CHICAGO -- For years, Maria Johnson slipped into Chicago Public Schools classrooms as a volunteer parent, an extra set of hands to help students sound out their reading. She can’t recall exactly when she started: Her eldest son is now 22.

“I was not only trying to be there for my son, but I wanted to be there for other children, because I ...Read more

Q. My son’s mother and I broke up seven months ago. She’s already living with someone else. He’s a felon and I’m furious that she’s dating someone like this. If he wasn’t in the picture, I’m sure we would have gotten back together. We have a 5-year-old son and I let him know every day that his mother has chosen this guy instead of ...Read more

Dear Kid Whisperer,

Why do my 4- and 6-year-old insist on being on their absolute worst behavior when we go to visit family? We live several hours away from most of our family members, so we don't have time to visit very often. I want to be able to enjoy the time with my relatives — but my kids make it impossible as they are just all over the...Read more

After our son grew up and began carving out a life of his own, he left home as young men often do. It was about 21 years, one month, 17 days, three hours and 10 minutes ago, but who’s counting?

He married a young woman whose passion for camping, hiking, dogs, night skies and the great outdoors matched his. After tying the knot, they fled to ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA -- Rene Garner cried even before the doors swung open Sunday to admit visitors to the last-ever day of operation for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.

“I feel so sad,” said Garner, a retired educator who brought classes to the museum for years and credits her son’s love of science to summers spent learning...Read more

If I ever won the lottery, I’d never collect the money. That’s because I would drop dead from shock. Then my wife would be a rich widow.

But since I haven’t even come close to hitting the jackpot, and the price of beer has gone up, I was willing to take the risk. So I sought the advice of Dr. Brown, a self-described “lottery doctor” ...Read more

HARTFORD, Conn. -- The Beardsley Zoo in Bridgeport is celebrating the birth of a rare red panda, allowing visitors an up close view of one of the world’s rarest endangered animals.

The zoo recently celebrated the successful birth of the its first red panda cub. Born during the overnight hours on June 24 to its parents Ponya and Pilot, the zoo...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Looking for more space than a Sacramento-area house can provide? Consider purchasing a small town in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

The town of Belden — roughly 36 miles northeast of Chico in the Plumas National Forest — is up for sale by its current owner for a modest $4.75 million.

Ivan Coffman, the town’s owner, ...Read more

The day after President Donald Trump announced he was banning CNN, Politico and MS Now from the White House, I moderated a panel called “Truth, Trust and Today’s Media,” hosted by the Glenview Public Library and arranged months prior.

The panelists were Brandis Friedman, chief correspondent and anchor of WTTW’s “Chicago Tonight,” ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA -- Lynsey Lehr grew up knowing that her beloved Aunt Donna survived a near-deadly hit-and-run as a teenager.

The details of the tragedy were part of the tight-knit family’s history.

Donna Eiser had just finished her freshman year at East Stroudsburg University and aimed to become a physical education teacher. Then one night in ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- Dr. Zaldy Tan, author of a new book with profound insights into aging, memory loss and resilience, was examining an 84-year-old patient with vascular dementia last week in a suite at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

The patient's daughter and primary caregiver, Adai Lamar, updated Tan on her mother Jessie's condition, and then ...Read more

This summer the plant trials have been riotous in their displays of colors in the recipe section. One that caught my eye this year was Merry Go Round, which was full of colors from the hot side of the color wheel. One featured plant was Campfire Red Ember.

Red Ember is one of the three in the Campfire series. Campfire Marshmallow, Campfire ...Read more

DENVER -- A tropical bird never before seen in Colorado drew dozens of Front Range birders to a lake on the Eastern Plains this weekend – and helped one birder become the first person known to spot 500 different species in the state.

Catching a glimpse of the piratic flycatcher, a migratory bird from Central and South America, this far north ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS -- This summer a schism fractured the baseball community in tight-knit St. Louis Park, Minnesota, where the modern forces of youth sports were about to dismantle a suburban relic.

For years, kids as old as 12 could still play Little League at a local park for a couple hundred bucks, placed on teams with kids of varying abilities. No...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- Construction crews working on an Oceanside, California, water department project this month uncovered the fossilized remains of what could be a “thunder beast,” a large, hoofed mammal that lived about 45 million years ago.

Contract paleontologist Joseph El Adli had just walked onto the job because the project’s regular state-...Read more

CHICAGO -- Luis Alejandro Calvo Velasquez meticulously wrapped silver wire around itself, winding pieces together until a small figurine slowly took shape. What starts as wire in his hands will end as a white calavera, a small skeleton figurine used during the holiday Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, to honor deceased loved ones.

His ...Read more

Today’s questions are all from women in the early stages of dating:

Question: He’s 40, not 38. And he used his middle name in his profile. Told me on the first date. Important for his job to keep low profile. OK?

Answer: Are you asking me to tell you that it's OK that somebody lied about their age by two years and then gave you the excuse ...Read more

Dear Anna,

I’m (27F) told pretty often that I’m out of most guys’ league, looks-wise. The guy I’m dating (36M) is a great person, but he’s not conventionally attractive, and he can’t stop pointing that out. I want to be clear I’m genuinely into him — I’m attracted to him, tell him constantly, and mean it. But whenever we’re ...Read more

MIAMI — Life in Florida was unbearable before the widespread adoption of two life-changing pieces of technology: air conditioning and mosquito control.

And while screen doors and a healthy (or, in hindsight, not-so-healthy) dose of DDT might have done the trick in the 1950s, nowadays, the war on skeeters has entered a new front. Here, the ...Read more