Favorites from julen
Subscribe:
Displaying post 51 to 100 of 383
"Your body is not a temple, it's an amusement park. Enjoy the ride."
If cuisine drives (or helps) you decide your travel plans, USA Today's list of food favorites covers Best Farmers Market, Best Food Trail, Best Food Factory Tour, Best Al Fresco Dining Neighborhood and Best Local Food Scene. All those lists are pretty self-explanatory, except for the food trails, which aren't even fully described in the more verbose slideshow of the top 10. And of course there are more than 10 food trails in the US (not to mention abroad), so let's dive in.
“She was a symbol,” he said. “And she died for others.”
Marion True, former curator at the Getty, discusses the charges of looting leveled against her in 2005.
“The art is on the market. We don’t know where it comes from. And until we know where it comes from, it’s better off in a museum collection. And when we know where it comes from, we will give it back.”
It stands for "Special Person Entering the World... Egg Yolks"
In 1990, the Fox network was looking for a sitcom to become the next Cosby Show. So initially, David Mirkin, Adam Resnick and Chris Elliott pitched Get A Life as "What would Dennis the Menace be like, at age 30?": a show starring Elliott as a likeable, wisecracking 30 year old bachelor who lives with his parents, has a job as a paperboy and is beating the system by refusing to grow up. But once they had a green light....
Accumulating Stitch by Stitch
Nina Paley Animates the Passover song Chad Gadya
In one of the most labor intensive feat taking a year and a half, Nina Paley animates Chad Gadya on matzoh covers. She calls the process "embrodermation" Her work had been featured on the site previously and 1, 2
Three Stars Mound
In 1986, workers in Sichuan province in China were digging for clay for bricks when they stumbled onto an archaeological treasure: a major site for a Bronze Age civilization previously only guessed at. The civilization, called Sanxingdui (wikipedia), had an art style unlike any other Chinese civilization previously encountered. Archaeologists had suspected there was a major city in the area since an early jade find in 1929 and a team went to work immediately, unearthing burial pits and gorgeous artifacts. (More history of the site.) An exhibit of treasures from Sanxingdui is on display in Houston until September; a permanent display can be found at a museum dedicated to the culture in Chengdu. Meanwhile, archaeologists continue to discover more of the city (warning: autoplay video) and even the remains of some of the inhabitants.
The Lisbon Earthquake of 1755
The Museu do Azulejo in Lisbon has an amazing panorama (video) of the city painted shortly before the historic earthquake of 1755 (image, here are some sections). Azulejo is a traditional form of Portuguese painted tiles -- the "azul" does NOT come from the blue color, a fairly recent development, but from the much older Arabic word "zellige" meaning "polished stones". This panorama comes from an age before photography and provides a look at the old city in a characteristic Portuguese art form, providing a fascinating glimpse into the old city before it was virtually destroyed.
Road tripping back in time on the Old Spanish Trail
In 1915, there were many ways to drive across and around in the United States (though trans-continental routes were mostly dirt, with some improved sections). So why did a group meet that same year to develop another cross-country road, one that would take 15 years to complete, rather than tying together existing segments? Tourism to their communities, mostly, but their* Old Spanish Trail also boasted of being the shortest route from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Today, you can still find remnants of that road, and there's a group of people who are trying to revive this historic highway.
Where else do you keep your needles?
The Avery Needle Case Resource Center is your comprehensive source for information about brass needle cases created by the W. Avery & Son company between 1868 and 1890.
“What was thrown off the bridge really isn’t that important.”
It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day
I was out choppin’ cotton, and my brother was balin’ hay
And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat
And mama hollered out the back door, “Y’all, remember to wipe your feet!”
And then she said, “I got some news this mornin’ from Choctaw Ridge
Today, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”
(Movie trailer, previously, previouslier)
I was out choppin’ cotton, and my brother was balin’ hay
And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat
And mama hollered out the back door, “Y’all, remember to wipe your feet!”
And then she said, “I got some news this mornin’ from Choctaw Ridge
Today, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”
(Movie trailer, previously, previouslier)
"He was a medical doctor, but he wrote songs."
Ben Bullington was a small-town doctor in Livingston, Montana, who wrote and recorded country/Americana music in his spare time. In November of 2012 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and decided to start crossing things off his bucket list. One of those things was doing a songwriting workshop in Nashville, and that brought him into the orbit of the great Darrell Scott.
