Posted on June 1, 2015
“The only essential equipment for seeing birds is a pair of eyes. Good ears are a help too.” The first edition of “Birds: A Guide To The Most Familiar American Birds” smells like an old missal and reads like a manual for living well – birding as a hobby, a lifestyle and a meditation. Its […]
Posted on May 1, 2015
On Sunday night the email landed in Mike Foss’ inbox: He had been named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30,” the business magazine’s annual list of rising stars younger than 30. Mike Foss, the soccer player from Springfield, Va., the kid who had been homeschooled through 12th grade. This sent Facebook abuzz: boldfaced evidence that homeschooling […]
Posted on April 1, 2015
Carly Poppalardo had blisters on her feet when she drove home from an eight-hour session of professional organizing last Thursday, threw a bag of Trader Joe’s pre-cut veggies and simmer sauce on the stove, flipped on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” and sank into the couch. “I was high on adrenaline,” Carly said, “but […]
Posted on March 1, 2015
Belinda Monahan has analyzed more than 100,000 animal bones in Armenia dating back from the Early Bronze Age (1,200 BC) to the Medieval period. For the 44-year-old archaeologist from New Jersey, the thrill never wears off. “When you look at a Stork’s lower-leg bone,” she says, “it’s about as long as my lower-leg bone. It’s […]
Posted on February 13, 2015
Chocolate milk. I have revisited the childhood beverage and found it not lacking: a dessert you can gulp, delivering a cool, filling sensation right to your stomach, right away. Now when I open my fridge, it jumps out at me, a quick way to pour some sweetness into any pocket of the day. And since […]
Posted on February 1, 2015
Irena Sendler was 29-years-old when Nazi tanks slithered into Warsaw, casting a shadow of fear over the town and slicing it apart with a walled-off ghetto for the Jewish residents. There was no way she could sit back and watch. The social worker with the shy eyes and round baby face stood 4’11” and possessed […]
Posted on January 1, 2015
It had an echo of Nicholas Sparks to it, but it was real life, and the story went viral: an Ohio couple married for 73 years died just 28 hours apart. Reporters across the globe culled bits of Hollywood drama from the marriage, chronicling a young Joseph Auer surviving the horrors of D-Day and missing […]
Posted on December 1, 2014
Grace Osterbauer was a 24-year-old bride-to-be when she took her first cake-decorating class, and the impulse compelling the Texas beauty to make that $35 investment remains today, now a 40-year-old mother of eight. “I wanted to make the Catholic events of our lives super special,” she said. Grace and her husband, Paul, are both frugal, […]
Posted on October 1, 2014
Lena Dunham is not done confessing. That’s the headline of the New York Times Magazine profile just published about the actress-turned-memoirist, and it couldn’t be more apt. Though I’ve never seen an episode of her highly rated, super-raunchy, nudity-filled HBO show “Girls,” I consider Lena something of a cultural case study, given how often she […]
Posted on September 1, 2014
When my cousin Emily moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood this June, it marked her 10th home in five years, a residential whiplash involving sweat, tears and 11 roommates. But it was also a notable first: Emily’s first time living alone. Six hundred square feet, all hers. Where to begin, what […]