Sherry Chandler

Sundress Publications has started a Best of the Net Anthology for creative writing.

This project strives to promote the diverse and growing collection of voices that are choosing to publish their work online, a venue that still sees little respect from such yearly anthologies as the Pushcart and “Best American” series. This collection will hopefully help to bring more respect to this innovative and continually expanding medium.

Subsequent issues of the anthology will appear each January with our submission period open from July 1st to August 31st each year. 2007 judges will be announced in the summer.

You should drop by and check them out. Not only is this an impressive collection of creative work but it also should act as a sort of road map to the best publications on the net — for you future submissions.

While you’re there, check out Sundress’s own fine web publications: Wicked Alice , 21 Stars Review, the multimedia Not Just Air, and Stirring (where Mosaic poet Valerie Loveland has a current entry: Aerogel.)

Remember all those articles a while back that said women who got too educated would never find a husband — words to that effect. Well, according to this morning’s NYTimes, women aren’t really crying in their beer over that: 51% of Women Are Now Living Without Spouse.

In 2005, 51 percent of women said they were living without a spouse, up from 35 percent in 1950 and 49 percent in 2000.

Coupled with the fact that in 2005 married couples became a minority of all American households for the first time, the trend could ultimately shape social and workplace policies, including the ways government and employers distribute benefits.

A number of reasons are given for this trend: more widows and divorcees who don’t remarry, more women marry later and/or cohabit without marrying, etc. Interestingly, white women are still the most married of them all, at 55%. Nevertheless, this statistic seems to speak volumes about our attitudes toward traditional family values.

“This is yet another of the inexorable signs that there is no going back to a world where we can assume that marriage is the main institution that organizes people’s lives,” said Prof. Stephanie Coontz, director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, a nonprofit research group. “Most of these women will marry, or have married. But on average, Americans now spend half their adult lives outside marriage.”