I can't really blame anyone but myself for not living on easy street. Those born under the sign of Aquarius can sometimes see the future. (Really. No... really, it's true.) And yet I don't play Lotto or Powerball or any of those games that could change my life. Set aside the slightly lunatic ravings of a January-born seer and it's still a strange perspective to have. I swear there's something deep inside me that doesn't want to hit it big.

When the jackpot gets up to those ridiculous numbers and people fantasize about what they would do with the winnings, I ...

NORWALK, Conn. – I read the article Wildlife Too Close for Comfort in Fairfield County by Richard Weizel. It took me down memory lane. It made me think.

I remember the first time I encountered a raccoon. I was away at an outdoor camp somewhere in the middle of Illinois. We were all warned not to have food in our cabins so we wouldn't attract raccoons. Someone didn't obey. A raccoon was spotted in a cabin. Someone screamed and all of us elementary school girls ran screaming from our cabins in the middle of the night.

I remember the first time I actually saw a raccoon. It ...

Ridge Hill, the vast new outdoor mall, a public common of commerce perched on a hillside overlooking the New York Thruway in Yonkers, is a study in contrasts and ironies.

Long billed as both a resuscitator of the local economy and the ruin of local traffic patterns, Ridge Hill, at least by early indications, is amounting to neither.   

By no means can you call it a dead mall walking. First off, stores are still in the process of opening. Moreover, during Christmas and over the weekend, Ridge Hill draws its share of crowds to stores that run the gamut from ...

A close friend of mine told me she was admonished by an acquaintance recently for not doing more to bring money into the household. My friend had been complaining of her money woes and this person said she was foolish for not going back to work full-time in the high-paying industry she had worked in prior to having children. With three young children, one of them severely disabled, my friend decided that her children needed her more than they needed more money.

Although she does work, it's not enough to allay the money worries that hang heavy on the shoulders of her and ...

NORWALK, Conn. – Teenagers Emily Todd and Millie Cunningham traveled to Hartford on Tuesday to testify in front of the Connecticut Legislature's Select Committee on Children's Joint Informational Hearing on Mandated Reporters of Child Abuse, as representatives of the 226 members of the Center for Youth Leadership at Brien McMahon High School. Here is what they said:

We've been banging our heads against the wall for more than two years with the issues we're here to talk about – background checks of employees and volunteers who are 18 years of age and older at camps ...

At a certain point in every student’s life, he or she is forced to take the most dreaded kind of test—standardized. By my definition, a standardized test is when some unknown money-hungry establishment convinces educators that they must evaluate students by putting them in a stuffy room for an extended period of time and surround them with clouds of eraser dust and judgment. There are lots of lead-filled ovals, coffees and longing stares at the clock. It is one of the worst experiences of any student’s career, but I have discovered that the event can be brightened by extensive ...

Toilet paper and butter. One is a necessity for most of us but I'll leave it to you to figure out which.

The little details in life can really get on your nerves if you let them. Well-rested and fed, on a day when what I set out to do is entirely possible for a mere mortal, I can fairly easily not sweat the small stuff, like running out of toilet paper and butter on a night when those two things were in fact, both necessities. I notice the times when the little stuff makes me crazy is when my life is out of balance and I have too much capacity to care about life's trivial ...