I am considering entering into a long-term nesting agreement with my husband because we have three kids in high school and neither of us can afford to buy the other out or otherwise stay in this town. Two of the kids are seniors and one is a sophomore. Three years seems like an eternity but both our parents live in town so we each have somewhere else to stay during our off times. We are thinking of doing week on week off with the change over happening at dinner time on Sundays.

Our mediator is encouraging this but my friends keep telling me not to do it. If I agree, are there rules you can recommend I put in place? And what would my options be if the arrangement is just impossible to live with?

While I tend to agree with your friends here, I also understand wanting to do the right thing by your children and uprooting them all at the end of their school careers seems very unfair. Nesting, even in short durations, can create many problems and lead to higher levels of discord so if you are going to do it, it is very important to establish clear rules at the outset, to be on the same page in your household including parenting rules, and to have a mechanism in place if either of you decides you can no longer do it.

The biggest issue I see is with new partners. The rule really needs to be that no new partners are allowed in the nesting home. This eliminates complaints of finding a new partner’s underwear in the former marital bedroom — something no one ever wants to find and the surest way to torpedo the nesting arrangement.

The second rule relates to cleanliness of the home. Both parties have to commit to stripping the bed and washing the sheets before the other takes over. Likewise, there cannot be piles of laundry, dirty dishes and general clutter waiting for the other parent to take over and tidy up. This is where you need to involve the children in the rules. They are old enough to understand that you are entering into this arrangement because it will allow them to stay in the same town/house until graduation. But, if they want this, they have to pitch in at home and keep their clutter in their rooms, help with the dishes and do their laundry.

The other critical piece is an escape clause. If one of you decides you just cannot take it any longer, you need the ability to give notice to the other that nesting is over. That notice should trigger a return to mediation to try to figure out what to do from there. It may be a new cost-sharing measure gets implemented — whoever stays pays more — with a slightly unequal division of equity upon a sale once the youngest graduates. Where there is a will, there is a way.

Email questions to [email protected]

As a widely beloved, much-honored series gets a reboot, others live “The Wonder Years.”

Though the original show’s “Kevin Arnold” still is on board — since his portrayer, Fred Savage, is an executive producer now — Dean Williams is the central character, played by Elisha “EJ” Williams, in the new ABC version that premieres Wednesday. The program still charts a youngster’s coming of age in the late 1960s with his adult self as narrator (Don Cheadle’s voice this time), but the formerly suburban setting has been changed to Montgomery, Ala.

“When you think of this time period in Black America, you don’t really think of middle-class Black people,” fellow executive producer Lee Daniels said. “You think ‘impoverished’; you think of what the media portrayed us to be. This really sits with me and Saladin (K. Patterson, also an executive producer, who developed the new ‘Wonder Years’) because we are around the same age. This is our story, a story that hasn’t been told to America.”

As the 12-year-old whose eyes that time is reflected through, star Williiams noted his mission is “giant, just trying to figure out how (people) maneuver, as well as just trying to learn what they learned in that time. Obviously, as history goes on, you’re going to learn about what happened in those days. Now that I’m playing a character who lived in those times, it’s more of an, ‘OK, well, what is going on?’ than an, ‘OK, I remember our teacher telling us about it.’ ”

Dule Hill (who also worked with Patterson on “Psych”), Saycon Sengbloh and Laura Kariuki play Dean’s family (in the slots Dan Lauria, Alley Mills and Olivia d’Abo first had), while Milan Ray portrays Keisa, who is to Dean who the original iteration’s Winnie (Danica McKellar) was to the long-admiring Kevin. Cheadle succeeds Daniel Stern as the comedy-drama’s literal voice.

As suggested by his involvement in the new show, 1988-93 “Wonder Years” star Savage (often a TV director now) is comfortable with the changes to the initial concept, which earned the Primetime Emmy Award for outstanding comedy series for its first season.

“There’s a lot of elements of this show that feel very comfortable and familiar, to me and to an audience as well,” Savage said. “We’re maintaining a similar tone, a similar blend of comedy and truth, the same idea of a narrator looking back on his youth with the wisdom of age … but there are things that are incredibly unique about this show. The fact that it’s a brand-new family and brand-new characters allows us to maintain some of the things we loved about the original, while also telling a wholly unique and new story.”

