Articles

I felt like I lived in a cavern deep in the earth without any light. It was the late 1980s, and I was playing out a fast-track career in the movie business.

We live in an age of information overload . Television and radio, newspapers and magazines, advertisements and commercials, Internet blogs, and chat rooms inundate us with continuous coverage and sometimes frightening messages on a variety of topics—including health.

We set up the card table in the living room for an evening of bridge with another young couple we knew. We both had little babies, so we decided to play bridge while the babies slept.

There are words whose very mention evoke a similar reaction from most of us. Tyranny is one of them.

I WAS AT MY WIT'S END. I had completed all the orders for my small floral business.

AN ANCIENT TALE GOES LIKE THIS: As a man and his camel cross the desert, a great sand storm arises. The man jumps off the camel and raises his tent.

• NEGOTIATIONS ARE GOING NOWHERE on a permanent peace agreement between warring factions. One labels the other obstructionist and stubborn.

1. LaMeice Harding tells it straight.

AS A GIRL OF EIGHT OR NINE YEARS OLD , I remember walking home in the dark one summer night with my dad. Earlier I had gone to the little brick library near the entrance to our rural road.

AFTER THE DEATH OF A FRIEND in seventh grade, I carried around a feeling of sadness and guilt. I felt that I had made mistakes and let people down, and hadn't always been the friend I could have been.