The note, from a friend of a friend with a brand-new baby, sounds pretty desperate: “I’m a little panicked, and wondering if any of you know of anyone I could hire to come in and help out. … Please don’t think I’m lame. How do single mothers do this????”

Ah, that wonderful, horrible, scary, amazing time just after your baby is born. I remember so well feeling one minute like I’d won the best prize ever and was the warrior-mom of the world, then the next feeling isolated, fat, ugly and incompetent. Usually within the same hour.

So maybe you don’t have any great leads on a baby nurse or nanny/helper, but what would you tell this new mom, to get her through these first weeks? Read the rest of this entry »

In my column yesterday, I wrote about the Salvation Army shelter kids, and their adventures shooting pictures of things they hope for to be turned into holiday cards. I was particularly touched by David, and his friends sisters Jasmine and Jackqueline. Here’s Jasmine’s photo … her models are David and Jackqueline. But it’s what she hopes for that really got to me: Jasmine hopes to have good dreams. Click here to find out how to buy these cards, all of the profits of which benefit programs for women and children.

You walk your dog there, train for a 5K there, watch the sun set there, or simply take a deep breath there. Now, have your say about what should happen to Shelby Farms, that precious green space, in public forums through the end of the month. Tomorrow the master planners will be named, and you can tell them just what to do with your park at public forums … click below for times and places. Read the rest of this entry »

If you loved the book “The Kite Runner” as much as I did, you probably can’t wait to see the movie, now set to premier in mid-December. You probably also know that the release date was postponed from early fall so that the Afghanis who were in the movie, particularly the family of the child who plays Hassan (above), could get out of Afghanistan.

Hassan is the best friend of Amir, the main character in the book, and the entire plot turns on a brutal rape scene when both boys are children. As a reader, it rocks your world, and I was lucky enough to see the movie in previews a few weeks ago, and it’s an incredibly powerful scene in the movie, too. Handled quite delicately, I must say, though given the brutal ethnic conflict that still rages in Afghanistan, I can see why the actors and their families felt like they were in danger. (Though how did they consent to the movie in the first place? Was it just too lucrative to pass up, or did they not know what they were getting into?)

The company that is distributing the movie has launched a contest for a local screening of “The Kite Runner,” which you can access here. Let me know if/when you see the movie, and what you think. When the premier date gets closer, I’ll write a review, too. Though let me say this: When I finished reading the book, I spent weeks thinking about the obligations of friendship, whether there are mistakes that you can never recover from, and whether redemption is possible. After I saw the movie, I have wrestled with those very same thoughts.

How totally cool was it to look out my office window in Memphis to see the space shuttle streaking southeast, then see just a few minutes later that it had landed safely in Florida. I guess if you’re supersonic you can fly from Memphis to Florida in less than five minutes. I think I’ll never stop being in awe of the courage and skill it takes to be an astronaut, even in these days of awesome technological achievements.

I never heard a sonic boom, though.

Did you? Did you see it? What did you think?