Author: NY TIMES

I am nearly 60 and newly divorced. My mother is 83 and has multiple health issues: She can barely walk and has profound deafness. She lives alone on a modest budget in a large house that needs repair. I live and work 200 miles away. I am moving into a small apartment until I get back on my feet after my divorce. A local friend runs errands for my mother, and I manage her finances. We don’t have any close relatives. Fortunately, she has begrudgingly agreed with her doctor, her friend and me that she can no longer live alone.…

Tour companies that offer multiday trips arrange most everything for you: lodging, sightseeing, food and transportation. But group size, style of travel and budget are among the considerations travelers should assess before picking a tour. Read on for tips.Big group or smallStart your research by thinking about how many people you want to travel with and what your tolerance is for the social demands dictated by group size.Smaller groups can move more nimbly and possibly see more. But they can also be more intensely social as you spend a great deal of time with the same people touring and dining.Larger…

Are you getting ominous warnings about your phone’s storage? Have you ever whipped out your phone to show someone a certain photo and had to scroll for minutes to find it? If you’ve accumulated gigabytes of images over the years, streamlining your photo library and dumping other unnecessary apps and files can let you reclaim that space. Here’s a guide to doing just that by using free tools that are probably already on your phone.Check StorageStart your cleanup process by noting the space on your device — and what’s filling it up.On many Android devices, open the Settings app and…

An indie comedy set in an Airbnb leans into the ways we distance ourselves from one another. Source link

When a young British man disappeared while vacationing on the Spanish island of Tenerife in mid-June, a familiar routine unfolded: search and rescue workers combing through the landscape, regular updates from tearful family members, a steady drumbeat of unconfirmed reports that he had been spotted.And soon after, they were joined by another increasingly common feature of disappearances: online sleuths who are certain that they can do what the police have not yet done and solve the case.This weekend, the Spanish authorities called off their search for Jay Slater, a 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer from England who was visiting Tenerife, a popular…

So you have an opinion you want to share online — something you need to get off your chest. Maybe it’s about the current political climate. Maybe you want to have the final word on whether or not people should wear their shoes in the house.If you know you have a spicy take on your hands, you might look to the American painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell to help you share it. Across social media, his work “Freedom of Speech” appears alongside all manner of strong opinions, from the highly serious to the absurd to the esoteric, enshrining itself into…

Plan B talks get louderThe Biden campaign’s attempts to soothe panicked Democrats and donors after the president’s calamitous debate appear to have cratered.One Democratic lawmaker has openly called on President Biden to withdraw from the race, while others are sharply criticizing his campaign’s response. Polls show his approval ratings are falling. And many party backers remain as nervous about sticking with him as they were last week — but also worry about the alternatives.The latest: Representative Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first sitting Democrat to demand that Biden step aside. And some Biden allies qualified their post-debate defenses: Representative…

On a recent clear day, visitors were wandering through the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to gawk at works by Yayoi Kusama and Alexander Calder, and, a few blocks away, making their way through the galleries at the Contemporary Jewish Museum and the Museum of the African Diaspora.That evening, music lovers poured in to Davies Symphony Hall to hear Esa-Pekka Salonen conduct the San Francisco Symphony and into the War Memorial Opera House across the street, where the San Francisco Opera was giving the American premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s “Innocence.”Although attendance at the city’s arts institutions remains down from…

The leader of the Universam gang — Marat’s brother, Vova — is also freshly returned from battle, having served in the brutal Soviet-Afghan War. He seems unbothered by what he saw there. None of his peers seem curious, either. This is the show’s aesthetic world: blank to the point of impenetrability. The director, Zhora Kryzhovnikov, rarely lets the camera wander beyond the rectilinear bounds of apartment blocks. The period details are hauntingly precise, but I still have no idea what Kazan actually looks like. The plot is somehow both frenetic and inert.The show is set in a critical moment. Everyone…

If old age is not for snowflakes — well, try directing a 90-minute feature film about old age in the iPhone era, as Niclas Larsson has done.Mr. Larsson, 33, greeted me on a recent morning into his 15th-floor terraced apartment in a former button factory in Manhattan, looking eerily like his dog, a blond lurcher named Ted, the way many owners do. He had settled here, the garment district of Midtown Manhattan, after rejecting “hipper” quarters in Brooklyn and the financial district.A native Swede with a deep appreciation of Americana, he was offering strong black coffee and strong opinions on…