In the early days of Facebook, we were tagged, poked, prodded and issued friend requests. We had no idea why we’re getting poked, tagged and prodded but we knew we liked it, we just weren’t sure why.




"Her email got me thinking about how we honor the day we were born, throughout the different phases of our lives," Jerrilyn Zavada Novak writes in her weekly Spirit Matters column.



"We get caught up in the story and the characters but I also remind myself that a human being, a real character, created the story with people we become attached to and relate to and remember," writes Lonny Cain, the retired managing editor of The Times, in his weekly column.