I feared that my childhood had ruined me for romance. My mother raised me alone, just the two of us, in five states and nine different houses. Sometimes we were broke, but we always had fun. She made every day beautiful. We ate pancakes for dinner, grew watermelon in the garden, picked raspberries. I had…
Earlier this year, I faced a conundrum that many of us who work from home know well: Where in the house can I actually work? Unless you’re blessed with a home large enough for a dedicated office, or are a truly nomadic worker and able to set up shop on a sofa with nothing more…
The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. This week’s issue is written by Tacey Rychter, an audience editor and writer based in Sydney. ______ When news broke Wednesday that Margaret Fulton, the best-selling Australian cookbook author, died at 94, many people posted photos of…
Q. Does eating smoked fish, such as smoked salmon or whitefish, increase the risk of colorectal cancer or other cancers, the way processed and deli meats do? A. It might. From a cancer risk perspective, the American Institute for Cancer Research considers smoked and cured fish in the same category as processed meats. Though other…
The Goûter Refuge — a futuristic structure that clings to a cliff at 12,516 feet — is, for many people, the final stop en route to the top of Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in Western Europe, straddling the border between France and Italy. Every summer at least 20,000 people attempt the 15,776-foot summit. The…
Since Deb Perelman started Smitten Kitchen in 2006, the cooking site has spawned legions of fans, two popular cookbooks and a drool-inducing Instagram account, where it’s easy to lose an hour (or five) in images of gooey chocolate-chip cookies, herb-sprinkled pastas and juicy chicken roasted just so. But even as Smitten Kitchen has expanded well…
“I hope to be around for a long time,” my father said, “but I’ve written my funeral plan so we’re all prepared.” That morning, he’d cycled to the farm in Fairhope, Ala., where he volunteered in exchange for organic vegetables. My dad was 62 but could pedal faster than his four middle-aged kids. He had…
For the last 21 years, Maurice Legere has been a security officer at the Lotte New York Palace, a hotel in Midtown Manhattan. And for the last decade, in addition to keeping the building safe, Mr. Legere has given a tour of the hotel to loyal fans of the “Gossip Girl” television show, showing them…
Across much of Europe, temperatures were setting records this week. In Paris, even before the thermometer hit 108.7 degrees on Thursday, beating a high mark set in 1947, the air felt like a furnace, and along sidewalks, people ducked into even the tiniest slivers of shade seeking relief. Prague hauled in water trucks to douse…
A man in North Carolina died on Monday after he went swimming in a lake and was infected by Naegleria fowleri, a single-celled organism known as the “brain-eating amoeba.” The man, Eddie Gray, 59, fell ill after he visited the Fantasy Lake Water Park in Cumberland County July 12, the North Carolina Department of Health…