We made a quick trip to central PA. My husband had meetings in DC and I had a book signing in PA. Then the plan was a couple of days with family in my husband’s hometown and a couple of days with my sister-in-law and her family near Philadelphia. Then home on Monday and back to our busy lives. But Sandy had other plans. On Sunday afternoon, our Monday flight...

I don’t remember being this squeamish when I was younger. Now, almost anything that smacks of personal conflict makes my stomach curl into a lead ball. Maybe it was all those years of raising kids, mediating disputes. Maybe it was working through my own personal issues that included raging arguments that never seemed resolved. Whatever the case, it comes down...

Four years ago, we took our daughter to college for her freshman year, a school in a little town in southeastern Louisiana, about 45 minutes from New Orleans. Eight hours by car–only she didn’t have a car. The only thing that made us nervous was weather. After all, it was then only three years since Katrina, and our daughter had seen than devastation...

The Olympics are here! The Olympics are here! What is it about the Olympics that draw us in so completely? Is it the world-wide competition? The (mostly) amateur-status thing? The pageantry? The personal stories of overcoming? Whatever it is–or the combination of them all–the Olympics seem to give us a shared experience in a way few other things do. I...

I don’t often pay attention to news items, but this one caught my eye and stirred my passions. A Michigan woman received a notice that if she continued to watch her neighbors children in her home while they waited for the morning school bus, she would be in violation of state law. Are you kidding me? It seems like everywhere we turn lately the government is...