Home is a symbol of the self. Caring for a home is caring for one’s self. - Gloria Steinem

To write is to bring an inner voice into the outer world, to believe that our thoughts are worth entering the thinking of others, and to make real what has never existed in quite the same way before. What could be a better path to self-value than that?

In fact, there are many unique satisfactions here. One is that Americans seem to outstrip every nation for hope. Perhaps because so many of us came in flight from something worse, or rose from poverty here, or absorbed the fact and fiction of the “land of opportunity,” or just because optimism itself is contagious — whatever the reason, hopefulness is what I miss the most when I’m not here. It’s the thing that makes me glad to come home. After all, hope is a form of planning.

Sometimes when I'm in the midst of all this, I can hear my mother saying, 'Democracy is just something you must do every day, like brushing your teeth.