ArcaMax

My husband and I have never bought a home we didn't tinker with. And by "tinker," I don't mean a coat of fresh paint and new shelving. I mean the knock out a wall, rip up the flooring and till the backyard for a new garden kind of tinkering. Real do-it-yourselfers. This is why when the kitchen cabinet recently fell off the wall -- literally ...Read more

The Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop saved me from making a huge mistake last week. I emailed my editor before I left and told her that I didn't think I'd have time to continue writing this weekly column. I told her I was too busy. I have a full-time job for our local newspaper, where I write and edit columns for the Kentucky community.

I ...Read more

A big part of my job is community engagement. The opinion section of any newspaper cannot happen without the people of the community. In order to lift up the voices of our neighbors, I must reach out and be willing to talk to people, not just sit at the computer and wait for my inbox to fill up. Email is still a digital space, and it lacks the ...Read more

I still have dry flower stalks and leaf litter across my yard. The weather is warming with the start of spring and it has me itching to get out in the garden. I've watched as some of my neighbors raked and bagged leftover leaves, but I'm resisting. I might be ready, but the Earth is not.

If I started cleaning up now, I'd disturb the ecosystem ...Read more

It's time. Super Tuesday is over, and America is deep into an election season faced with two very familiar candidates. It's time to take stock of our collective values and decide how we plan to support those beliefs in our actions. I'm not just talking about how you plan to vote;I'm talking about how you plan to live every day as a member of ...Read more

I love contributing to the family. But I hate chores. As a child, chores were tasks to be checked off a list so I could get on to other things. A checklist made clear that I'd either succeed or fail based on chores completed. I often felt overlooked, reduced to tasks. Patted on the head for duties that meant nothing to me so I could disappear ...Read more

At a lunch meeting recently, I heard someone say they liked living downtown but moved to the suburbs because "the homelessness is just too much." This same person went on to say that unhoused people should be relocated out of downtown. To where? He didn't say.

I bristled. Someone else's homelessness is not something being done to you. Having to...Read more

I was unloading the car I'd rented when my neighbor asked where I'd gone. "The University of Dayton," I told her, explaining that the university had received a treasure trove from Erma Bombeck's family for their archives.

"Who?" my neighbor asked.

"Erma Bombeck."

"The name sounds familiar..." she said, trying to place the name.

Erma has been...Read more

Valentine's Day is upon us, and my son is gearing up for a "friendship party" with his second grade class. I love this view of the day. The focus on friendship has a longer view on love than the pressure of passion with hearts and flowers.

Our son is only 8 years old. Friendship is the only thing on his mind when it comes to relationships. ...Read more

I didn't know I was claustrophobic until I had to get an MRI of my knee when I was 32. The technician pushed the button that eased me into the tube, and all seemed to be going well, until a few minutes into it I felt my heart rate increase and proceeded to have a full-blown panic attack.

This intense reaction to an MRI is common -- so common ...Read more

An intern is working with me for the spring semester. This is new for my department as the opinion editor. We get newsroom and photography interns every year. But opinion journalism is a different beast, and journalism is a fast-moving, ever-changing industry thanks to the internet. What used to be words on paper with a headline delivered to ...Read more