(Many observant WVFC readers are already fans of Julia Kay, who first told us of her Daily Portrait Project a year ago and this fall shared vivid memories of many Septembers. Since then, one of her portraits was in a Chicago show featured in the New York Times, and she keeps discovering new meanings of the [...]

My husband invited me to dinner last week. He made reservations at the finest restaurant in our neck of the woods: a white tablecloth sort of place, with a dining terrace positioned for viewing unobscured sunsets over the Pacific Ocean and designed for lovers anticipating the night. At last! Having the older kids in college [...]

September 11, 2001 I had just finished my first case of the day in the gynecology operating suite at New York Presbyterian Hospital. My patient had been transferred to the recovery room nurse, and I sat by her bed to write my notes. Then I was paged to the phone. It was Mommie, from her [...]

When my mammogram turned up a highly suspicious mass this past May, one of my first (irrational) thoughts was, “But you don’t understand! I don’t have the cheekbones to pull off the Jaunty Headscarf stage!” Cheekbones or not, here I go. As of yesterday, I share a hair style with Lance Armstrong. For him, a [...]

Labor Day weekend has always been a time of transitions for me, starting with the earliest and biggest transition I’ve ever gone through: September 2, 1962, when my mother labored on Labor Day and brought me into the world. Officially marking the passage of my years has thus also always coincided with one of the [...]

This has been a summer of constant work. No other distractions or crises— just work, seven days a week. Long days, often beginning at seven and then phone calls, emails and chart reviews until 8 p.m. The weekends have been filled with chart reviews that I have done periodically but have now chosen to do [...]

We did it! We made it to Alaska! We started to believe that we could do it when we were approaching Prince Rupert, but with the wind, seas and fog up here, it never feels like it’s a sure thing until it happens. As we crossed into Alaskan waters, we toasted our arrival with Patrick’s [...]

Nothing puts you in your place quite like being outwitted by a couple of chipmunks.I know; I spent 48 hours battling them for the modest rations of food meant to sustain me and my husband, AJ Pettway, during a two-week hike in southwest Colorado. I’m relieved to report that after two destroyed ditty bags and [...]

Here in Savannah, Ga., people in my neighborhood are accustomed to a variety of aromas: the occasional stench of the paper mill when the wind is from the northwest; the sweet, grassy fragrance of the salt marsh to the east; the perfume of magnolia and wisteria in the spring; the lingering essence of horse and [...]

In the newest installment of her column “The Compass Rose,” Ainslie Jones Uhl writes about California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage, her own civil marriage in Brussels, and how random conversations with strangers can yield unexpected, important insights.