Sue, that is a very valid point and I agree completely that it is extremely important for a woman to have the means to provide for herself should something happen, whether it be divorce, death, incapacitation, or something else. As everyone knows, there simply is no way to guarantee everything, so you can never completely protect yourself from all contingencies, but it is very unwise to simply trust in the fates (or whatever) to see you through. It is imperative to have some sort of plan in mind for securing an income should something happen. My parents were adamant about all of us kids getting an education, regardless of career plans. I'm very glad about that. I had a degree when I was married to my first husband but didn't use it. I worked part-time managing a clothing store, a fun but low-paying job. When it became apparent that I had to get out of my marriage, I realized that my husband would make it extremely difficult, would do whatever he could to avoid paying anything, and that my job would never provide for my family. So, I stayed married an extra year and a half while I got another degree with better income potential and a teaching credential. It was somewhat underhanded but it was literally my life and the well being of my children at stake. I had a good job when I was finally able to get out of my marriage. It was still very tough. When I remarried (stayed single for 15 years by choice), I wished to retain my own accounts and my name. I have good insurance should anything happen to dh, a good prenup that sees to my needs and those of my children from my first marriage, and also protects dh's property for him and our children together. Sure, no one thinks divorce will happen to them, but it CAN happen. Even if your feelings never change, you cannot guarantee your partner's feelings. It also is not a sign that you don't trust the person to simply get a legal definition of what belongs to whom and protect it. I have a lot of autonomy with financial matters as I kept my own accounts, separate from dh. We have a system for paying bills that works well for us and provides me some security with how the money is disbursed. There is a whole area of finances that I have no clue about, but it is dh's trust fund and not my money unless he puts it into joint tenancy areas, such as the house, family purchases, etc. The same is true for me. I put the money from the sale of my house into an account that has nothing to do with dh, and he does not feel he needs to know what I do or don't do with it. I have insurance to cover death or disability so I wouldn't be compelled to sell the house or immediately find a job. I have a nest egg to see me through as well. When we married, I chose to take my dh's name because I liked our family all having the same last name. However, I studied the options carefully and found that if I added my own last name as a second middle name, it gave me the flexibility of using that sometimes, too. There is no legal way to have both last names as last names without using both, if you know what I mean. If you're Cheri Jones Smith, you can't sometimes go by Jones and sometimes Smith, you always have to be Jones Smith. I wanted to be able to use one for some things and one for another. For instance, I liked using my "own" last name for work and on my credit cards. I didn't want a hyphenated name nor did I want a double last name, so using my own last name as a second middle name suited me well. On documents, including my ID, it looks like two last names, which allows me to use my maiden name when I choose, but also gives me my husband's name as my legal last name so when you look me up somewhere, you can find me. Do you know what I mean? Say my maiden name was Jones and my married name was Smith. I am Cheri Ann Jones Smith on my ID. My first name is Cheri, my middle name is Ann Jones, and my last name is Smith. If my legal last name was Jones Smith, you would have to look me up under Jones and I would have to use both when signing checks, etc. I don't know that keeping my credit cards in my maiden name is exactly legal, but no one has ever questioned it. They simply look at my ID and say ok. Sorry for that long ramble! But yes, it's very important to have backup plans in anything you do. You just never know. I have the advantage of age and experience; a young woman would likely have much less protection than I, and I would urge that she get a good education or job certification in a field that would allow her to find a job if the need arose.

Lauramarie, ahhh yes, the Ligurian coast. I enjoyed Extra Virgin but for some reason never reread it. Another one for the reread pile! I've liked several of Paul Gallico's books, though I don't think I ever read the one you mention. Annie Hawes' book reminds me of a category I left out in my list above: Travel memoirs and the related I-Bought-a-House-in-a-Foreign-Country books a la Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence. I read a whole bunch of those several times, until I think I must have burnt-out on them. I never bought a house outside the USA, but I've rented a few delightful ones and many dumps. And, oh! the landlords. Lydia, I suspect that's right: the magazines had to cut out the lit so they could make room for more beauty tips, advice columns, fashion spreads, interior decorating displays, and other pretty pictures. Give the reader what she wants... Actually I don't know if all the magazines did that, since I haven't bought those sorts of general magazines in several decades. I think the UK publications held out longer than US ones -- some of them may still print stories and poems...I don't know. I was introduced by the magazines to a lot of writers who later became well known. I recall a Judith Viorst story from the early 1970s called "The Tenth Good Thing About Barney" and the Redbook novel for August 1973 was Richard Bradford's So Far from Heaven (a condensation, of course). I liked the Bradford one so much that I sought out the complete version and have reread it several times. Sylvia Plath got her start in magazines, too, although that was a little before my time. I've never heard of the Everywoman's magazine your grandmother collected, but I know that those 'little' magazines could contain gems. Yes, I suppose they were tame, but watch out! The characters may not be hopping in and out of bed with each other, etc., but they might smoke cigarettes! :-b Lydia, the dustjacket on my copy of Before the Sun Goes Down says it won the $20,000 Doubleday Prize and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer $125,000 Annual Novel Award for 1945. Evidently, it was quite popular in the 1940s and '50s because even small-town libraries usually had a copy. I didn't read it until the early 1960s, although I had heard my mother and grandmother often refer to it. I suppose it became one of those family favorites that all the readers know what the other readers are talking about when they quote from it at apropos times. It's rather old-fashioned in the storytelling style, so I'm not surprised that modern readers might not like it -- it's too straightforward. Oh, and what it's about: The setting is a small town in Pennsylvania, the year is 1880. The main character is the town's doctor. The story is his interaction with the townspeople, most of them having been his patients, and he attended the births of nearly all the children in the previous twenty years. It's an evocation of another time, of course, but there's change in the...

Oxford American - a magazine of the south. The Oxford American is a non-profit, quarterly literary magazine dedicated to featuring the best in Southern writing while documenting the complexity and vitality of the American South. http://www.oxfordamerican.org/

Vee, my high school had about a thousand students and probably close to one hundred teachers (not counting support staff). Using English as an example, there was at least one teacher for every grade level, thus I had a different English teacher every year. One year I actually had two: the one who taught grammar and composition during the fall term, and the one who taught literature in the spring term. Btw, that sequence -- grammar in the fall, literature in the spring -- held through all of my four years of English. Donnamira, I loved diagramming sentences! I wonder why it was discontinued, as it seemed to me to be a wonderful way to learn the structure of English. I can relate to your experience of understanding a limit in trig! Those breakthroughs were always worth much more than the price of tuition, I think. You had a lot more exams than I remember taking. I don't think we had anything like your Regents exam. We took the Iowa Achievement Test every year from about third grade; but as it was supposed to be an assessment of how much we had already learned, we were not drilled on what we could expect to appear in it. And I never studied specifically for it -- I don't think anyone did. Neither did I cram, as so many students later have done, to take the ACT and/or SAT. I took both, very casually. Vee, I don't recall my schedules of classes, but I think we had each subject daily much the same as Kath and Donnamira did. I didn't have "blocks" before college. High school began at 8 a.m. and let out at 3.45 p.m. We had seven class periods and lunch between those times. We were discouraged from talking, as well, especially during class. I'm always surprised to hear the din in modern classrooms.