Dear Heloise: This is to add to Karen from Michigan’s suggestion about recycling toilet paper rolls. I reuse them by cutting the rolls in half and standing them upright in the bottom of a plastic ice-cream bucket. Next, I add potting soil until it reaches the tops of the shortened rolls. ...

Dear Annie: I’m a 64-year-old woman who thought making new friends at my age would be simple: find someone kind, show up, bring snacks, repeat. A few months ago, I met “Jill” at a community class. We clicked right away. She’s funny in that dry, smart way that makes you feel like ...

In 1848, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published “The Communist Manifesto” in London. In 1885, President Chester Arthur dedicated the Washington Monument. In 1911, composer Gustav Mahler, despite a fever, conducted the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in what turned out to be his ...

Dear Annie: I’ve had a dear friend for nearly a decade. He has been addicted to meth, heroin, alcohol -- you name it. For years, I was the savior he ran to when everything fell apart. He’s married and has two young children. Before his youngest was born, he was a full-blown meth addict. I ...

Dear Heloise: My 4-year-old grandson and I enjoy playing scavenger hunts together, but sometimes we can’t remember exactly what he has hidden outside. To make things easier, we now line up seven or eight items that we’ve chosen to hide -- usually his toys -- and I take a quick photo of them ...

Dear Heloise: I frequently see fellow shoppers in the grocery store produce section who snatch and eat bits of items there -- grapes, cherries, blueberries, blackberries, little peppers, and even a small apple one day. While individual instances are miniscule, this “grazing” over time can ...