I noticed that no matter where I went in the country there was this group of questions that got asked. I would track them and keep them in categories. Like body image school family friendship you name it the emotional life of a teenage girl.

The building of friendship family community and love is complicated. We are so isolated in this country no longer supported by tribes and villages.

Americans are free to choose everything from what they eat drive and watch on TV to the President of the United States. Yet when it comes to allowing Americans to choose the health insurance that works best for them and their family the freedom to choose suddenly becomes un-American.

I grew up in a food-obsessed Italian family so food was always front and center in my life. I was a food obsessed person who morphed into a comedian and tried to figure out a way to make fun of my cake and eat it too.

I did skit comedy online for many years beginning around 2001. Around 2006 I started watching a lot of food television and got re-interested in food. I come from a very food-obsessed family. But I also wanted to do my own thing which was the comedy.

I grew up playing music and enjoying good food friends and family in my own backyard.

We don't really go in for big family dinners but Scottish people are famously confrontational. It's a cultural thing so maybe we don't need to have them to clear the air. Also traditional family food isn't as nice here so there's no payoff for traveling hundreds of miles.

When I hosted the dinner I served fast food hamburgers. It had nothing to do with black white purple yellow green race. it had nothing to do with Tiger or his family or his golf game.

In the States you can buy Chinese food. In Beijing you can buy hamburger. It's very close. Now I feel the world become a big family like a really big family. You have many neighbors. Not like before two countries are far away.

I don't think any other holiday embraces the food of the Midwest quite like Thanksgiving. There's roasted meat and mashed potatoes. But being here is also about heritage. Cleveland is really a giant melting pot - not only is my family a melting pot but so is the city.

It does kids no favors and sets them up for a potential lifetime of poor health and social embarrassment to excuse them from family meals of real food. Everyone benefits from healthy eating but it is particularly crucial at the beginning of life.

When you're out grocery shopping for your family maybe you can put a can of cat or dog food in your cart and bring it to an animal relief center.

Food during my early years was a very difficult issue for me. I grew up in an addictive family. My mother had serious problems with alcohol and prescription drugs. I was an overweight kid. I can remember back in those days there weren't the strategies that there are today to deal with those issues.

Sitting down to a meal with an Indian family is different from sitting down to a meal with a British family.

The more anxious isolated and time-deprived we are the more likely we are to turn to paid personal services. To finance these extra services we work longer hours. This leaves less time to spend with family friends and neighbors we become less likely to call on them for help and they on us.

Thirteen thousand dollars a year is not enough to raise a family. That's not enough to pay your bills and save for their future. That's barely enough to provide for even the most basic needs.

I began to fear that Mos Def was being treated as a product not a person so I've been going by Yasiin since '99. At first it was just for friends and family but now I'm declaring it openly.

There's so many things I want to do. I want to work with great filmmakers great actors great scripts. And there's no reason for me to do anything short of that because I'm 24 I don't have a family I don't need to make tons of money and I'm not dying to get famous.

I don't come from a famous family and don't have this detachment from everyday people and everyday life. I'm just doing my job and the attention that comes with it is part of the territory.

I'm not in the business of becoming famous. And that's the advice I give to younger aspiring actors. Work onstage and do the little roles. In the end it's not important to be seen. It's important to do. There's a lot of disappointment in this business but my family keeps me grounded.

I remember Michael saying 'Rich and famous? It's much better to be just rich'. I didn't quite get it to begin with. But he's right. You lose anonymity. I say to my family that you've no idea until you lose it how precious anonymity is.

When you look at Michael Jackson there's nobody who loves him in that family nobody. If they did they'd tell him he didn't have to do all that in order to be famous. All he has to do is keep doing his music and be himself. Michael's been a little touched for about 20 years but somebody needs to pull him aside and tell him they love him.

While Free Choice Vouchers didn't fulfill my vision of a health care system in which every American would be empowered to hire and fire their insurance company they were a foothold for choice and competition and a safety valve for Americans whose employers are already forcing them to bear more and more of their family's health insurance costs.

The importance of human life should be universally respected - and that refers to children before they are born and after. All children have the right to be brought up in a loving two-parent family where the notion of divorce is not even possible.