Life Style & Travel

UNITED STATES—Many of our trees live at our homes longer than we do. Some of our trees were there before we got there. Some of the trees we plant will be there for whomever comes along after we are gone. Trees very often evolve into something very different from what they were intended to be. Nonetheless, since they are...

UNITED STATES—The Grimes had a neighbor who had no manners. It was embarrassingly obvious even to the youngest Grimes, Max. Any fool with eyes could see Max was on his way to somewhere, waiting for his car to come and buried in earphones. He wasn't in the mood for conversation or people getting in the way of his song....

UNITED STATES—Mathematically, division is the opposite of multiplication. Horticulturally, they are the same. Digging and splitting overgrown perennials to propagate them is known as 'division' because it divides many rooted stems or rhizomes of one plant into many new plants. Division is a form of propagation; and propagation is commonly known as multiplication. So, we divide plants to multiply...

UNITED STATES—As the youngest of his children prepared to leave the nest—not tomorrow or the next day, but inevitably it would happen—the old vices came back, and a few new ones. The smoking (tobacco mostly) and drinking. Who's fooling whom? Kids see a lot now. In the middle school someone had to call 911 because a kid had overdosed...

UNITED STATES—Like Michael Jackson said, “You got an easement on down the road.”. . . or something like that. In older neighborhoods, that is where the utility easements are usually located. These are zones for utility poles that suspend electrical, telephone and television cables. When electricity first became available, that was the easiest place to put the cables, and...

UNITED STATES—I know I don’t drink enough water. Some of my friends track the amount of water they consume every day, making sure to keep a bottle handy at all times. They take sips regularly and try to drink a specific amount by a certain time. On the contrary, I only turn to water during meals, or if the...

BEL AIR—Becoming deaf as a teenager who adored music wasn't easy...I think I would have accepted blindness if given a choice. Surely, my ears were my biggest gift of life but there was one person who seemed to suffer more than me... my mother. The first year was about seeing specialists, taking tests and getting opinions... 2nd… 3rd…4th…12th from basically...

UNITED STATES—The national holiday fell on a Tuesday. It was not one of the movable holidays, so there was a buoyant Monday, that felt like a second Friday, effervescing with anticipation for good times to come, that many commandeered for good times in the present. Right after it was all over, on Wednesday, Mr. Smith urgently deposited cash at the...

UNITED STATES—Is a prune really just a dried plum? No! A plum is really a prune. In fact, all 'stone fruit' are of the same prune genus known as Prunus. This means that apricot, cherry, peach, nectarine, prune, plum and even almond are all related. So are all their weird and trendy hybrids, such as aprium, pluots, plumcots and...

UNITED STATES—Well, I had an English student named Berta in a class I was substituting. She had a motto that she got from her grandfather: Live and learn. Well Berta was talking about how she already had her five minutes of fame. Somebody with a camera had followed her around for a month in her job and life and made...