I was cleaning blue fabric dye out of my giant chili pot the other morning when it hit me that some of my favorite parts about parenting — the parts that hit me like a gust of wind and make my chest tighten in a good way and my eyes well up in a where-did-that-come-from way — are the parts I was least expecting. Wasn’t actually expecting ...Read more

Daniel Gonzales pressed a tattoo needle into Israel Ray Gaitan’s bare back, where a Mayan calendar spanned Gaitan’s shoulder blades. Gonzales had already logged 30 hours tattooing the elaborate design in honor of Gaitan’s mother.

Gonzales wasn’t sure how Gaitan sat through the ordeal: Tattoos in the spinal area hurt a lot. “Don’t ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — It's called "red-shirting" or the "gift of time," but the practice of holding back a child from kindergarten for a year offers few benefits over the long term, and the academic advantage for students of being older generally evens out by the third grade, according to a new report.

The percentage of parents who hold back their 5-...Read more

The National Garden Bureau has named this the Year of the Impatiens. I could not be happier. Very few flowers provide nonstop blooms from spring until frost in the deep South. From impatiens that look like a rose to riveting color in the shade garden and in full sun, the impatiens can do it all.

Let’s go basic, and that is the bedding ...Read more

Dear Anna,

My partner and I met on a dating app five months ago. It started out as a very casual thing but quickly became exclusive and serious. He lives about 40 minutes away, and it’s a long drive to see him. We’re both in college, so generally we only see each other on weekends, but sometimes, we’d see each other multiple times a week....Read more

PHILADELPHIA — Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter was working at Mural Arts in 2021, inside the former home of famed Philadelphia painter Thomas Eakins, when she came across an 1882 photograph by Eakins, posted online, that left her rattled.

Titled African American girl nude, reclining on couch, the sepia image focuses on a young child gazing ...Read more

Jacqueline Kerr arrived to a Florida convention center Friday, suitcases stuffed with intricate, hand-made costumes — pink sequined ball gowns, a leopard bodysuit and an all-white rhinestone cowgirl ensemble — all paying homage to classic Barbie looks.

None of them made it out of her suitcase.

Kerr and her best friend had spent hundreds of...Read more

Every online dater knows the emotional roller coaster of the process. After spending tons of time crafting your bio and choosing photos, you finally feel all the stress and effort is worthwhile when you start coming across promising profiles and starting meaningful conversations. Things reach a new level of excitement when you finally agree to ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — It was a frigid Tuesday night in mid-January when John Wilson went to deliver laundry to a Columbia Heights family in hiding because of Operation Metro Surge, the immigration crackdown that brought more than 4,000 federal agents to Minnesota.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents had been staking out laundromats, so ...Read more

DENVER -- Sabrina Ortengren had almost no hope when she and her husband Jay sat down with an autism therapy provider in Evergreen, Colorado, in 2022.

All of the specialized schools in their home state of Virginia had deemed their son Ethan’s needs too severe to manage. The family had made the three-day journey west based on reports that ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA -- Brett Joseph Cohen was manning the only meteorite stall at the Philadelphia Mineralogical Society‘s annual trade show Sunday morning. Chunks of asteroids and lunar rocks glinted on his table.

He’d affixed a hand-lettered sign to one display: “This meteorite fell 12 days ago and was recovered by me in Northern Ohio.”

And...Read more

We have a long-standing affection for courtroom dramas. “Perry Mason” set the standard years ago. He’s still questioning witnesses, introducing dramatic pieces of evidence, and consulting with Paul Drake and Della Street in black and white, albeit in the wee hours of the morning on local channels.

When Andy and Barney finished corralling ...Read more

Hey.

Psst. Hey. You. Hey, you, the one reading this. Yeah, you. I lured you into this column because if I had called this “How to make your kids happy,” it would have attracted all of the wrong people (people who think that they can make their kids happy). This column is not for them. It’s for you!

As I think you know, because you’re ...Read more

Q. I was never really with my daughter’s father. We met at a party and we ended up sort of friends with benefits for a few months. I got pregnant and we decided to raise the child together, but apart. We share custody, but she's with me most of the time. Fast forward eight months and he doesn’t know what he’s doing! We don’t talk. I ...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Frustration is simmering among parents who say their young children are spending too much classroom time online, disrupting their learning and development at a critical time and clashing with stricter screen restrictions at home.

Grassroots coalitions across California and nationwide are emerging in school districts, including ...Read more

1976 was a spectacular year in the United States, with fireworks, parades and a nationwide celebration to mark a momentous event in American history.

I refer, of course, to my unlikely start in journalism.

There was also, on a much smaller scale, the bicentennial, the 200th anniversary of our nation’s independence.

Now, 50 years after I got...Read more

War in Iran. Sleeper cells. Soaring gas prices. A new virus. ICE arrests. The acceleration of AI. And a rogue food delivery robot. Is your heart racing yet?

Amid one of the highest-stakes, most chaotic news cycles in recent memory, it's hard to keep calm while scrolling through the day's doom-saturated headlines.

Fear not. A team of British ...Read more

The National Garden Bureau has named 2026 "The Year of the Azalea," and The Garden Guy thinks that is Perfecto Mundo! As you might guess that is exactly the name of one of the newest series of re-blooming azaleas.

In case you are wondering, Perfecto means perfect and Mundo is an intensifier thanks to the Fonz and "Happy Days." One thing is for ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- The Gaslighter makes his way to the stage of "NAW or Never: Smack Talk Open Mic" during a December show. Wearing a black hood over his fedora and sunglasses to complete his persona, he begins to boast about winning the NAW championship at the last show.

"I am now the NAW, Intercontinental, Breakfast, Continental, World ...Read more

What’s the difference between a Roomba and “The Jetsons” robot maid, Rosie? It’s not a joke, it’s a challenge University of Maryland doctoral student Seungjae “Jay” Lee is tackling in hopes of training real-world domestic robots to master housekeeping tasks.

His work focuses on incorporating the vast reservoir of web videos to ...Read more