Going out of my mind (or into it). Art by Hong Chun Zhang (hanging at local hospital) Sitting still was never my forte. I was a kicking and twisting baby, a kid who couldn't stay in my seat, and an adult who rarely goes a minute with fidgeting. I'm almost always in motion, unless I'm asleep when, strangely enough, I'm capable of holding very still and dreaming I'm walking along the Jersey shore with Bruce Springsteen, talking about what we're writing. Maybe I just have few speeds, like an...

I live in a part of the country where we talk a lot about weather a lot because it's both highly entertaining and can kill us. Like many places in the middle of the continent, we're famous for four seasons in one day. So often, I find myself wishing for the humidity to break, the rain to fall, the rain to stop, the cold snap to snap away, or whatever else that would bring me creature comforts. But we often just get a handful of days each year of pure pleasantness. Mostly it's too much, too...

As a kid in love with the beauty of horses (and cats and dogs and.....) I can't remember ever not being a beauty hound. My earliest memory, sitting on what was to my three-year-old self a giant cliff, fishing with my grandfather was a beauty immersion. I was in love with moving water, light breeze, my slim, very quiet grandfather chain-smoking Tareyton cigarettes in one hand, balancing his fishing pole in the other. It was a moment of great peace, calm, love, and belonging. In short, it was...