Women gain social influence through their roles as mothers, transmitters of culture, and parents for the next generation.

Far too many black men who praise their own mother feel less accounted to the mothers of their own children.

Black women's feelings of responsibility for nurturing the children in their own extended family networks have stimulated a more generalized ethic of care where black women feel accountable to all the black community's children.

Work for black women has been an important and valued dimension of Afrocentric definitions of black motherhood.

But beyond the hysteria of phantom death panels, where is the abomination? Show me the provisions that will hurt consumers, because if you think a $110 billion a year tax break for working-class Americans to buy private health insurance is a government takeover, I welcome the debate.

It scared me to death to think about improv, but I got hired for a year at Second City in Chicago, which made me nervous, but I found I could improvise. Then I was in a group called the Ace Trucking Company, which we'd do, like, a half hour set of material, then open up for improvisation.

Sometimes, you do need different leaders for different stages of the company.

The world rolls round forever like a mill; it grinds out death and life and good and ill; it has no purpose, heart or mind or will.