PERSPECTIVE
Healing the Wounded Nest
There once was a lady with an interest in publishing whose kids grew up and left the nest. So she quit her job, converted her vacant real estate into offices, started her own business, and became a successful children’s book publisher. That dream is partly mine, but that’s not quite my story. There was another lady who dreaded the thought of her children growing up and leaving home, so she started her own business to keep herself occupied. But I’m not quite that lady either . . .

STYLE
What Does It Mean to Be Old Enough to Ignore the Dictates of Fashion?
Free at Last? Or Merely Irrelevant?
“All of us realized with joy that we could now wear the clothes we liked best” (Alison Lurie, “The Day I Threw Away Fashion”). When I read that line, it reminded me of a four-year-old I used to know who was so besotted with her purple miniskirt—pronounced poorple miniskoort—that she wanted to wear it every day, and every night, too. No dice, kiddo: Come bedtime, her mom insisted she put on her pajamas, so she did, and she slept in them—for a little while. But sometime in the night she’d get up, pull on the beloved mini over her PJs, and go happily back to sleep.

COUPLES
The Color Pink: Fall Project
It all began when we had our attic converted to a master bedroom suite, about 20 years ago. Well, okay, maybe it was later than that, when said bedroom was no longer new. When the nails began popping out of the drywall in random places, the walls were cracking from floor to ceiling, the skylight was leaking rainwater onto our quilted bedspread, and the roof was begging to be replaced. Yes, maybe that’s when the project began . . .

POETRY
Autumn and Summer Verse
Two beautiful seasonal poems by Canadian Free Press “Poet in Residence” William Bedford: “Autumn Gold” and “Summer Soak” . . .

Features . . .