My friend and colleague Laure Quinlivan has gone from TGI Friday’s waitress to NY PR assistant to local TV reporter to national award winning journalist to Cincinnati city council member. Quite the career and it’s [...]
Her mother and father were just high school students when they got pregnant with her. They felt like they “had to” get married. The marriage didn’t last. Now Nicole C. Ayers is herself a mom [...]
Lucy Lustig wasn’t feeling well. But she was still up for a talk. She knew we didn’t have much time. She was dying. Hospice had been called in. She spends most of her days in [...]
Stacy Cassio grew up in a tiny town in northwest Kansas, halfway between Kansas City and Denver. After graduating high school with 26 others (including four foreign exchange students) she decided to forego college to [...]
Her two daughters have never heard some of these stories. She doesn’t talk about them much. But my cousin E’beth was something of a whitewater pioneer. Gen Z’ers may find it hard to believe there [...]
Once upon a time, folk talked to one another. No texts. No voicemails. No phone trees with endless options to “Press one if you’d like to…” At the Doubletree Hotel in SouthPark, for a quarter [...]
Sally sells books. No, not by the seashore. In Charlotte. Sally sells books in the strip shopping center in Charlotte. Let’s hear you say that five times fast! She has sold books there for almost [...]
Michelle Chernicoff was really ticked off. You could tell. It was a quote in a national op-ed that really got to her: “Cheerleaders just need to go away.” That was one feminist’s takeaway from #metoo. [...]
I hadn’t seen Roshanda Pratt since my TV days when executive producer Allison Andrews invited me and Lorraine over to a dinner honoring Ro. We told stories and laughed so hard we almost peed our [...]
Marnae Costa’s daughter Torie was runway model beautiful, whip smart and fiercely courageous. When she lost her hair during cancer treatments, she still walked the runway rocking her bald head. Marnae was in an intense [...]