The best New Works in every department of Literature
Well before Netflix, there was the circulating library. Although circulating libraries large and small were well-established in Britain by the middle of the eighteenth century--some of them, perhaps most (in)famously the Minerva Press, becoming publishing houses themselves--the most powerful circulating libraries came into being during the Victorian era.
“It is an artist's duty to reflect the times.”
What Happened, Miss Simone? [YouTube] [Trailer]
Helmed by Oscar-nominated director Liz Garbus (Bobby Fischer Against the World, Killing in the Name), the fully authorized doc incorporates concert footage, archival material, and interviews taking place over three decades. The movie will be available on Netflix June 26.
Merlin Bird ID - Solve your (North American) birding mystery
The fantastic Cornell Lab of Ornithology offers two ways to identify that bird you saw, if you were bird watching in North America, with Merlin. You can download the free app for Android or iPhone and go through a series of prompts to ID that bird, or upload a photo from your desktop, note where and when you took the photo, tag the tip of the beak, the eye and the tail of the bird and like magic (and with use of the eBird database), you can learn about the birds you see.
"their intimate, closely guarded songs from home, camp and ghetto"
The Stonehill Jewish Song Collection
is a website by the Center for Traditional Music and Dance containing songs sung by Jewish refugees in Hotel Marseilles in New York in 1948. All songs include the original lyrics and translations into English. Not all the songs have been digitized and translated already, but there is a variety of themes already, with more on the way soon. The songs were collected and recorded by Ben Stonehill who went to the refugees and asked them to sing anything they like.
And my imagination will feed my hungry heart
You Must Remember This (previously) is a weekly podcast by Karina Longworth, documenting the secrets and forgotten histories of 20th century Hollywood. The podcast recently wrapped up "Star Wars," its first themed arc on the subject of movie stars and their lives and careers during times of war...
We Are Here For You, and We Welcome You
The Real Purpose of Libraries
, by Ferguson Library Director Scott Bonner (SLReading Rainbow)
Needs more dickbags, Anne
Anne Bronte: the last, but not least, of the Bronte sisters
Thirty years before Nora Helmer famously slammed the door in her husband's face, Helen Huntingdon did the same. And, as an added bonus, Helen - by earning her own living as a painter - became an outlaw as well as a rebel.
Bart and his flying dead zoo
Previously.
Bart Jansen, the Dutch artist who charmed and disgusted the art world with his flying taxidermied cat Orville, has not been resting on his laurels since. After creating Orville, he went looking for bigger challenges... and found them.
This town is crooked!
Lavenham was a wool boomtown during the 15th and 16th centuries. It grew so fast that many of the houses were hastily built with green timber that proceeded to twist and warp.
The Cook's Thesaurus
Got a recipe with an ingredient you can't find? Never fear, the Cook's Thesaurus is here. The Cook's Thesaurus contains information on thousands of ingredients and kitchen tools, including recommended substitutions and commentary on flavors, and is especially useful for people learning to improvise in the kitchen. Entries range from callaloo to huauzontle to Velveeta. There's even sometimes a bit of colorful commentary, as in the entry for chipped beef.
Orchids underground: a beautiful parasite
In 1928, a farmer digging in his garden found a flower blooming underground. Three years ago, scientists discovered that it's so well adapted to living underground that it has lost almost all of its chloroplast genes. While this species is unusual for an orchid in the extent of its parasitism, it turns out that all orchids are actually parasites--stealing nitrogen from tiny fungi in the soil without trading any carbon back as plants usually do. See photos of the underground orchid here.
But where were the "fallen women"?
The researchers focused their attention on allegations of wrongdoing at the prison, looking at previously discredited testimonies of prisoners who claimed to have been physically abused and at the activities of a prison doctor who had some very Victorian ideas about women and sex. They began to unravel a long-standing mystery: Why didn’t the prison incarcerate any prostitutes in its early years? They presented their findings at academic conferences and published papers in journals. And they did all of it without access to the Internet.They had to do it without access to the internet, as the researchers investigating the hidden history of the Indiana Reformatory Institute for Women and Girls, America's oldest women only prison are themselves prisoners at the same prison and what they found shines a new light on its origins.
