I don’t often catch colds. Part of that may be that I eat well, get plenty of sleep and exercise daily. Or maybe it is just that I don’t have schoolage kids and work out of my house, so I don’t come in contact with all the germs that are floating about. But over the […]

NASHVILLE, TENN. The small-town Tennessee couple that bought one of three magic tickets splitting the world-record $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot says they don’t plan to quit their jobs or buy a new house. Their daughter, however, wants a horse. After appearing on national television, John Robinson and wife Lisa went to the Tennessee lottery headquarters […]

NEW YORK Another price fight is breaking out among the country’s biggest burger chains, this time with meal combos designed to make people forget about the once ubiquitous dollar menus. The new “bundled offers” show how hungry McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s are to win over deal seekers, and how quickly a popular idea gets […]

Alice was our au pair from China, and when she joined our family she brought with her a slew of tasty dishes. Our family fell in love with her complex fried rice, dumplings with juicy meat fillings, and her crispy egg rolls with garlicky-meaty-mushroom fillings. The tricky thing was that Alice was one of those […]

Until I moved to Maine in 2008, when I was 31-years old, I had never seen more than a few inches of snow, and then, only when on vacation. I had a lot to learn, like: Why would anyone rake anything off their roof (“It looks so pretty with snow on it!”), and why people […]

I wonder why so many of us make resolutions at this time of year: lose weight, keep a clean desk, be nicer to people working for political candidates that call us during dinner time … and so on. As a gardener, I don’t tend to think so much about resolutions, but more about what I […]

LOS ANGELES Wylee the border collie can search an avalanche the size of a football field in five or 10 minutes. It would take a probe line of 50 people using poles a couple hours to cover the same ground. When 30 minutes can mean the difference between life and death for a skier lost […]

NEW YORK The apartments in a new Manhattan building boast little balconies, tall ceilings, dishwashers and storage space. All in 360 square feet or less. It’s micro-living in the nation’s biggest city, and New Yorkers could be seeing more of it. Planning officials are proposing to end a limit on how small apartments can be, […]

TRENTON, N.J. Online retailer Amazon has been a prime beneficiary of more consumers doing their holiday shopping online and procrastinating. Amazon Prime, the company’s $99-a-year loyalty program that includes unlimited free two-day shipping, gained 3 million new members in the third week of December alone. Meanwhile, the number of Prime members shopping via mobile more […]

This fall, I wrote about serendipitously meeting a group of Amish women at our local office supply store. The women, all teachers I presumed, were making photo copies of lesson plans for their students. I was also making photo copies for students — my college-level mass-communication students. Because the Amish do not use electricity or […]