As headline after headline tells of a nation torn by race, I am taken to the rare thing few in the media talk about, but which I have been exploring for the past year — solutions.

In 1988 I wrote a commentary for the Gazette in which I described the extinct heath hen as an umbrella species.

When I was 16, before I got my driver’s license, I would bike seven miles each day after school to a gym to work out.

I first read Moby Dick in a college literature course focused on Melville, Twain, James and Faulkner. Many big books there, but the outstanding one was Moby Dick.

Lately I have begun referring to myself as the incredible shrinking woman.