Weekly home rail, with items on spring-cleaning the exterior of your home, tips for hiring a builder, ideas for a sweet-smelling garden, and more.

When Irish native Victor McMullan came to the United States to live, he had never considered celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with a meal of corned beef and cabbage.

Kara Elizabeth Wall and Joshua Ray Bowlin, both of St. Louis, were married Oct. 17, 2009, at St. Clement of Rome in St. Louis.

Kara is the daughter of James and Cathy Wall of St. Louis. She graduated from Cor Jesu Academy in St. Louis in 2003 and Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn., in 2007. She is press secretary for the mayor of the city of St. Louis.

Joshua is the son of Charles "Chico" and Vicki Bowlin of Christopher. He graduated from Christopher High School in 1999 and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2003. He is branch sales manager for Regions Bank in St. Louis.

When a flea bites a person or a pet, it then lays 50 or more eggs, which can stay dormant for many months, only to mature later on under the right conditions.

Invading Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945, Private Paul Minehan nearly drowned when his amphibious truck "shipped water," forcing him to scramble onto a landing craft that ferried him to the beach. Just out of high school, Massachusetts veterans of the Pacific war had to grow up overnight when they found themselves in Guadalcanal, Okinawa, Corregidor, Midway and the skies over Japan.

After returning home from the war in 1945, they married, had kids and supported their families like everyone else. Sixty-five years later they still remember their wartime service in the Pacific with a mixture of pride, nostalgia for youthful high jinks and the reluctance of survivors to dredge up memories of brutal combat and lost buddies. Even though they are in their 80s and 90s, some memories never fade.

Weekly food rail, with items on a book about whole-grain flours, an easy recipe for yogurt salad dressing, the latest from The Beer Nut, and more.

Home redesign can be done with a little imagination, a burst of color and a small amount of money.

If you, like the white rabbit in “Alice in Wonderland,” find yourself constantly chanting about being late, then Monday might have been especially challenging.

At the Gerald P. Murphy Cancer Foundation in Indiana, scientists look at age-related cancers, tapping the field of comparative oncology to discover useful similarities and differences between species. Over the last three years, the Murphy center contacted kennel clubs, breeding groups and veterinarians to build a database of the 140 longest-lived Rottweilers, chosen because they are a popular breed and because they have an unfortunate tendency to develop cancer.

Weekly health rail, with items on hearing aids, the low risk associated with kidney donation, glaucoma risk factors, and more.

Dr. and Mrs. Robin LaBuwi are pleased to announce the engagement of their daughter, Emily LaBuwi, to Mr. David Landry. David is the son of Becky and Mark Landry of Knippa, Texas.

The couple will be married in Austin, Texas, this May.

Discussing health issues is usually a topic delicately danced around when, in reality, it's better to dive right in and be nosy, says Dr. Alfred George Jr., a geneticist and director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Genomics. The more details - who, what, when - that you know about your family's medical history, the better off your future generations will be.

Joe Howard thought he was finished. Not finished completely. He’d had hockey taken away from him for too many years to even think of giving up the game by choice. But the travel, the tournaments, the training … no, after dozens of international events and three Paralympics, it was time to play for fun, and when he felt like it. But Howard, 43 and playing with teammates 20 years younger, is out to help lead Team USA to a gold medal in Vancouver.

The Medicines For Humanity group continues to deal with the aftermath of the January earthquake in Haiti, and program director Betty Scanlon said she doesn’t see the situation getting much better any time soon. She should know – she recently returned from the ravaged country at the beginning of March.