photograph: alamy
We do not live by fruit alone, so:
How moussaka made it into the pantheon of Greek gastronomy
Patriotism revolutionised a classic dish
In 1821 greek revolutionaries rose up against the Ottomans, setting off years of bloodshed that culminated in the creation of a free state in 1829. Continue reading
People work to reforest Allegheny National Forest in Pennsylvania circa 1934.
Photograph: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Planting trees, we have noted, is smart policy. Some campaigns may have stretched beyond scientific evidence, but science has given us plenty to go on:
Very cool: trees stalling effects of global heating in eastern US, study finds
Vast reforestation a major reason for ‘warming hole’ across parts of US where temperatures have flatlined or cooled
Civilian Conservation Corps workers plant 15,000,000 trees across the wastelands of southern Mississippi on 11 April 1940. They are part of the United Forest Service which will re-establish forests destroyed by logging and lumbering operations decades ago. Photograph: AP
Trees provide innumerable benefits to the world, from food to shelter to oxygen, but researchers have now found their dramatic rebound in the eastern US has delivered a further, stunning feat – the curtailing of the soaring temperatures caused by the climate crisis.
While the US, like the rest of the world, has heated up since industrial times due to the burning of fossil fuels, scientists have long been puzzled by a so-called “warming hole” over parts of the US south-east where temperatures have flatlined, or even cooled, despite the unmistakable broader warming trend. Continue reading
Central Valley coffee farms produce reliably high quality beans. A few farms produce beans of unusual quality, and we source from these farms to create a blend worthy of the name Reserve. Unlike the chocolate notes typical of a Los Santos coffee, or more fruity or floral notes from other regions, here we find a special toasted nut sensation.
The “architecture of coffee heritage” caption for the image on this label refers to the fact that this building from the 1990s pays tribute to the history of coffee in Costa Rica. It was built within a coffee hacienda, and this year thousands of coffee plants are being replanted on the property. If you have an interest in the feeling of a coffee plantation, and plan to visit Costa Rica, you could not do better than spend a few days here.
Charles Duhigg at home. PHOTOGRAPH OF CHARLES DUHIGG BY GLENN MATSUMURA
The themes in Charles Duhigg’s work are ones we aim to pay more attention to this year. So, thanks to Jonathan Shaw at Harvard Magazine for this:
Charles Duhigg unpacks how business and finance—and you—really work.
IN THE HISTORY OF stock market rallies and economic recessions, much defies quantitative explanation. Whether looking back on the tulip mania that gripped the Netherlands in the 1630s, or to the present obsession with bitcoin, the decisive role of human behavior fascinates journalist and author Charles Duhigg. Continue reading
There is an interview with Jill Lepore discussing this book to the left, which I link to below. It got me thinking about an earlier post I wrote about having read April Morning and The Hessian in my teens and my brief encounter with their author Howard Fast. That post was primarily a thank you to the librarians who got me interested in reading. I knew from the return address on the letter he sent me that Mr. Fast lived on my same street, a five minute walk from my home. I enjoyed that fact because I enjoyed the two of his books that I had read. But I never saw him after the library lecture.
Who I did see frequently, because he drove an easily identifiable red convertible Cadillac, and also lived close by, was Roy Cohn. Yes, that guy. If you know a certain bit of mid-20th Century history, the bit called the Red Scare, you might understand my first glimpse of irony. I had learned that Howard Fast was punished early in his career for his political beliefs. By the time I knew who Roy Cohn was I knew he had something to do with that punishment, directly or indirectly. What I found ironic, as a teenager, was that Howard Fast was influential on my sense of why patriotism exists; and Roy Cohn, a self-proclaimed protector of American values, made me fear patriotism. I always wondered if they knew they lived so close to one another. History does not seem to have recorded anything about that. The interview by Julien Crockett below reminded me of that irony of patriotic fervor I sensed in my teens:
The Hold of the Dead Over the Living: A Conversation with Jill Lepore
“I WROTE THESE essays during a period of terrible, tragic decline in the United States,” historian Jill Lepore writes in the introduction to her new essay collection, The Deadline. Wide-ranging and often provocative, the essays cover the past decade of “political violence, endless vicious culture war, a series of constitutional crises, catastrophic climate change, and a global pandemic.” In short, “a time that felt like a time, felt like history.” Continue reading
Illustration by Paul Spella / The Atlantic. Sources: Wikimedia; Getty.
