Dining

A Foodie’s Trip to the Doctor

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What do your teeth, brain, mood and gut all have in common? Unsurprisingly, it turns out one answer is almost everything. They are, after all, interconnected and essential aspects of your body and life. The other, often overlooked answer, however, is food. The COVID pandemic put into perspective how little control we have over certain parts of our health, but quarantine was sobering, proving we don’t have to be “an inert chunk of randomly assembled molecules drifting wherever the universe blows” us.  In fact, the decisions we make about our food give us resounding leverage over our health.

academic life cornell

ROSENBAND | When Hospitals Become Our Battlegrounds

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When 7 p.m. arrives, my neighbors gather on their porches, banging pots and pans and cheering for doctors, like my dad, as they arrive home. It’s a sweet tribute. But in this period of social distancing, when every pursuit is a solitary one, I pinpoint those moments of camaraderie as my loneliest ones. I wait for 7 p.m., and when it rolls around I welcome a dispirited substitute for my father, void of his trademark optimism. I quickly scan him up and down — he has a face shield and mask in one hand and a bag of pomegranate licorice in the other, a blank face, a few drops of dried blood on his sneakers, a loosely tied Cornell sweatshirt hanging from his waist  — and then I continue to stir a pot of butternut squash soup.

Columns

WU | Masks for My Mom

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On Friday, I watched my mom bask in the 75 degree daylight on our back porch. She sported her typical lounge outfit — a light magenta athleisure jacket and gray capris — and browsed the web  on her iPad, taking occasional sips of jasmine tea and enjoying her time off from work. I felt like I was watching her in a video: It was my mom, but from a different, slower, easier time. It was so normal. But nothing as of late has been normal.