You can teach someone who cares to write columns, but you can’t teach someone who writes columns to care.

This packrat has learned that what the next generation will value most is not what we owned, but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we loved. In the end, it's the family stories that are worth the storage.

Maybe this year, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives not looking for flaws, but looking for potential.

In journalism, there has always been a tension between getting it first and getting it right.

We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives...not looking for flaws, but for potential.

Without even knowing it, we are assaulted by a high note of urgency all the time. We end up pacing ourselves to the city rhythm whether or not it's our own. In time we even grow hard of hearing to the rest of the world. Like a violinist stuck next to the timpani, we may lose the ability to hear our own instrument.

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