Stephanie Piper

I came as a corporate wife, dragging my heels, nurturing a secret hope that this would be a short stop on the way to another big city like the ones I’d left behind. Knoxville was still basking in the glow ...

I’m over multi-tasking. I realize that it’s a highly prized skill here in the second decade of the 21st century, right up there with extreme couponing and ice-road trucking. But for me, the thrill is gone.

I’m wondering if maybe it’s time to go home.

There was a time when peace meant the absence of conflict. Now it’s invoked to describe every imaginable condition from manageable hair to financial security.

I’m not interested in naughty and nice. Let someone else worry about that. Me, I’m counting sheets and towels and frozen lasagnas.

My personal saints have no marquee value. They do not appear on any calendar or stained glass window. There are no statues of them in parish churches. If I told you their names, you would not recognize them as spiritual ...

Wisdom, I have come to believe, lies in accepting one’s limitations while not using them as an excuse for laziness, whining, or general laxity.

So here we are again in the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness that Keats wrote about, the long, languid autumn that redeems the brutal summer. The light has begun to soften, filtering through leaves whose green is deeper now, ...

I don’t like crowds. I don’t like noise. I don’t like funnel cake. I don’t like giant cartoon characters looming over me like neon-colored predators, nor do I want to stand on line for three hours to hyperventilate on the ...

And then, out of nowhere, the moment arrives when the antique charm of your childhood becomes the stuff of legend.