A young bride to be was very nervous on the day before her wedding, so she went to speak with her minister. "I'm afraid I might not make it through the ceremony properly," she confessed.

The minister assured her that everything would be fine: "When you enter the church tomorrow and the processional begins, you will be walking down the same aisle you've walked many times before. Concentrate on that ...

At the start of every new school year, The Beloit College Mindset List is published, offering a glimpse into the hearts and minds of the next generation. As expected, the list finds that this fall's freshman class is unique in how they see the world, hear the world, speak in the world, and experience the world.

Ron Nief, the communications director for Beloit, says faculty members, military officers, ...

On my desk I like to display, on a bookstand, the kind of gift books you put on the coffee table—those filled with professional photos of nature or tourist destinations. My current book is called America's Spectacular National Parks (author, Michael Duchemin). For several days I have had the book open to a photo of the Grand Teton Mountains, an extra-wide photo that filled not only the left page, ...

In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine named the greatest rock 'n' roll song of all time. Their selection, Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” was not a huge surprise. Dylan’s opus is at the top of several such lists. It was recorded on June 15, 1965, in Studio A at the headquarters of Columbia Records. A few days later, Dylan and his manager listened to the edited tape and were convinced it would be a hit. ...

The International Spa Association reports the number of hotels or resorts offering spas has more than tripled: from 473 spas in 2000, to 1,662 spas in 2004.

Spas are offering exotic treatments indigenous to their location, including "lava rock massages in Hawaii, papaya scrubs in the tropics, grape seed facials in Sonoma, and maple body wraps in the Northeast."

In Arizona, "A Native American shaman ...

Death Valley may no longer deserve its name. Normally the hottest and driest place in North America, this desert area in California has experienced the wettest year in a century. As a result, colorful wild flowers are in bloom. “Vast fields of desert gold poppy, Eschscholzia glyptosperma, desert star, Monoptilon bellioides, evening primrose and phacelia have sprouted in the usually barren moonscape, ...

The slum district of Manila is already overcrowded, but a gold rush has made it worse. It all started when 15-year-old Alfredo Gallo, who was combing the riverbed that runs through the Philippine capital, found a chunk of gold. His father immediately sold the nugget for about $500 and bought a television and a bicycle.

Once word got out, hundreds of people flocked to the banks of the filthy river looking ...

The percentage of Americans with household incomes of $50,000 or more making the following New Year's resolutions:

Retire before 65: 33 percent

Get out of credit card debt: 22 percent

Make do with current finances: 15 percent

Look for higher-paying job: 10 percent

Die broke: 9 percent

Former President Jimmy Carter writes:

In 1966, I ran for governor of Georgia and lost to avowed segregationist Lester Maddox. [My sister] Ruth drove to Plains and listened while I deplored the poor judgment and racist tendencies of my fellow Georgians and vented my anger toward God. Then Ruth quoted James 1:2.

I said, "Ruth, my political life is over! It's not my goal just to grow peanuts, sell fertilizer, ...

Ralph Warner, author of Get a Life: You Don't Need a Million to Retire Well, urges that people looking toward retirement think about more than financial matters.

In his interviews of more than fifty contented retirees, Warner "couldn't find a major correlation between retirement success and money. By working a little less you're really investing in yourself, in your family. Money is not the most important ...