Watching the ’40s- and ’50s-inspired looks that floated down the runways this season, I was put in mind of the painters in Mary Gabriel’s Ninth Street Women, whose prim sweaters and pencil skirts concealed a broad hint of subversion. Buttoned-up, cinched silhouettes may have once looked impossibly dull and conservative. In our current epoch of…
Details
An Eco-Friendly Three-Bedroom Villa in Croatia $1.2 MILLION (7.5 MILLION CROATIAN KUNA) This three-bedroom vacation home sits in the heart of Croatia’s mountainous Gorski Kotar region, a northwestern pocket of the country — known as the “green lungs” of Croatia — that stretches down to the Adriatic Sea. Completed in 2019, the three-story house sits…
Details
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…
Details
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…
Details
LONDON — If you stand outside the Bank underground station, in the heart of the financial center of Britain, and want to pick up a quick lunch, within about 10 minutes you can reach 25 Pret A Manger stores. Pret, a 37-year-old British sandwich and coffee chain, became ubiquitous in central London with the mantra…
Details
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…
Details
People who have never tried intense interval training might be surprised to find that the workouts can be more appealing than they anticipate, according to an interesting new study of people’s emotional reactions to different types of workouts. The study, which involved inactive adults sampling intervals and other types of exercise, often for the first…
Details
People with back pain are often referred for physical therapy, though studies on its effectiveness have been mixed. A randomized trial suggests that, despite some limitations, physical therapy may have real benefits. Researchers studied 220 adults, aged 18 to 60, with back pain and sciatica (pain radiating down the leg) of less than three months’…
Details
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…
Details
HELSINKI, Finland — When his tour as the American ambassador to Finland ended in 2015, Bruce Oreck decided to linger. Part of the draw was a business opportunity. In a neighborhood just north of the city center, Mr. Oreck paid about 11 million euros for a vast, abandoned, century-old train factory. He has been transforming…
Details