‘When I think of this past year, the song in my head is: lately it occurs to me, what a long, strange trip it’s been! .. Through Q&A interviews, we’ve also brought in experts like Deutschebank’s Karen Weaver, whose predictions about the mortgage crisis proved truer than even she wanted; historian Annette Gordon-Reed (on Sally Hemings),and journalist Robin Gaby Fisher, who spent years chronicling the fire at Seton Hall University. We also weighed in as the Presidential race tightened, reporting from the Conventions and live-blogging the third debate.

By Patricia Yarberry Allen It is hard to find something that is good for the butt, brain biochemistry, balance both physical and spiritual, bra fat, back fat and burning off all those holiday calories.  I have found a new exercise program that does all this and more.  Boxing…that’s right, fighting.  I have been boxing with [...]

Six a.m.Christmas morning: My two sons and daughter in law  were off to Long Meadow, Massachusetts, where they would spend the rest of the holiday with my daughter in law’s large and exuberant family on Christmas Eve after our holiday dinner. The husband and my two stepsons had just left in a mad rush at [...]

Here’s what I remember about the long ago time of being a young married person living in New York City at Christmastime.  I remember giving my heavy winter coat to the lady in the coat check room at the front of Bloomingdales then attacking the floors like a stealth shopper on a death defying mission.  [...]

- by Chris Lombardi It’s a voice I hardly remember not having heard: the writer in the edgy science-fiction anthologies, the voice cool as ice, the material borderline radical. Not a writer I much liked at first, but the stories stayed with me: “The Girl Who was Plugged In” (turned later into an episode of [...]

Kandahar candid: Veteran reporter Sarah Chayes left NPR in 2002 to live and work full-time in Kandahar, Afghanistan, after the fall of the Taliban government. After three years of rebuilding homes and working with a dairy collective, she set up the Arghand co-op, which produces hand-made silks, soaps, and body oils to be sold in [...]

Elevating with the human voice: One of WVFC's own voices, poet Elizabeth Alexander, will present an original poem at the Presidential Inauguration next month. Alexander, who attended the 1963 March on Washington in a stroller, is only the fourth poet to read at an inauguration, continuing an on-and-off tradition established by Robert Frost's appearance at [...]

                                PERIAPT AND HU-KWA She bought the tea trolley at auction along with other piecesthat took her fancy, mostly Chinoiserie.  After the diagnosis,she placed the trolley in the living room where chemo and chamomile often kept her asleep on a chaise.  One day longing for distraction, she began [...]

By Elizabeth Willse Two years ago, Jessica Lange collected portrait photographs she had taken of her children, to be assembled into a book as a gift for her family.   The book's designer, Sam Shahid, asked to see more of her photographs. Looking through her black and white landscapes and photographs from her travels, Shahid told [...]

On Friday, WVFC readers in Philadelphia (or willing to travel there) can meet noted boomer photographer  Deborah Willis, who will be signing copies of her new book  Obama: The Historic Campaign in Photographs at 5:30 p.m. at the  African-American Museum of Philadelphia (7th and Race Streets). Willis,  Professor of Photography and Imaging at the Tisch [...]