The Boston Globe has a little-reported story on the rising number of homeless women veterans, many of them single parents with kids. What's even more disturbing is the fact that although services are in place to help returning vets, many feel that the culture of the Veterans Administration is primarily geared toward addressing the needs of men; therefore, they're having a hard time adjusting to the very different and specific needs of women.

Something arrived in my inbox this week that had the ring of an old wives' tale -- one of those tried and true remedies passed by word of mouth. NJM included me in her list of friends and relatives to whom she forwarded an email that said taping a copper penny to a bee or hornet sting takes the pain, redness, and swelling away.

So many women I know (including my neighbor across the street) spend endless hours gardening; it's one way to unwind. So I had to find out for myself and others -- does this really work?

My go-to guy on all things forwarded via email is David Emery, About.com Urban Legends Guide. He has the full email that's been circulating on the internet since August 2006, and the details on whether or not it works. Thanks NJM for passing this along.

For me, reader emails are just as much fun as a package from home during summer camp. (You never know what you're going to get, and if the contents are really good, you feel compelled to share.) If you've got something interesting to relate, or a story I should pass along to other readers, here's how you can email me.

_{© Joe Raedle/Getty Images}

Once again, Williams forthrightly tackles what most others dance around in an unblinking examination of the very complex contradictions inherent in Michael Jackson's life, death, media image, and altered reality. In "Mirror Man" she looks at our fascination with him; the terrible childhood abuse his father Joe Jackson still denies dishing out; the "mind-boggling malpractice" that supported his drug abuse and his extreme plastic surgeries; the disturbing allegations that his three children have no biological connection to him; and his even more disturbing need to blank out any presence of a mother in his children's lives:

Their conception was accomplished as a made-to-order, cash-on-the-barrelhead commercial transaction....Reportedly, the women who gestated them carried anonymously donated eggs fertilized by sperm from secret donors....Deborah Rowe, Jackson's ex-wife and the surrogate who carried his oldest two children to term, describes being inseminated "like a horse"; she then received around $9 million to give up any claim to them. On the birth certificate of Jackson's youngest child, the space for "mother" is left blank.

Many have voiced their concerns over this, though most (like the author of "Michael Jackson: Talented Yet Troubled" from the blog Mothers Raising Boys) don't have a gig at The Nation as Williams does. In the midst of the frenzy surrounding the extended mourning of the King of Pop, Williams will likely get flak for "Mirror Man." But like all concerned mothers, it's the children she worries about -- the children who called Michael Jackson 'father,' and the child that man once was despite an upbringing that included being held upside down and punched repeatedly by his father.

"He mimed a narrative of constant paradox and infinite suffering," Williams writes about Jackson, and closes with her fears that his three children will end up with their "ignorant, brutish" grandfather. Should that come to pass, if that isn't an example of "constant paradox and infinite suffering" for yet another generation of young Jacksons, then I can't imagine what is.

Related article: Remembering Michael Jackson and the Woman Behind "Man in the Mirror"

That's why it's so refreshing -- and dare I say it, exciting? -- to read Emily Bazelon's extensive, wide-ranging interview with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the New York Times website. (A version of this will be printed in some editions of the July 12, 2009 paper.)

Here's a glimpse: She works out with a personal trainer. She uses a gentle touch to influence her colleagues. At her confirmation hearings in 1993, she hoped there'd be three or four female justices further on down the road. And today, she thinks that "It just doesn’t look right in the year 2009" to have only one woman on the Supreme Court.

Having done some research and writing on Ginsburg earlier, I've always been curious to know more about the sole female justice remaining on the court, the one who's been seen as more quiet than activist. Yet as Bazelon reveals in her four-page Q&A, Ginsburg has a sharp, probing mind and a sensitivity to some cases (such as the strip-search of the 13-year-old girl) that her fellow male justices lack.)

Want to know why another female justice (namely Sonia Sotomayor) is so essential, not only to the Supreme Court but to the well-being of this nation? Read Brazelon's "The Place of Women on the Court."

With nominee Sotomayor's confirmation hearings scheduled to begin next week, I can't think of a more timely article for both women and men to read.

Related articles:

• Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Second Woman on the Supreme Court
• Sandra Day O'Connor, First Woman on the Supreme Court
• History of Women on the Supreme Court
• Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court Nominee and Possible Third Woman on the Supreme Court