LaVonne Neff > LIVELY DUST

[Rodin, Le baiser ] It's odd that Christians--people who claim to believe that God created the earth, sustains it day by day, and ...

Seneca the Younger committing suicide with the help of his friends, A.D. 65 (Luca Giordano, 1684) Next month Massachusetts voters wil...

Dear Mr. Romney: I am a woman. Like most other women , I am not likely to vote for you. Your unpopularity among women worries you, I kno...

I have to ask myself: am I part of the American majority who wants to scale back government expenses – as long as none of my personal benefi...

Several of my conservative Facebook friends responded to yesterday's post about Social Security. I commented that "my dad, who was ...

A lot of us don't have as much disposable income as we had two or three years ago. Some of us have a lot less. But Christmas is coming, ...

Are you hoping to live to at least age 85? If so, there's good news and bad news. The bad news - If you turn 85 in the next ten years ...

Here's an idea for people who are unhappy about having an Islamic Center near the site of the World Trade Center, especially if those ...

When my previous post about Missouri's health-care insurance vote and obesity rates was re-posted on Sojourners' God's Politics...

Thanks to my friend Beth Spring for recommending Little Bee (or, in the U.K., The Other Hand ). It's the best novel I've read so f...

Memo to fans of Precious Ramotswe , Alexander McCall Smith's Motswana heroine of the Number One Ladies' Detective Agency series: Mm...

President Obama is getting no respite from contentious issues. Today, speaking at American University’s School of International Service, he ...

Yesterday I wrote about the toll caregiving takes , especially on women. This is not news. For several decades we Boomers, shocked at the fa...

A few minutes ago I got the news that my daughter’s mother-in-law has stage 4 cancer. I was still staring at the computer screen, trying to ...

In The Double Comfort Safari Club , the 11th installment in Alexander McCall Smith 's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, the s...

Whew. The health-care bill passed. It isn't the complete overhaul we need, but at least it's a start. An editorial in today's N...

Alexander McCall Smith's third book in 2009 (after The Lost Art of Gratitude , the sixth Isabel Dalhousie book, and Tea Time for the Tra...

I have mixed feelings about wish lists. They rob Christmas of creativity, surprise, and personal contact, but they make shopping much, much ...

A couple of weeks ago I previewed T.R. Reid's The Healing of America . I'm happy to see that today it is #18 on Amazon's sales...