When my growing girls flip flopped between the comfort of playing with dolls and then reaching out to try on lipstick, my view was compassionate amusement. Now I am the one flip flopping and I am not feeling particularly compassionate, or amused! Today I am flat out blue. One of those girls is leaving home to start a life in Washington, DC. She is determined, lovely, eloquent and brave enough to have made...

Food Inc., a documentary about the food industry, unveiled my denial and I have changed my mind. I will now pay more, much more, for a chicken who has had a life. My friend used to joke, ” What’s the big deal about a free range chicken, you are going to kill it anyway!” Last weekend, during a mother-daughter viewing of Food Inc, a woman farmer walks into her chicken house which is STUFFED with...

I love to play games with perspective. At the beginning of February, I decided  to counter all the gloom and doom reports by perceiving every present I received, as a symbol of good things to come. Boy, did I get tested. It took three service calls to convince my furnace that it wasn’t an air conditioner. With that out of the way, I discovered that my name and some Chinese characters clicked through to...