By Paige Smith Orloff
IT’S NO SECRET THAT WE TSP SISTERS love movies. Over the last few months, we’ve again updated (with loads of your suggestions) a feature we’d like to think of as the definitive list of sisterly cinema. But just like the fine folks at Webster’s, we know that definitions change, so keep your suggestions coming, and let us know what we should be adding to our queues for winter viewing, and beyond. The list, Version 3: [click to continue…]
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LIKE WE ALWAYS SAY: If you want to be a better sister, read. What follows is the start of a booklist for sisters–fiction and non-fiction alike. Please add suggested additions in the comments space, so that with your help, the list can grow. [click to continue…]
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By Paige Smith Orloff
IT’S NO SECRET THAT WE TSP SISTERS love movies. Over the last few months, we’ve put together (with the help of loads of reader suggestions) a list we’d like to think of as the definitive list of sisterly cinema…but just like the fine folks at Webster’s, we know that definitions change, and we love to keep revising. So keep your suggestions coming, and let us know what we should be adding to our queues for summer viewing, and beyond. The list, Version 2: [click to continue…]
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INDIE OR CLASSIC, funny or weepy, the goal here in Sisterpedia is inclusion, and with films it’s no exception. We want every sister flick worth sharing with any manner of sister to find its way to this page. Let it be Hannah, and beyond…way beyond. Sure, you can just grab a title from our work-in-progress below, get the popcorn (the wine?) and the remote, and you go, girl. But wouldn’t it be so much more sisterly to visit the comments before hitting “play,” and leave behind word of your own favorites? [click to continue…]
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SISTERS. YOU GOTTA love ‘em. Or at the very least you have to worship them, for without nine classical sisters, there would be no creative inspiration and no intellectual activity. Come to think of it, maybe that is what’s wrong with the world today: No one’s talking to the Muses. [click to continue…]
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Mother Maybelle and The Carter Sisters
COUNTRY MUSIC’S first family, and the most influential sister-act in Americana history, would have to be The Carter Family. The first generation of The Carter Family, which consisted of A.P. Carter, his wife, Sara Carter, and his sister-in-law Maybelle Carter (married to A.P.’s brother, Ezra), made their first recording in 1927. In that recording, the trio performed many of the songs that would become their signatures for a decade to come—songs like Can the Circle be Unbroken and Wildwood Flower. By the early 1930s, The Carter Family was nationally known, and had sold more than 300,000 records. [click to continue…]
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Lizzie Borden took an axe
And gave her mother forty whacks
And when she saw what she had done
She gave her father forty-one
WHILE YOU might think that it’s the kind of children’s rhyme that only the Adams Family could love, it’s not. Well-known to millions of people, it still easily slips off the American tongue 117 years after the acquittal of Lizzie Borden, charged with hacking to death her father and stepmother. And while we all seem to know that rhyme, what you may not know is that Lizzie had a sister, and that she, like all sisters, had her own version of the family tale, as well. [click to continue…]
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The Watson Twins
A recent TV Week blog entry asks, “Whatever happened to sister acts?” in a despondent sort of tone, remarking that sister acts—at least in their true form—no longer exist. As if the 1940s and 50s was the sole era with fertile enough ground to grow proper sister acts. Sure, the 50s saw wonderful singing and dancing sisters like the Andrews Sisters, the McGuire Sisters, the King Sisters, and the Lennon Sisters. And we often think of Vera Ellen and Rosemary Clooney’s portrayal of the Haynes Sisters in White Christmas (1954) as the quintessential sister act.
The Andrews Sisters
Certainly sister acts have existed as long as there were sisters and songs—long before the variety show era on television (although it is not nearly as well documented). Even today, sister acts are thriving, but with a very different face (and sound) than that of Clooney and Ellen. While the sisters of the 50s were marked by syrupy sweet smiles, and beautiful harmonies, they were also on the road to spinsterdom if they didn’t get married quick. And in the past 50 odd years, America has seen the evolution of the Sister Act within the evolving roles of women. [click to continue…]
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SISTER FLICKS: We can all use some SENSE AND SENSIBILITY.
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.