For much of my childhood in the Berkshires region of western Massachusetts, I didn’t give a hoot about the Housatonic River. In contrast to the many lakes where my brother and I would swim or skate, attend Scout camps or sprawl out for family picnics, the hushed and shaded Housatonic seemed unfamiliar and at times…
Be careful: The garden wants to have its own way, to blur the lines and refocus those pictures you planned so carefully and then planted. Anyone who has ever tried to create a garden — especially a naturalistic one — learns a few things very quickly. Most emphatically, that change is the only constant. But…
The assignment was clear: Test how well artificial intelligence could plan a trip to Norway, a place I’d never been. So I did none of my usual obsessive online research and instead asked three A.I. planners to create a four-day itinerary. None of them, alas, mentioned the saunas or the salmon. Two assistants were, however,…
Forty-three highly sociable people, from Ivy Getty to Rufus Wainwright, offer tips on how to be a stellar guest and a gracious host. Read this before you say yes to the next invitation. As the summertime social whirl was about to begin, we asked dozens of socially adept people — socialites, artists, designers, restaurateurs, party…
New research suggests that as many as 18.5 million older adults regularly take aspirin to prevent the onset of cardiovascular disease, even though the drug’s risks outweigh its benefits for many of those patients. The new study, published Monday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, examined self-reported data from more than 186,000 adults across…
This article contains spoilers. Celine Dion welcomed the cameras. For the new documentary “I Am: Celine Dion” (streaming on Amazon Prime Video), the singer set no restrictions on what to film. What follows is a painfully intimate portrait of a pop star’s body fighting itself. Dion announced in 2022 that she had stiff person syndrome,…
The James A. Bailey residence at St. Nicholas Place and 150th Street in Harlem, built in 1888 for the less flamboyant partner of the Barnum & Bailey team, is a three-ring circus of architectural elements: a Romanesque Revival tower, curvilinear Flemish gables, a high chimney adorned with Tudor roses, even a heraldic carving of a…
When Suzette Mullen finally acknowledged her complicated feelings for the woman she considered her best friend, she felt the weight of a significant question: Am I gay? Ms. Mullen, then 54, had been married for more than two decades to her husband, whom she loved. They lived together in Montauk, N.Y., and had two adult…
In a bid to acquire a key supplier, Boeing has shifted how it plans to pay for the deal, according to two people familiar with the negotiations, a move that could help the plane maker preserve money as it addresses safety and quality problems. Boeing would use stock instead of cash to buy Spirit AeroSystems,…
During the Lunar New Year of 1988, Selena Wong wanted to create a special dessert for her family in Kingston, Jamaica. Ms. Wong, whose ancestors came to the island from China in the 19th century, was a self-taught baker who occasionally sold goods from her home. Knowing the importance of lychees to the Chinese Jamaican…
