By Judith A. Ross

Surprisingly, this feeling of sisterhood wasn’t just limited to my encounters with adult women. The hugs and kisses I received from the 12-year-old daughter of my son’s host family made me feel like a revered and much-loved aunt. And then there was our 10-mile trek to Todra Gorge . . .

By Shelley Singer

What? He wants me to pick up, leave my life to go live in an apartment with elderly neighbors in pastel clothing who play golf and mah jongg and don’t color their hair? No way was I ever going to “winter” (ugh!) in Florida.

By C.A. Carrington.

This New Yorker has just fallen in love with “weird and wonderful Portland.” Still, she notes judiciously, “Let’s be realistic, darling—you do have some qualities and traits that can try my resolve and good nature, even in my most patient moments.”

“Tonight,” Michael said, uncorking a bottle of Champagne, “we are going to see the ballet.” But first we would be together. Watching the celebratory bubbles spill into our glasses, I was suddenly as tremulous as a bride.

Feminism is a vitally important aspect of the current exhibition of 75 works by women artists at the Seattle Art Museum. The Guerrilla Girls’ poster puts the problem succinctly: “Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?”

A romantic life is not just in the telling of a story—the spin you put on it to maximize its romantic value; it’s consciously seeking out the special moments in order to experience them and—perhaps most important—enjoy them.

I took 75 photos of laundry lines in Rome, the Amalfi Coast (a small windfall), Florence, Venice, and the island of Burano (a bonanza!). Here is just a sampling of my renewed passion for clotheslines. Looking at these garments, I can almost smell their freshness!

Check back for more C.A. Carrington pieces on living in Portland, Oregon, to see if the author—a native New Yorker—transitions, for the first time in her 45-year life, to being “too nice.”

“Flamin’ Amy” Coleman has red hair and a voice “bigger than God.” Here, to inaugurate WVFC’s series “Days of Their Lives”—profiles of accomplished women with unusual jobs—is a peek into the everyday world of a chanteuse.

“Ohmigod, I just finished having dinner with the archbishop of La Cattedrale di San Marco Argentano, in his quarters. Eleven nuns cooking, cleaning, serving his every need. I just can’t help thinking, “What’s a nice Jewish girl like me doing in a place like this?”

Janet Goldner shared with us, in “Finding Home: West Africa,” that the year she spent in West Africa was pivotal—one of the more life-changing periods of her life. It was 1973 and she was 20 years old. In this installation of “Finding Home,” she reflects on her adventurous 21st birthday, spent in Togo.

My first journey in West Africa remains a pivotal experience of my life and is still a source of inspiration and resonance for me. In Africa I was relieved to find, as I had suspected, that there are many ways to organize life.

From editor/author Pamela Fiori, summer entertaining tips, favorite summer reading, and three TV series she finds more appealing than the current crop of summer movies.

The crowd Jonathan Coulton draws is as odd and compelling as his songs: Most would look right at home in a Diane Arbus photo. They know all the words. They sing along. They dress like zombies. A Coulton show is where you fit in if you don’t fit in. I felt right at home.

For our Fashion Friday series on Summer-Weekend Favorites, Marion Fasel tells us that she falls for the “happy hue” of yellow, loves a wide-brimmed straw hat, and keeps in her beach bag fun goodies not just for herself, but for her dog too.