I spent my Saturday with twelve men in cages It s hard to imagine that in the United States we put inmates in cages but in the Secured Housing Unit of the prison where I volunteer we do In the SHU inmates who are privileged to attend Catholic services are escorted from their housing to ind

My husband and I are movie freaks Our earliest dates were to on-campus movies in college We ll see all kinds of movies romance sci-fi adventure documentary foreign independent animated whatever Since we live in a small town with limited cinematic offerings our favorite way to spend a s

David Shields an author and English professor at the University of Washington has written a sort of memoir combined with a science report called The Thing About Life Is That One Day You ll Be Dead My daughters were a little alarmed to see me engrossed in such a morbidly-titled book I think t

So I m thinking of applying to a university for my Master s degree Part of me is excited about the opportunity Part of me feels a little ridiculous I have children who are old enough to think about getting a Master s degree I worry that my time for being a student has long passed It will

Up until maybe ten years ago it didn t occur to me what kind of bleeding the woman with the hemorrhage told of in Mark 5 and Luke 8 was actually experiencing My unexamined mental image was of a woman with drops of blood oozing from random pores who somehow did not bleed to death Then I heard

I have always been a reasonably successful person: a long marriage, beautiful children, published clips on demand, no criminal record, no bankruptcies. Ive been a hard worker at every job Ive had. Ive been O.K.until this past year, which I have spent as an English teacher in a public high school. Th

My oldest daughter was mugged last Saturday night. She was talking with two friends in the parking lot of a restaurant in Los Angeles before saying goodbye for the evening. Two young men approached her and asked her for a light, and as she offered her lighter, there was suddenly a gun at her head. T

A woman is born with all of her eggs. Unlike male sperm, which are produced continually and by the millions throughout a man’s life, a woman’s immature eggs are contained in follicles in her newborn ovaries. Over the course of her reproductive years, 300 to 500 eggs will mature. Each mon

My 13-year-old daughter wore black to school today. When we pulled into the circular drop-off point at school, she said, "Look at everyone. We look like a bunch of Goths." (For those over 30: Goths, short for Gothic, are the adolescents who wear black clothes and black lipstick, resign the