Marion Roach Smith’s alternate sisterly reality, with Margaret Roach.
WHEN SISTERS HELP one another we all benefit. This was the feeling I had recently while cruising around, looking for some book promotion advice. I stumbled upon some, and came away with that unique and fabulous feeling I only get when I witness one woman helping out another, and have only to keep the good moving along to help some more. You know that feeling? I know you do. [click to continue…]
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SISTERHOODS ARE PRECIOUS, though every once in a while one reveals itself to you, and makes you stop in your flats (or heels), and take stock of the genuine value of the connection. Maybe this happens to you all the time. Not to me, which is why a recent chance encounter is one I have to share. [click to continue…]
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HE’S AT IT again. And we’re just as proud as we can be, this time promising to rip the pages right off the cover of The New York Times Sunday Magazine, pin’ em to our dresses, and wear ‘em all over town. I can only be talking about our number one honorary Roach Sister, right? [click to continue…]
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DO THEY TALK? Do they have names? If they talk and have names, do they speak of anything other than men? These are the questions raised by a fascinating test that rates the movies that come out each year, and guess who the “they” in those phrases refer to, sister? [click to continue…]
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ON THIS DAY in 1934 is the birth of one of the goddesses of conservation, Jane Goodall. She was 26 years old in the summer of 1960, when she arrived on the shore of Lake Tanganyika in East Africa to study the area’s chimpanzee population. We are grateful every day that she stuck with it, and designate her a sister we admire. You know we do this on occasion, yes? No? Either way, please read on. [click to continue…]
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MY SISTER’S MEMOIR is not mine. My sister’s new drop-out memoir is her own version of a life I know a lot – as well as little – about. Maybe the Chinese have a word for the unique feeling it is to read one’s sister’s memoir. If anyone does, it would be the Chinese, who combined words in ways that allow for the exquisite to meld with the uncomfortable; the peeking that I felt I was doing, to alchemize into an unutterable joy and pride at the generosity of this book, the other version of a life I knew well, and yet not at all. I can say with all honesty that I’ve never felt anything like it. [click to continue…]
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THE FIRST WOMAN to set foot on Antarctica did so today in 1935. Granted she was not the first person to set foot there — a man had stepped onto the continent more than a hundred years earlier, beginning what is known as the “heroic era” of Antarctic exploration — but we celebrate Caroline Mikkelson, who was accompanying her husband, Captain Klarius Mikkelsen, a whaling captain, on an expedition. And why not?
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Nic Robertson and Margaret Lowrie Robertson in Egypt with their children
SHE WAS PENNY when we met, when she and I were among the last classes of copyboys at The New York Times. Just out of college, we had no idea that to run copy all day would perhaps not be best done in high heels. So we wore high heels and dresses, and ran from desk to desk in the great inky expanse that was the old New York Times newsroom on West 43rd Street, and then got up and did it again all day – or in my case, all night – the next day. She is known as Margaret now, though not my sister Margaret, she is my other sister Margaret, a friend of more than 30 years, and you would have thought in all that time I would know her. I didn’t, that is until I read what she wrote on Piers Morgan’s blog, and then I wept. [click to continue…]
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NOTHING IS FINER than learning something from your own daughter. It’s among life’s richest gifts, isn’t it? Especially if that something is a matter of global importance. And so it was that my daughter said she had something to show me, saying that I was going to love it. I do, in no small part because it has renewed in me the sense of urgency about something the sisterhood takes very seriously: The future of girls on this planet.
Watch this, sisters. And let them hear from you.
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WE ALL KNOW that at least one of our New Year’s resolutions should involve the sisterhood–being a better friend, staying in closer touch, listening instead of having only our say. So not to be a nag about this, but here’s another one to add to your list: Get involved in the research to eradicate a sister’s illness. [click to continue…]
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LITTLE SISTER, BIG SISTER: A digital moment, today.
First time here? Here's the idea: The Sister Project 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 on our homepage 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.