The origins and uses of words have been of interest to us since early on, because the terminology around conservation is relatively young; also because words are essential to the cause. Stephanie Hayes, writing this review in the Atlantic, reminds us to keep paying attention to how we know what we know about words:
Who Made the Oxford English Dictionary?
A new book gives life to one of the world’s greatest crowdsourcing efforts.
The Oxford English Dictionary always seemed to me like the Rules from on high—near biblical, laid down long ago by a distant academic elite. But back in 1857, when the idea of the dictionary was born, its three founders proposed something more democratic than authoritative: a reference book that didn’t prescribe but instead described English, tracking the meaning of every word in the language across time and laying out how people were actually using each one. Continue reading
View in the “Cross Timbers,” Texas, by George Catlin, c. 1832. Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of Mrs. Joseph Harrison, Jr.
Lapham’s Quarterly, judged here only by the rare occasions when we have linked to their work, offers gem quality items of interest, such as this essay by Rosemarie Ostler:
Corn pitcher, Southern Porcelain Company, c. 1855. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sansbury-Mills Fund, 2014.
The Early Days of American English
How English words evolved on a foreign continent.
English settlers faced with unfamiliar landscapes and previously unknown plants and animals in the Americas had to find terms to name and describe them. They sometimes borrowed words from Native American languages. They also repurposed existing English words and invented new terms, as well as keeping words that had become archaic in British English. As non-English-speaking immigrants began to arrive during the eighteenth century, they accepted words from those languages as well. By the time of the American Revolution, English had been evolving separately in England and America for nearly two hundred years, and the trickle of new words had become a flood. Continue reading
A Kuikuro village in the southeastern Amazon. JOSHUA TONEY
Thanks to Yale e360 for this one:
How Ancient Amazonians Locked Away Thousands of Tons of Carbon in “Dark Earth”
A new study reveals how, by cultivating fertile soil for farming, ancient Amazonians locked away thousands of tons of carbon that have stayed in the ground for centuries. Continue reading
Among topics I would not have shared here previously, Elon Musk. But this is by one of our best biographers, and he has earned the benefit of our doubt. A review by one of our best historians captures my concerns about the system that Musk represents. By extension it raises questions about the biographer’s approach. So, I share:
How Elon Musk Went from Superhero to Supervillain
Walter Isaacson’s new biography depicts a man who wields more power than almost any other person on the planet but seems estranged from humanity itself.
In 2021, Elon Musk became the world’s richest man (no woman came close), and Time named him Person of the Year: “This is the man who aspires to save our planet and get us a new one to inhabit: clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman, cad; a madcap hybrid of Thomas Edison, P. T. Barnum, Andrew Carnegie and Watchmen’s Doctor Manhattan, the brooding, blue-skinned man-god who invents electric cars and moves to Mars.” Continue reading
Soren Walljasper, NGM Staff. Sources: Douglas Stenton, University of Waterloo; Jonathan Moore, Parks Canada; Matthew Betts, HMS Terror; Mark Synnott; Tom Gross
We rarely link to expeditions-gone-awry stories, but here is an exception, with thanks to National Geographic:
Seeking to solve the Arctic’s biggest mystery, they ended up trapped in ice at the top of the world
In 1847, Sir John Franklin and a crew of 128 men disappeared while searching for the fabled Northwest Passage. A National Geographic team sought to find evidence of their fate—but the Arctic doesn’t give up its secrets easily.