It Rains Fishes and Dancing Shrimp
Thai Curries — Kaeng (or Gkaeng or Gaeng).
Award-winning cookbook author, cooking teacher, and tour guide Kasma Loha-Unchit discusses Thai curries. More detail on making curry: making curry paste from scratch, tips on equipment and technique, tips on prepping herbs and spices, the importance of the mortar and pestle.
I Envy Those Who Have Not Read P. G. Wodehouse And Are About To
Lev Grossman has this to say about P. G. Wodehouse: "As it turns out, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse — what else would the P.G. stand for? — was an English writer born in 1881. He was a comic writer in an age of serious aesthetes: he was of the generation of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, and the toweringly serious works of his famous coevals have gone a long way towards obscuring Wodehouse’s enormous gifts as a stylist. His subject was the foibles of the pre-war English aristocracy, which sounds limiting, but it was his subject the same way marble was Michelangelo’s subject. He could do anything with it. (He also co-wrote the book for Anything Goes. True fact.)"
"...hollow out a heel of french bread and stick a whole onion into it"
Irish-American Dining.
A history of and guide to food that is expressly Irish-American, by Mefi's own Max Sparber. Irish Egg Rolls! Early onion-based pub food! The hidden history of the Shamrock Shake! [via mefi projects]
Bending in delightful and vulgar ways
A Girl, A Shoe, A Prince: The Endlessly Evolving Cinderella - Linda Holmes, NPR's Monkey See:
"The idea that animates the classic Cinderella is that the prince would not be free to consider Cinderella a desirable mate if he first saw her as she is, but he can meet her under false pretenses and fall in love with her. And, most importantly, once achieved, that love will be durable enough to survive her reversion to her real identity. Getting him to literally recognize her — getting him to look at a woman in rags and realize she's the woman he wants to marry — seems to function as sort of a stand-in for him proving that he can overlook her low status and choose her as a partner. Whether that's more a fantasy of romantic love or a fantasy of economic security, power and rescue from a lifetime of washing floors may depend on who's telling it and who's hearing it and when."
The scrub jays of Santa Cruz Island really love a good peanut.
This Jay Is Evolving in a Very, Very Weird Way.
As she gathered more and more data on different populations of the island scrub jays around Santa Cruz Island, Katie Langin, a biologist at Colorado State University, had a revelation: The birds, members of one single species, had split into two varieties in different habitats. Ever since Darwin and his famous finches, biologists have thought that in order for a species to diverge into two new species, the two populations had to be physically isolated. Those finches, for instance, each live on a different Galapagos island, where their special circumstances have resulted in specialized bill shapes. Yet the two varieties of island scrub jay (they haven’t technically speciated—yet) live on the same tiny island. If they wanted to meet each other for a brunch of acorns and/or pine nuts and perhaps later some mating, they could just fly right over.
'She is a masculine looking woman, with a strong, unsympathetic face'
Over one hundred years ago, Lizzie Borden became infamous for supposedly brutally killing her parents with an ax. Few know that she was actually acquitted of the crime, and there was little evidence in fact suggesting that she had done it. Why was Lizzie maligned in history and the press? Some feminist interpretations, such as Carolyn Gage's, argue for another look at the story, suggesting that prejudice, not evidence, ruled the day. Fortunately for those interested, the advent of the internet has provided many opportunities for passionate scholarship and the presentation of evidence, providing the interested observer closer looks at the case, the trial [1] [2] , a potential plethora of suspects and at Lizzie herself.
She had taught a Sunday school class for Chinese men and had also taught classes for young women who worked in the mills. She participated in many women's groups at her church and had been a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, a hotbed of feminist organizing in its day. She had been elected a member of the board of the Fall River Hospital, a rare appointment for a woman, and in 1891 was a board member of the Good Samaritan Hospital... In other words, Lizzie had a full life outside the home at a time when employment opportunities for middle-class women were severely restricted.
CBS brings you ....SUSPENSE!
Suspense was a thriller-style radio drama that ran on CBS from 1942 to 1962 and is widely considered to be one of the greatest Old Time Radio (or "Golden Age Of Radio") series and model for "The Twilight Zone". In addition to theme music by Bernard Herrmann and scripts by leading mystery authors of the day, Suspense also featured a stunning roll call of big-name Hollywood stars, often playing against type or in more lurid material then the movie studios would allow.
