A person can do a lot of reading and research as I have done. I went to Spain and spent a whole summer there with my family, immersing myself in the culture. But all that isn't really necessary to experience the music.
Most Americans have some experience with nursing homes or other long term care settings, and nearly half have had a family member or close friend in a home in the past three years.
I always thought I'd make a good parent, but I was single and led a solitary life for many, many years. Then I met David, and he had experience with kids and wanted to have a family, too.
The events that I have attended to mark my Diamond Jubilee have been a humbling experience. It has touched me deeply to see so many thousands of families, neighbors and friends celebrating together in such a happy atmosphere.
When you go to the movies with your whole family, it's a different experience. For some reason, it's something that you're all doing together and you take away something special in that.
When I first went to Paris in 1965, I fell in love with the small, family-owned restaurants that existed everywhere then, as well as the markets and the French obsession with buying fresh food, often twice a day.
It's easy for people in an air-conditioned room to continue with the policies of destruction of Mother Earth. We need instead to put ourselves in the shoes of families in Bolivia and worldwide that lack water and food and suffer misery and hunger.
For much of the female half of the world, food is the first signal of our inferiority. It lets us know that our own families may consider female bodies to be less deserving, less needy, less valuable.
The interesting thing is, while we die of diseases of affluence from eating all these fatty meats, our poor brethren in the developing world die of diseases of poverty, because the land is not used now to grow food grain for their families.
Taking care of our families isn't just about putting food on the table today. It's about ensuring that our children and grandchildren will have a habitable world where they can get to know various species of sea turtles.
The Food Network and the Cooking Channel have so many viewers. And, because there's no violence, some of that audience is children. So, I think we have a responsibility to educate parents how to produce healthy meals for their families.
Something I'm going to try to really instill in my own family is a lot of tradition. And, I used to have a lot of superstitions, and then I realized that it was kind of hogwash. Once I let go of them, I relaxed a lot.
I always had a larger view. I'm interested in real life - my family, my friends. I have tried never to define myself by my success, whatever that is. My happiness is way beyond roles and awards.
A Western woman is not her brother's or her father's property. She's just herself. She can choose her own lifestyle. But in a Muslim family, the honor of the man is between the legs of a woman.
And partly, the worst thing you could do in my family was need something from someone. So physical strength represented an avenue of self-sufficiency to me.
My illness is one often characterized by dramatic overspending - in my case through frenzied shopping sprees, credit card abuse, excessive hoarding of unnecessary material goods and bizarre generosity with family, friends and even strangers.
My children grew up with one Western parent. My husband doesn't believe in raising his voice with the kids and we don't spank. They were really raised in a half-Asian family.
All I care is that my family, and my loved ones, understand me. Or that they understand me to a degree - I don't understand me very much. And I don't need the world to understand me. That is the most egocentric thing.
I have a great advantage over many of my colleagues inasmuch as my students bring with them to class their own personal knowledge of national, regional, religious, ethnic, occupational, and family folklore traditions.
My father suffered much and toiled painfully all his life, for he had no resources other than the proceeds of his trade from which to support himself and his wife and family.
Both sides of my family had come from Ireland in the 19th century for the same reason: There was nothing to eat over there. Since then, I've tried to make up for the potato famine by making the potato the only vegetable that passes these lips.
