But what Leavitt was doing the February day was a rare occurrence last winter across the Great Lakes. The long-term average for ice coverage on all five Great Lakes -- Superior, Michigan, Erie, Huron, and Ontario -- is 54 percent. Last winter, ice co...
It's still dark, and well below freezing, when Kristie Leavitt pulls to a stop and turns off the rumbling motor. For a moment, there's no sound in the world but the faint whisper of wind sweeping over the ice. The navy blue sky begins to lighten. The...
My husband is a labor lawyer, his days consumed with pandemic-collapsed businesses and workers losing their paychecks. During the outdoor walks we are still permitted to take, we keep reminding each other to notice spring poppies as we distance-veer...
My daughter is an ambulance-driving paramedic. One city over from mine, that's all, but for us she's a voice on the phone, a face on the screen, until somebody can promise that sharing a kitchen table won't inadvertently set off a new chain of transm...
We can't throw ourselves into shoulder-to-shoulder rescue work with strangers, the way we would if we were digging someone out of earthquake rubble. We can't funnel into houses of worship or yell together at ballparks. 如果要在地震废墟中挖人...
The nomenclature was so strange at first, and then it was everywhere: in our stories, our questions, our arguments, our dreams. In California, where I live, I wake with a racing heart one morning because in the nightmare I was trying to buy cloth, fo...
Worldwide, some three billion people -- 40 percent of the global population -- lack basic facilities to wash their hands with soap and water at home, according to a report released last year by the World Health Organization and UNICEF. Most are in ei...
This spring, as COVID-19 began spreading, people in Kaithi, as in so many other Indian villages, faced a disconcerting choice: They could wash their hands or they could keep their social distance, but it was hard to practice both methods of warding o...
If you add up all the situations in which international authorities such as UNICEF recommend washing hands during this pandemic -- after visiting a public space or touching a surface outside the home, after coughing, sneezing, or blowing your nose, a...
This year, Indians have been getting the message as never before: Frequent handwashing with soap prevents disease. They've been getting it from their national and state governments. They've been getting it on social media, from Bollywood stars and fr...