While nearly all 947 episodes are available online (exhaustively comprehensive previously) the sheer number of episodes can be daunting. Old Time Radio Review is halfway through the series with a convenient rating system to finding the best - why not enjoy these Youtube versions of a few episodes starring Judy Garland, Lucille Ball, Robert Taylor, Orson Wells, Agnes Moorehead (again), Cary Grant, and more
Bittersweet
Since the late 19th century, the amount of her writing we have access to has more than doubled and our views of sexuality have changed, leading to constant modern reexamination of one of the greatest poets the world has ever seen: Who was Sappho? And just how much does her sexuality and her personal life matter to a discussion of her work?
Some ancient writers assumed that there had to have been two Sapphos: one the great poet, the other the notorious slut. There is an entry for each in the Suda. The uncertainties plaguing the biography of literature’s most famous Lesbian explain why classicists who study Sappho like to cite the entry for her in Monique Wittig and Sande Zeig’s “Lesbian Peoples: Material for a Dictionary” (1979). To honor Sappho’s central position in the history of female homosexuality, the two editors devoted an entire page to her. The page is blank. . . . Even as we strain to hear this remarkable woman’s sweet speech, the thrumming in our ears grows louder.Previously: Metafilter (awesomely) tackles the newly discovered "Brothers Poem" in real time.
Queen Nzinga: Angola's answer to Queen Elizabeth I
Nzinga Mbande (1581-1663) was a powerful queen and guerrilla commander in what is now modern day Angola. She is best remembered for a story about her first meeting with Portuguese leaders, who slighted her by providing her no chair upon which to sit. Famously, she ordered one of her maids to kneel on all fours and sat upon the maid's back while she conducted negotiations. However, the focus on this story belies Nzinga's accomplishments as a canny politician who successfully consolidated an effective power base despite starting from a very unstable position.
Knitting patterns are only guidelines
The knitware design process [large PDF] has three phases:
Squirrels? That's where I'm a Viking!
Common knowledge about squirrels is that they are basically furry rats. Yes, they are adorable in an amnesiac sort of way, what with their inability to remember where they buried their nuts, but the modern squirrel is not typically considered a manifestation of anything monstrous. Interestingly, much like Coca-Cola and Pop Rocks, if you combine Viking aesthetics with squirrels, you produce a malevolent little rodent called Ratatoskr (“Drill Tooth” in Old Norse) that spends his days spreading malicious gossip and trying to start a fight between the eagle at the top of the World Tree Yggdrasil and the angry Wyrm beneath called Níðhöggr, generally with phrases like, “Did you hear what he said about your mother?”
Boring rooftop? Put a house on it
If your apartment building is looking a little plain, just build a house on the roof. NYC isn’t the only place to find homes on rooftops, though some aren’t for the faint of heart.
In Style: The Dress Doctors
"Before ready-to-wear and before fast fashion, American women created affordable clothing for themselves and their families with help from the Dress Doctors—the thrift experts, home economics professors, and fashion guide authors who advised women how to craft the most appropriate looks for less." Historian Linda Przybyszewski talks about the rise of home economics, women's entry into academic departments in higher education, and the origins of American theory on suitable, affordable clothing for everyday wear. Before the Dress Doctors, however, there was Mary Brooks Picken, the First Lady of Fashion.
Spring's Herald in Bulgaria
Happy Baba Marta Day! Time to get your Martenitsas together and pick out a tree to hang them on when spring finally comes. ...Or, if you're not in Bulgaria, just read this.
Deep Soul: Rick Hall's brand of integration in segregated Muscle Shoals
How Muscle Shoals became music's most unlikely hit factory (previously, 2008) If you love music and musical history, you really owe it to yourself to see the superb "Must See" documentary Muscle Shoals now on NetFlix and other online venues - Trailer here. Rick Hall of Fame Studios is the quintessential American "rags to riches" story and the "peckerwood" group "The Swampers" (and eventually the competing Muscle Shoals Music Studio) that he unintentionlly spawned, are together responsible for many of the classic soul and R&B hits that are part of the very fabric of American Music.
