“I love you,” I said to my wife. Then, quietly: “Goodbye.” It was 6 a.m. and I was getting up for work. If I had said more, she would have had trouble falling back to sleep. She already had been woken numerous times in the night by our two boys, aged 4 and 13 months.…
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My husband is the family bread baker, turning out burnished, crackling sourdough loaves from our Dutch oven on a weekly basis. But biscuits are my domain. And they’re great to make right now, transforming a few pantry staples into buttery, flaky treats. They are also pretty easy, as long as you don’t overhandle the dough.…
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After Governor Tom Wolf ordered all “non-life-sustaining” businesses in several counties in Pennsylvania to shutter last week — as one of a growing number of governors to issue “stay at home” or “shelter in place” orders to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus — only the most Dickensian remained in operation. It was not…
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There is good evidence that a daily baby aspirin reduces the risk for heart disease and stroke, and some have thought its inflammation-lowering effect might also help in delaying cognitive decline. But taking a daily low-dose aspirin did not appear to be effective in lowering the risk of Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia,…
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At the beginning of March, I experienced a new joy: I published my first book, a collection of essays investigating how Americans make meaning of their lives and what they do when their systems of meaning-making begin to break down. This book was roughly seven years in the making. In writing it, I did quite…
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If you are one of the millions of Americans breathing polluted air, you may be at a greater risk of catching the coronavirus and of having a more severe infection. The reasons are twofold. First, air pollution can cause or aggravate respiratory illnesses like asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. And those illnesses can make…
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Arian Agrawal and Arjun Naskar had dozens of mutual friends at M.I.T. in Cambridge, Mass., many of them Indian-American like themselves, during the three years they overlapped as students there. Yet somehow Ms. Agrawal and Mr. Naskar managed to avoid meeting each other entirely. “M.I.T. is a very small school, which makes it even harder…
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HLAING THARYAR, Myanmar — When he was 12, Ko Naing Lin survived a cyclone that killed his father, a small-town doctor, and at least 130,000 others in the Irrawaddy Delta of Myanmar. A life of lazy soccer games, plentiful fish curry and reprimands to finish his homework — “Now, or else what will become of…
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Over the next several weeks, Americans will conduct virtual Seders, cook Easter brunch for just one or two, enjoy scaled-down Nowruz feasts at a six-foot distance from one another, and break their Ramadan fasts while isolating at home. All of these holy days and celebrations, which promote renewal and reflection, involve gathering around meals. Social…
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Late one recent night, I found myself on the phone with my patient’s brother, trying to explain respiratory failure and Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. He had been unable to sleep, he told me, after hours spent online in a futile attempt to understand what might be happening in his sister’s room…
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