Health Tips Line

About 10 years ago, my husband and I loaded our kids into the car and drove to what was billed as a destination family resort with an indoor water park . The ads promised a magical, kid-friendly escape worth the drive. We booked it without a second thought. We should have had at least one second thought. When we arrived, the parking lot was empty. Not “offseason quiet” empty— more like “the last guests left under mysterious circumstances and nobody came after them” empty. The lobby carpet was torn up in patches. The hallways were dim and echoey. And the indoor water park, advertised with glistening slides and splashing families, consisted of exactly one broken slide standing in an otherwise empty pool. My kids’ faces broke my heart. The concierge was pleasant enough. She advised us to just wander the halls and pick whatever room looked good to us. So we chose the least creepy option, pushed the bureau in front of the door before bed, and left first th...

Clockwise from top left: Liverpool First Presbyterian Church; a free book-exchange box outside a residence; Heid’s of Liverpool; feeding the geese at Onondaga Lake; columbine flowers at the Liverpool Public Library; sign greeting incoming drivers from the New York State Thruway; Operation Northern Comfort breaks down a ramp; playground at Onondaga Lake Park. To get the best out of a crawfish, you need to work for it: You have to twist and pull to separate the tail from the head, push the meat from the tail with your thumb, then go back and suck the flavor from the head. But getting the best out of Liverpool, New York, isn’t nearly the same squeeze. The village, only a square mile in size and 2,600 strong in population, fits right in neighboring Syracuse’s pocket. Despite its small scale, both charity and volunteerism pour from Liverpool at a disproportionate rate, making it a lily pad and vital leaping-off point for the entire region. The westerly side of town is almo...

If you could sit down with your younger self for five minutes, what would you say? Stop worrying so much? Trust your gut? Wear sunscreen? (Seriously, wear the sunscreen.) Hindsight has a funny way of making everything look a whole lot clearer, and no matter how successful you become, there are always lessons you wish you’d learned a little sooner. Celebrities , as it turns out, are no exception. We’ve interviewed some of the biggest names in entertainment—including Academy Award nominee and Emmy winner Angela Bassett, two-time Oscar winner Robert De Niro, and actress, model and bestselling author Brooke Shields—and asked them to share the advice they’d give their younger selves. And these are people who know a thing or two about dreaming big, taking risks, navigating setbacks and becoming seriously good at what they do. Their answers are honest, surprising and, above all, incredibly relatable. Think of it as a little hard-earned wisdom from people who...

When I was in elementary school, I knew two things about Liz: She dotted her i’s with bubbles, and she couldn’t do a handstand. The first I learned from the name plate on her desk, and the second because we spent hours during recess trying to “teach” each other how to walk on our hands. After a week of face-plants and grass stains, I added a third thing to my list: She was my best friend . That’s all it took. No “we should hang out sometime,” no “we should exchange numbers” (not like we had phones then anyhow), and certainly no agonizing for three days over whether double-texting is a social crime . It was simply: handstand, face-plant, friendship, forever.  And you likely have a similar story. But making friends as an adult is a whole different thing. I’ve been a fitness teacher for more than a decade, which has given me a front-row seat to watching adult friendships form. For example, there were two women in my early mor...