When I returned to college after a spring vacation spent in my home town, a girl I knew from New York's Westchester County asked if I'd had a good time. I gave her my usual response, saying that I'd had fun. She wondered what could be fun about spending spring break in Iowa.

We were taken by the dog bone frame, the geography glasses by Catstudio

"When he could marshal some grains of his spirit, he trawled the web for plastic surgeons, hoping someone might offer the medical care he needed. Most days he simply drew the blankets over his head ... They ended their relationship by mutual agreement, but he knew she just needed a graceful way out"

A birding walk on the Filoli estate in Woodside, California a few years ago and inspiration from an unknown warbler some weeks ago in our backyard, led us to list a new site which, regardless of your attachment to birding, might of be of interest to all who hear a song and wonder about the singer. Meeting the members of the site could perhaps be the most interesting aspect of all at Xeno-Canto.

It was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., who served on the US Supreme Court from 1902 to 1932 who held up freedom of thought as one of the prime protections offered to citizens in the US Constitution. He explained that he believed that this protection was most valuable "not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate."

To Brother Theo: "I tell you again that I’ll always consider that you’re something other than a simple dealer in Corots, that through my intermediacy you have your part in the very production of certain canvases, which even in calamity retain their calm ..."

 The mood at the annual progressive conference meeting held in Washington DC June 7-9 can best be described as cautious pessimism. After the high two years ago of electing the first African-American President and a Democratic-controlled Congress, both…

It seems that the human inability to grasp and execute the complex steps of a deepwater drilling procedure led to the tragic outcome. A separate discussion is warranted of an almost universal lack of preparedness by the industry and government to deal with the aftermath of this blowout.

I thought about the Kindle and the iPad, but I didn’t think about them long. I’m sure something better, that incorporates a bazillion features and will function like a personal computer, a telephone, a television, an e-book, and possibly a food-o-matic will soon be touted. When it arrives, I’ll think about it, slowly.

The number of persons expected to be working and paying taxes into various programs is rising more slowly than the number of persons projected to receive benefits. Notably, this year about 5 individuals are between the ages of 20 and 64 for each person aged 65 or older. By the time most of the baby boomers have retired in 2030, this ratio is projected to have declined to around 3.

The Cate family is on vacation at Decatur Motor Camp, York Beach, on the southern coast of Maine. It’s late afternoon and the Cates are settling down after their day. Mrs. Cate and her daughter are preparing dinner in the trailer; Mr. Cate is relaxing with a magazine in a sling chair. Visitors can peer inside their Trav-L-Coach and see the ingenious design of this 1930s mode of travel.

Rosé season is in full bloom, and there are more rosés than ever to choose from. As the world changes so quickly and there are fewer and fewer constants to count on, I cherish reasonably priced wines that I can turn to year after year. Just as there are certain dishes I try to make every season, there are certain rosés I like to revisit.

But until then, all would be rosy. Or so I thought — until Company Y’s installer showed up, dragging yards of dusty cable across my carpet and tripping over his baggy jeans which were hanging at half mast mid-paunch and puddling at his feet. Oh, well, I thought, he’s not a fashion model; he’s a cable installer.

It's an election year, and my popularity is at a all-time high! Not that I'm running for office myself, but if I were, it's nice to know that I recently acquired a lot of friends in high places whom I've never actually met. Nevertheless, many of them have really been putting themselves out lately to win my approval, and I must say I'm extremely flattered, even though there are times when I might characterize their efforts as "overkill."

What if I scan all those photographs, dump the film and originals to save space in my house, only to discover the technology of the future (probably being developed somewhere by a 12-year-old as you read this paragraph) would work better if I started from the irreplaceable articles I tossed in the garbage two weeks ago instead of my digital copies?

It's an especially bad idea to take extra multivitamins in an effort to ramp up your intake of a single micronutrient. Doing so means you're sure to get too much of other vitamins and/or minerals, which can be harmful.

"We examine a widely circulated chain e-mail written by an Arizona state senator who supports the law, and find her claims to be misleading. The violence against ranchers that she describes is real, but it is the work of Mexican crime cartels, not illegal immigrants."

The present oil leak situation in the US brings to the fore the need to preserve and treasure beaches around the world. The Victoria and Albert Museum is carrying a beach art project on their website that you might want to join in and take pictures of.

There is considerable variation in terms of who they share their videos with, who they believe is watching, and concerns about how their video may be used.  One in three uploaders (31%) say they "always" place restrictions on who can access their videos, while 50% say they "never" do this.

I careen from elegance to decadence — Bergdorf’s and Saks, the Lincoln Center Crafts Fair, the gift shop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the street fair at Columbus Avenue and 75th St, occasionally succumbing to overwhelming temptation for a souvenir of my visit.  

"Stress and Anger steeply declined from the early 20s, Worry was elevated through middle age and then declined, and Sadness was essentially flat. Unlike a prior study, men and women had very similar age profiles of Well Being.

The year is 1909, and it's dinnertime at the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, the largest and most luxurious facility of its kind in the world. The richest and most powerful American women — and men — are on a diet.

It didn’t take my husband long to discover that our fathers were 5th cousins, via an eighteenth century common ancestor. That meant we are sixth cousins, and our three sons are their own 7th cousins (for a while thereafter they took delight in greeting each other with cries of "Cuz!").