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Making this recipe isn’t hard, but it does take time. You’ll need to cook the polenta on the stove, then bake it until firm before assembling the dish. (If it’s more convenient, you could do all that the day before.) The colder the polenta is when you layer it, the less likely it is to break apart. But don’t worry too much: If a piece of polenta falls off or cracks, just smush it back onto the slab. No one will notice after the casserole is baked, a gorgeous molten thing, capped with gooey cheese. Be sure to get a good brand of marinara sauce, preferably one with chunky bits of tomato, for the deepest flavor. Or even better, if you have homemade marinara sauce stowed away in the freezer, use it here. This recipe makes a lot of servings, possibly more than the number of members in your household. But leftovers freeze well. Pull them out when you need something warming and rich to get you through the rest of this winter, which will, thankfully, eventually end.

Delta, unlike many of its peers, will continue blocking middle seats through at least Jan. 6 in an effort to separate smaller parties of one or two. Parties of three or more can book adjacent — including middle — seats. On aircraft that have sections without middle seats — say, the 2-3-2 configuration of economy class on a 767 — other seats will be blocked as tickets are purchased and seats are selected. The more people who sit together, the higher the likelihood that your son can sit alone when the plane is 70 percent full, but there’s no way of predicting how many people will be flying individually, in pairs or in groups. There still are ways to be proactive; for instance, your son can use the Fly Delta app to change seats until about an hour before boarding. Just as one might refresh fantasy football scores or election results, your son can be “that guy” at the gate, hunched over the seat map. He can also continue to make changes with the gate agent and (unofficially, perhaps) onboard. Additionally, said a Delta spokeswoman in an emailed statement, “if customers are uncomfortable with where they’re sitting, they can be rebooked to another flight without a change fee or fare difference.” (...)

The reminders of pandemic-driven suffering among students in Clark County, Nev., have come in droves.
Since schools shut their doors in March, an early-warning system that monitors students’ mental health episodes has sent more than 3,100 alerts to district officials, raising alarms about suicidal thoughts, possible self-harm or cries for care. By December, 18 students had taken their own lives.
The spate of student suicides in and around Las Vegas has pushed the Clark County district, the nation’s fifth largest, toward bringing students back as quickly as possible. This month, the school board gave the green light to phase in the return of some elementary school grades and groups of struggling students even as greater Las Vegas continues to post huge numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths.
Superintendents across the nation are weighing the benefit of in-person education against the cost of public health, watching teachers and staff become sick and, in some cases, die, but also seeing the psychological and academic toll that school closings are having on children nearly a year in. The risk of student suicides has quietly stirred many district leaders, leading some, like the state superintendent in Arizona, to cite that fear in public pleas to help mitigate the virus’s spread.
In Clark County, it forced the superintendent’s hand.
“When we started to see the uptick in children taking their lives, we knew it wasn’t just the Covid numbers we need to look at anymore,” said Jesus Jara, the Clark County superintendent. “We have to find a way to put our hands on our kids, to see them, to look at them. They’ve got to start seeing some movement, some hope.”