April/May 1983 RAIN Page 29 with specific techniques to enable you to act on these truths in your daily life. According to the author, "prospering” does not mean simply earning a lot of money, although this may be a part of it for some women. Rather, "prosperity is experiencing balance in life; it is attaining what we want on mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, and financial levels. Prosperity is the natural result of opening our minds to our creative imaginations and being willing to act on our ideas.” I have a few minor criticisms of Prospering Woman. One is that the book is clearly aimed at women of a certain social class, yet this is never openly acknowledged. There is little here of immediate use to someone who is hungry or unable to pay the heating bill. Also, the author sometimes takes the concept of accepting responsibility for one’s life too far. Letting go of blame is healthy, but I can’t agree that "coming from a position of responsibility is to say T got my parents to treat me the way they di- d—given who they were.’ ” In spite of these criticisms, I place this book alongside Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s A Gift From the Sea as a bedside "bible” and source of inspiration. Whether I’m feeling on top of the world or confused and depressed. Prospering Woman offers me valuable encouragement to acknowledge and act on my inner strength and wisdom—the inner strength and wisdom which Dr. Ross argues every woman possesses. As a tool for self-understanding and transformation, I highly recommend Prospering Woman. —Barbara Snyder Until recently, Barbara Snyder was the Executive Director of Tilth, a Northwest agricultural organization. She feels most prosperous when she’s learning a new language. Women and Men Speaking Cheris Kramarae Newbury House Publishers, Inc. 54 Warehouse Ln. Rowley, MA 01969 $11.95, 1981, 194 pp. Women and Men Speaking is a clearly written, well-researched book on the subject of language used by men and by women. 'The author, Cheris Kramarae, explores the questions of whether there eue differences between men’s and women’s language, why differences might exist, and what the consequences of these differences might be. As the title suggests, the book mainly looks at spoken language. The author limits herself to the English language, but the research presented includes British, Canadian, and American sources. A strength of the book is that Kramarae uses theoretical models drawn from several different academic disciplines and explicitly states what these models are. The first of these, the "muted group” approach, assumes that since men’s and women’s experiences are often different, they perceive the world somewhat differently. A further assumption is that since males are dominant in society, they have more control over language. This leads Kramarae to investigate whether it is more difficult for women to use language to communicate what they experience. Women and Men Speaking manages to cover a great deal of ground. The research presented comes from many disciplines and includes studies on nonwhite and non-middle class subjects as well as much feminist scholarship. Kramarae seems to be writing for a mainly academic audience, and the reader can get lost in the mass of data and sometimes contradictory conclusions. It is frustrating, at times, that Kramarae sometimes seems more interested in posing questions for further research than she is in drawing any firm conclusions. For anyone seriously interested in the subject, however, this is a book definitely worth reading. —Sara Gogol Sara Gogol is a writer and teaches English as a Second Language. TOUCH AND GO Ear Transplants? A Small Part of the Nuclear War In trying to track a suspected Soviet submarine last October, the Swedish Navy had difficulty finding sailors who could hear well enough to operate the listening devices. A Navy captain attributed the hearing loss to years of listening to loud rock music. (New York Times) But Do They Know What They Are Reading? Each week, Cosmo (Cosmopolitan Magazine) women drink 10,789,000 glasses of wine, and 7,893,000 glasses of cordials or liquors. 3,837,000 of them drank vodka in the last six months. And they entertained at home 180,234,000 times last year. Suppose You Get Used To It In Reagan’s first 18 months in office there was an attempt or threatening on his life about once every 30 hours. That is to say, 284 people were arrested for threatening his life. According to the Secret Service, 95% of the people were prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to serve time in prison or a mental hospital. Small Business Development In a recent issue, the Conservative Digest published a surprising list of loans made by the Small Business Administration. 'These included a $345,000 loan to Tom Brokaw (NBC News) to buy a South Dakota radio station, and a $45,000 loan to Donald A. Nixon, nephew, of the former U.S. president, who claims he was "socially disadvantaged”. He used the money to buy a gold mine. As you probably know, the last chapter of the popular 'TV show M”'A*S*H was viewed by the largest 'TV audience ever; therefore, it was one of the major events of history as measured by how many people simultaneously experienced it. Perhaps you didn’t know that several months before the last chapter. Bob and Wanda Donahue in Wethersfield, Connecticut, Were watching M*A‘''S’'‘H when their house was struck by a six-pound meteorite. Another meteorite weighing 12 pounds struck the same town in 1971. Quality of Life Index Three out of four Americans alive in 1982 will die of cardiovascular diseases, cancer, accident, or violence.
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