Latkes and Dante Led to Love

A peculiar alchemy of latkes, Dante, smarts and social aptitude brought Deborah Beck and Alan Greenberg together. But it took some time. The two met in 2011 at Mr. Greenberg’s annual Hanukkah party, which showcased his potato-pancake-making chops. She had tagged along with mutual friends, and both came away from their encounter impressed but not…

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Playful Waves at Rockaway Beach

Keziah Weir swam and bobbed around the water at Rockaway Beach on the southern edge of Queens in August 2014 while Daniel James Feller surfed playful waves on his white shortboard nearby. Their mutual friend, who Mr. Feller knew from high school, and Ms. Weir knew from Bard College, from which she graduated, introduced them…

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Toxic Ghosts

My father is dying, besieged by both emphysema and a metastatic colon cancer that’s migrated to his lungs. I shudder in recognition because I’ve nearly been killed twice by raging diseases: An unusually aggressive prostate cancer, and an uncontrollable ulcerative colitis. What haunts Dad and me all these decades later, as we help each other…

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Coronavirus Attacks the Lungs. A Federal Agency Just Halted Funding for New Lung Treatments.

When the coronavirus kills, it attacks the lungs, filling them with fluid and robbing the body of oxygen. In chest X-rays, clear lungs turn white, a sign of how dangerously sick patients are. But earlier this month, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, a federal health agency, abruptly notified companies and researchers…

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Food That’s a Business and a Comfort

This article is part of Owning the Future, a series on how small businesses across the country are coping with the coronavirus pandemic. Azalina Eusope cries every day. “But the food comforts me,” said the 41-year-old chef and owner of Azalina’s, a Malaysian restaurant business in San Francisco. “Ten years ago, my business started off…

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Missing Those Old Familiar Places

OK, I’ve finally gone around the bend. I’m sitting in my Manhattan studio and listening to the “Colonel Bogey March” from “The Bridge on the River Kwai” on YouTube. I’m checking out other Mitch Miller hits that were on some record my parents had more than a half-century ago. I’m even singing along to old…

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