WHO CROSSED YOUR PATH FIRST on New Year’s Day? If it was a redhead, you may need to fasten your seat belt for a bumpy 2010, since at least one beginning-of-the-year tradition holds that the person first crossing your threshold in the new year decides the luck you’ll have for the next 365 days. Read why here.

ONE OF OUR TSP SISTERS, redheaded Marion, is the subject of an interview on Raising Redheads dot com this week. Here at TSP we’ve gathered our own Sisterhood of Redheads, where we’re doling out what we know about the breed. Got something red-hot to add?

By Paige Smith Orloff

Kelly Rae Roberts, Artist, Author, Possibilitarian.

KELLY RAE ROBERTS is an author, blogger, artist and a prolific maker and teacher of extraordinary things. She also describes herself as a “possibilitarian,” a word we’d, frankly, like to see used more often. We’ve long followed her from afar, moved by her extraordinary spark, her passion, her sisterhood of creativity, but her latest endeavor really deserves a front-page mention.

You see, Kelly has put out the call for help for her sister-friend’s sister-friend, Megan. Megan has metastatic breast cancer, and her insurance company has denied coverage for treatment that will prolong and improve her quality of life. Kelly has asked her readers to chip in, and they have–in two days, more than 200 visitors to her blog have donated.

Rock on, Kelly. Megan is lucky to have a sister like you. As Kelly wrote on her blog when she put out this call for help, “i really believe in the interconnectedness of our community. i feel it. i admire it. and i deeply believe in our collective power and hope to change people lives.” Amen.

You can read more about Megan and her cancer journey here. For more about Kelly, you can visit her blog, of course, but we also really loved this profile of her and her studio over on Modish.

IN 1983, MARION PUBLISHED a piece in The New York Times Magazine that, impossible as it now may seem, introduced Alzheimer’s disease to millions of people who didn’t know what it was. Tonight, HBO begins a three-night series, about a disease that now needs no introduction. What a difference 26 years makes. Or does it? In today’s Op-Ed in The Los Angeles Times, Marion writes about just that. Learn more.

ONLY SISTER MARION could find the key to the genetic code in her mother-in-law’s hand-me-down recipe for Spam Chop Suey. No kidding: Read about it.