January 2016 – West Coast Review

Your source for advice or any kind of question. Every Thursday on Vampire Maman.

Dear Juliette – Ask A Vampire
Advice for Everyone

Dear Juliette (Ask A Vampire) is a regular Thursday feature on Vampiremaman.com

These are real questions from real readers. If you need advice or just have an interesting question send it to: juliettevampiremom@gmail.com

Dear Juliette,

Now that my teenage daughter has her driver’s license, she repeatedly fails to text me when she’s not coming home after school. She is expected to do her chores at home before going anywhere after school. Again, I text her and asked where she was. “Sorry, at dance practice, but I did come home after school.”

“Why aren’t the dishes done?”

“Oh, well I went back to school to edit the video project before dance.”

Do we place restrictions on her for these breaches? What do you do when your kids don’t communicate or do what is expected?

~ Worried Mom

Dear Mom,

Boy does this…

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I too love paintings of women reading. Wonderful article!

Culture and Anarchy

I have a particular fondness for paintings of women reading. I suppose this is because I spend so much time reading – and I like images that have a woman, alone, comfortable, engrossed in a book, ignoring whatever is going on around her (including the artist painting her). I love this 1933 painting by Henry Lamb (left), The Artist’s Wife, for this reason. I’ve just discovered the Tate’s Album facility, in which you can create your own digital exhibition drawing on their collection, so I decided to do one of pictures of women reading. There are quite a few, it turns out (although, of course, many from other collections, too). You can look at my album here. The range of images is fascinating – because, after all, women reading is a historically complex, socially-inflected topic. For centuries women were only encouraged to read the Bible, and, presumably, recipe books –…