Goats Really Love Pie 

My dad and I were on opposing sides during the greatest college basketball game ever played. He liked Duke and I rooted for Kentucky. At the time, I didn't really have a favorite basketball team because two years earlier my team, North Carolina State, fired Jimmy Valvano. That was the first blow to the team I grew up watching, and it was never going to recover. First it was Jimmy V, then Chris Corchiani and Rodney Monroe (Fire and Ice), and then Googs (Tom Gugliotta) was the

If you hated reading The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne in high school, I recommend another book by him titled, Twenty Days with Julian and Little Bunny by Papa. It's a daily diary of a 20-day period when Hawthorne's wife left the two alone to visit family out of town. It's touching and sweet, and I believe makes accessing his other writing a little easier. One of the more entertaining parts is when Herman Melville just drops by for a little visit. I loved the book whe

When I was a kid my dad used to say that we children were his pride and joy. I am fortunate to have two parents who were not shy about expressing affection to us. Obviously I couldn't understand that feeling of pride and joy until I had kids of my own. There are some days as a parent that I can be particularly emotional in the love I feel for my kids; I'm sentimental, and too-often cognizant of the ephemeral nature of life. The best thing about that recognition is that I thin