My wife offered to buy me a stove for my birthday. We were having dinner at a neighborhood restaurant when she made the suggestion -- just a suggestion, she assured me, a joke, if I wanted to look at it that way.I've always been the cook in our house, and not just a weekend warrior, either.

My mother was such a bad cook that when I was a boy I would pretend I was a prisoner of war being forced to eat her creative offerings -- macaroni and cheese studded with sliced hot dogs, say.My younger brother, Ethan, and I learned to fend for ourselves in the kitchen, and after our parents divorced we took turns cleaning, along with my younger sister, while our mother was out earning a paycheck. What used to be called women's work has always been second nature to us.But I never thought of it as my calling. Whatever satisfaction I derived from cooking or schlepping laundry or changing diapers came in part from the knowledge that I would soon be doing something else. [Read the full article]

Strikingly symmetrical and impossibly elegant, British supermodel Erin O'Connor is one of the most recognizable and acclaimed figures in the fashion world today.She's been the face of Versace, Dior, Armani, and Gaultier -- and after 16 years commanding catwalks around the globe, the porcelain-skinned belle is still at the very top of her profession.But beyond the extraordinary physique and angular, painterly features that define her appearance, O'Connor has emerged as a vocal proponent of change within the pressurized, often exploitative industry she inhabits.Driving to increase diversity among models and improve industry-wide working conditions, the down-to earth Brit is co-founder of "All Walks Beyond the Catwalk," an organization that encourages designers to embrace women whatever their age or size. [Read the full article]

The minister who performed the ceremony for our wedding six years ago required all couples to take counseling sessions with her before their big day.So my guy and I did -- we took personality tests, talked about our approaches to solving conflict and our plans for the future, and we got a lecture on the importance of "feeding the tree."At the time, we giggled, thinking we were getting bedroom advice from a seemingly asexual woman of the cloth. But "feeding the tree," she explained, was about treating our relationship with care, nourishing it, so that it could grow sturdy roots, limbs, and leaves.Kind of a hokey metaphor, I know, but it turns out, that minister gave us the secret to keeping our romance alive.Whenever I realize I've been preoccupied with my daily grind, that life is starting to feel routine, and I'm taking our relationship for granted, I think about that "feeding the tree" idea. [Read the full article]

CNN's Soledad O'Brien looks at how some are fighting debt from the pulpit in "Almighty Debt: A Black in America Special," premiering at 9 p.m. ET on October 21.(CNN) -- The Rev. E. Dewey Smith Jr. bangs on the pulpit with his fist. He shuts his eyes and moans. Then a high-pitched sound rises from his throat like the wail of a boiling tea-kettle."I wish you'd take the brakes off and let me preach," he tells his congregation during his Sunday morning sermon.Rows of parishioners stand to shout. One woman in a satiny blue dress jumps up and down like she's on a pogo stick. A baby starts to cry.Smith had already given his congregation the "meat" of his message: scriptural references, archaeological asides, modern application -- all the fancy stuff he learned in seminary. Now he was about to give them the gravy. [Read the full article]