IT’S HERE, FINALLY, Sister Marion says. You think she means Spring, or gardening season, or prepare-to-get-into-bathing-suit season? Nope. Not that. Or, more to the point, all that plus this one other altogether totemic annual moment: that first run of holidays (as opposed to the November-December sleigh ride) during which memoir writers are given ample opportunities to take notes. Get out your notebooks, sisters: Your family is on its way to your holiday table! Good fodder coming right up. How to get ready to write it.
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Marion Roach Smith
OSCARS, SCMOSKERS. YOU want to see some fashion, sisters? Forget the red carpet, eschew Joan Rivers chewing over (and spitting out) those unfortunate Academy Awards fashion faux pas, and sink your teeth into some genuine glam. We’re talking gowns–with shoes and bags to match–that have all not only been oggled by millions, but are in part owned by you. That’s right: you. Read Marion’s report on the latest additions to the First Ladies exhibit at the Smithsonian.
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.
THE NEW MAMMOGRAM GUIDELINES are confounding, TSP’s Sister Marion says; she thinks we can agree on that. Ever since that government task force reported last November that most women don’t need mammograms in their 40s, that they should get one every two years starting at 50, that breast self-exams do no good, and that women shouldn’t be taught to do those exams, Marion has been dismayed as well as confused. But after developing some pain and tenderness, she scheduled a scan and, as if in response to all this unsteadying noise, a steadfast sisterhood was there to greet her. Read her story of the sisterhood of the breast.
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.
I LOVE THIS SONG BY RICHARD THOMPSON, called “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” after the bike model, and every time I hear it, I think of my red-haired sister, Marion. I don’t even know if she knows the song (or Richard Thompson, or his ex-wife, Linda Thompson, or their son, Teddy Thompson, glorious musicians all). Do you, Marion? But as Richard’s cult hit says…Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme…(Get all the lyrics…)
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SISTER MARION WAS ON AMERICAN IDOL. Did you know? Did you catch her? No? Well, she recorded it for you. “I think you’ll be really proud of me, sisters,” she says. “It went really, really well, like this:”
AS SOMEONE WHO HAS PREVIOUSLY purchased Aristotle, you might like…” Thus began a recent email Sister Marion received from Amazon.com. She’s thinking of printing it out and pinning it to her dress to wear while she watches The Simpsons, the combo of the two influences really kind of summing her up. Or does it? She’s not sure. Who is she, again? (Singalong now: “Who are you? Who, who, who who?”) Shall Marion ask Google, or ? A hilarious case of sometimes-mistaken identity: Read all about it.
OUR SISTER MARION LIVES ON A GRID. She calls it The Grid. It’s a character in her family’s lives to some extent, and everyone who knows it makes fun of it, and she is good with that. Printed on a large white board, written in erasable dry marker, The Grid sits on Marion’s desk, in full view as she writes, mapping out the seven days of her week, incidentals to big chunks. It’s not her sister Margaret’s digital grid, but it’s Marion’s and it works. Want to know more?
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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SOMETIMES MARION CAN BE SUBTLE. And while no particular incident of that comes to mind right now, she’s sure she occasionally is. Though never when teaching memoir writing, so she knows for certain that she was not a bit subtle in a recent class when she simply declared a total moratorium on the self-congratulatory. Let her explain.
MUCH LIKE A PARTY at her house, Sister Marion says, the party in her mouth only goes well when some forethought is given to who sits next to whom. Chocolate and peanut butter? She hates ‘em as a couple; loves ‘em alone, which is the same damn thing she frequently hears herself say about many of her friends. Marion offers some favorite odd-combo recipes, and then asks this: Got a food combo that rocks your ‘buds, or one you can’t abide? What’s going on in your sorority, sister?
REDHEADS IN THE KITCHEN could be what Milton had in mind when he coined the phrase “adding fuel to the flame,” says Sister Marion. Inviting a redhead into the kitchen certainly does add heat and color to the place, says Marion, who has rounded up her favorite cooks who share her flambe hair color. They’re all right here.
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. 
