Lifestyle

CHICAGO — Shaunté Brewer didn’t know that her health was in danger at age 13. As the Chicago resident recalls, she was more focused on passing her softball test in gym than on her prevalent cough. Fortunately, Brewer’s mother determined that the sound and persistence of her daughter’s cough called for a trip to the hospital.

Whenever I see a historical novel that’s clearly a historical novel — the curlicue cover fonts, windswept beaches, hooped dresses, moody Renaissance hues, tall-masted schooners, maybe a helicopter to suggest Vietnam — I cringe. I feel bad for the writer. Because the idiot part of myself whispers that historical fiction was a terrible mistake. It’s one of those residual, myopic cultural prejudices, the kind that equates the value of a piece of music with its complexity and tells us not to take comic books seriously. I forget momentarily that genre has nothing to do with quality, and that, in the past decade alone, more than a few National Book Award winners (“Blackouts,” “The Good Lord Bird”) and a large majority of Pulitzer winners for fiction (“Trust,” “All the Light We Cannot See,” “The Night Watchman,” “The Nickel Boys”) were historical fiction.

Q. My boyfriend has been living with me for three months. Sometimes he doesn’t come home for days, doesn’t say where he has been, and I think he is staying at his ex’s house. When I ask, he says he drank too much with his friends and slept on the couch. I think he is with his ex because they have a child together. Is there an Ex-Etiquette rule to cover this?

LOS ANGELES — Seated on a chair, with the hum of twin furnaces and the Impressions playing in the background, glassblower Cedric Mitchell is lost in his craft as he and assistant Sara Roller turn and sculpt molten glass with steel shears.

The last thing you want to deal with on vacation is overcrowding, especially when you book in advance. If traveling more this year is on your to-do list, there are a few options that offer the ultimate escape without the crowds.

Similar to natural elements like iron and copper, people can ingest, absorb or even inhale microplastics and nanoplastics and their chemical additives. A landmark study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine links microplastics and nanoplastics found in plaques of human blood vessels to a potential increased risk of heart attack, stroke or death.

I used to dread making grilled cheese sandwiches.

What can a couple of fruit cans, wood from store cases, piano wire, type lead and other found items make? In 1935, 25-year-old Jacob E. Zint created a seismograph using items intended for the trash. One of only three seismographs of that caliber in Ohio, his sturdy homemade machine made clear and accurate recordings of earthquakes as far as China and Guatemala.

LIMA —All Saturday long, Lima residents and visitors will have the chance to get set for the April 8 total solar eclipse with a fun-packed event.

FICTION