The air is getting cold and the holidays are over. Gifts have been unwrapped and placed into two piles – those we want to keep and those we’d like Santa to recall. For those who managed to score big from Santa, but now need to lug items back to be returned or exchanged – GMC …

Maybe, because it’s the year 2010, I feel a responsibility to raise the level of my game when it comes to New Year’s Resolutions. It’s hard to believe that it was just nine short years ago that we thought the world’s economy, or at the very least our home and work computers, might experience a …

There is perhaps no better embodiment of the old saying that “it’s not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game,” than Charley Brown’s baseball team from the old Peanuts comic strip. Several dozen of those strips, dating as far back as 1952, were on display from Nov. 14 to Dec. 20 …

A decade ago, Roberto Benigni was the talk of Hollywood and the world with his award winning Italian film Life is Beautiful. Tea with Mussolini (1999) is also a quasi-autobiography written and directed by Franco Zeffirelli. Both films set in the same time and place, about the same subject: the growing Fascist movement in Italy …

Happy New Year everybody! At the beginning of a new year it is always very tempting to offer up some forecasts of what to expect in the economy and investments during the coming year. I am sure you will see many commentaries out there that will attempt to do this. One thing that always makes …

Iron Chef Michael Symon was in San Francisco recently to promote his new cookbook. On this particularly chilly morning he deftly fielded questions from journalists while preparing an awesome breakfast for all of us. (Sometimes my job is really tough.) Between all the cooking and conversation it became apparent that this executive chef and restaurant …

Q. We have a sorely neglected nectarine tree. The limbs are very long and bare except on the ends where there are clusters of small branches. I’ve already removed many of the water sprouts but I’m unsure on how much to cut these branches back? We would like to salvage the tree if possible. As. …

Operation School Bell began in 1958 when a teacher in the Los Angeles school district saw children from one family coming to school on a rotating basis. She discovered that the children came to school based on whose turn it was to wear the clothes that day. What began as a one-woman effort to provide clothing to …

It was my first New Year’s celebration in San Francisco, California. I’d long dreamed, back home in Charleston, South Carolina, that I would someday move to California and live the good life in sun, temperate climates and just a little bit of Melrose Place-like drama, and here I was. I had a bottle of champagne …

The New Year gives us all the opportunity to reflect on ourselves and the time to change. It is a time to replace old habits with new, which includes changing up your skin care and makeup routine. Cleansing your skin properly at night and applying the correct moisturizer for your skin type should be on …