Q: Here at Ask Real Estate, we recently received a reader’s question about poor treatment by mortgage servicers. Many first-time home buyers don’t realize that the lender that approves their mortgage could turn around and sell the servicing rights to a company they’ve never heard of. Now the homeowner might have to deal with a…
Thailand is renowned among hard-charging tourists for nightlife in Bangkok, full moon parties on Koh Phangan island and hedonistic walking streets in Pattaya. It’s also a magnet for the bohemian and wellness crowds who flock to the mountain destinations of Chiang Mai and Pai. But mostly ignored by foreign tourists is Lampang, in Northern Thailand….
Alcohol-related liver disease is the leading cause of death from excessive drinking — and while it’s curable in the earliest stages, many people don’t realize they have it until it’s too late to reverse. Annual deaths caused by the disease are on the rise in the United States, having climbed 39 percent in recent years,…
Good morning. On Sunday, I like a project in the kitchen more than on any other day. It’s a chance to work at the stove without the need to get something on the table in 45 minutes, a time to stretch my skill set. Mostly, it’s an opportunity to explore recipes rather than simply following…
Claude Folmer was about 40 years old the first time he visited the Mer de Glace, the largest glacier in the French Alps. He remembers enjoying the panoramic view from the observation platform, then taking a short hike down to the ice, where he toured the ice cave that’s carved into the glacier’s surface. Four…
When Brock Forsblom and Jeremy Heimans first saw their future apartment, “it was the SoHo loft fantasy,” says Heimans, 46, an Australian entrepreneur and nonfiction writer. With nine and a half-foot ceilings covered in moldering pressed tin, exposed brick walls and 3,000 square feet of open living space, it evoked a bygone era in which…
Good morning. The vernal equinox is in less than three weeks, but you wouldn’t know it from the frosted mud in the woods and the storm-wounded lawns where I stay. It’s bare ugly everywhere save in the bays, where water clear as gin flows over rocks in a spectrum of pink. At the market: cabbage…
The artist Joel Hernandez, 39, first worked with papier-mâché as an 8-year-old, soon after moving from Mexico to rural Indiana. His parents had gone looking for piñatas — a staple of their family celebrations — at local stores but had come up short. “So we decided to make our own,” he says. Two decades later,…
In the spring of 2020, at the height of the pandemic, the always bustling Dam Square in Amsterdam was deserted, silent and surrounded by concrete counterterrorism blocks. The Dutch street artist Frank de Ruwe, who goes by the name of Frankey, decided these daunting studded blocks resembled something more innocent — giant Lego blocks —…
The kindest thing you can do for yourself when you’re stiff from being in the cold is to find some warmth: Because as the chill in your bones starts to fade, so does your stiffness. The same thing happens to hard winter vegetables when they’re enveloped in the heat of the oven — they soften…
