Courtesy photos

Starshine Roshell lives in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Starshine Roshell had an idea for a newspaper column that was just plain wacky.

"I can explain women to men," she told an editor at the Santa Barbara (Calif.) News-Press, where she worked as a features reporter.

A funny thing happened after she made her pitch. Instead of being sent away for a mental evaluation or -- worse, yet -- assigned to cover the local sewer authority, Roshell was given space to write about women, relationships, motherhood, sex, politics and just about anything else she deemed worth pontification.

For nearly eight years, Roshell has written her California-based columns, which include a bi-weekly parenting column that appears every other Monday in The Roanoke Times. Now, some of her best columns have been published in a new book, "Keep Your Skirt On: Kicky Columns with Legs" (Cabal Publishing).

Roshell, 37, actually credits her husband, John, for giving her the idea to write a column. He suggested that if she could explain to men how women think, men (and probably women, too) around the world would be extremely grateful.

"It's a vast mystery," he told her.

Over the years, her column branched out from the topic of men and women to include stories about mothers and children. Roshell has two sons, Stone, 10, and Dash, 3.

And, yes, she was named for the song "Good Morning Starshine" from the 1960s musical "Hair." (At least she wasn't named "Aquarius.") Her father toured with the production in the early 1970s. She was born in Baltimore while her parents were on tour.

Unique names aren't that -- well, unique in Roshell's family. In fact, her last name is a made-up hybrid of her last name, Rowell, and her husband's, Gaushell.

Ah, Californians. When told that making up one's own last name is perhaps not as common in the Blue Ridge Mountains as it is in, say, California, Roshell said not to worry, because, "Nobody does it here, either."

Roshell, who won an award for best column-writing from the California Newspaper Publishers Association in 2001, still lives in "swanky, seaside" Santa Barbara, as she calls it, where "carpools collide with couture."

She left the Santa Barbara newspaper in 2006 during a newsroom shake-up that pitted many editors and reporters against the newspaper's publisher, whom several editors had accused of ethical violations and meddling in content that compromised the paper's integrity.

Roshell's column was canceled by the newspaper during a time when more than 70 reporters and editors either resigned or were fired. In addition to The Roanoke Times, several other newspapers carry her column, including the Santa Barbara Independent, the Ventura Star and several parenting Web sites.

We chatted with Roshell recently.

Q: Some of the columns in your book include racy topics such as sex in cars, nipples and designer vaginas. Do you think Roanoke Times readers who are familiar with your parenting columns might be surprised to read those?

A: It might seem incongruous. But I don't discuss nipples in the parenting column anyway. I don't consider myself a parenting columnist or a sex columnist. It's about being a woman in modern culture ... being a daughter, a voter, a mother, a working person, all of that.

Q: Your sons are named Stone and Dash. Having grown up with a name like Starshine, did you ever consider for a second giving them names like Joe or Jimmy?

A: I like unusual names. I never considered anything 'normal.' That would be my husband. Our family has Starshine, Stone, Dash ... and John.

Q: I guess you were not one of those in the media who made fun of Sarah Palin's name choices -- like Track and Trig?

A: I didn't make fun of Sarah Palin over her names. I made fun of her over other things.

Q: Where do you find your column ideas?

A: I get a lot of ideas from my boys. I just wrote a piece about trophies. Why does everybody on a sports team get a trophy? Doesn't that encourage mediocrity? During my son's awards ceremony, which came after the longest season of youth tackle football ever for 10-year-olds, he got the biggest trophy he's ever gotten. And his team didn't score a touchdown all season.

Q: We know about your parents' association with "Hair." I hate to ask, but was your father one of the actors who had to perform naked every night?

A: Fully naked. In front of lots of people. Mom, too. She was pregnant at the time. My father had to walk out in the audience, climbing over arm rests, in a loin cloth. You gotta love it.

Q: Have you seen the revival of "Hair"?

A: No, it just seems so dated. I think it's a mistake to bring it back. It was part of the time then. It seems silly now.