Sometimes life comes full circle. At least it has for me. In 1989 I visited my daughter Rachel in Los Angeles and fell in love with it. Later that year I quit my job at The Pittsburgh Press, sold my house, packed up my belongings and moved to Redondo Beach. I had no job there, not even a prospect, but I believed that I belonged in California, and I believed in myself. I took 100 resumes with me and sent one out the day I arrived. When American Salon hired me to be the West Coast editor, I threw the other 99 resumes away. I couldn't believe my good luck. Someone was actually going to pay me to hang out in salons, with hairdressers, some of my favorite people. I would have done that for free.

Recently, I attended the premiere of Vivienne Mackinder's latest film, Discover Your Passion, at Philip Pelusi's salon, Tela, in Manhattan's Meatpacking District. Philip is an old friend who has a chain of eponymous salons in Pittsburgh, which many of you know is my hometown. Strangely enough, there were so many other Pittsburgh expats there—celebrity colorist Brad Johns, editorial stylists Louis Angelo and Jimmy Paul, Redken's David Stanko—that I could have been at a Steelers Super Bowl party. Vivienne even featured Steel Town girl Beth Minardi in her film.

As many of you know, I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, so when I tuned in to Primetime on ABC and caught Diane Sawyer's moving tribute to a Carnegie-Mellon University professor named Randy Pausch, I took the time to watch. Despite the fact that he has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Pausch refuses to succumb to self-pity. Instead, he has chosen to live life to the fullest and inspire those around him to do likewise. Six months after his diagnosis, Pausch, a beloved professor of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh and father of three small children, delivered "The Last Lecture" to a group of students and well-wishers. Lots of professors give last lectures, in which they are asked to reflect upon their demise and consider what matters most to them. Considering Pausch had been given six months to live, his last lecture could have been a maudlin affair. Instead, it became a celebration of life, of seizing every moment, because, as Pausch told his students, "Time is all you have and you..

Redken's Ann Mincey and I have been friends since we lived in Los Angeles nearly 20 years ago. In comparing notes about our respective mothers over the years, we came to the same conclusion: We were lucky to have them in our lives.

For the past 40 years, Democrats have been waiting for a presidential hopeful capable of inspiring Americans in the way that John F. Kennedy did. Now there's talk that Barack Obama may be that candidate. First of all, there was Caroline Kennedy's endorsement.

S

Last November, I spent Thanksgiving in Scotland with my daughter Erin, who's working on her Ph.D. at the University of Edinburgh. Aside from attending a literary pub crawl, visiting Edinburgh Castle, which rises majestically out of a slab of volcanic rock, and eating dinner nearly every night at Henderson's, one of the best vegetarian restaurants on the planet, I made time to visit some of the city's salons.

Now that the holidays are over, it's time to implement those New Year's resolutions we made when we had a little too much Champagne and thought that losing 30 pounds by Easter would be a cakewalk.

One of my first initiatives as editor in chief of American Salon was to completely redesign the magazine.