A woman once emailed to invite me to join her book club for lunch at a country club in Malibu. She offered to reserve a parking spot for me near the front door. It was a lovely gesture, but it would have been a 2,100-mile drive.

The trip would have taken four days, maybe five. I stop a lot for Diet Cokes.

Another reader wrote expressing ...Read more

Q. My mother butt called me last night and I overheard her badmouthing my wife. She was having a drink with her best friend and going off. At first, I didn’t know what was happening, but then I heard my wife’s name, recognized my mother’s voice and I was ticked off. My mother loves my ex and hates my wife, and this was obvious on the call....Read more

Dear Kid Whisperer,

I have a corner in my seventh-grade classroom where I send students who cause problems over and over. They have to stay there until I come talk to them, at which point, I find out if they can come back. They have to fill out a reflection paper that requires them to describe their feelings and a strategy they used to calm ...Read more

As a man of many words, not all of which can be used in a family newspaper, I am delighted to announce that our special guest today is Prof. Ludwig Lingo, the noted linguistics expert and an ardent fighter of crimes against the English language.

JZ: Welcome, Prof. Lingo. What’s the good word?

LL: Beer.

JZ: What’s the bad word?

LL: Iconic...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- Dog owners may need to be on alert for a disease many have never heard of — anaplasmosis, spread by the same tick that transmits Lyme disease.

Anaplasmosis can make dogs feverish or lethargic, turn their nose up at food and lose weight, but many show no sign of illness at all. In rare circumstances, though, dogs can bleed from ...Read more

Next time your teenagers have a craving for the ultra-spicy Buldak ramen or the fierce-looking Labubu toy, don’t scratch your head and question their taste. Rather, consider yourself lucky, because they are helping you spot the next billion-dollar brand before it gets on global investors’ radar.

With birth rates falling around the world, ...Read more

In your 30s, responsibilities pick up. You’re likely to buy your first home and grow your family. Marriage, a mortgage and little mouths to feed can drain your earnings. Even the family dog eats a portion of your paycheck.

It’s easy to think that saving for retirement is impossible in your 30s, but it should remain a top priority, ...Read more

LOS ANGELES -- There are a lot of reasons why people reach out to Teen Line, a Century City-based hotline that connects young people in crisis to trained teenage volunteers.

They call because someone is hurting them or they are afraid of hurting themselves. They text because an important relationship has ended or a troubling conflict has ...Read more

No one can say we didn’t see this coming.

Since the earliest days of the birther movement, Donald Trump has been diligently and incrementally chipping away at the American people’s constitutional right to free and fair elections.

He has repeatedly sowed baseless mistrust about the legitimacy of leading candidates. He has called numerous ...Read more

Dear Anna,

I've been with my boyfriend for over six years, and I'm exhausted from constantly attending family gatherings and social events alone while he stays home playing video games. Every wedding, birthday party or holiday celebration, I'm the only one without a partner while everyone else shows up as couples. I've started making excuses ...Read more

LEE VINING, Calif. — At a trailhead surrounded by sagebrush, a naturalist welcomes a group of visitors to Mono Lake beside a sign that reads “Oasis in the Desert.”

Guide Ryan Garrett, his face alight, greets the group of vacationers and entreats them to see the value in the saline lake — it teems with migrating birds, it’s around a ...Read more

This was a leap year for several of my Luminary tall garden phlox in more ways than one, as I’ll explain shortly.

For those newbies to the world of perennials, we always explain that in year one, they sleep. This means they are there and will bloom, but they are getting those roots established. Year two they creep, meaning they put on some ...Read more

SEATTLE — It's beautiful, ethereal: When we hear the sound of the Swainson’s thrush in the Pacific Northwest's woods, we know our summer is truly here. Our bird is back, with its signature song gracing our long, summer twilights.

And yet, this is not really “our” bird at all. It is a bird of two worlds. Arriving here by late May for its...Read more

I often get questions from friends and potential clients alike: “What are your clients like? How old are they? What kinds of things do they ask you?”

Let me let you in…

My client base is about 70% women and 30% men, ranging in age from mid-20s to mid-70s. But most are in their 30s, 40s and 50s. In general, I believe that women are more ...Read more

SAN DIEGO -- Isaac Santos, 22, remembers growing up with family barbecues at his aunt’s house in Imperial Beach, south of San Diego, and swimming with his cousins. Sure, the ocean was dirty sometimes, but the beaches were open and accessible.

But since late 2021, swaths of the south San Diego coast have been closed every day — 1,345 days in...Read more

Our primary care doctor announced he is joining a concierge practice and invited us to follow him. We were excited, thinking this meant luxurious fluffy white robes in the exam room and 500-thread-count cotton sheets on the table instead of that crinkly deli wrap paper.

Visions of coffee bars danced in our heads. The concierge practice could ...Read more

Try as we might to avoid it, sudden, expensive emergencies can happen to anyone. A pet might need an unexpected vet visit, your car might need a replacement part or you may experience a layoff. That’s where emergency savings come in: By keeping a savings fund that you only use for emergencies, you can have peace of mind knowing you can tackle ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS -- On her first outing with a running club, Bria Black got passed. A lot.

“They were so sweet and so welcoming, but they were like, eight-minute pace marathoners,” she said. “I had never even ran before, so when we were running together, they would just pass me up,” Black said. “They would be encouraging, like, ‘Go Bria,...Read more

Dear Kid Whisperer,

I can’t believe I am asking this, because it seems so simple, but I can’t figure out how to do it. How do I get my 4-year-old to clean her room? With my now-8-year-old, we would just tell her to do it, and she would do it. Not with our second. She says she’ll do it and then doesn’t. I threaten her with loss of ...Read more