Jacob Keanik scanned his binoculars over the field of ice surrounding our sailboat. Continue reading
The primary author of this book is one of the pioneers of AI, so what he has to say about it as a dilemma is relevant. From a recent conversation he had with Sam Harris my takeaway was that while I do not have much agency in the dilemma, it is better for me to understand it than ignore it. Containment is not, apparently, an option. So what can I do? In this book review, a quicker version of the same message, and the only option may be to ponder it:
The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman review – a tech tsunami
The co-founder of DeepMind issues a terrifying warning about AI and synthetic biology – but how seriously should we take it?
On 22 February 1946, George Kennan, an American diplomat stationed in Moscow, dictated a 5,000-word cable to Washington. In this famous telegram, Kennan warned that the Soviet Union’s commitment to communism meant that it was inherently expansionist, and urged the US government to resist any attempts by the Soviets to increase their influence. This strategy quickly became known as “containment” – and defined American foreign policy for the next 40 years. Continue reading
A coiled basket by Louisa Keyser (Dat So La Lee) of the Washoe people of Nevada, titled “Our Ancestors Were Great Hunters” (1905), with an oval degikup form, was made for the curio market. Her work comes to the Independent 20th Century fair this week. Donald Ellis Gallery
When craftwork is treated as artwork, valorization is the word that comes to mind. Not all craft is art, nor need it be; but we applaud the impetus of the Independent 20th Century fair. If this is your interest, and you are in New York City, the fair is open:
The Artistry of Her Baskets Is Complex. So Is the Story Around Them.
A couple recognized the Washoe weaver Louisa Keyser’s prodigious talent and spun myths to promote it. But her fortitude shines in work that today can be seen in museums and at the Independent 20th Century fair.
A portrait of Louisa Keyser, the most famous Washoe basket maker, who helped transform a utilitarian craft to fine art and was promoted at the time as a “princess” by a couple who sold her work. Donald Ellis Gallery
The Native American baskets sold in the early 1900s out of Abe Cohn’s Emporium, a men’s clothing store in Carson City, Nev., were exceptional. They were woven by Dat So La Lee, said to be a “princess” from the nearby Washoe people whose royal status permitted her alone to utilize a special weaving style.
The truth was less exciting. Dat So La Lee preferred her English name, Louisa Keyser. She was a Washoe woman, but the tales Cohn and his wife, Amy, spun about her — her esteemed heritage, her meeting with the Civil War general John C. Frémont — were myths. Continue reading
Earl Stephens, who goes by the Nisga’a cultural name Chief Ni’is Joohl, center left, and members of a delegation from the Nisga’a nation pose beside a 36-foot tall memorial pole during a visit to the National Museum of Scotland on Monday. Andrew Milligan/Press Association, via Associated Press
The legitimacy of museums possessing artifacts from other cultures is not inherently dubious, but as the Parthenon marbles example has demonstrated, there are plenty of reasonable questions. This story about a museum’s move to the better side of history is worth a read:
The pole is soon to be moved to British Columbia on the west coast of Canada. Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images
Totem Pole Taken 94 Years Ago Begins 4,000-Mile Journey Home
The 36-foot tall memorial pole has spent almost a century in a Scottish museum. Now it will be returned to the Nisga’a Nation in Canada.
Almost 100 years ago, a hand-carved totem pole was cut down in the Nass Valley in the northwest of Canada’s British Columbia.
The 36-foot tall pole had been carved from red cedar in the 1860s to honor Ts’wawit, a warrior from the Indigenous Nisga’a Nation, who was next in line to become chief before he was killed in conflict. Continue reading
If you click on the image above you will experience through a short video what can happen when technically skilled map-makers, using GIS, combine forces with scholars of antiquity. Better yet, go straight to the software they have created. In advance of travel commemorating 40 years since two of us met, my daily omnivorous media diet brought me to Dipylon, via a profile by Nick Romeo, which I highly recommend (to better understand the origins and workings of Dipylon) whether or not you are planning to visit Athens:
Illustration by Eleni Kalorkoti
The Hidden Archeologists of Athens
By collecting long-forgotten archeological data, a new project reveals the researchers who toiled unrecognized.
