Attention young adults. May 12 is Mother's Day, the busiest Sunday of the year for telephone volume, according to the Pew Research Center. (Father's Day is the busiest single day for collect calls for AT&T.)

This Mother's Day, do something that will leave Mom dazed,...

As annual duties go, completing the FAFSA in spring is as pleasing as having a mammogram while filling out your 1040. Warming winds lure young and old to neighborhood cafes and parks as middle-aged parents of college kids collectively growl at computers.

The clunky acronym stands for...

If you're a public radio fan, like I am, try this exercise. When you turn on your local station, heed the first phrase you hear. Here, for example, are some that I've noted.

Plummeting temperatures
I cried in my car
Sixteen stingrays died
This is...

From the Business Insider, August 17, 2012:

Discover Magazine is Moving to the Middle of Nowhere

The science journalism world got a shake up this week when Kalmbach Publishing announced on Aug. 13 that they will be moving the highly successful popular science magazine Discover Magazine...

During the first year after my husband moved out, I ignored the ironclad rule of divorce and children: that every child will assume blame. Because my son Erik -- a preschooler at the time -- did not broach the subject, I came to believe that we were the one family...

I am sliding toward a wardrobe of soft, stretchy clothes with no buttons, zippers or collars. After returning home from work, I am in yoga pants within minutes, my work clothes lying on the floor as if felled by cardiac arrest. In doing so, I like to believe I am...

One year ago, as my son packed for his first year at college, I combed my mind for parental advice. But when the goodbyes were over, the only advice left standing from 27 advice nuggets would be the one I tossed in at the last minute.

...

Baby Boomers are "amongst the first to grow up genuinely expecting the world to improve with time," according to Wikipedia. So true. As a Boomer, I have witnessed monumental changes since my childhood (the resurgence of bald eagles, TiVo and chip clips, to name a few). Still, there...

When I was 19 years old, my father began to die. I was at a Carr Hall dorm party at the University of Illinois when I received a phone call from Mom, who told me that doctors had found a "spot" on Dad's lung and were going to...

You like clean, modern lines; he prefers ornate, Victorian furniture.

Your ideal home boasts colorful walls and countless tchotchkes; he aims for a monastic décor.

If you're going to loggerheads with your partner over decorating -- let's just say he wants to cluster his New York Yankees paraphernalia in the...

In a scene familiar to many farsighted Boomers, I found myself recently standing in a grocery store aisle, holding a bottle of barbeque sauce at arm's length in order to bring into focus the ridiculously tiny type. "When did children with 20/10 vision start designing all our consumer products?" I...

I remember my peculiar reaction the first time I heard someone was divorced. It's a moment burned into my now middle-aged mind, like my first funeral (I nervously laughed as I stood by the coffin), first communion (I practiced in front of my bedroom mirror with Necco wafers for weeks),...

Ninety-nine percent of family life has centered on group living -- in caves, in frontier settlements, on farms. Not until the 20th century did nuclear families, void of extended kin, routinely seek their own homes. The downsized family of two parents and one child in one house occupies a tiny...

Does your dog have a sense of self? Does your cat live her life with Zenlike awareness or is she just a pleasantly-packaged pet with mechanical eyes set in an unanimated, furry face?

Birds, dolphins, elephants, mice, pre-historic human beings... Do any creatures other than modern-day people possess what we...

When I read last month that NASA's Kepler space telescope was allowing scientists to spy on a potentially habitable planet 600 light years away and compare it to Earth (it's 72 degrees, 290 days to its year), I thought of one person: atheist and Elmer's glue...

Just one child. Just a waitress. Just an average student.

There are times when just is appropriate, as in "I'm OK. I just stubbed my toe." But often, the word spotlights exactly what the speaker, consciously or not, deems inferior or lacking.

Having raised one child, who is...

I have a peculiar habit of tracking incidents that land substitute teachers in hot water, a hobby I started in 2008 while researching a book.

It was impossible to miss the October story about substitute teacher Patricia McAllister, who was fired from Los Angeles Unified...

I don't want to interface with you later on that.

Or have a dialogue about it.

Or, God help me, language about it.

We'll just talk, like people have done for 100,000-350,000 years prior to the advent of interfacing and will continue to do, even if the...

Kegeling -- an easy, pelvic-floor exercise -- can help prevent incontinence and even heighten sexual pleasure, if done regularly. I had read this for years, long before Kegel Camp became the 36th most popular paid app in the health category.

But beneficial, free...

Researchers have recently documented that students' academic achievement suffers because of their regular teachers' absences.

--Raegen Miller, Associate Director for Education Research, Center for American Progress, writing on StudentsFirst.org blog, April 19, 2011

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