While on her deathbed a few weeks ago, Mary Fallon made sure to order a cake.

Kai Humphrey, 9, has been learning from home for more than a year. He badly misses his Washington, D.C., elementary school, along with his friends and the bustle of the classroom.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Maya Rose Bliffeld's family is separated.

LOS ANGELES – This is the story of a journey from ignorance to understanding. It's about questioning beliefs, and radical rethinking. It's about parenthood and childhood and the pandemic.

BALTIMORE — Benjamin Banneker — who was born a freed Black man in Baltimore County in 1731 — is known mostly as an astronomer and mathematician, who also penned a letter to Thomas Jefferson about race relations in the U.S.

You've been thinking about it for some time and you've finally decided to take the plunge — you're going to build a patio or deck this summer.

BALTIMORE — Many Americans are heading into a summer where adults in the family may be vaccinated against COVID-19, while the youngsters aren’t yet eligible — leaving parents and guardians wondering what activities are safe with their kids.

There was a time when I ran three to five miles before work and trained for half marathons. Three years ago, however, I tore a muscle in my right hip flexor. I limped for months. I could barely walk, let alone run.

LOS ANGELES — Kukim Vazquez, a 17-year-old high school senior from Compton, started baking when she was in fifth grade and has spent the last few years watching YouTube tutorials and making more cookies and cupcakes than her friends and family are able to consume.

LOS ANGELES — Shopping for houseplants now can be like playing the lottery: There's no guarantee you will be rewarded with the jackpot. As houseplant sales have skyrocketed and more plant stores have opened, the demand for plants has become increasingly competitive for small businesses.

CHICAGO — When their toddler daughter Maddie was diagnosed with cancer in 2017, Scott and Pammy Kramer felt her care was in good hands.

The smell joined Jefferson Wiggins and members of his all-Black service unit as they tramped through the French countryside.

CHICAGO — Kyujin Derradji is well-versed in Advanced Placement exams, having taken one as a sophomore and three as a junior. Now a senior at Northside College Prep High School, Derradji, 17, of Humboldt Park, is slated to take four more exams in May.

PHILADELPHIA — Shawn Smith got a full-time helper’s job with an electrical contractor in Philadelphia and is continuing his education at Delaware County Community College.

Last summer, Global Plasma Solutions wanted to test whether the company’s air-purifying devices could kill COVID-19 virus particles but could find only a lab using a chamber the size of a shoebox for its trials. In the company-funded study, the virus was blasted with 27,000 ions per cubic ce…

What, you lost your glasses — again? And you have no idea where you parked your car? And the name of your favorite sitcom — it's on the tip of your tongue, but you just can't quite remember it?

COLUMBUS, Ohio — As teachers pivoted to online learning last school year, some faced a unique challenge: What would happen to their class pets?

BALTIMORE – Separately and to the untrained eye, they are not particularly distinguished rocks — the backdrop to several holes at the Forest Park Golf Course, part of an excavation to improve the water system at Lake Ashburton, or left behind in abandoned quarries and mines around the area.

LOS ANGELES – In early December, just as COVID-19 cases were spiraling in Los Angeles, Jennifer Grosso posted a request on her Buy Nothing Facebook group that struck a chord with her neighbors:

ORLANDO, Fla. – It all started with a silly old bear.

CHICAGO – Michael Penny, 60, had his first run-in with police at age 11 after he broke into a car near the old Chicago Stadium. He said police “beat him up, tossed him around and left him in the dirt.”

Last October, St. Petersburg, Florida, artist Margaret Bayalis, feeling burned out by the pandemic, was grappling with how to respond to it visually.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – After a year of talking with patients via Zoom, phone and sometimes FaceTime, some central Ohio mental health providers are confident that telemedicine is here to stay, even after the pandemic goes away.

CHICAGO – Chicago’s preeminent plovers are together again, settling in for their third summer of saving their species at Montrose Beach along the Lake Michigan coast.

LOS ANGELES – Louis Moore couldn't stop staring at the dancer, third from the right in the chorus line, at the China Doll nightclub in New York City.

