I’m writing this with no idea who our next president will be. You may be reading this already knowing.

I’m typing this six days before Election Day. It will appear in the printed version of my hometown newspaper, and several others, five days after Election Day. Such is the reality of newspaper deadlines. It’s a little like writing a ...Read more

SEATTLE — This summer, therapist Michelle Ehle added a new offering to her practice: a weekly group focused on getting through the presidential election.

Clients were bringing up politics during sessions, and she wanted to make a space for people to process emotions before the November election.

In the first sessions, the group focused on ...Read more

The Temple of Bloom is like the tree of life to everyone who gardens for pollinators. It is a more compact form of Seven-Sons Flower known botanically as Heptacodium micronioides. The Temple of Bloom’s native habitat is China where its wild populations are under threat of extinction.

If you live in zones 5a to 9b however, and you are looking ...Read more

Dear Anna,

I’m a 40-year-old newly divorced career gal, and dipping my toes back into the dating pool after a long marriage. I’m not looking for anything super serious just yet, but I also don’t want to waste time on people who aren’t genuinely interested or who have wildly different values or goals than I do. The idea of endless dates ...Read more

CHICAGO -- Peter Schoenmann leaned over a rectangular hunk of plaster with a historic mural painted on it last week in Berwyn, Illinois. He began slowly shaving material off the backside of the hunk with a vibrating tool while his wife, who’s also an art conservator, positioned a vacuum near the blade and sucked up the debris.

The goal is to ...Read more

As anyone who's swiped on Tinder, Hinge or Bumble can attest, some of the photos our eyes come across, well, leave a lot to be desired. In fact, the photos you choose can make or break your profile before someone even reads your bio (which will obviously be well-crafted if you’ve been taking my advice!).

In my 13+ years of helping people with...Read more

LOS ANGELES — Barely four hours after he had arrived in Los Angeles from Georgia to attend his nephew's birthday bash, James Huling was seated at a bar rolling a joint and sipping a cannabis-infused agua fresca on a recent Thursday afternoon.

"I'm trying to find out about that Cali life," said Huling, 71, with a grin as he sparked the freshly...Read more

DENVER -- What keeps you up at night?

Bank account woes? An impending work presentation? Analyzing that embarrassing thing you said in the seventh grade?

Boring!

To give you something fresh to worry about as Halloween approaches, The Denver Post pulled from the scariest thing we can think of — the state of the world — and asked a slew of ...Read more

When I was a little girl taking piano lessons, we lived in an old house with a dark, scary basement where mice frequently gathered and hosted parties.

Sometimes, mice ventured upstairs and hid behind the piano. When I began practicing, they would shoot out due to the horrible off-key sounds piercing their teeny, tiny, perfect-pitch sensitive ...Read more

Dear Kid Whisperer,

I handed my 5-year-old a few books and some trash from his car seat and asked him to take it into the house and put it where it belongs. He put it back on the car seat, said “no” and walked in the house. I am proud of myself that I didn’t react, but now I have no idea what to do about it.

Answer: You already did the ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- For more than two days, a vital shipping passageway in the Port of L.A. was shut down, and the cause was surprising to some. A big rig overturned, sparking a fierce lithium-ion battery blaze that spewed toxic gases, snarled port traffic and resulted in what one official said was massive economic losses from delayed shipments.

The...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- To hear police and locals tell it, Halloween in Hollywood two decades ago was out of control, with revelers routinely spraying and damaging property with a product deemed such a menace it has since been seasonally outlawed: Silly String.

Thin plasticine strands stripped the sheen off sports cars parked on the street. Not even the...Read more

My heart surgeon told me to take a hike, so I bought a pedometer. Then he told me that my surgery was canceled and I didn’t have to take a hike. But I already had the pedometer.

So I took a hike.

It was a walk in the park — or, actually, around the neighborhood — compared to the excessive ambulation I would have to do each day while ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — On a Wednesday night around 7, Morgan Steffy arrived at El Rey in Philadelphia's Center City area, following directions from an app she had downloaded two months ago. The app directed the 30-year-old West Philly software engineer to sit at Table 2, where she joined a Temple University doctor, a nomad who works in health care ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- For the young and upwardly mobile hipsters of Northeast L.A., the Frogtown Flea Crawl was the hot new event of their perfectly Instagrammable dreams.

For many residents of the historically working-class Latino community, it was their breaking point.

This fall, the event became an unexpected flash point in L.A.’s debate over ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- As she stuffed her clothes and papers into a suitcase and prepared to walk out the door of 5700 S. Hoover St. for the last time, Daviell McKinley had no idea where she would live.

She'd been complaining about living conditions at the residential complex for years, writing increasingly desperate messages to city officials to try ...Read more

Q. Halloween is always a problem. I want the kids to be with me and their dad wants them to be with him. I keep trying to tell him that the kids want to trick-or-treat with their friends, not in a neighborhood 30 minutes away, but he says they have friends near him, too. It’s so frustrating! Their dad never listens to me. What’s good ex-...Read more

CHICAGO -- The Sugar Hole puppets are an odd bunch. Since May they have appeared every Saturday and Sunday and offered passersby cones of ice cream. When the weather turned, they began serving soup, hand pies, beer and wine. They are not pushy. They are plush. They poke their heads out of a warren on Hamlin Avenue and take orders, then retreat ...Read more

This is a thank you note to my 40s, which I just left behind.

My 30s gave me my children. My 40s gave me the setbacks and screwups and strength and soul-searching to be worthy of them.

My 30s gave me some of my closest friends. My 40s gave me the chance to lean on them and the privilege of being leaned on by them. Some of us (me) took a while ...Read more

CHICAGO -- A siren screamed down 31st Street as six men faced one another in a dim church and began to chant.

They chanted standing up. They chanted bent over. Above a thumping bass from a passing car, they prayed to the holy trinity through St. Benedict that travelers would arrive at their destinations and for seasonable weather. They prayed �...Read more