Rebecca Bodenheimer

“Every single day is a battle.”
That’s how Maria Elena Novo describes remote learning since suddenly becoming her son’s main teacher last spring. A third grader in the Oakland Unified School District in California, David hates Zoom; Novo has to hound him to turn his camera on.
“I sit with him every da...

As public health experts reach a consensus about the low risk of transmission of the COVID-19 virus within schools, Oakland parents have become frustrated at the lack of urgency by educational leaders to get kids safely back to the classroom. While the Oakland Unified School District rolled out a plan several weeks ago to begin a phased reopening on Jan. 25, it has now decided to postpone reopening, not even giving parents a new date.

Jigsaw puzzles have made a major comeback in 2020. In the spring, when the first shelter-in-place orders were issued in many regions of the country due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, there was a surge in demand for puzzles. Puzzle makers saw sales go up by 300 to 400%, and, due to the pandemic-related pause in production, quickly sold out of popular items. As this seemingly endless year has dragged on—with record-breaking numbers of COVID-19 cases in the U.S.—sheltering in place isn’t end...

For Americans, raising children is more expensive, in both money and time, than ever before. Even before the pandemic, when many parents were suddenly forced to become teachers and full-time caregivers, the cost of raising a child can be upwards of $13,000 a year for a middle-income family. And, while it’s too early to predict the long-term affects, one survey from May suggested the pandemic has already impacted the decisions of some 40 percent of cisgender women with regards to having childr...

Fat shaming Trump has been widely accepted and popular among progressives and liberals for years.
Fat shaming doesn't harm Trump, but rather average fat people, who internalize public fat-shaming and get the message that their body is a subject of ridicule and should be a source of shame.
Trump is one of the most inept and harmful presidents in our country's history, but he should be critiqued on his words and actions, not on his body.

What do you think of when you hear the word “liverwurst?” Many people think of something gross, usually liver (which, although pooh-poohed by Americans, is very popular in many cuisines across the world). Then there’s the German word “wurst” (meaning “sausage”), which sounds exactly like the English word for something that’s the least likable, the most inferior. Even translated fully into English (liver sausage), it sounds horrendous.

“The Good Doctor” is set to culminate its two-part season premiere Monday, Nov. 9, on ABC. The show, set at a fictional hospital in San Jose, was the first returning medical drama to introduce the COVID-19 pandemic into its version of reality, though other network procedurals will be following suit, including ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Station 19” and NBC’s “Chicago” franchise.
“Good Doctor” showrunner David Shore considered not taking on the pandemic at all, telling Entertainment Weekly he ...

As streaming services expand their content catalogs, the inclusion of classic titles from past decades shows us that inclusivity on TV didn’t start in our current era.
The enduring popularity of “Friends,” one of Netflix’s most-streamed shows in 2019 before it left for HBO Max, suggests that it’s not just Gen Xers watching nostalgically. Streaming is introducing older shows — particularly comedies from the 1990s — to a new generation of watchers, and Gen Z is eagerly tuning in (sometimes with...

A record number of women are running for office this year, building off the success they had in 2018. To illustrate just how historic Election Day could be, we spotlight five women running for office for the first time ever.
Less than two years ago, Candace Valenzuela was a relative stranger to the world of national politics. In 2017, the Texas native ran for and won a seat on the Carrollton-Farmers Branch school board. She told Texas Monthly she felt drawn to becoming more politically engage...

With Thanksgiving quickly approaching, adults with elderly parents and relatives are thinking about how to celebrate in the middle of a pandemic that’s still not under control. Many factors go into the decision of whether to celebrate virtually or in-person with older adults, who are at a much higher risk of becoming severely ill if they contract COVID-19.
Dr. Amy Paul, a Richmond, Virginia-based geriatrician who previously worked at Virginia Commonwealth University, believes the safest way i...

There is little nuance in public discourse about Cuba. Even six decades after the rupture between the United States and Cuba ushered in by the socialist Cuban Revolution in 1959, polarized views—from the anti-communist Miami Cuban exile community or from leftist apologists for the Castro regimes—still dominate in the media. But this dichotomy doesn’t represent the majority of Cubans’ perspectives or even those held by Cuban Americans.
Belly of The Beast is a new Havana-based media project hea...

Afro-Cuban music is made up of a variety of traditions, and includes instruments with diverse origins. Many African ethnic groups were forcibly brought to Cuba during the transatlantic slave trade, and when they collided with Spanish culture under colonialism, cultural fusion ensued.
The four main African ethnic groups brought to Cuba were the Yoruba (from modern-day southwestern Nigeria and Benin), the Bantu (from the two Congos and Angola), the Calabar (from southeastern Nigeria and Cameroo...

Despite making up the second-largest ethnic group in the U.S., Latinos have, until recently, been sorely underrepresented across all forms of media, especially in TV and film.
This fact was glaringly clear during the 2020 Primetime Emmy Awards, where only one Latino actor was nominated — Alexis Bledel, whose family is of Argentine descent, in the guest actress category for her role on “The Handmaid’s Tale” — despite stellar performances by Harvey Guillén (“What We Do in the Shadows”), Tony Da...

Small businesses have been crushed by the economic crisis. Research shows those owned by women have declined by at least 25%.
It’s no secret that small businesses across the US have been in crisis since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March. A report released by Yelp last week indicates that over 163,000 businesses have closed as of Aug. 31. Roughly 98,000 of them, or 60%, have shut down for good.
Among small business closures, women and non-white entrepreneurs have been affected at dra...

Since the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the Cuban government has consistently criticized the United States for failing to address institutionalized racism. During his famed trip to New York in 1960 to attend the United Nations General Assembly meeting, Fidel Castro complained of unfair treatment in a Midtown Manhattan hotel and ended up at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, meeting with Malcolm X and making no bones about standing with African Americans in their fight for racial equality. Cuba has also...