AMSTERDAM, N.Y. (NEWS10) – The City of Amsterdam held it’s annual Italiafest on Bridge Street on Saturday.

“You just have to love good food and good company, this festival is for you,” says NYS Assemblymember Angelo Santabarbara. You should probably come to the festival on an empty stomach, that’s what Amsterdam Native Rocco Natale did. He won the spaghetti eating contest, he also won in 2019. “I usually fast during the day, so I did my normal routine just fasting and then I eat whatever I want for dinner and it’s worked two times in a row,” says Rocco.

ItaliaFest had live music, games, rides and wine tasting…something for the whole family to enjoy. Italiafest has been an event many people have been waiting for. “Judging visually from what I see, this may be the best turnout they ever had for this festival for any festival on the south side,” says Assemblymember Santabarbara.

The even brought the community together and shinned some light on the local businesses. “They are great businesses, a lot of these people a lot of these names have been in our city for 100 years. It’s a very historical neighborhood with a lot of historical people who have been in these businesses for years. Today is a great celebration for them as well,” says Amsterdam Mayor Michael Cinquanti.

Mayor Cinquanti says this event is what the community needed. “It has been such a long time for us to be able to put an event on like this and to see all these people here and everyone enjoying it it does our heart good. It’s a great thing for our city and it’s a great thing for the people of our city.”

Julianne Moore knew the minute she saw Ben Platt’s electrifying performance on Broadway in “Dear Evan Hansen,” a Tony Award was coming.

“Let me say,” Moore said, sitting next to Platt for a Zoom interview, “I was there very early in the process because I like to see Broadway musicals too.

“Ben was downstage center and he started singing two minutes into it and he was exquisite, intelligent. Different than anything I’d seen on a Broadway stage. Ever.

“I turned to my daughter, I said, ‘Oh my God! I’ve never seen anything like this!’ I really did. Then I said, ‘He’s going to win the Tony!’ My daughter is 14. She said, ‘Shut up Mom.’

Moore plays Evan Hansen’s mother in Friday’s film version.

“It’s a beautiful show. But when you say ‘a career-defining performance,’ what Ben brought to it is so original and electric that suddenly everyone is, ‘Oh my God.’ That’s really special.”

A high school story, “Evan” expands from tragedy to a communal understanding. Following the suicide of Connor (Colton Murphy), a classmate, socially anxious high school senior Evan Hansen (Platt) is mistakenly considered the boy’s only friend by Connor’s mother and sister (Amy Adams, Kaitlyn Dever).

Platt, who turns 28 the day “Evan Hansen” opens nationally, has been here from the start. When did he realize this was life-changing for him?

“Just doing it in the first place, I already felt like a dream was coming true because since I was 6 years old my greatest dream was to get to originate a role that was entirely original.

“I realized this was going to be something a little bit larger than that average experience when we started in Washington, D.C.

“We all love the piece but there’s no way to anticipate the kind of emotional reaction this always seems to have. Audiences were not only moved but were tangibly altered by it, and consistently.

“No matter what the walk of life, there was just consistent tears and sharing of real difficult conversations afterwards. People were coming back, bringing their parents. It’s such a powerful icebreaker.

“Now I’m just incredibly grateful I’ve been afforded the opportunity to finish that journey and be the one to carry him over to the kind of final Evan resting place that he will live in always.

“Which is this film version. I know that’s a very rare opportunity for someone who performs onstage. So I feel really lucky.”

(NEXSTAR) – TikTok is removing videos that show students bragging about stealing items from their schools after the trend started to take off earlier this month.

The “devious licks” trend, as it’s known on social media, had resulted in students stealing items from their schools, or, in some cases, literally ripping off fixtures of their school’s bathrooms, according to educators in numerous districts. Videos later posted by some of the students showed them removing the ill-gotten goods from their backpacks, bragging about the “devious licks,” or thefts, they were able to get away with.

Other times, the students are simply destroying school property, an act also attributed to the trend by educators in some districts.

“We’ve seen students ripping soap dispensers off of the walls and throwing them across the bathroom,” Ben Fobert, the principal of Mountain House High School in Mountain House, California, said in a statement provided to KTXL. “We’ve also seen paper towel dispensers completely ripped off of the walls. Students have ripped off the dividers between urinals in the boy’s bathrooms.”

