Rebecca Davis

Let's face it, if you've been staying home a lot, you're probably pretty tired of looking at the same faces. Love them as we do, it feels like well past time to start seeing other people, to visit or host relatives and dear friends. So how can you do this without unknowingly spreading the virus or getting exposed?

A tall woman with a strong gaze is standing by the shores of Lake Victoria. It's a busy morning. Boats are coming in full of fish: Nile perch, catfish, tiny silvery fish called omena — aka the Lake Victoria sardine.

She has her eye on one boat in particular. Like the others, it's made of wood. It's about 30 feet long. And it has a majestic white sail.

"That is the first boat which we started with for No Sex For Fish," she says.

When curbside recycling caught on in the 1970s, it was mostly about cans, glass, cardboard and paper. That's how Donald Sanderson remembers it.

Sanderson is 90 years old, an earnest man with a ready smile. Every Thursday in Woodbury, N.J., where he lives, he hauls a big blue recycling bin out to the curb. Recycling is close to his heart. "I guess you could say I'm the father of recycling," he says. "I don't know if that's good or bad."

Psychologist John Van Dreal has spent almost 30 years working with troubled kids. Still, it's always unsettling to get the kind of phone call he received one morning eight years ago as he was on his way to a meeting.

"I got a call from the assistant principal at North [Salem] High, reporting that a student had made some threats on the Internet," remembers Van Dreal, the director of safety and risk management for Salem-Keizer Public Schools in Salem, Ore.

Threats of violence in a Facebook post

In January, we published a special report called "A New Weapon In The War Against Plastic Waste." It profiled Froilan Grate, a Filipino environmental activist, and his efforts to fight the non-recyclable plastic waste that is clogging miles and miles of coastline in the Philippines.

It's early in the morning and 20-year-old Aaron Reid looks like he's sleepwalking.

His head nods forward and he shuffles a bit as he heads toward the pediatric clinic at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center.

Reid, who has been fighting leukemia since he was 9-years old, is experiencing intense pain.

He can't say much at the moment, so his mother, Tracie Glascox, speaks for him. "He's been complaining of pain in his ankles, his knees and his arms," she tells the nurse.

OK, so you've just left the hospital with your newborn baby. You're relieved, because the baby is healthy, your heart overflows with love and you're excited to begin this new chapter in your life. Then, most parents will tell you, on the way home a strange feeling sets in.

It's as if you went to sleep in one world and woke up in another, a world that seems familiar but slightly off-key. As you gaze into the eyes of this fragile new being, it hits you: "What have I done?" And, more importantly, "What do I do now?"

Editor's note: This story contains language that may be offensive.

In February 2009, Samantha Pierce became pregnant with twins. It was a time when things were going really well in her life.

She and her husband had recently gotten married. They had good jobs.

"I was a kick-ass community organizer," says Pierce, who is African-American and lives in Cleveland. She worked for a nonprofit that fought against predatory lending. The organization was growing, and Pierce had been promoted to management.

When Boyd Coble heard the sheriff's deputy pounding on his door in Houston in the middle of the night, he rolled over and went back to sleep. Coble, who lives alone, except for his Australian sheepdog, Wally, knew all about Hurricane Harvey. He just didn't think his own home would flood. It never had before, and even if a little water did trickle in, Coble was pretty sure he and Wally could ride it out.