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Muhammad Ali knew his worth. We can still grow from that lesson

The first thing Mariel Gardner mentioned was the sound. Cicadas and katydids buzzed while butterflies and bees drifted among bright yellow blooms in Louisville’s Chickasaw Park. Gardner smiled. “This is what I wanted to hear,” she said. A new aptly named Butterfly and Bee Pollinator Meadow honors Muhammad Ali, but Gardner hopes it also reminds Louisville of something else: what believing in yourself can grow. Everybody knows Muhammad Ali as the Champ, the GOAT. What they don’t know is the Kentucky kid who believed in himself and understood his worth long before the world ...

The New Normal: Abnormal

There’s poison in the air outside my house, a bitter smoke of ashes and hot freeway, and it is keeping us all inside. Yesterday morning, the kids’ summer camp announced that the planned trip to the pool had been cancelled. They would do activities indoors all day. “How high can it get?” one of the boys asked, and I admitted I didn’t know. We had gone through a stretch of bad air a few years earlier — also due to invading smoke from Canadian wildfires — and I remembered feeling worried back then, seeing numbers in the 180s. The air quality index for the town today ...

Dear Annie: Kids’ sports have squashed our summer fun

Dear Annie: I always pictured summer as the one time of year when our family could finally slow down. During the school year, we are all racing from homework to practices to carpools to late dinners. I thought summer would bring beach days, lazy mornings, cookouts and maybe one real vacation where we could reconnect without everyone checking a team schedule. Instead, our summers have become just as busy as the school year, maybe busier. My 13-year-old son plays on a travel baseball team, and my 15-year-old daughter plays competitive soccer. Between practices, tournaments, showcases and ...

Patient who underwent surgery for femur walks with a bad limp

DEAR DR ROACH: I’m an 80-year-old female who sustained a right femur fracture in February. I had surgery within 24 hours of the incident. Surgery went well, and I was discharged two days later. Recovery at home has also gone well. I’m using a walker and a cane for mobility assistance. The hospital referred a home-based physical and occupational therapy company that set up a twice-a-week program at my home. So far, I’m doing well at 14 weeks, just not quite back to my usual activities. When I try walking around my house without the walker or cane, I have a very distinct limp, and ...

The bottom 1% we rarely talk about

America spends an extraordinary amount of time debating the top 1% — the billionaires, corporate CEOs and hedge fund managers — and the widening gap between the rich and everyone else. It is an important conversation in a nation that prizes both opportunity and free enterprise. But there is another 1% we talk about far too little. Not the poor. Not the single mother working two jobs. Not the veteran struggling to find his footing. Not the family living paycheck to paycheck. Poverty is not a moral failing, and millions of Americans with modest means are among our country’s ...

Republicans control Congress, so why is Trump’s SAVE America Act stuck?

President Donald Trump’s obsession with unfounded claims of election fraud has defined his second term in office. But in recent months his fixation has moved from executive nominee litmus tests and executive orders reinforcing proof of citizenship to vote into legislation – dragging Congress into the fray. The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, or the SAVE America Act, featured heavily in Trump’s primetime speech on July 16, 2026. It’s become the focus of the administration in recent months, eclipsing prior legislative efforts by proposing stringent and widespread ...