In Don DeLillo’s 1982 novel “The Names,” an American businessman living in Athens can’t quite bring himself to visit its most iconic monument. “For a long time I stayed away from the Acropolis,” he says. Continue reading
A huge field of pineapples in Maui, Hawaii. The extensive use of pesticides on Maui’s pineapple fields poisoned nearby water wells. Photograph: David Olsen/Alamy
In addition to helping understand how fire came to ravage a Hawaiian island, this article’s highlighting of water hogs makes the case obvious that water is an underpriced, therefore undervalued natural resource, so it gets wasted:
A sugar mill in Hawaii. Photograph: University of Southern California and California Historical Society
Land privatization and water depletion set the stage for the Lahaina fire 150 years ago. Now, land companies may benefit even more
In the late 18th century, when the Hawaiian Kingdom became a sovereign state, Lahaina carried such an abundance of water that early explorers reportedly anointed it “Venice of the Pacific”. A glut of natural wetlands nourished breadfruit trees, extensive taro terraces and fishponds that sustained wildlife and generations of Native Hawaiian families. Continue reading
The reviews are in, and below is an excerpt. The book does not appear to be available through online booksellers in the USA, but I will be watching for it. The excerpt echoes my experience growing up in an equivalent place. A key difference between my youth and hers: my family’s income was modest but, due to my immigrant mother and father’s New England heritage I inherited a clear sense of mobility. I never had the oppressive sense of class boundaries that can dictate exclusion.
Instead I had the sense, and still do, that I could have chosen to earn the requisite fortune that would have afforded me the luxury of owning my own home in that town. But I chose otherwise, and for plenty of reasons I have no regrets whatsoever.
The view from the author’s bedroom window at Graythwaite. Rebecca Smith
Jane Austen’s English Countryside Is Not Mine
Often people assume I am someone I am not. My childhood was spent making dens in the hidden corners of the landscaped gardens of a grand country estate in the Lake District. I wandered woods full of baby pheasants being fattened up for the shoot. I roamed the hills listening to my Walkman like a modern Brontë sister. I had lakes to paddle in and a dinghy that we bumped down the path to a private beach.
The author playing in the garden at Graythwaite. Rebecca Smith
But they weren’t my gardens. It wasn’t my beach.
Until the age of 18, I lived on three private country estates in England. First in Yorkshire, then in Bedford, then on Graythwaite Estate, in Cumbria in the Lake District. In each of these my dad had the job of forester, working his way up until he was head forester, overseeing 500 hectares of woodland at Graythwaite, where the job came with a three-bedroom lodge on the estate. Continue reading
Paris’ iconic zinc roofs can heat up to 194 degrees F on a hot summer day. JAN WOITAS / PICTURE-ALLIANCE VIA GETTY IMAGES
We have celebrated the many greening efforts made in Paris over the last decade, and today is a small but important addition to our knowledge of those commitments. Our thanks to Jeff Goodell in Yale e360:
A rendering of a rooftop terrace installed by the Parisian startup Roofscapes. ROOFSCAPES
Paris When It Sizzles: The City of Light Aims to Get Smart on Heat
With its zinc roofs and minimal tree cover, Paris was not built to handle the new era of extreme heat. Now, like other cities worldwide, it is looking at ways to adapt to rising temperatures — planting rooftop terraces, rethinking its pavements, and greening its boulevards.
