There was a woman on the street where I grew up who put her Christmas tree away fully decorated every year. She would cover it with a sheet and scoot it into a cold, dreary utility room.

I used to think that was the saddest thing in the world. What had happened to her love of lights, ornaments and artificial pine cones?

I now know what ...Read more

DETROIT -- It is essential, after a school shooting, that parents and other adults control their emotions around their children to restore a feeling of calm and safety and limit anxiety, according to medical experts interviewed by the Free Press.

"In general, children, especially younger ones, do not have a good ability of threat detection or ...Read more

Humor may not be expected on a chemotherapy floor.

But for Jeri Davis, jokes became a way to cope.

She was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2020 after some early symptoms she chalked up to allergies. After the hospital visit that resulted in a rapid diagnosis and chemotherapy, Davis found many absurdities within the treatment ...Read more

MIAMI -- Cervical cancer is a preventable and treatable disease. Yet, it kills about 300,000 women annually worldwide. The World Health Organization is hoping to get that number to zero by 2030.

Toward that end, WHO has designated Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami as the first “WHO Collaborating Center for ...Read more

DALLAS -- “I’m fighting like that third monkey who’s trying to get on Noah’s ark — and it’s just started to rain.”

Frisco, Texas, mom Amber Freed isn’t the first to invoke that battle cry, but I’ve never met anyone more relentless, more desperate to live every day by its words.

Amber is fighting for the future of her 4-year-...Read more

I just learned a new way to tell if you are "officially old."

This tidbit comes courtesy of an 11-year-old granddaughter. She has no research to back this up, not a single poll nor shred of scientific evidence. That said, she is keenly observant.

With exuberance and confidence, she shared her observation around a crowded dinner table: "Old ...Read more

They are less likely to see the doctor. They eat fewer fruits and vegetables. They're more likely to smoke, die in alcohol-related crashes, and engage in other activities that can lead to traumatic brain injury. By nearly every measure known, men fall short of women when it comes to taking care of themselves.

And for months now, to the surprise...Read more

TAMPA, Fla. -- Earlishia Oates has plenty of reasons to demand more of the public school system.

The single mother of four recounted the times when she attended planning meetings for her son with special education needs, only to have her input ignored. She spoke passionately about how Hillsborough County district officials did little to improve...Read more

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Damari Parker-Morris slouched in his chair and fiddled with the strings of his hoodie as he stared at the English lesson on the computer screen in front of him.

Kevin Kennedy noticed that Damari and the other teens and tweens sitting around the folding tables in one of the classrooms at the Woodward Park Community Center ...Read more

BALTIMORE -- Howard High School junior Poppy Swallow is working to support and comfort children in her community by creating distraction kits for those receiving their COVID-19 vaccines.

As part of her Girl Scout Gold Award project, the highest award in the program, Swallow, 17, of Ellicott City, Maryland, wanted to find a way to help young ...Read more

Everyone has a dream, right? Some dreams are so big, you dare not think them out loud. But I did. I thought my dream out loud and now it is about to come true.

We are having our Thanksgiving celebration outdoors. In the woods. Branches overhead and leaves underfoot.

The forecast says partly cloudy with a high of 38, but you know how quickly ...Read more

“He fits in with all of us, but he’s completely alone.”

That might be the closest one comes to describing and understanding Trey Ciuri, the protagonist in John Peter Fer’s complex, far-reaching novel "A Fool and A Whore."

That description was from one of Trey’s many friends that Fer introduces using extended dialogue between ...Read more

In the first book in her Magic After Midlife series, "Throwing Shade" (‎Te Da Media Inc.), Deborah Wilde shows us exactly why 40 is the new 20. Especially if it comes with magical powers and some killer red lipstick.

On the surface, Miriam Feldman, a 42-year-old divorcee with a teenage daughter and a job at a law library, has a normal life. ...Read more

Consider 100 baby boys and 100 baby girls born in 1950. Experts predict that 46 of the men and 61 of the women — a third more — will still be alive at age 80 in 2030.

Even Steven Austad, an expert on aging at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, didn't give statistics like that much thought until about 10 years ago. Everyone knew that ...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Two doctors and four nurses bustled around a young indigenous mother as she lay in a hospital bed at Mercy San Juan Medical Center this summer. The woman was giving birth to her second child, and in the din of the brightly lit room, she heard that staff wanted to give her Pitocin, a synthetic hormone that increases ...Read more

I have personally prepared, or helped prepare, more than 40 Thanksgiving turkeys over the years, several of which were entirely edible.

Drawing on my vast experience, and occasional use of fire extinguishers, I wish to address frequently asked questions concerning how to prepare the perfect Thanksgiving feast.

My thinking behind this offering ...Read more

Introduced on its title page as “An historical, fictional autobiography,” "Into the Sky With Diamonds: The Beatles and the Race to the Moon in the Psychedelic ’60s" by Ronald Grelsamer will be a wild ride of memories and flashbacks for readers who lived through the era — or a detailed and thorough history lesson for those who are too ...Read more

Katniss Everdeen set the bar high for sisters when she stepped in to take her sister Prim’s place in "The Hunger Games." Mary Boleyn — good move as it turned out — stepped aside to let her sister Anne marry Henry VIII.

Sisterly relationships are fraught and conflicted and seething with potential envy and opportunities for manipulation. ...Read more

We didn’t start the fire

No, we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it …

Billy Joel, 1989

Firmly rooted in fact and history, "Freedom" (Big City Press) is highly readable, bitterly nostalgic, romantic, a little heartbreaking and surprisingly edifying. In this book, the second in a series about our nation in the 1960s, Mike Bond ...Read more

BALTIMORE -- Students had just divided into small groups in Jaylin Ramsey’s fourth grade classroom, giving a boy the opportunity to tell her why his mind wasn’t on reading. His mother had COVID, which frightened him because another family member died of the virus. He blamed himself, thinking maybe he had given it to his mom.

“I am sorry ...Read more