Reporting is pretty vital to me. It keeps me connected to the world. A 40-hour-per-week day job may be less feasible as time goes on.

I've gotten to do a lot of stuff, traveled, worked hard at my career.

As for music, my tastes are eclectic. Elvis Costello is my all-time favorite. I listen to a lot of jazz, primarily the great female vocalists, and I am very fond of the late cabaret singer Nancy Lamott.

Reading was not a fallback position for her but an ideal state of being.

Anyone can love a perfect place. Loving Baltimore takes some resilience.

There was no protection, no quota system when it came to luck. It was like that moment in math when a child learns that the odds of heads or tails is always one-in-two, no matter how many times one has flipped the coin and gotten heads. Every flip, the odds are the same. Every day, you could be unlucky all over again.

Children can be happy when their parents are miserable. But a parent is never happier than her unhappiest child.