If you think vaccination is an ordeal now, consider the 18th-century version. After having pus from a smallpox boil scratched into your arm, you would be subject to three weeks of fever, sweats, chills, bleeding and purging with dangerous medicines, accompanied by hymns, prayers and hell-fir…

It had already been a rough week for Wendy Mosko, a longtime server at the Brick Tavern Inn in Quakertown, Pennsylvania. Then a customer at one of her tables said she wanted to talk to her.

The COVID-19 pandemic had already left Anna Yao's grandparents largely confined to their Oakland homes.

ATLANTA — Lies Toribio walks into a classroom at Bethesda Elementary, in Gwinnett County, Georgia, and sits in front of a laptop bearing a sticker: "dedicated teacher."

Mark Gottlieb’s life changed in an instant when another driver crashed into his car, damaging four vertebrae in his upper spine and smashing six teeth.

DETROIT — Rachael Lobdell has never put on a cap and gown and walked across a stage to get a diploma.

Life is all about taking calculated risks that are worth the benefits.

Mason is only 30, but for nearly half his life he has been using hard drugs, including heroin. The petty crimes that came with his habit landed him in jail a few times, where he’d be on his own to deal with withdrawal and everything that followed.

LOS ANGELES — Last March, as the lights went off in museums across California and galleries were shuttered in the first wave of coronavirus closures, a dangerous invader penetrated the Getty Museum in Brentwood. It crept into the darkened, quiet decorative arts galleries, which are filled wi…

We are dinosaurs who still have a landline phone. It sits in the family room of our home tastefully decorated with hieroglyphics on the walls.

With so many people spending their days kitchen-adjacent, readily indulging in fat- and carb-laden comfort foods, the "quarantine 15" was expected early in the pandemic.

TAMPA, Fla. — Hockey jerseys hang from the bedroom wall, hovering above the Lightning puck resting on a nearby desk.

So far, roughly 213 million COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the United States, with more than a quarter of the nation fully vaccinated. The virus is still spreading, with cases rising in many parts of the country.

Meet Cameron Corbett, a hospitality-industry veteran who was recently hired by Four Seasons Total Landscaping through a new professional development program.

CHICAGO – When COVID-19 halted the world a little more than a year ago, one group of people appeared to be particularly vulnerable to this new, little-understood coronavirus: the homeless.

Physicians in Israel recently reported that six women with autoimmune disorders developed the painful rash known as shingles 3 to 14 days after they received a first or second dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

LOS ANGELES – In the 2003 musical comedy "School of Rock," Jack Black plays a wayward rock guitarist who takes a gig as a substitute teacher — and trains a class of brainy fifth-graders to play rock instruments, and eventually, compete in a local Battle of the Bands. By the movie's end, the …

The last U.S. airline to maintain a social-distancing policy of leaving middle seats empty to lower COVID-19 risk is set to start filling them next month, just weeks after a new federal study found evidence that greater spacing can greatly reduce virus transmission.

PHILADELPHIA — Getting vaccinated comes as a huge relief. You finally have physical protection against a virus that has haunted us for over a year. 

NEW YORK – At 91, Dottie Brier has found the secret to eternal youth: volunteering.

When the pandemic lockdown led to high unemployment numbers and strict social distancing measures, public health experts warned of a coming mental health crisis. However, recent provisional data from the National Vital Statistics System published by JAMA Network showed that suicide deaths dr…

LOS ANGELES – For a few tense months, between the time she submitted her college applications and received the momentous decisions, Rhea Mistry waited and wondered. Was her high school record strong enough for her choice colleges to accept her among thousands of other students in one of the …

You dread the prospect of aches and pains. That trip to the clinic is inconvenient and takes time. And that first dose already offers some protection.

LOS ANGELES – Los Angeles County residents rate education among the worst of several factors affecting their quality of life, displaying one of the biggest drops in recent years among parents of children in public schools, according to a UCLA survey.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — For 23-year-old Alexis Hernández, leaving Puerto Rico in January 2019 to study medicine in Mexico was the culmination of a lifelong dream. For as long as he can remember, the young man from the coastal town of Camuy aspired to be a doctor.