When I was a kid, my father planted asparagus in a sunny corner of our Brooklyn backyard. He was an optimistic urban gardener, despite a long list of failed crops: apricots eaten by rogue squirrels; corn that withered in its husk; white eggplant that might have been the first grown in Flatbush had they not…
On Cinco de Mayo in 2019, Candace Brisco went out with a group of friends. Later that night, she couldn’t fall asleep. The question “Do you like a girl?” wouldn’t leave her mind. “I woke up the next morning, and was like, ‘I guess you like a girl,’” Ms. Brisco said. “And that was it.”…
Gabrielle Dawn Luna sees her father in every patient she treats. As an emergency room nurse in the same hospital where her father lay dying of Covid last March, Ms. Luna knows firsthand what it’s like for a family to hang on to every new piece of information. She’s become acutely aware of the need…
When coronavirus vaccines first became available, state health officials in Virginia turned to software recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to schedule appointments. But people complained that the software, called VAMS, was too confusing for older adults to use. So the state switched to another system, PrepMod — but that had problems,…
When coronavirus vaccines first became available, state health officials in Virginia turned to software recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to schedule appointments. But people complained that the software, called VAMS, was too confusing for older adults to use. So the state switched to another system, PrepMod — but that had problems,…
During the course of their four-year relationship, Dr. Alexis Catherine Gomez and Dr. Taylor Francis Baumann have been new friends and best friends and then boyfriend and girlfriend. Dr. Gomez, 30, who is known as AC, and Dr. Baumann, 29, are both resident physicians in internal medicine and pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine in…
In the years leading up to 2019, Lane Harris watched the landscape around her home in Ithaca, N.Y., become overgrown. Weeds crept up the raised bed in the backyard. Woody shrubs bombarded the lilac bush. The fig tree was ailing. Since then, it has become a different picture entirely. The weeds were cleared away, replaced…
In 2012, after Hurricane Sandy devastated much of the Rockaways in Queens, Nicole Russell, a longtime resident of Arverne by the Sea, a community there, began making pizzas out of her home. She did this in part to please her sister, Joan, a pizza lover who had recently learned she had cancer. When Joan declared…
Ms. Hunt’s transition from publicist to D.J. was a slow metamorphosis. She grew up in Chesapeake, Va., and graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in English literature and African-American studies in 2003. Just after, she moved to Mexico City to teach. She hoped to become a D.J. there, too. “But I bought…
The stimulus package signed by President Biden on Thursday provides new options for Americans who need health insurance — and new resources to help lower costs for those who are already insured. Few of these changes apply to Americans who get insurance at work or through Medicare. But if you buy your own insurance, have…