Quarantine (Life and Culture)

May 5, 2020

Cooped Up Indoors? There’s a Reason You Don’t Feel Well

When you spend a lot of time indoors, as many of us are doing now, it’s easy to succumb to a sense of malaise. Scientists, architects […]
May 5, 2020

How to Talk About Coronavirus

The coronavirus pandemic has upended all kinds of human behavior, including speech. Conversations are mediated by masks and screens, their sentences strung together with new vocabulary: […]
May 4, 2020

Smash a Coronavirus Piñata. You’ll Feel Better.

If you cannot join, beat. Such is the resolve of creative people bashing piñatas to defeat a pandemic (or at least, excise some of their feelings […]
May 3, 2020

Beirut’s Nightlife Survived Civil War. Can It Withstand Pandemic?

BEIRUT, Lebanon — When the disruptive threat of the coronavirus first came for Beirut, I was, appropriately enough, in a local bar. When a friend and […]
May 1, 2020

The ‘Credibility Bookcase’ Is the Quarantine’s Hottest Accessory

Imagine that you are a member of the expert class — the kind of person invited to pontificate on television news programs. Under normal circumstances, your […]
May 1, 2020

Garden Flowers: Not Too Late for Annuals

My farmer-florist neighbor Jennifer Elliott’s 15-acre organic operation in the Hudson Valley is like a giant cutting garden from April to November. So it was to […]
April 28, 2020

8 Delicious Ways to Use Your Sourdough Discard

Part of caring for a sourdough starter is “feeding” it: a process that begins by removing half of the starter before adding more flour. The portion […]
April 26, 2020

How to Make an Illustrated Map in 8 Steps

Travel and travel planning are being disrupted by the worldwide spread of the coronavirus. For the latest updates, read The New York Times’s Covid-19 coverage here. […]
April 25, 2020

How to Trim That Dog Right Up

As someone who often walks his dog — in this case an energetic white miniature schnauzer named Gogo — I occasionally find myself in a familiar […]
April 21, 2020

The Small-Space Workout Challenge

If you’re used to hitting the gym or running in an urban park or on city sidewalks, being ordered to stay at home has required a […]