Sentinel Lifestyle
Feeling a little bleak about the world? There’s a film festival for that
Bleak Week, a film festival celebrating “cinema of despair,” started as a contrarian response to cries for feel good movies after the pandemic. Programmers at the American Cinematheque, a non-profit arts group that curates for several historic theaters in Los Angeles, heard the cries for comedies and thought, well, what if they did the opposite? […]
Tens of thousands are making annual peony pilgrimage to University of Michigan’s garden
ANN ARBOR, Mich. | Nicole Calvin has been visiting the University of Michigan campus annually over the past 16 years to catch a peek — and a whiff — of the school’s sizable peony collection. She even came twice this year. “I just love walking through the gardens,” Calvin said Monday. “I love that they […]
YouTuber box office boom: ‘Backrooms’ and ‘Obsession’ draw Gen Z to theaters
Young audiences turned out in droves to movie theaters around the country this weekend. It wasn’t for the big budget “Star Wars” movie, “The Mandalorian and Grogu, ” which fell sharply in its second weekend, however, but for a small budget horror from a 20-year-old first-time filmmaker that began on the internet. “Backrooms,” released by […]
A mop, a broom and a calmer mind. Why some find mental health benefits in everyday tasks
NEW YORK | Amid spring cleaning season, it can be easy to dismiss housework as drudgery, so dreaded or anxiety-inducing that it’s best delegated to others if at all possible. But experts from Zen monks to psychologists say there are mental health benefits to be found in such manual chores as sweeping, mopping and clearing […]
Flower gardens endure hot, dry summers better if you choose these plants
When summer temperatures soar, we humans can take shelter indoors. Our garden plants, however, have no such respite. Some may droop, wilt or get crispy, while others may simply refuse to bloom. Although there’s not much we can do to counter extreme weather, we can equip our gardens to stand up to it better by […]
Steampunk festival creates an unlikely capital for Victorian style and sci-fi oddity in New Zealand
ŌAMARU, New Zealand | The woman in the pink frock coat announced herself as steam curled from a strange brass contraption on her back. “I am Lady Sarsaparilla Ovabyte, of the Coventry Ovabytes,” she said. “We are purveyors of fine cordials.” Her companion peered through glasses made from fused-together forks. “Captain Bob McSpoon, inventrepreneur,” he […]
In farm country, an old American pickup truck becomes more than a workhorse
EFFINGHAM, Illinois | In Illinois farm country, there’s a 70-year-old pickup truck waiting on a fresh coat of canary yellow paint. It’s the first vehicle my dad learned to drive, as a young boy helping with farm chores during the day and adventuring with friends at night. At the time, the 1956 International Harvester S-130 […]
A robot is helping an ailing couple stay in their home. Are more to come for an aging population?
DURHAM, N.H. | After outliving Booker T. Bones, their second service dog, Brenda and Brian Marquis still needed help with some of the more difficult parts of daily life. They found Robbie, a robot that rolls out of a hallway into their living room several times a day. “Do you want to exercise now? Please […]
Ayesha Curry’s Cast-Iron ‘Fruit Cake’ is foolproof when dessert time is tight
While I’m not sure how or when it started, there is no denying that I have an extremely mean sweet tooth. It shows up all the time in the way I cook savory food — but it goes bananas when I get to dessert. None of this means that I need my sweets to be […]
8 crested ibises released in Japanese town decades after extinction in Japan
TOKYO | Eight crested ibises were released into the wild in a north-central Japanese town, decades after the birds went extinct in the country. The endangered birds took off from each of their wooden cages at a ceremony Sunday in Hakui city in the Noto region, where they were last seen in the wild. Residents […]