“Though she came up and out of a tiny, Upstate South Carolina hamlet, population 100 at most, she had an uncanny eye; an unfailing, unwavering instinct about what objects, what clothing, what design,…

“Long ago, the day before my-then-fiancé, Kevin Andrews, drowned before my eyes off the Greek island of Kythira, I was walking up a cobbled path in the island’s main town of Hora, when…

“For we depressives are suspended throughout the vast, shadowy circles of hell; beneath, below and out of sight of even the ‘Purgatorio,’ let alone the ‘Paradiso’ and the stars beyond. Unless rescued, guided…

“I am working my way—again—through X-rays and skull scans, but I have, finally, come to the conclusion that Yoga as we practice it, as we are taught it, in the West, is not…

“Just inside ‘The Art of Eating: The Collected Gastronomical Works of M.F.K. Fisher’—and, remember, my mother was, first of all, a reader, and only second, reluctantly and late, a cook—there is a two-page…

“The story of the Teaneck Sushi Buffet in Bergen County, New Jersey, is actually more of a cross-cultural love story than a fish tale. Tommy McGlew, originally of Fort Lee, and his wife,…

“So . . . Once upon a time, O Best Belovéd, these were the books that made me a reader and writer; the books that made me me, to a very large extent;…

“For about a week now (a long time to remain this delusional, I admit), I have believed, firmly, that: 1) my husband was going round the bend; or losing his vision and sense…

“Though Jesse and I—on those so very rare occasions when we meet—are more or less overcome, for the duration of our time together, and all but speechless, remembering our mutual losses, we also…

Note: This column first ran following the grievous wounding of Gabrielle Giffords, among many other innocents, in Tucson AZ—perpetrated by a mentally ill young man with no business carrying “weapons of mass destruction.”…