Catherine Gigante-Brown

You learn a lot about people when you live in their home. The Taylors seemed to lead a joyless, Spartan existence.

"Bring over a meal—and leave. Breakfast, lunch or dinner, from soup to nuts. And coffee. Plenty of coffee."

I immediately developed a hot-and-heavy girlcrush on the wild, wacky, brash, candid, feminist, rubber-faced comedian—and you should too.

Were you going to run into that cute guy John Williams on the way home? Would you see Anne Marie by the lockers and sort out what to do for the weekend? It was hit-or-miss, and that was the beauty of it. The breath-holding chance of it all. Now, our kids’ friends are as close as a keyboard stroke away. It’s too easy.

Mindel and Maria were young teenagers when the horrors occurred—but they remembered the tiniest details with crystal-clear intensity.

I realized my father was from a generation that never said those three little words. He was saying he loved me without them. But I didn't realize it then.

Instead of categorizing people as different colors, I proposed we might begin to think of each other as Earthtones—because our skin colors are based on hues from the earth. Just as the planet is made up of a myriad of shades, it’s still one cohesive entity. We can be thought of as one entity also.

Why, when I'm cool with being a salt-and-pepper chick, does it so clearly unnerve others?

A new U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendation on mammograms ensures more women will die of breast cancer.

Wrinkles or lifelines? Chunky or curvaceous? The choice is yours.