The elegant Eirene Gown, named for the Greek goddess of peace, is sewn from silk hand-gathered from naturally-hatched wild silkworms and woven on antique looms in a small mill in India. Its delicate coral hue is derived from a dye extracted from the root of the Madder plant, growing in a war zone in the […]
A cow fell out of the sky and crushed me flat. I pushed it aside with all my might, but then – boom! another cow came barreling out of the blue. Again, I shoved it aside, to no avail, because, hey, yet another cow was falling in its wake. After a while, I thought it […]
On a hot summer day, I like to watch a rat or two foraging on the tracks of the New York City subway system. No-one is entirely sure how many of the whiskered beasties live in the city, although, thanks to New York’s electronic rat map, a catalog of rat hot spots such as lived-in […]
Ian McEwan’s entertaining new novel, Solar, contains one of the best descriptions of a bag of potato chips (or “crisps” to the Brits) that I have ever read: “It was a plastic foil bag of finely sliced potatoes boiled in oil and dusted in salt, industrialized powdered foodstuffs, preservatives, enhancers, hydrolizing and raising agents, acidity […]
When I’m thirsty, I often fancy a cool drink of green algae, filled with Spirulina, a vitamin-and protein-packed beverage resembling pond scum that’s promoted as an immune-boosting elixir. I think of algae as benign or beneficial: clinging to a damp tree trunk, like the primitive one-celled Protococcus; as a source of biodiesel, aka oilgae; or […]