Franklin (New London, Connecticut)

We were just sitting down in the conference room of the old mill building when several of us spotted what looked like an animal outside. Then one of the women who worked in the building glimpsed it. "It's a beaver," she exclaimed excitedly. That was...

It was mid-April, and the Connecticut River as it passes by Bellows Falls, Vt., was raging with snowmelt, flooding its banks in places. I had come to see petroglyphs, rock carvings made by Native Americans centuries ago. Would I even be able to see them?...

Friendly's 298 Montauk Ave, Bay Shore, 631-665-2243 South Shore Mall, Bay Shore, 631-665-4860 960 Montauk Highway, Copiague, 11726, 631-842-8131 50 Montauk Hgwy, East Islip, 516-581-2466 361 Larkfield Rd, East Northport, 631-368-6891 330 Fulton St,...

Long Island is blessed with dozens of independent ice-cream parlors. Here are some of the more popular. A single-scoop cone will cost between $2 and $4. NASSAU Bollinger's 282 Main St., Farmingdale, 516-501-4990 Gooseberry Grove 12 E. Main St.,...

Ben Franklin was a man of great invention. And he prided himself in making things easier. Bifocals were hatched out of his near-sightedness. The lightning rod out of his fascination for electricity. A primitive odometer out of his need to measure early...

The center of the Republican presidential coalition is moving toward the distant edges of suburbia. In this month's election, President Bush carried 97 of the nation's 100 fastest-growing counties, most of them "exurban" communities that are rapidly...

Way up on the barren, treeless mountaintop sits a Taliban camp, which lobs shells every so often at the Northern Alliance army base below, giving this otherwise abandoned village about 30 miles east of Mazar-e Sharif a desolate look. Abdul Rahmin, one of...

Hungry they came. Hungry they left. Whole families jealously eyed each 50-kilogram bag of wheat, hoping there would be more for them. Newly arrived refugees loudly pled to be registered for the weekly food supplies. Young girls rushed forward whenever...

Hamidullah can expertly fire a rifle, fearlessly attack an enemy trench and deftly bayonet an enemy Taliban fighter. But the slump-shouldered, freckle-faced 15-year-old, a soldier for the last year in the ragtag army of the Northern Alliance, the foes of...