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Uh oh.  Didn't see this coming. Did you know opposites attract -- except in a relationship? According to a new study, turns out, when you're in a relationship, you're more likely to find someone who looks like you more attractive. My husband and I are certainly opposites.  He stands 6'1" to my less than 5'2".  (I used to have to stand on a chair arm to kiss him when we first started dating.  Now we're old married parents.  Need I say more?) If we are in a relationship we are more likely to be attracted to faces resembling our own, but for single people, opposites attract, newswise.com reports.  Relationship status affects who and what we find attractive, found a study published in Frontiers in Psychology . Dr Jitka Lindová of Charles University in the Czech Republic and her team showed a series of photographs of faces to university students and asked them to rate their attractiveness. The photographs were digitally manipulated so that t...

I recently had a friend suggest to me that I write about community. He was referring specifically to a small intimate Italian restaurant in town where, because it's so popular, and there's often a waiting list, he (and his wife) met and fell in love with another friend of mine, someone who's had a great influence on my life, and become very important to him, too.  This restaurant is very popular (I won't say the name but it's very near Cummings Beach), and on Saturday nights, people have to wait for a table.  Seems both sets of friends ran into each other all the time because they each went to this restaurant on Saturday night and had to sit in the tiny alcove to wait for your table. Our mutual friend got very hungry one night and asked if they could have something to eat while they waited.  A small platter of cheese and crackers was presented and she and her friend asked the couple if they'd like to share. And a beautiful friendship was born. Here...

Not in my town, where endless redistricting has kids shipped up from downtown to the northernmost reaches of the city, and kids bused right by one middle school to go to another five miles away.  Yes, it's still happening in many cities. Guest columnist Risa-Lavizzo-Mourey laments this at the New Jersey Star-Ledger.  "It’s back-to-school time, and for most of us that inspires images of children with brightly colored backpacks making their return to the classroom on sidewalks and crosswalks across America. But how many kids actually walk or bike to school these days? Far fewer than you think." She reports that in 1969, nearly 50 percent of children 5 to 14 walked or biked to school. "And if they lived within a mile of the schoolhouse, 89 percent used their legs to get to class." But today, only 13 percent of students walk or bike to school, regardless of how nearby they live. "It isn’t unusual to see children climb into a car every morning to be ferried...