Weighted Blankets for Sounder Sleep?

Weighted blankets, which have long been popular aids to induce calm, could help reduce insomnia, a new study suggests. Swedish researchers studied 121 patients with depression, bipolar disorder and other psychiatric diagnoses, all of whom had sleep problems. They randomly assigned them to two groups. The first slept with an 18-pound blanket weighted with metal…

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Tips on Bird Feeders

The first juncos are back in my Hudson Valley garden, and the white-throated sparrows, too — birds that summer in forests farther north. At Julie Zickefoose’s place in the Appalachian foothills of Ohio, “purple finches are infiltrating,” she said. “And pine siskins are around — it’s happening.” We both know what the return of these…

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The Future of Hotel Design

Hotel occupancy is down 50 percent nationally in the pandemic-stifled world of travel. While hundreds of hotels nationwide remain closed because of the crisis, new hotels — from the sleek high-rise Joseph Hotel in Nashville, Tenn., to the Kimpton Armory Hotel in a 1941 Art Deco landmark in Bozeman, Mont. — continue to open. Whether…

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The Evolution of the Onion Sandwich

Long before James Beard was famous for championing American foods and mentoring a generation of chefs, long before he was an immediately recognizable celebrity, he was sick and tired of not being famous. Sick and tired of working in kitchens, unseen and uncelebrated, stalling out while the people around him came up. In 1940, working…

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