I was stranded in Disco. I went to dozens of darkened places with enough flashing lights to drive the average person mad. I felt lost in the pulse of sheer panic.

The morning after my high-school graduation found me up early job hunting. The dream of college I put on the back burner.

Berry Gordy turned his house into a studio and discovered over 30 acts in the city. And we're famous all over the world.

I have always thought music as a way out of the ordinary mundane obligations of life.

My father was Catholic, and my mother wanted me to go to Catholic school. That's what I did in first grade. But she couldn't afford the payments. I think it must have hurt her a lot, not to be able to give me a Catholic education.

If you're a parent, love your children. If you're married, honor your spouse instead of looking on the Internet for love in all the wrong places. I'm talking about real relationships, not false intimacies.

For years following the death of my mother, I wanted to write about her. I started writing what I thought of as personal essays about growing up as her child, but I never could finish any of them. I think I was too close to that loss, and too eager to try and resolve things, to make her death make sense.

As a parent with young children, I would always find little things that bothered me when I was reading bedtime stories or watching shows or listening to children's music. I couldn't find any stories, games or television shows that were fun and exciting while also being morally instructive and patriotic.