My early childhood was spent in Newark, New Jersey, but my family moved to Denver when I was 12.

Weeping is terrible for the complexion" said Leonie, holding Shayndel close, "but it is very good for the soul.

The story it told was unremarkable: a tale of love found and lost- the oldest story in the world. The only story.

There's something almost adolescent about Whitman's paean to everything that was and remains good about America.

Making plans is a game. Life chooses for you.

It's a wonder that any mother ever called a daughter Dinah again. But some did. Maybe you guessed that there was more to me than the voiceless cipher in the text. Maybe you heard it in the music of my name: the first vowel high and clear, as when a mother calls to her child at dusk; the second sound soft, for whispering secrets on pillows. Dee-nah.

The real Mary Poppins got lost when Hollywood turned her into a cream puff.