The New York Times Magazine

It was not hard to detect some gloating in the coverage of a recent study showing that older fathers are more likely to have children with schizophrenia.

With Nasdaq halved and the Dow flirting with bear-market territory, the idea of protecting your portfolio from downside risk may seem a little like buying flood insurance when your living room is under four feet of water. But there's reason to believe that the worst may not be behind us. Short interest on Nasdaq -- the number of shares investors borrow and then sell in hopes of repurchasing them later a lower price -- rose to a record level in March.

Last year, a 10-month-old baby boy died in the hospital after a minor operation went wrong. The baby's parents, an American couple, had two other children and probably could have had another if they wished; neither parent was infertile, and both were healthy and in their 30's. But they did not want another child. They wanted this child.

When you once believed something that now strikes you as absurd, even unhinged, it can be almost impossible to summon that feeling of credulity again.

The worst way for a famous person to retain her privacy is to demand it. A celebrated recluse will never be left alone in a celebrity culture; her silence is an irresistible challenge and her secrets will eventually be prized from her. Is it any coincidence that J. D. Salinger has attracted two of the most loquacious memoirists in decades? No, the business of being a public private person is subtle and tricky. Retreat and refusal are not enough. Bargains must be struck.

The shelves at Spino's Pawn Shop in Waterbury, Conn., brim with mismatched goods: stereos, vacuums, saxophones, crossbows, video games, yellowing packages of Krazy Glue. The brothers who run the place pay hard cash for what people drag in, though they draw the line at anything that's alive; a fisherman once tried to pawn a string of wriggling carp.

When Jefferson Alexander Stackhouse was 3 years old, good luck entered his life for the first and maybe the last time. Abandoned as a 2-week-old infant by a schizophrenic mother, Jeff had lived by then in eight different foster homes. But in 1988, he was taken in by a woman who quickly made up her mind to love him and who adopted him two years later.

In the late 70's, when I was a high school student, you went to summer school if you (a) had failed a class or (b) had absolutely nothing better to do.

Perhaps I should start by saying that I have never had a dog I would have wished to replicate. There was Nappy, the poodle-shaped blur of my toddler years. Sweet little Woof, never the brightest bulb in the canine kingdom. Lawrence, the labrador, who barked at suitcases on wheels. My sister's Irish setter, who gathered up the ripest of our unwashed laundry and slept in it.

To get to the house where Stephen and Megan Scheibner live with their seven children, you skirt past Allentown, Pa., and drive for another half-hour into the hills above the Lehigh Valley. The Scheibner place is on Blue Mountain Road, a few miles past a forlorn establishment called Binnie's Hot Dogs and Family Food.