Some enlightened doctors, nurses and therapists have a prescription for helping all of us to get through this seemingly never-ending pandemic: Try a little laughter. Humor is not just a distraction from the grim reality of the crisis, said Dr. Michael Miller, a cardiologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. It’s…
Shaquilla “Shaq” Blake at Pine Hill Farm in Taunton, Massachusetts. Celeste Sloman At 10 a.m., it’s already as hot as midday. Shaquilla “Shaq” Blake, a rising Black equestrian, finishes feeding the horses at a stable in Massachusetts as part of her student work in exchange for riding lessons. Wearing black breeches and a T-shirt that…
A leafy drive in Nashville, hikes in the Appalachian wilderness, a spin on a scenic Colorado byway: There are many ways to savor autumn while being mindful of pandemic travel precautions. Below are six fall outings in Massachusetts, Ohio, West Virginia, Maine, Tennessee and Colorado, replete with apple cider doughnuts, a highway ghost and sightings…
On July 2, all Caroline Mackenzie Gottlieb wanted to do was sit inside her cool, air-conditioned apartment. Ms. Gottlieb, 36, is a features producer for NBC’s “Today” show in Manhattan, and had spent the last few days shooting on location in Charlottesville, Va. It had been hot and humid in Virginia and it was hot…
Amanda Herrera and Olujimi Akili Tommasino met through a mutual friend, Kyrah Daniels, on a move-in day at Harvard. Although Ms. Herrera, 31, and Mr. Tommasino, who is 32 and known as Akili, were feeling the same romantic vibes as they helped Ms. Daniels settle into her dorm room in August 2010, they continued moving…
Dr. Sharath Puttichanda was an emergency-medicine psychiatrist at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence in December 2019 when he stumbled across Sundeep Dosanjh’s Instagram posts from Machu Picchu. A neighbor was off on an adventure in Peru while he was stuck home in wintry New England, Dr. Puttichanda (left) said, so he began wandering on the…
When they were asked to summarize their relationship in one word, Mavis Baah and Jay Jones, who are both 32 and working in Norfolk, Va., blurted out the same word at the exact same time: “partnership.” Ms. Baah, a public relations manager for the PRA Group, a financial services company, and Mr. Jones, a lawyer…
Two months after a wildfire burned through Paradise, Calif., in 2018, Kevin Phillips, then a manager for town’s irrigation district, walked from one destroyed home to another. Burned out cars, the occasional chimney and the melted skeletons of washers and dryers were the only recognizable shapes. “You started to actually be shocked when you saw…
Max Krauss, a social worker by day and a guitarist by night, left his home in Park Slope, Brooklyn, one morning in mid-February 2018, and headed to his parents’ Manhattan apartment, perched high above the Hudson River on West 125th Street, where he grew up. Like most visits to his former residence, Mr. Krauss, 38,…
PARIS — The old story of the American ingénue who moves to Paris, succumbs to the city’s sensual pleasures (usually by way of a French lover) and masters its hardened customs (never smiling at strangers) is a perennial crowd-pleaser — if the crowds are American, that is. Parisians, however, like to rail against the clichés…