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Jo left NYC for North Carolina to care for her ailing, estranged mother. She tells the story of that epic journey in this bestselling memoir. ​Lots of us dream about taking a job overseas, and when I heard that Jo Maeder , bestselling author and former top New York  DJ, actually took the plunge, I…

“ People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life.… I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. ” ​ Joseph Campbell ​For…

“One can’t believe impossible things,” Alice said in Through the Looking Glass (the sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ). “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” That…

​Thirty-three years ago Rich and I inconvenienced our nearest and dearest by getting married two days after Christmas, requiring them to make all sorts of awkward travel arrangements just when everyone really wanted to be home by the fire playing with their new toys. Ever since then, our anniversary has been squeezed into a social…

One of the oddest aspects of being a blogger is that strangers meeting my husband for the first time tend to say things like, “I feel I know you already, and I really share your love of duct tape and ice cream.” If you’re new to my blog, don’t be alarmed, I’m not revealing some…

Greetings from Seville! As the holidays are reaching fever pitch, I figure most of my readers are too busy and distracted to read much this week. I was looking back over past posts for inspiration, and realized this one, which I wrote back in 2012, really says it all. So I’m recycling this nice, short…

David Niven epitomized the debonair Englishman in the Pink Panther and other films. ​Gift giving has always been a tricky business. In the 1930s, when future Hollywood star David Niven was an impoverished young actor, he spent the holidays merrily regifting stuff he’d received — until one day he accidentally sent someone back the leather…

​Only 66% of millennials believe the earth is round , according to one poll*, which (for those of us who still place our faith in math) means 34% of young Americans suspect or “know” our home planet is flat. In 2017 rapper and conspiracy theorist B.o.B. tweeted he was crowdfunding his own satellites to go…

​“Hey, this is the Dragonpit!” exclaimed my sister Kate. “The actual Dragonpit from Game of Thrones .” “Yep,” I said. “Although sadly, it doesn’t have any actual dragons in it at this time.” We were in the ancient Roman city of Italica , just six miles northwest of Seville, visiting the remains of the massive…

“And whatever you do,” said the technico who had just installed my gleaming new self-cleaning oven, “don’t use the self-cleaning feature.” “What? Why?” “It raises the oven temperature to 6000 degrees, to convert grease to ash. I had to really jam the stove under your countertop — which is narrower than standard, by the way…