We want our children to fit in and to stand out. We rarely address the conflict between these goals.

Maybe at 20 you can write well, but I don't think you could do what I do. Some things have to happen to you first.

We may never know why Joe Ellis fabricated a heroic past. But we know that the life he embellished has deeply diminished the life he'd earned.

We want our children to fit in and to stand out. We rarely address the conflict between these goals.

It is, I suppose, the business of grandparents to create memories and the relative of memories: traditions. We want to lodge moments, like snapshots, in the fleeting video of time.

How many of the people I know - sons and daughters - have intricate abstract expressionist paintings of their mothers, created out of their own emotions, attitudes, hands. And how many have only Polaroid pictures of their fathers.

Values are not trendy items that are casually traded in.