"It's a boy," my brother-in-law said with great shock as he stood before a roomful of nail-biting family members and friends. The stunned pandemonium that followed shook the desk ...

At Thurman's , in Columbus (Ohio), the meat in the burger is so succulent it almost melts in your mouth. It's the best (and the biggest) burger I've ever eaten. It's been four years ...

I'm still surprised by the cell phone invasion into United States culture—the same way I am surprised by pickled pork rinds or couples making out in public ...

I ate meat this past Friday. I didn't mean to; it just happened. Abstinence malfunctionI was at lunch with a friend at Evergreen, one of my favorite Chinese restaurants in ...

I am Sam Sam I am That Sam-I-am! That Sam-I-am! I do not like that Sam-I-am! Do you like green eggs and ham? I do not like them, Sam-I-am. I do not like green eggs and ham. What do Green ...

I'm a high school English teacher. When I share this with others, they usually respond with some variation of the following: "Wow. That takes courage." It's an accurate observation, but ...

A few years ago my mother said, "Today is Good Friday. Why don't come to church with me tonight?" Oh no, I thought. Not the church talk again. "Mother," I explained for the hundredth ...

As my husband Scott and I packed up our apartment to move, I came across a box of my old diaries. I could barely lift it. It held twenty-seven ...

There I was, flying 13,000 feet in the air without an airplane. I was plummeting 120 miles per hour toward the earth, with my arms and legs outstretched. I was ...

"Ok, now make a right at Lenape in .6 miles" I said, squinting at the passing street signs as if by brute concentration I could make the next sign ...

I'd been cleaning for weeks. It started the week before Thanksgiving; I had nine coming for Thanksgiving dinner and was damned if I didn't have a clean and organized ...

All marriage as moral danger? "Nothing is so powerful in drawing the spirit of a man downwards as the caresses of a woman," St. Augustine ...

With the much hyped anticipated opening of Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of the Christ on the first day of Lent 2004, Christians ...

Many people have a hard time with winter. Up North where I come from the days are short and gloomy. The cold is bitter and winter is long. The holidays, cloaked in joy and celebration ...

Mrs. America Attractive, hospitable, gracious—eager volunteers. This is the traditional image of the First Lady of the United States. Since there is no official job description for the wife ...

A man set apart by God When George W. Bush was governor of Texas and decided to run for president, he described his decision in terms of a divine mandate: He had ...

On a recent Saturday night, my husband and I went to a concert for an Irish punk band he had been following for over half a decade. We arrived at ...

Fresh out of graduate school a decade ago, I was hired as a speech pathologist for a not-for-profit agency serving the inner city poor. My therapy room contained an ...

I boarded a bus in Washington, DC, complete with wailing children, frustrated parents, and a man be-bopping to the loud music on his earphones for ...

My body screamed: "I've only had four hours of sleep!" But at 6:30 in the morning, some inner yearning drew me from my flannel sheets into the snowy winter morning. Looking back at last winter, I ...