When I was growing up as a young lesbian in the '50s, I looked in vain for books about my people. I did find some paperbacks with lurid covers in the local bus station, but they ended with the gay character's committing suicide, dying in a car crash, being sent to a mental hospital, or 'turning' heterosexual.

Surely one of the most visible lessons taught by the twentieth century has been the existence, not so much of a number of different realities, but of a number of different lenses with which to see the same reality.

There are a couple of things that I'm sure people don't think are important, but I do. I don't like hair changes unless there's a reason for it. Clothing - I don't like to see an outfit worn more than one time in an hour - you can wear it again a few weeks later.

Like Venice, Italy, New Orleans is a cultural treasure. And everyone who lived in the city should be allowed to come back. But that doesn't mean that they all should live in exactly the same spot that they lived before.