Is This the 21st-Century Heroine’s Journey?

Women Don’t Have to Reinvent All That Was Lost. We Only Need to Remember It

The decision to attend my first women’s retreat felt indulgent and nerve-racking. Indulgent, because it represented an escape from so many responsibilities. Nerve-wracking in that I didn’t know any of the other women who’d be there, and I’d have to travel from Los Angeles to the remote Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, where cell reception was limited.

What hooked me was that the retreat was led by a Jungian analyst and author who I greatly admire, who would guide us in analyzing fairytales that portray the heroine’s journey, and stages of female …

Tropical Divine | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Tropical Divine

Miriam Castillo is an illustrator, graphic designer, and muralist who divides her time between New York City and the Mexican Caribbean.

Castillo draws upon her favorite climate—the tropics—for this month’s Sketchbook. …

The Voodoo Priestess Whose Celebrity Foretold America’s Future

Marie Laveau, the Self-Invented New Orleans Prophetess, Blurred the Sacred and Profane While Presiding Over a Multiracial Following 

Any tourist who rolls into New Orleans’s French Quarter eventually finds themselves standing before a Bourbon Street botanica called Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo. It’s a small shop, and …

The Religious Roots of America’s Love for Camping

How a Minister's Accidental Bestseller Launched the Country's First Outdoor Craze

Summer 1868 passed as an unremarkable season at Saranac Lake in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. The weather was fine, the scenery delightful, and the usual array of 200 to …

My Antidote to L.A’s Madness Lies Less Than 100 Miles Outside the City

Finding Peace in a Benedictine Abbey Transplanted From China and Thriving in California’s High Desert

Driven. Rushed. Anxious. These adjectives describe me and many of the nearly 4 million people with whom I share the malls, freeways, and surface streets of Los Angeles. Some days, …

In Medicine, Dying Doesn’t Have to Be a Struggle

Options, Not Treatment, May Be What’s Most Needed at the End of Life

Grandma’s dying.

She lived a full life, but illness is getting the best of her. Could be days, could be weeks, the doctors say—unless, that is, she tries one particular treatment. …