Moira C. Silva

It is mid-February. Winter’s sea-frosted breath is seeping through the cracks in my house and chilling the bones of everyone we left behind. I admit that it gives me the tiniest bit of guilty pleasure to imagine this as I linger over brunch with my family in historic Winter Park, Fla., 90 miles from where I attended high school. Call it Vacation schadenfreude.

Julia Rappaport

It was after spending the holidays back home on the Island that I made the decision to tackle Dry January: an aptly-named, specialty cleanse in which one gives up booze for 31 days at the start of the new year.