Are you your own worst critic? Does it affect your writing? My post about this topic is being featured on BlogHer today ... come on over...

My first apartment in New Jersey, after I returned from the West Coast, was at the back end of a long, two story half-empty building, where ...

For Lease , reads the sign in the window, in bold sans serif font above the large white phone number of some commercial real estate company....

The snow had left powdered-sugar dust on the grass, on the daffodils.  A thin crust of crystal, dazzling in the sunlight, invitingly crunchy...

Today, my daughter turns five. In her Montessori classroom, there are no cupcakes, no balloons, no party favors.  Instead, they will tell ...

I used to believe I was colorblind.  What that meant, to me, was that I thought I could judge people, in the words of Dr. King, not on the b...

It was part of the ritual of December.  Every year, the large box of Christmas cards, covered in a thin layer of dust, would come down from ...

What do you do when you're having a bad day she texted.  I took a nap but I don't feel much better. I thought about it, knowing t...

I work at one of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in the world. The students, while they do come from all over the ma...

Long ago, I learned to tune out the talk about the demise of the humanities.  As a former English major, I couldn't help but feel like t...

On the way home last night, I found myself listening to an NPR story about foraging .  I'm no stranger to the concept; I know that NPR ...

I touched down at O'Hare with two phones in my purse. That's how I roll these days: my spiffy work iPhone and my old scuffed andri...

With gratitude to my book group, who provided the inspiration for today's post. This month, my book group read Unbroken , the memoir o...

Back in the spring of 2012, I signed up for The Listserve . The idea of the project was to create a email list that would allow one subscr...

My friend K., who brought the peonies from my last post , told me that her mother had a sign she took from house to house as she moved throu...

(I'm about to embark on NaBloPoMo again, and this month's theme is "Roots"; oddly enough, the post I had brewing for toda...

The visiting minister who gave the sermon at our church this past Sunday said that every minister has one sermon that they keep preaching ov...

It was obvious, when I walked out to the garden today, that it needed to be done. The wintered-over raspberry canes were already bending a...

I am honored and proud to be syndicated over at BlogHer.com today for the post that was originally entitled "You Are Here , " a p...

My husband bought a Kindle not long ago.  He loves it, and reads most of his books that way now.  I, on the other hand, use it only when ne...