Ever heard of a “truth window?” It’s a small, glassed opening configured inside the interior wall of a straw-bale house — an offbeat, low-tech, environmentally friendly way to build — […]

Somewhere, in one of those gaps between teaching high school English and opening a restaurant, I was a Kelly Girl. In New Orleans. In a tightly knit town like the […]

We live in a class-conscious, color-divisive world. We don’t want to admit it, but we do. We know our own kind best. Or we think we do. Catholic, Jewish, country, […]

Last month, while spending a week in Aspen, hanging with the rich and famous — or in my case, my cousin, who once played center field on some local softball […]

I am awash in Thomas Friedman’s book, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. I didn’t want to start it. I have a stack of titles […]

Everyone’s busy. Have you noticed? But are we busy or just out of the practice of talking to one another? I used to get put out if someone didn’t call […]

I know that right about now, Paula Wallace, the Savannah College of Art and Design’s president, is probably getting a lot of heat, a lot of criticism – first, for […]

Before I visited New Mexico, I had never heard of journalist Greg Palast, never imagined that 90 percent of a tribe of Native Americans — the Taos Pueblo Indians, to […]

They give you fair warning in Aspen: “If you don’t want it printed, don’t let it happen.” This advisory appears above the masthead of the Aspen Daily News, which is […]

When I grow up I want to be like Alice Waters. She’s a chef, the owner of Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., a gastronomer. She’s an activist. Years ago […]

I love surprises. I live for the unexpected. That’s what I was thinking the other afternoon – the kind of day when only mad dogs and Englishmen would be outside […]

I have to admit. It was a relief last week to plop down in the Johnson High School auditorium to listen to the four candidates vie for our vacant school […]