In addition to warning students against such behavior, some schools, like Cram Middle School in North Las Vegas, have had to send letters to parents or otherwise notify the community after connecting a spate of stolen items and vandalism to the social-media trend.

“Please, check your child’s cell phone. Check their social media accounts. See what they’re doing,” Cram Middle School’s principal, Gary Bugash, told KLAS. “That will help us here in our education system.”

TikTok confirmed Wednesday that it was in the process of removing videos connected to the “devious licks” trend, which are in violation of the platform’s community guidelines.  

“We expect our community to create responsibly – online and [in real life],” the company wrote on Twitter. “We’re removing content and redirecting hashtags & search results to our Community Guidelines to discourage such behavior. Please be kind to your schools & teachers.”

As of Thursday morning, however, TikTok has not been able to scrub all videos pertaining to the trend, as some users began using similar but slightly different hashtags to continue sharing the clips.

TikTok’s efforts to remove the “devious” videos come shortly after the platform announced that it was banning videos related to the “milk crate challenge,” which tasked social-media users with ascending and descending an unsecured makeshift staircase made from milk crates. The trend soon prompted warnings from doctors, police, and even whole municipal health departments, one of which warned participants to “check with your local hospital to see if they have a bed available for you” before attempting the dangerous stunt.

Climate change made the floods in the Northeast from Hurricane Ida worse.

So proclaimed stories in major media: CNN, The Washington Post, ABC News and many others. Get used to it, scientists and politicians told reporters. “More storms (like this one) are coming more frequently,” the governor of New Jersey opined, “with (even) more intensity.”

In August 1955, before it is said that humans began having a major impact on the climate, I (a little boy) was awakened by a sound truck coming through our Waterbury, Conn., neighborhood proclaiming, “Do not use your gas unless it is an extreme emergency.”

I soon learned from my father, who couldn’t get to work that morning, why that truck woke me. The whole of the Naugatuck Valley was flooded, he reported. Water several feet high rushed through the valley destroying nearly everything in its path. From a hilltop vantage point near my grandparents’ house, I watched in amazement and horror as trees, roofs, houses, cars and much more came rushing along the streets that bordered the usually placid and polluted Naugatuck River.

The flooding occurred from the remnant of Hurricane Diane. There was flooding from Pennsylvania to Massachusetts. Nearly 400 people died and the cost of damage was in the (inflation-adjusted) billions.

Of course, one-off disasters occur as we know so this was a once-in-a-hundred-year storm, right?

No. There had been an even more devastating Northeast hurricane only 17 years before. That storm, unnamed, killed 600 people. According to The New York Times, in Bridgeport, Conn., just down the road from Waterbury, “the streets were turned into torrents.”

In fact, just the year before Diane, Hurricanes Edna and Carol spread devastation to the Northeast, even as far as Canada.

This isn’t ancient history. It tells us that really bad hurricanes and floods resulting from them have happened recently, in the lifetimes of many of us. Dangerous storms have spread devastation over large swaths of the country, killed people and destroyed property. But somehow we’re supposed to believe that it’s all new, all because of human-caused climate change.

Of course, it’s undeniable that the world is warming and it’s quite likely that human activity is a significant reason for it. But is it really causing historically more extreme weather, more often?

Not if you go farther back in history than some people want to go. A historic study of Atlantic hurricanes from 1900 to 2019 shows that, in fact, the frequency of hurricanes making landfall in the U.S. has declined, albeit slightly. The intensity isn’t rising either.

But for some people. history only covers the years 1980 to last year. In that time period, storm intensity has risen, but only to the level of the 1940s and 50s.

Scientists and politicians should be careful of using recent bad experiences to make predictions about how the climate will behave. They are almost always wrong. James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, for example, predicted New York City’s Westside Highway would be underwater by the early 2000s. It isn’t.

Still, here’s a safe prediction: There will be more bad hurricanes in the future — as there has always been in the past.

Peter Z. Grossman is the author of several books on energy. This column provided by InsideSources.

I have a bonus family. My husband has two kids and I have two kids. We’ve added a son three years ago. We have tried your suggestion of a family discussion to air differences, but things seem to spin out of control. What’s good ex-etiquette?

Family discussions are great ways to problem-solve, but bonusfamilies must be careful that they remain a forum for conflict resolution and not just venting sessions. If the discussion is filled with “you always do this” or “you never do that,” the conversation is bound to spin out of control.

