Author: Lance Garrison

Atef Abu Saif was visiting family members in Gaza with his 15-year-old son, Yasser, before Oct. 7 and has kept a diary of the war since it began. Here is his entry for Nov. 21, the day he decided to leave the Jabaliya neighborhood in the north of the territory for southern Gaza, en route to the Rafah crossing into Egypt.We cannot stay here any longer. We have decided.The shells over the last two nights have been so close to the apartment we are staying in that I didn’t just see the light and hear the thunder of their explosions.…

Long walks around his hilly Pittsburgh neighborhood turned scary for Jagdish Bhatnagar when his left calf started hurting so badly, he had to rest on the side of the road. Diagnosed in early 2021 with peripheral artery disease (PAD), the 83-year-old retired medical physicist knew blocked blood vessels in his leg were causing his severe cramps.But Bhatnagar didn’t have surgery or take medications for his condition. Instead, he takes part in a supervised exercise therapy (SET) program that helps him push past his pain on a treadmill three times a week while being monitored by a nurse or other medical…

You can tell a lot about a person by what he or she regrets. This holds especially for Supreme Court justices, whose decisions can, with a single vote, upend individual lives and alter the course of history. Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. said he probably made a mistake in upholding a law criminalizing gay sex; Justice Harry Blackmun was sorry he ever voted to impose the death penalty.Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who died on Friday at the age of 93, expressed regret publicly over one vote she cast: in the case of Republican Party of Minnesota v. White, a 2002…

By Jim Stocker, as told to Danny BonvissutoWhen I started smoking in high school, it was cool. Attractive women in grocery stores handed out little packs of four cigarettes, trying to get you to change your brand. When I was in the military, my C-rations had cigarettes in them and the thought was, “Smoke ‘em if you’ve got ‘em.” I don’t think anyone was concerned about health at the time.Some smokers can tell you the minute, hour, and day they quit. I can’t because I quit so many times. Jim Stocker, retired regional sales manager, Franklin, TN. I was in…

When Yaneth Flores first moved to Albany, in upstate New York, in 2008, she needed some time to get used to the sleepiness of a small city. She had been working at a fish market near Boston, where she lived after fleeing violence and a bleak economy in El Salvador. She met her husband in Albany and eventually settled into life there.But ever since the start of the pandemic, she has not been not herself. She and her husband lost five relatives during the height of Covid, and they struggled with grief as the virus spread across the area.Ms. Flores…

At first, Rich was just a friend from the dog park.“He had a couple of dogs and I had a dog and we were in a group one day,” says Dale Tunnell, a research psychologist in Sun City West, AZ. “We sat down and talked and found we had shared experiences in the military: I was in the Army and Rich is a former Marine. We became close. We’re closer than most brothers are.”When they met, Rich was overweight and had back problems. He’d had a heart bypass years earlier that inspired him to quit smoking.Later, when Rich was diagnosed…

Henry Kissinger was the wisest of American foreign policy leaders and the most oblivious, the most farsighted and the most myopic, the one with the greatest legacy — and the one we should most study to learn what not to do.I knew Kissinger only slightly (he worked to charm journalists, just as he believed in engaging other adversaries) but see lessons both in his accomplishments and in his catastrophes.Kissinger was intellectually brilliant and knew it. He had a capacity to see around corners, perceive possibilities for change and then work tirelessly to achieve them. His deep familiarity with history, particularly…

Cheryl Wilson went from running 5K races to struggling to walk a few blocks.When it happened, Wilson, a 63-year-old wellness coach from Chesapeake, VA, shrugged it off as a charley horse. But the pain persisted for weeks and made walking unbearable. So Wilson finally went to see her doctor.“Anytime I walked a short distance, I would get leg pain,” Wilson says. “It was in my calf, behind the knee.” Cheryl Wilson In 2009, Wilson was diagnosed with peripheral artery disease (PAD). She had never heard of the condition, which affects 6.5 million adults over the age of 40. PAD happens…

My favorite “Twilight Zone” episode is the one where aliens land and, in a sign of their peaceful intentions, give world leaders a book. Government cryptographers work to translate the alien language. They decipher the title — “To Serve Man” — and that’s reassuring, so interplanetary shuttles are set up.But as the cryptographers proceed, they realize — too late — that it’s a cookbook.That, dear reader, is the story of OpenAI.It was founded in 2015 as a nonprofit to serve man, to keep an eye on galloping A.I. technology and ensure there were guardrails and kill switches — because when…

At first, Douglas Salisbury’s peripheral artery disease, or PAD, crimped his sex life in small ways. “Cramping in my calves during sex was the most obvious related issue,” says the 60-year-old retired chemical dependency counselor.Salisbury managed the cramps by drinking extra water before sex. He also tried applying ancient magnesium oil to the skin on his calves after hearing that the mineral might also ease the cramping.He says it helped somewhat, but nothing helped Salisbury more than simply standing up or hanging his legs off the side of the bed. “Gravity helps,” he says. Cramping in my calves during sex…