Uncle Xavier News Today

Gilbert Lorenzoni bicycled to the newspaper office from his Oak Bluffs home last week to tell us a story about connections and family, and how The Times played a role in the restoration of a family link he didn’t realize existed. Lorenzoni, 81, is originally from Nice, France, and how he found his way to […]

One house, two doctors, three generations and the long-awaited relief of a vaccine Diana Marcum © Provided by The LA Times Dr. Rene Ramirez, an emergency medicine physician, and Dr. Veronica Ramirez, a pediatrician, help their daughters Danielle, 5, left, and Samantha, 8, with school work at their home in Fresno. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times) In the Before (as their children call pre-coronavirus), Rene and Veronica Ramirez sometimes joked after a hectic day that they we...

In the dusty fields of the San Joaquin Valley, “El Profe” brings masks, music and help to farm laborers, some of whom are barely scraping by. A year ago, Rene and his colleagues with the Fresno campus of UC San Francisco, saw hospitals in Italy overrun with COVID-19 patients. They knew it was only a matter of time until it reached California’s fifth-largest city, which has some of the nation’s most concentrated poverty and is surrounded by farm towns where people work closely in the fie...