ArcaMax

'ONE OF THEM DAYS'

Rated R for language throughout, sexual material and brief drug use.

What it’s about: Two best friends living in L.A. have a crazy day trying to secure their rent payment.

The kid attractor factor: The comedy will be a draw to teens

Good lessons/bad lessons: Never let your boyfriend pay your rent, have each other's backs...Read more

Saturday morning began with a video text of one of the grands doing a wild gymnastics routine on an exercise mat in the middle of their family room. She was lunging, flipping and cartwheeling (barely clearing the sofa, the TV and a younger sister’s head), all to the soothing strains of “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

The antics culminated in a ...Read more

Q. My son is 9. His mother and I broke up a year and a half ago. Although we absolutely do not get along, we have been trying to share his time. We exchange every few days. Each time he has to leave my home, I see the happy little boy slip away. Sometimes he tells me he doesn’t want to go, but he can’t tell me why. I told his mother, but she...Read more

It was date night for me and my husband, the first since our daughter was born. When we returned to my mom’s house for the baby — hurriedly, being first-time parents — I heard a strange but familiar voice.

It was that of Raffi Cavoukian, known simply as “Raffi,” who rose to fame in the 1970s with such folksy, reassuring numbers as “...Read more

The sweeping tale of the French Acadians in America and one family’s trials over hundreds of years of persecution is revealed in "The Acadians" by Samuel Andre Aucoin.

Aucoin mixes history and light fiction to tell the often heartbreaking story of the Acadian experience in America. Beginning with a trip to the Vietnam War Memorial in ...Read more

History is most clearly observed through the rearview mirror. Leaders can more accurately be judged by the impact of their speeches, actions or inaction, beliefs and accomplishments not by eulogies but after an adequate amount of time has passed for a more objective assessment. Yesterday’s lauded heroes may have legitimately earned the ...Read more

Can we ever make peace with our regrets? That is the question I asked myself while reading Tom Casey’s "Unsettled States" (Heresy Press), which begins with a raw portrait of familial fracture. Bradley’s visit to his mother, Eleanor, opens the door to a past steeped in warmth now shadowed by regret.

Eleanor, a once-spirited woman, is now ...Read more

A week after giving birth to her second daughter, Amelia Laytham's focus was on baby Jocelyn's and big sister Vera's sleep schedules; on breastfeeding her newborn; on the balancing act that parents navigate.

The morning she was scheduled to bring Jocelyn to the pediatrician for her first checkup, Amelia woke up feeling like someone was sitting ...Read more