At 66 years old, I challenged myself to reach a big fitness goal. That meant creating the right mindset as well as increasing my physical endurance. — Step-Aware to Intrigued by a Goal I wasn’t obsessed with my daily step count. Yes, I had a Fitbit. Yes, I had the step reader on my iPhone. But I wasn’t obsessed with it like my younger brother was. …

She’s not what you think . . . — The witch is not a horror symbol but a symbol of liberation. Arthur Miller, as brilliant as he was, got it wrong about the Salem Witch Trails. What was really going on in those Salem woods? …

Written in 90 Minutes: Knoxville: Summer of 1915 — Originally written in 1935 and published in 1938 in the Parisian Review, this piece became the classic prelude to his Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel published posthumously, A Death In The Family. Time Magazine called James Agee’s prose-poem , Knoxville, Summer 1915, “the most ecstatic piece of writing ever composed about an American…

The producer of the original Top Gun — Trigger Warning: abusive behavior, aggressive language It was 1983. A blizzard had seized Anchorage, Alaska. Through the glass of the theater, I watched a limousine pull up into the night. In hurtling snow, the driver opened the door. …

“I feel the need, the need for speed” — Producer Don Simpson had a golden-goose knack for finding non-fiction articles and making them hit movies. He had done that with The Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night (Saturday Night Fever) and Flashdance by construction worker-by-day, erotic-dancer-by-night, Maureen Mawder. In 1983, when he sent over his latest acquisition, Top…