New Study Links Sociopathic Traits to People Who Are Anti-Mask or Don’t Practice Social Distancing

While wearing a mask is an effortless way to curb the transmission of COVID-19, face coverings have become extremely politicized in the U.S. during the pandemic. Continue reading New Study Links Sociopathic Traits to People Who Are Anti-Mask or Don’t Practice Social Distancing

THE REMARKABLE LIFE AND WORK OF GUITAR MAKER FREEMAN VINES

Freeman Vines has spent almost half a century creating the most distinctive guitars in America. No two look or sound the same. A few of the 78-year-old’s guitars are carved to look like African masks; others partake in the famously boxy Bo Diddley style, and others resemble nothing so much as the leaf off a tree, or the flat part of a well-used oar. For materials, Vines works with wood salvaged from unlikely places: the soundboard of a discarded piano, the front step of an old tobacco barn, the plank from a mule’s trough. Vines is on a quest. He’s trying to build a guitar with an eerily perfect tone that he first heard as a young man, and which he hasn’t been able to wring out of any of the dozens of guitars he’s crafted. Continue reading THE REMARKABLE LIFE AND WORK OF GUITAR MAKER FREEMAN VINES

How to Deal With the Anxiety of Uncertainty

IF THERE’S ONE defining feature of the coronavirus pandemic, it’s uncertainty. Will there be a vaccine? When can schools safely reopen? Will I still have a job next week? Should I book a spring vacation abroad? A crisis that we’d all hoped would be short-lived is dragging on indefinitely, and the list of unanswered questions keeps growing. Continue reading How to Deal With the Anxiety of Uncertainty