Compass A&E

I had the good fortune to attend an excellent public high school. Langley High School in McLean, Va., was so good that the great and the good of Washington, D.C., who had their pick of exclusive private schools, often sent their kids to Langley.

The fall season inspires many of us to tackle tasks in home spaces holding essential and non-essential stuff that has built up over the summer, or longer. Take, for example, a walk-in closet that has become a stretch-to-reach-in closet with various objects blocking the way.

Autumn is typically a time when we dive back into books, after a summer spent, ideally, on vacation. But with the world in disarray as it is now, summer travel was nearly impossible, — and if you’re anything like me, five months of being cooped up have left you looking for any way out.

Halloween is fast approaching, which means it’s time to forget everything Tom Ford told you about how to look beautiful on Zoom. 

Spooky season is now in full effect, and while many of Halloween’s festivities may be canceled due to the quarantine, we can still carry on the way we have been with everything else this year: on Zoom! 

The arrival of the Pumpkin Spice Latte to the Starbucks menu has become a harbinger of autumn since 2004, when it was first released. 

Now, more than 15 years later, almost every establishment that sells coffee in America has its own pumpkin spice latte recipe that it sells from late September through October. 

As writer Lia Wolgemuth sensibly warns (in the article above), it’s easy to go down a bento box rabbit hole and get too deeply involved with making funny shapes with your children’s snacks and lunchboxes.  

Tucked away in my recipe box are a few yellowed, typewritten pages from my mother-in-law’s home economics class circa 1960. Knowing that I love food, she thought I might like these notes from a unit on garnishes.

We are an indoors people, my family. A walk after a big Thanksgiving dinner was the extent of my childhood experiences outdoors with my parents. But they sent me to summer camp, where I learned to light fires and pitch tents. Raised in a big city, I loved being in the woods.