It’s a voice I’ve heard somewhere before, repeating words that are vaguely familiar. Carefully. Slowly. Nicely. They are everyday words, faint admonitions usually associated with librarians, teachers, and camp counselors. Where does it come from, this vocabulary of caution, and ...

The girls in the photograph are all about 20, dressed in fall suits and pearls. They stand in an autumn garden, grouped around a bride seated in a wicker chair. The bride is me. The girls are my best friends. ...

When I was a young girl, I wanted to be many things. An actress. A writer. A translator at the U.N. A CIA operative. I drifted in and out of these career aspirations, my enthusiasm waxing and then waning as ...

That loud noise you hear is not the rumble of distant thunder. It’s the sound of presses grinding to a halt all over America as daily newspapers fold. In the past few months, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and The Rocky Mountain ...

Here’s what I’m wondering: Is it possible to own a PDA (personal digital assistant) and still have an interior life? There was a time when people used to ask that question about television sets. Before that, it was the radio. ...

The crash of flight 1549 into the icy waters of the Hudson and the miraculous survival of all on board is a story for the ages. The skill of the cool-headed pilot, the quick action of the flight attendants, the ...

So it’s New Year’s Day again, that big, bright intersection of starry-eyed intentions and real life, the vantage point from which last year looks tired and shopworn and this year, still unsullied, seems full of possibility.

It was a scene that once gave me such pleasure: brightly wrapped packages piled knee deep around the Christmas tree, great shiny stacks of them filling the living room and blocking traffic. Abbondanza, I called it. Glorious abundance. Looking at ...

For most of us, the next part goes something like this: when I win Powerball; when I meet Mr./Ms. Right; when I get my Dream Job; when everyone I love is joyful, healthy and wise. Well, wise may be asking ...

I have a new heroine. She’s feisty, quick-witted, and fearless. Confronted with an impossible task, she forges ahead. Knocked to the ground, she springs up again. Whine? Never. Cry? Not in public. Scream? Maybe. She’s a woman after my own ...

We leave the highway and bump along a sandy track into another era. There is a timelessness here, a sense of lives well lived and histories preserved in this beach house by a New England bay.

Midpoint by Stephanie Piper: I pass it on my way to work every day, the stone sign on Kingston Pike now heaped with flowers and balloons and handwritten tributes. Two weeks ago, it simply marked a church, a place of ...

Midpoint by Stephanie Piper: Here is what I used to think: that I would always feel 26. Or even 35. I rejected the relentless march of time. Blessed with good health and a family tree of vigorous, long-lived women, I ...

Midpoint by Stephanie Piper: In search of the ultimate blunt cut, I strayed up and down Kingston Pike to a string of different salons and a parade of different stylists. Some of them were good and some of them were ...

Midpoint: I am an amateur gardener, a hit or miss tiller of the soil. I may talk the talk about bone meal and mushroom compost, but don’t quiz me too closely. My successes are more likely to be accidents than ...