Why? Because it’s human nature to hear two words first and lose sight of the gist of the observation — always and never. Once those words are entered into the discussion, people are on the defense and not listening.

Anytime you air your differences or are looking for a solution to a problem with someone, stay away from the blame game. Teach family members to use “I messages” to explain how they feel. There’s a very simple model you can follow that really works in discussions.

Using “I FEEL,” not “you always”:

• State the feeling.
• State the offending behavior.
• State the effect it has on you.
• State what you would like to see.

So, “you always yell at me for no reason!” — something that kids say all the time — becomes “I feel hurt (feeling) when you raise your voice (offending behavior). I feel like I want to cry and I don’t want to listen (the effect it has on you) and I wish you would just talk to me without yelling at me (what you want to see).”

Now you are talking about you, not blaming them.

The family discussion model I often suggest — sitting down with rules your family has devised specifically for your family — was born out of necessity. When my husband and I wanted to talk to the kids about whatever we saw needed to improve, we approached it from a “we’re all in this together” approach.

The family discussion worked really well. The amusing thing was when the kids called a family discussion on us. We were floored. We had no idea something we were doing — working too many hours — was bothering them.

When my daughter was 8 and my bonusdaughter was 9, they put their heads together and called a family discussion. They very clearly stated their case and said what they would like to see (cut back on the work hours).

So take a look at your approach. Are you using the family discussion model as a problem-solving tool, or a way to complain? You may have to tweak what you are doing for it to work for your specific needs. Try to stay flexible. That’s good ex-etiquette.

Dr. Jann Blackstone is the author of “Ex-etiquette for Parents: Good Behavior After Divorce or Separation,” and the founder of Bonus Families, bonusfamilies.com. This column provided by Tribune News Service.

NEW YORK (WWTI) — Governor Kathy Hochul updated New Yorkers on the state’s progress combating COVID-19 on Saturday.

“We are continuing to partner with localities and health providers to make sure the vaccine is accessible in every part of the state,” Governor Hochul said. “We know the vaccine works, and we know that by not taking it you are many times more vulnerable to the most severe symptoms of COVID-19. If you still need to get your shot, you need to do so for your safety and the safety of everyone around you.”  

Saturday’s data is summarized briefly below: 

• Test Results Reported – 197,275
• Total Positive – 5,368
• Percent Positive – 2.72%
• 7-Day Average Percent Positive – 3.07%
• Patient Hospitalization – 2,382 (-13)
• Patients Newly Admitted – 322
• Patients in ICU – 557 (-10)
• Patients in ICU with Intubation – 312 (-2)
• Total Discharges – 197,629 (+303)
• New deaths reported by healthcare facilities through HERDS – 27
• Total deaths reported by healthcare facilities through HERDS – 44,133
• Total deaths reported to and compiled by the CDC – 56,184
• Total vaccine doses administered – 24,621,870
• Total vaccine doses administered over past 24 hours – 58,712
• Total vaccine doses administered over past 7 days – 366,081
• Percent of New Yorkers ages 18 and older with at least one vaccine dose – 79.9%
• Percent of New Yorkers ages 18 and older with completed vaccine series – 72.1%
• Percent of New Yorkers ages 18 and older with at least one vaccine dose (CDC) – 82.4%
• Percent of New Yorkers ages 18 and older with completed vaccine series (CDC) – 73.9%
• Percent of all New Yorkers with at least one vaccine dose – 67.6%
• Percent of all New Yorkers with completed vaccine series – 60.7%
• Percent of all New Yorkers with at least one vaccine dose (CDC) – 69.7%
• Percent of all New Yorkers with completed vaccine series (CDC) – 62.3% 

Each region’s 7-day average percentage of positive test results reported over the last three days is as follows: 

Each New York City borough’s 7-day average percentage of positive test results reported over the last three days is as follows:

Yesterday, 5,368 New Yorkers tested positive for COVID-19 in New York State, bringing the total to 2,349,893. A geographic breakdown is as follows: 

Yesterday, 27 New Yorkers died due to COVID-19, bringing the total to 44,133. A geographic breakdown is as follows, by county of residence:

Yesterday, 32,739 New Yorkers received their first vaccine dose, and 28,154 completed their vaccine series. A geographic breakdown of New Yorkers who have been vaccinated by region is as follows:

People with at least one vaccine dose:

People with complete vaccine series: