I've read that doing puzzles helps keep your brain sharp as you age.

I don't like to brag, but I can often solve the Jumble puzzle at a glance. After years of making millions of typos at the keyboard, I'm accustomed to seeing words with letters in the worng odrer.

A granddaughter brought over a new game called Mobi. It's like Scrabble but all ...Read more

There are two sounds that follow natural disasters. The first is an eerie, unnatural silence. No traffic, no car doors slamming, no children’s voices, dogs barking or birds chirping. Just a disquieting quiet.

The second sound is that of motors revving and gears whining, followed by the deafening buzz of chain saws slicing into downed trees.

...Read more

The air is growing crisp, the trees are beginning to shed their leaves and pumpkin spice is on every drink menu.

This month, Women’s Fiction Writers Association has gathered a list of novels that hold a glimmer of magic within their pages. Whether you’re looking for thrillers with a supernatural twist, romance entwined with magical realism...Read more

The cereal aisle at the grocery story is lined on both sides with options. But not all these morning meals are equal. That’s why Healthnews researchers teamed up with nutrition scientist Lauryna Nelkine to determine how some of the United States’ most popular breakfast cereals rank when it comes to healthiness.

According to Statista, more ...Read more

More than 17 million U.S. adults may be unable to get accurate blood pressure measurements at home from popular over-the-counter devices because the cuffs that come with these machines are too small or too large for their arms, new research shows.

The proportion of adults whose arm circumference didn't match the standard device cuff size was ...Read more

I, like so many others, have constantly chased the high I feel when reading books by bestselling author Sally Rooney. She has a way of making the most mundane subject matter fill you with such emotion as each book portrays the spectrum of human connection and interpersonal relationships.

The same can be said about her newest release, "...Read more

Like so many people, I have a deep and personal connection to Asheville, North Carolina, a once-sleepy mountain town grown into an artists’ enclave and vacation haven for people weary of bright lights and big cities.

I grew up 63 miles south of the town of 95,000 in the also once-sleepy berg of Greenville, South Carolina, in the foothills of ...Read more

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" is a question heard frequently around here with this small herd of grandkids.

Answers range from archaeologist to teacher, bluegrass musician, artist, builder and welder. A 9-year-old grand wants to be a NICU doctor because she's always wanted to be a doctor and loves babies. Win, win!

Of course, all ...Read more

Cohen Craddock was just 13 years old when he died in August, his brain swollen with blood. The West Virginia middle school lineman made a tackle during a Friday practice, stood back up, took a few steps and collapsed. Within a day, he was dead.

The same day, Alabama high schooler Caden Tellier — a 16-year-old quarterback — died of a brain ...Read more

It is a common enough tale: A wife, daughter, sister, or mother who began a career at the side of a man in her life, only to have her considerable contributions to their shared life goals minimized to a footnote in history or erased from them altogether.

When working on my novel, "Mademoiselle Eiffel," I wanted to highlight an important woman ...Read more

Maintaining good cardiovascular health early in pregnancy may lower the risk for dangerous high blood pressure-related health conditions, even among people at genetic risk for those problems, preliminary new research suggests.

The study found higher cardiovascular health scores, as measured by adherence to a set of health metrics, were linked ...Read more

It has been 10 years since we bought a new car, which puts us roughly 2,000 light years behind the curve on automobile technology.

Our new car has smart car features, not to be confused with one of those little Smart cars that looks like it fell out of a Cracker Jack box and can be washed in a dishwasher.

We are still learning about all the ...Read more

Staying fit was important to Linda Griffin, especially after she was diagnosed with high blood pressure. That came after the birth of her third child, April, when Linda was 29. Since then, she'd taken medication to control her blood pressure.

She was also concerned about heart disease because her father had two bypass surgeries. He later died ...Read more

As a captain of the Chicago Luvabull dancers in the late 1990s, Natalie Poli gasped for air after performing elaborate dances on the basketball court for Chicago Bulls fans.

Poli had danced her whole life – she started at age 3. In her eighth-grade graduation program, her answer to "What do you want to be when you grow up?" was "Dance for the...Read more

B is surviving, but not living. Existing with unconscious effort for over eighty thousand years, brought forth by a myth-spinning mother and lightning bolt of a father, he has been a weapon from birth and cannot avoid a life dedicated to killing, though he cannot die himself.

Such an existence must be exhausting, and in actor Keanu Reeves‘ ...Read more

One of the promises of autumn where we live comes when the university marching band starts practicing on the front campus up the street from us.

Time was, I’d hear the unmistakable rat-a-tat-tat of the snare drums, and I’d grab my youngest by the hand and run the five minutes to the field in front of the music building where we would take ...Read more

New research suggests that our thinking about aging is, well, old and outdated. A recent study claims people do not age gradually in a slow, linear fashion, but age in waves.

From what I gather, these are not gentle waves we are talking about, but waves more like tsunamis.

The first tsunami hits around age 44. Check and done.

My experience ...Read more