A lot of my friends and I are turning 50 this year, which means my calendar is filled with celebrations to mark a half century (!) of life and memories and friendships and mistakes and love and heartbreak and reinvention and redemption.

And my social feeds are filled with ways to look like none of it happened.

There’s a product or procedure ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA -- A tall, young man carrying a camera stopped two young ladies strolling down South Street one recent afternoon.

“Would you mind if I took a photograph of you together?” the man politely asked the friends.

This being Philly, you can imagine what the response might have been. But instead there was the spark of recognition.

�...Read more

This month, 21 current and former Major League Baseball players invested their own money in youth baseball. If that sounds like a feel-good story in which baseball’s past paves the way for baseball’s future, think again.

The MLB team invested in Perfect Game, a company that holds pricey tournaments and prospect showcases for college and ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- A dog-bites-woman story usually isn't much of a story at all. But an incident in one of L.A.'s wealthiest enclaves has become something else entirely.

What began in a Brentwood park on a summer day in 2022, when a dog owned by billionaire surgical-device inventor Gary Michelson allegedly bit another pet owner, has turned into ...Read more

Sparkling Rose may sound like an adult libation at your favorite Italian restaurant, but in the gardening world it is a Superbena or should I say a Super Verbena. Some in the green industry might consider it a novelty bedding plant, mainly due to its coloration. Personally, I don’t like the adjective novelty, mostly because of the dictionary�...Read more

I am known for saying texting is the “death of a first date” (morbid, I know… but true), and I stand by it. What I mean by that is this: Once numbers are exchanged, if you haven’t already set up the details of the date (time/date/location), then there is now a 65% chance of the date no longer happening. Here’s why:

- Someone simply ...Read more

PITTSBURGH — It started as a theoretical class project to improve the use of robots in a health care setting. It ended in a trip to California for two Carnegie Mellon students, who lived with a man with quadriplegia for a week as they tested and perfected their robotic interface.

Akhil Padmanabha, a third-year robotics Ph.D. student, and ...Read more

If you’ve sensed that your allergies are getting worse each year, it’s not your imagination: Allergy season in the U.S. is getting longer and more intense. You can thank climate change for your misery. And yet we’re not doing enough — to slow down climate change, of course, but to recognize and respond to its very clear health effects.

...Read more

Dear Anna,

I'm a 28-year-old woman who has recently ended a long-term relationship. Over the past five years, I've gone from one relationship to another, hardly giving myself any time to breathe and truly be on my own. My last relationship ended about three months ago, and for the first time, I'm consciously deciding not to rush into another ...Read more

Every tattoo has a story. Some are good; others may leave a nagging sense of regret.

Those tattoos that make you cringe are at the heart of a contest that the PetSmart superstore company launched this month.

Dubbed the "Redo Tattoo" contest, PetSmart is offering five winners a chance to replace tattoos they regret with a portrait of a pet.

...Read more

Parents may shrug that it's too late to reverse the epidemic of smart phones. But if we all banded together, couldn't we save childhood?

My oldest child just turned 11. Now is the time to be begging my friends — the parents of his closest buddies — to sign a pact: We will resist the temptation to hand them their own smart phones or let them...Read more

Dear Kid Whisperer,

I teach in a K-5 room for students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBDs). I love my job and I run a tight ship. My students know that while they are in my room, their negative behaviors won’t work: They only get what they want with positive behaviors. However, a few of my students know that there are some ...Read more

Kate Movius knew it would be challenging when her son Aidan, who experiences profound autism, turned 22 and aged out of the programs and services provided through his school.

What she didn't anticipate was the two years she would spend in a fruitless search for an adult program that fit her son. Ultimately, the family ditched the wait lists and...Read more

I was lucky in many ways that my parents were young when I was born. My mother was 19, my father 22.

Their youth meant their parents were also relatively young, as were their parents’ parents, which dropped me into a multitude of grandparents and great-grandparents at birth, a tribe of elders whose physical presence would enrich my life for ...Read more

CHICAGO -- Rose and Rob Bronstein were blindsided by their 15-year-old son Nate’s suicide in early 2022.

The Bronsteins say Nate was a funny, athletic and well-liked kid. What they didn’t know, they said, is that in the weeks leading up to his death, Nate was being harassed by other Latin School of Chicago students on the social media ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA -- Anxiety among children and teens is on the rise, and that concerns clinical psychologist and Temple University professor Philip Kendall.

Kendall directs Temple’s Child & Adolescent Anxiety Disorders Clinic, which treats kids ages 7 to 17. The clinic charges low treatment fees in exchange for enrolling children in research to ...Read more

When our kids were young, I briefly considered home schooling. Then I was teaching our son to play piano, found myself with the John Thompson Book for Beginners rolled up in my hand, ready to swat him on the arm, and realized I was not home-school material.

We paid a neighbor for piano lessons. She taught all the kids in the neighborhood and ...Read more

Q: My sister is getting married, and her fiance has asked my ex to be his best man. My ex and I don't get along very well and I have asked her fiance to reconsider many times, but he refuses to consider how I might feel. I am also in the wedding party as well as my two children, ages 10 and 12. Plus, there are other former couples who are ...Read more

If the remains of Jimmy Hoffa are ever found, ending a nearly half-century search for the notorious union boss, I know just where they will be:

My office.

That’s because I am in the middle of one of the biggest cleanups of all time, one that not only rivals the most ambitious urban renewal projects ever undertaken, but could be the basis for...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- It was a yearlong battle, Maribel Ahumada said, to get her teenage son into the program that changed his life.

The Gardena, California, mother was dissatisfied with the traditional system that arranges supportive services for Californians with developmental disabilities like D'Angelo Ahumada, who has cerebral palsy, epilepsy and ...Read more