March First, Then Win
119 years ago, today, the unthinkable happened, as far as the Europeans were concerned. The Ethiopian army trounced the Italians in the Battle of Adwa. Headlines such as ‘Abyssinia (Ethiopia) Defeats Invading Italians’; ’80,000 Ethiopians Destroy 20,000 Italians at the Battle of Adwa’; ‘Italian Premier Crispi Resigns’; and ‘Abyssinia and Italy Sign Peace Treaty.’ peppered the European press. Adwa was placed on the world map and remained a historic story because of Ethiopia’s decisive victory against the Italian army on March 1st 1896 (Yekatit 23, 1888 according to the Ethiopian calendar).
'I am a woman. I do not like war. But I would rather die than accepting your deal."attributed to Empress Taitu Bitul*, Wife of Menelik II
Shirley Scott, Queen of the Organ
Shirley Scott was a hard bop and soul jazz master of the Hammond B-3. She was a gifted composer, combo leader, and prolific recording artist, releasing the majority of her 40+ albums from the late 1950s to the late 1970s:
Sacred Trash
The Holy Junk Heap:
In 1896, a cache of manuscripts -- mostly fragments -- was discovered in the storeroom ("genizah") at the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo. The collection outlines a 1,000-year continuum (870 CE to the 19th century) of Jewish Middle-Eastern and North African history and comprises the largest and most diverse collection of medieval manuscripts in the world, including Jewish religious texts such as Biblical, Talmudic and later Rabbinic works (some in the original hands of the authors), "letters, wills, bills of lading, prayers, marriage contracts and writs of divorce, Bibles, money orders, court depositions, business inventories, leases, magic charms and receipts" which give a detailed picture of the economic and cultural life of the North African and Eastern Mediterranean regions, especially during the 10th to 13th centuries.
AKA "American Regional Food Stereotypes Are Entirely Accurate" -NY Times
After causing some serious angst among the good people of Minnesota (cf. the cri de coeur of ex-Gopher and Mefi's own Linda Holmes) with its own unique Thanksgiving recipe suggestions for each of the 50 nifty United States (previously), the agents provocatuer of the New York Times are back at it again, this time leaning on the Google data team to find out which unusual regional recipes really are the favorites of each state: Behold, the Snickers Salad Belt.
Before and after Cab Calloway's Minnie the Moocher, there's more to hear
Cab Calloway's song "Minnie the Moocher" is familiar to many people, due to its status a one of Cab's swinging classics, which was used for the title and inspiration for a spookly little Bettie Boop short cartoon, complete with a spectral walrus whose dance moves were rotoscoped from Cab himself. Flash forward to 1980 with Calloway in his 70s, Cab returned to belt out the tune in The Blues Brothers in classic Cab Calloway swinging style, returning the song to broad prominence. But do you know how the song came to be? You've probably heard the somber "Saint James Infirmary," but have you heard of "Willie the Weeper" or "Willie the Chimney Sweeper"? Mix the two, and you have a few pieces of the story behind Cab Calloway's big hit (Google books preview).
freely downloadable patterns: The Amazing Pattern Library
The Amazing Pattern Library is an ongoing project which compiles patterns shared by designers, available to be freely downloaded and used without restriction.
Cookies, caches and cows
Translating technological terms throws up some peculiar challenges
Ibrahima Sarr, a Senegalese coder, led the translation of Firefox into Fulah, which is spoken by 20m people from Senegal to Nigeria. “Crash” became hookii (a cow falling over but not dying); “timeout” became a honaama (your fish has got away). “Aspect ratio” became jeendondiral, a rebuke from elders when a fishing net is wrongly woven. In Malawi’s Chichewa language, which has 10m speakers, “cached pages” became mfutso wa tsamba, or bits of leftover food. The windowless houses of the 440,000 speakers of Zapotec, a family of indigenous languages in Mexico, meant that computer “windows” became “eyes”.
It seems this genet is making a habit of riding large herbivores.
A genet in Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park in South Africa has been photographed by camera traps for several weeks running, riding around on the backs of cape buffalo and rhinoceros . Researchers agree: this is weird! (via.)
Malka Moma
Malka Moma or Young Maiden is a Bulgarian folk song, here sung by Neli Andreeva with the Philip Koutev choir. (SLYT)