The nurses kept using the same word. The doctors used it too: Rock star.

It started with the Italians, whose arias rose from the balconies. They were on lockdown, but their voices rang out down empty moonlit streets. Ballads, the national anthem, improvised ditties over the barking of dogs.

Stephanie Weinert’s Instagram followers have come to expect unfiltered captions to go with her pretty pictures. That’s why she has amassed 7,000 followers, who click on images of her five young children and, in doing so, access her tips on skincare, home decor and liturgical living.

There comes a moment when something clicks. At a book club or a Bible study. In a carpool circle or a coffee shop. A connection is made, and a gathering turns into a group, taking on a life of its own.

 Elizabeth Tomlin has experienced it many times, and as a nomadic army wife, she’s come to rely on it.

The snow has begun. It is expected to last 18 hours, piling nine inches high and crippling weekend plans. The streets are emptying, the collective dash to the grocery store completed.

But here in our cul-de-sac, the party is about to begin.

I’m beginning the new year with a clean office. It seems a good place to start, a practical way to set me up for any other resolutions I make.

Robert May was painfully aware of the distance between his dreams and his reality.

The 34-year-old Dartmouth graduate had long fantasized about writing the great American novel. Instead, he was working a mediocre job as an ad man for Montgomery Ward, cranking out forgettable copy about silk sheets and white shirts. He lived in a tiny apartment with his ill wife and young daughter.

It’s become a four-generation tradition to head south of the cities and take in a small-town celebration of fall. Our route winds between soaring bluffs and a shimmering lake. It feels like a narrow passageway, a tunnel back in time.

I was a sophomore in college when I received the little blue book, a gift from a friend who also wanted to be a writer. At the time I was editing the student newspaper, poring over buried leads and dangling modifiers.

Business was good. So good, in fact, that the family company had become one of the largest breweries in New England, producing 300,000 barrels a year and supporting two generations of Geisels in Springfield, Mass.

There is an art and a science to slow living. This summer I’m trying to learn both.

In music you can measure it. The tempo called largo — Italian for slow and broad — clocks in at 40 to 60 beats per minute. (Allegro, by contrast, doubles that pace, while presto races up to 200.) 

More than 19 million people tuned in to watch the final episode of “Game of Thrones” May 19, making it the most viewed show to ever air on HBO.

Yet many were dissatisfied with what they saw, hurling gripe after grouse online. The finale didn’t fit the ethos of the show, they insisted. It was overly sentimental. It tarnished the show’s legacy. More than 1 million people signed an online petition to re-make the show’s final season.