This is a terrific, (mostly) sensible, hallelujah can I get a witness post with advice for women traveling solo. Road Junky, as usual, tells it like it is. For example, on bringing a journal: So tell your journal all about the delicious club sandwich you had for lunch and spare your friends the boring stories.

I love picture gifts - I admit it. I love to give them and I love to receive them. This may have a little something to do with the fact that in the three years since becoming a digital SLR fanatic I've logged over 20,000 images on my various hard drives. (Don't ask me how many of these actually make it into print, because the percentage would be very, very low. But the ones that have? Priceless.)

Virginia recently posted a comment on Nordette's post about collections that said something like "what about things people collect FOR you"... and I could relate to that. People have always collected things for me, usually because I make the mistake of telling them that I like "something". I am somewhat afraid that this is what is about to happen to me and pumpkins.

Art takes new forms in winter months where cold weather sends reflective souls inside to create and make things new. New York writer Jen Lee talked to me about her latest project, Solstice: Stories of Light in the Dark, an audio collection of stories written with the lonely days of winter in mind.

Unless you have avoided internet surfing this month, you've seen a lot of pumpkin photos and Jack-o-Lantern photos. What you might not know is that there are tricks and tips to help you photograph lit Jack-o-Lanterns. I've read about a half dozen of these "tips and tricks" and it seems to all come down to one thing... resist the flash!

Friday night, I was reading my feeds and the little one was shoulder surfing. Dooce fed a post with video celebrating Coco's first birthday, so I clicked it. Liz oooohed and ahhhhed over Coco and I realized she had no idea that Dooce has a much better dog than Coco... Chuck is far superior! So I went to Dooce, clicked the Daily Chuck and we surfed photos. It was troubling because the kid was still enthralled by Coco. I needed Former Congressman Chuck from the old days so I dug deeper into the archives and started finding the photos I knew would win her over to the Chuck side.

After a day like today, I could use some "shiny! shiny!", how about you? I'm not sure how my the fabulous Deb Roby knew I'd be needing some shiny pumpkins but she did and she sent me that cool link. We've got a pumpkin sitting on the counter just begging me to turn it shiny like this one. Unfortunately, the local craft store does not deliver so no shiny pumpkin decorating will be happening any time soon.

"How's business?" I ask an artist friend who practically wrote the book on making a boutique business thrive and prosper with the help of the web. "You can hear crickets chirping," she tells me. "No one's buying a thing."

The 10 billionth photo was uploaded to  Facebook this month. 10 billionth.

Fall can be an incredibly inspired time for artists as the season changes, giving way to shorter days, more reflection and if you're lucky, more time to create. Here's a nice sampling of offerings for fall from artists who are focused on the transformations of nature as well as the heart.

I want to encourage folks to support the Appalachian History project at DonorsChoose.org. To be honest, it was tough to pick just one. This particular project however has life changing possibilities. Mrs. L's class needs 15 non-fiction books on Appalachian history and culture. The transfer of cultural information is a crucial element in visualizing success in your future.

Women have been struggling to balance family and career as long as women have been in the workplace. And over the last decade, we've seen progress. Partners expect to have to share household responsibilities to a certain extent; modern couples understand the need to take turns so each person gets a shot at making particular goals a reality.