Reina Gattuso

  • How to Say “No” to Sex

    How to Say “No” to Sex

    It was a perfect day for romance. The birds were singing, the flowers had just opened their faces to the early-spring sun, and I was walking hand-in-hand with a new date. I was midway through a story about a neighbor’s uncomfortable sexual advances when my love interest said something that stopped me in my tracks.…

  • These 7 Companies Ship Unique Seeds for Your Quarantine Garden

    These 7 Companies Ship Unique Seeds for Your Quarantine Garden

    IN 1944, AT THE HEIGHT of World War II, 20 million home gardeners across the United States dug deep to support the war effort. As the country poured the bulk of its resources into the conflict, Americans grew Victory Gardens to bolster the domestic food supply. Nearly a century later, Jes Walton is trying to bring…

  • 5 Ways to Support Your Community During the COVID-19 Pandemic

    5 Ways to Support Your Community During the COVID-19 Pandemic

    It’s perhaps cliche to say that crisis brings out the deepest human love and solidarity, as well as the deepest grief. But that statement is a truism because it is true. Even during the horrors of the coronavirus pandemic, there is hope in community. If you, like billions around the world, are currently socially distancing…

  • Taste the Globe With Recipes From New York’s All-Grandma Kitchen Crew

    Taste the Globe With Recipes From New York’s All-Grandma Kitchen Crew

    WHEN JODY “JOE” SCARAVELLA OPENED Enoteca Maria in 2008, he was sorely in need of a grandmother. Scaravella grew up in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, where his Nonna Domenica cared for him while his parents worked. “I remember her going to the market everyday, bringing her shopping cart,” Scaravella writes. “She stopped at the vegetable shops…

  • The Unexpected Benefits of Remote Dating During Social Distancing

    The Unexpected Benefits of Remote Dating During Social Distancing

    In times of crisis, grave concerns tend to intersect with more mundane ones. The coronavirus pandemic has created a series of global shockwaves, from unprecedented strain on the healthcare system to economic instability, exacerbated inequality, and xenophobia. Some of us, due to health vulnerabilities, economic precarity, or housing instability, are more severely affected than others. But between grim…

  • The 1700s Plague Cure That Inspired an Uncannily Contemporary Cocktail

    The 1700s Plague Cure That Inspired an Uncannily Contemporary Cocktail

    WHEN NICOLE LABOUFF AND EMILY Beck first decided to create a modern version of plague water, the potent herbal liquor that early-modern Europeans believed could help prevent epidemics, they had no idea how contemporary their experiment would soon prove. It was spring 2018, two years before a novel coronavirus would lead to the worst global pandemic…

  • Staying Safe When Socially Distancing With an Abuser

    Staying Safe When Socially Distancing With an Abuser

    When stringent social distancing measures went into place to help slow the spread of COVID-19 in mid-March, the calls began. These weren’t calls to doctors from people concerned about symptoms, or to unemployment officers from people without work — though those calls started, too. Instead, they were calls to domestic violence hotlines, from abuse survivors…

  • The Chef Bringing Native American Flavors to Communities in Quarantine

    The Chef Bringing Native American Flavors to Communities in Quarantine

    WHAT’S IN YOUR KITCHEN PANTRY? If you answered quinoa, green beans, or potatoes, you have, perhaps unbeknownst to you, been eating Native American heritage. “They might not know they have indigenous foods in their cupboard: might be canned corn, canned beans, squash,” says Brian Yazzie, a Twin Cities-based chef and food activist from the Navajo Nation,…

  • Preventing Household Conflict When You’re Stuck at Home Together

    Preventing Household Conflict When You’re Stuck at Home Together

    Most of us are so busy with jobs, school, and caretaking responsibilities that extended time at home with our loved ones once seemed like an unattainable dream. Self-isolation, resulting from the coronavirus crisis and government orders to shelter in place, however, can bring with it the silver lining of getting to reconnect with those we…

  • The COVID-19 Pandemic and The Dire Need for a Mental Health Safety Net

    The COVID-19 Pandemic and The Dire Need for a Mental Health Safety Net

    As governments across the United States are requesting, or mandating, their residents to “shelter in place” to help prevent the further spread of the novel coronavirus, acute anxiety grows exponentially one group in particular: our neighbors without housing. Many U.S. residents have already lost their jobs, or risk future job loss, due to closures in…