Absentee ballots in the mail for this week’s primary elections have to be postmarked by Tuesday and delivered by Thursday to be counted. But some ballots postmarked on Tuesday may not have made it through the U.S. mail in time to reach municipal clerks’ offices by Thursday. The responsibility for timely ballots lies somewhere between the voter and the postal service.

Once a week outside a Newington nursing home, Peggy Johnson stands masked, 6 feet apart from her 94-year-old mom, imagining what it would be like to hug again.

A young man with his girlfriend stood in the shade under an awning at the side of an RV truck parked near Barnard Park in Hartford on a recent Tuesday morning. Holding a bag in one hand and reaching through an opening in a screened door with the other, he dropped empty, used syringes into a medical waste bucket. “Eighty-eight, eighty-nine, ninety,” he counted, each needle making a thunk as it disappeared into bright red plastic.

With some in Connecticut just getting their power back one week after Tropical Storm Isaias, a lot of families have wondered aloud whether some other company could do a better job than Eversource and United Illuminating. One man who emphatically answers yes is Joe Courtney, the U.S. representative for Connecticut’s 2nd District.

As of Friday, the town of West Hartford had received about 2,000 of 10,500 absentee ballots requested for Tuesday’s primary elections.

There’s a primary next week. And though absentee balloting has been the talk, the question now is whether the power outages caused by Tropical Storm Isaias will affect in-person voting.

Since the killing of George Floyd, some Americans have been examining their role in perpetuating racism and are committing to no longer being silent and inactive. Huma Farid , a Pakistani American and obstetrician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, recently wrote a commentary for WBUR’s blog Cognoscenti , “The ‘Shame and Rage’ of Being a Minority in America Kept Me Silent. Not Anymore.” As a woman of color, Farid says there have been times -- especially in her role as a doctor --

Tropical storm Isaias sent strong winds through most of the state yesterday, knocking down trees and cutting power to more than 700,000 electric customers. Connecticut residents spent the day cleaning up and waiting for their power to return.

We've been busy watching many different butterflies this summer in our garden. It seems they love this heat and humidity. And there's been enough water for them to thrive. Of course, this time of year the Monarch butterflies become more noticeable. Their prized plant is the milkweed. Many insects only feed and lay eggs on a few different types of plants. That's certainly true of monarchs. Anything in the milkweed family is fair game. Monarch caterpillars have the unique ability to eat the

As next week’s primary elections approach, officials are warning voters with absentee ballots to get them in the mail on Thursday. Under Connecticut law, ballots received by mail after 8 p.m. on Aug. 11 cannot be counted.