yeah, and spend my life with someone else, which is how I got this last name in the first place.

Early in my marriage, while my husband was the editor of our city’s newspaper, and in an attempt to be the ever dutiful help-mate to that man, I went into the local historical society to volunteer. Weeks later, I overheard someone proudly whisper to someone else, “Oh, well, we have the editor’s wife on our committee,” and I laughed like hell and wondered if they knew that I once spent my days—or more specifically, my nights—at Studio 54.

No, I thought I wouldn’t mention it. Nor the other clubs I frequented, nor lives I’ve lived. Nope, I had remade myself, you see. Which anyone can do, simply by starting a Facebook page. Oh, the sins that are washed away when you simply choose to tell what you choose to tell the world. A near occasion to absolution, that Facebook page. Look at all those pasts wiped clean. I love that.

That is, until an old acquaintance shows up with a friend request, and there is that chilling moment of what might be revealed.

A more private version of this fear can occur on email, as it did to me when just yesterday I received a message whose salutation read, “Dear Brenda,” the name by which I am known in my hometown of Douglaston, Queens. A former newspaper person, a redhead, the connection to Brenda Starr was obvious, but having been gone from The New York Times for more than 25 years, it amazes me that the name has stuck. Brenda I am, however, not to anyone where I now live.

Neither am I Red, which is what I was when living in Manhattan. I was Red to pretty much every construction worker, telephone line maintenance guy, cop and any other man on the street. Red, a nickname owned by all redheads. I like being Red.

And so it seems that some of the women we are are those we grow into, some we grow out of, and some we simply leave behind when we move. And you can get away from all of them, I suppose, but only if you are better at cleaning your closet than I am. I run into the old me(s) there among the shoes and the no-longer–worn miniskirts. Sigh.

Gee.  A woman could get frantic with this.

Or not.

When I get a little nuts with all the women I am trying to be, I ask myself if there is any one role, one identifier I can always depend on being–that one thing I have been since the day I was born? There is, and thinking of it calms me.

Who am I?

Her sister.

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REDHEADS IN THE KITCHEN could be what Milton had in mind when he coined the phrase “adding fuel to the flame,” or perhaps what Shakespeare was pondering when penning “add flame to the fire.” Inviting a redhead into the kitchen certainly does add heat to the place, as well as color. I’ve always known that, though if you need confirmation, you have only to look at the online redheads in the kitchen to see what I mean.

The hands-down best redhead recently lasso-ed into aprons strings is Ree Drummond, known as Pioneer Woman, self-described “accidental country girl,” who admits to channeling Lucille Ball and Ethel Merman. (Just love her for that.) Ree has just wrapped up a large national book tour for Pioneer Woman Cooks, and thank goodness, since she’s back in the kitchen in time to answer our Super Bowl prayers for a salsa that is not chunky/runny/vinegary, but hot as, well, as redheads like it.

Another redhead out on a cookbook tour whirl is Molly Wizenberg, of Orangette, whose A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table, is a memoir writer’s cookbook, a cookbook reader’s memoir, and a combination platter that delights the senses. This book is one to take to bed, the kitchen, and back. I was tickled last weekend to discover that we had made the very same pancakes on the very same day. Nice redhead breakfast synergy.

And though she doesn’t tout it nearly loudly enough, Sara McColl, of the ever-fabulous Pink of Perfection, is a redhead. Her recent post on leek, barley and mushroom stew saved this redhead from a meltdown when, as we are all doing, I decided to use up what’s in my pantry. A noble pursuit, I know, until I unearth my many culinary impulse buys–this time, a three-pound bag of barley. Having no idea whatever what to do with it, I went to Sara’s website, and the rest, as we say, was delicious history.

By the way, many of the recipes found on these redheads’ sites would wash down well with any on the redhead drinks we ran on TSP. I ask you, what could go better with Orangette’s Chocolate Mousse than a Redhead in Bed?

If your goal is to see a redhead at work in the kitchen, get yourself to Manhattan’s East Village, and witness Meg Grace at work at The Redhead. A bar turned restaurant, the food is some of the best in the city (hint: try the fried chicken). Or, if you can’t get to NYC, but are simply pining to see a redhead in an apron, you can catch Mario Batali at any number of places. We consider him an honorary sister. It’s the clogs. We love ‘em.

Here at TSP, our resident redhead cooker is Paige, whose cookbook swap is the kind of wild idea for which redheads are famous. When she’s not swapping, she’s cooking up a regular storm in her lovely home. (Go trade yourself a cookbook.)

Interested in more? I’ve got them. Here are some other redheads who cook, a place to get cooking supplies, a chef who makes house calls, as well as my personal favorite place to buy retro tablecloths. What do they have in common? You’ll know it when you see it, and you have to see it to believe it.

Live like a redhead. Go on, you can take the heat.

• Redheads Gotta Eat
• Redhead recipes
• Musings of a Waspy Redhead
• Redhead Pantry
• The Redheaded Chef
• Retro Redheads

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PEOPLE ARE JEALOUS OF REDHEADS. Even the drinks named for us reflect a certain envy, as they should, of course. I mean who would agree to a mere Rusty Nail, when you can sip on a Redhead in Bed?

Collecting drink recipes has long been a habit of mine, dating back to my recipe box file addiction, and the punch recipes of my grandmother. (Wowza, but those women drank some serious stuff while playing bridge). Though I can say with great certainty that not one of those potables packs the same punch as a Redhead on the Moon.

Have some redheaded friends, or merely friends who love redheads? Invite them over, get out your blender, and after a couple of these, everyone will look just like Joan Holloway. If you squint. Which you’ll be certainly be doing if you start mixing your Redhead in Bed with your Slutty Redhead, or your Absolut Redhead with your basic Irish Redhead, not to mention what might transpire after you shake up a batch of Frothy Redheads and drink ‘em down.

Need some video instruction on how to handle a Slutty Redhead? Who wouldn’t?  Right here.

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