I recently stumbled across a blog entirely devoted to the sharing of secrets. The project began as a public art project in 2004, when its founder, Frank Warren, distributed 3,000 self-addressed postcards with instructions to write down and illustrate a secret and send it back. He stuck the cards in library books, left them on [...]

About a year ago, on NPR’s “This American Life,” I heard the story Louann Mims, a 78-year-old Hurricane Katrina survivor who floated through her flooded home for eight days on an extra firm Sterns and Foster mattress. Before the levees broke, she went out on her patio to have some cereal and a banana. After [...]

The five Amish girls who recently died in the Lancaster County school shooting were prepared for burial in the traditional way: Older women dressed them all in white — simple gowns sown by their mothers, white head coverings, veils, socks and aprons. The white pointed to the purity of heaven — to which the Amish [...]

“I am walking home, I keep telling myself,” writes Jeffery Smith in Where the Roots Reach for Water. “I live on east Third Street in Missoula, Montana and I am walking home and by the time I get there this will be gone.” Smith feels his depression returning and wants to deny it. He wants [...]

It was a rare June day in Chicago — not too humid, fresh and balmy. At the farmer’s market, I filled every crevice of Anna’s stroller with leeks, carrots, tomatoes and peaches, and then schlepped my overloaded stroller to a friend’s house for lunch. My friend’s husband Isaac made lasagna, which smelled wonderful. Two bites [...]