Is Heat Actually Good for Sore Muscles?

After a hard workout, soaking in a hot tub or sitting in a steam room can be transcendent. A heating pad pressed on a particularly tight area of your lower back can help it feel looser after a long day of lifting boxes or hunching at your computer. “I go to the sauna myself,” said…

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The Ancient Art of Calligraphy Is Having a Revival

For the first time in many years, a teacher was correcting my handwriting. “Go more slowly,” Laura Edralin, a calligraphy teacher in London, told me, as she walked around a table of beginners on a recent Wednesday night, explaining how to achieve even, flowing strokes. As a breaking news reporter for The New York Times,…

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So Close to Sicily, So Far From the Crowds

For years I had been hearing about the island of Pantelleria, the craggy, hard-to-get-to Eden with middle-of-nowhere tranquillity that sits 89 miles southwest of the island of Sicily and about 50 miles east of Tunisia. Luca Guadagnino’s 2015 film “A Bigger Splash” painted a seductive idyll of mud baths, romantic ruins and secluded swimming coves….

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