WESTON, W.Va. - Though I consider myself an uneasy agnostic when it comes to ghosts, it's 9 o'clock in the evening, and soon my husband and I will be locked in a shuttered, 19th-century insane asylum to spend the witching hours of a cold, soggy West Virginia night seeking out their company. As we wait shivering on the steps of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, which predates the Civil War, the darkness is penetrated only by a tungsten sliver of light escaping between the mahogany doors.

Whenever I stumble upon an old list tucked in the back of a notebook or the bottom of a drawer — a packing list for a trip to meet my in-laws, a guest list for a party we hosted two cities and many goodbyes ago — it’s like discovering a flash-frozen slice of the past.

Three years of news coverage of the turmoil have not been able to erase the image in my mind of Syria as a peaceful place where jasmine trees dust the interior courtyards of family homes with their white confetti blossoms and scent the warm afternoon air.

As a child Carol Bramblett dreamed of a sleek sailing ship, named "Joshua," built as fleet as the old schooners that once plied Mobile Bay. After an uphill struggle to launch it into reality, she wonders if the true keel of her dream wasn’t all the people who came together in the process.

If you invite an international student home for Thanksgiving, he may ask to come back at Christmas—and you may prepare a basket for the guest room with cookies and hotel shampoos, causing your mom to say, “You really like this boy.”

We were barely in our hotel room in Damascus, Syria a half hour before our afternoon delight came to a jolting halt. Khair, my husband, who is Syrian and always calm in emergency situations, muttered an understated “uh oh.” I knew from his panicked expression it had to be bad before I even looked down at the ripped condom.

The moderator gives us a nod, and we walk in unison along the edge of the deep end. “Aaaaaand stop!” comes a call from the rear. We pivot to face the pool and bend and stretch into formation, surrounding our seven-person clump with a sunburst of jazz hands. I feel hundreds of eyes watching us as we wait for the music, smiling in our silver-and-pink swimsuits and glittery eyeliner.

ANTI-ATLAS, Morocco - In a modern update of the ancient practice of collecting dew from stone walls, five villages in southwestern Morocco received drinking water from mountain fog for the first time this spring.