The tree-lined Boulevard des Italiens is much cooler than nearby streets that lack trees. MBZT VIA WIKIPEDIA
There’s a long tradition in France of taking August off for holiday. Paris virtually shuts down as the temperature drifts around in the seventies, and people go to the beach or the mountains to cool off and relax. Think of it as an old‑fashioned adaptation to heat. People who stick around during August are often older or have jobs that require them to stay and keep the city functioning. Continue reading
Mr. Biscu makes pieces using clay that comes from earth extracted from a hill in Horezu.
Chantel Tattoli reported this story from Horezu, Romania for the New York Times. Accompanied by photographs and video by Marko Risovic, her story is based on speaking to a dozen local potters using a translator:
Can Old-World Ceramics Survive Modern Tastes?
A style of pottery made for centuries in a small Romanian town has recently become a hot commodity.
Sorin Giubega at his home, which is filled with ceramics made by him and his ancestors.
Sorin Giubega’s grandfather was a potter. So was his father. And at 8 years old, Mr. Giubega said, he started to play on a pottery wheel, too.
Mr. Giubega, now 63, and his wife, Marieta Giubega, 48, are potters in Horezu, Romania, a town in the foothills of the Capatanii Mountains about three hours by car from Bucharest.
Horezu is home to a community of about 50 artisans who make a traditional style of ceramics with methods that have been practiced for more than 300 years. Continue reading
Our thanks to the LA Review of Books for this review by Dinyar Patel:
Sugar, Slavery, and Capitalism: On Ulbe Bosma’s “The World of Sugar”
WHAT MIGHT DONALD RUMSFELD have in common with Frederick Barbarossa, Mormons, and Queen Elizabeth I’s rotting teeth? The answer is simpler than you might expect: the power and influence of sugar, a crystalline specimen of world-historical significance dissolved in your morning coffee or tea. A warmongering neocon, a Holy Roman emperor, pious Utahns, and a heavily cavitied pair of Tudor gnashers are part of an expansive cast of characters in Ulbe Bosma’s new work on the sweet stuff, The World of Sugar: How the Sweet Stuff Transformed Our Politics, Health, and Environment over 2,000 Years. This book is a tour de force of global history, one that helps us better understand the genesis of both modern capitalism and globalization. Continue reading
Illustration by Owen D. Pomery
The Climate Crisis Gives Sailing Ships a Second Wind
Cargo vessels are some of the dirtiest vehicles in existence. Can a centuries-old technology help to clean them up?
In February, 1912, Londoners packed a dock on the River Thames to gawk at the Selandia, a ship that could race through the water without any sails or smokestacks. Winston Churchill, then the minister in charge of the British Royal Navy, declared it “the most perfect maritime masterpiece of the twentieth century.” But, as the Selandia continued its journey around the world, some onlookers were so spooked that they called it the Devil Ship…
The history is a fun read, so continue to the whole story here. But then, take a closer look at the company featured in the article:
Our Story
Over the course of 20 years working in the maritime industry Cornelius Bockermann witnessed first hand how humans adversely affect our environment. He knew something had to change. In 2013, he moved with his family to Cairns and shipped all their possessions from Germany to their new home in Australia. Through the process of shipping his own goods he experienced the disconnect between commerce and environmental preservation. Upon learning of plans to expand fossil fuel based shipping along the Queensland coast and amongst the Great Barrier Reef he knew he had to act. The question became how do you offer businesses and consumers a sustainable option in shipping?
Cargo Under Sail is the answer and the Dutch schooner named the AVONTUUR is the vessel to start it.
We are a passionate collective of individuals working to create a supply chain that merges the relationship between commerce and preservation. We are restless and can no longer wait for others to make a change.
Our Mission Zero
To eliminate pollution caused by shipping cargo.
We have a five-stage approach:
1. Raise Awareness about the environmental destruction caused by the shipping industry
2. Model a clean shipping future with our AVONTUUR
3. Sell premium AVONTUUR products to support the ongoing operation of the project.
4. Establish a demand for products shipped by sail
5. Build a modern sail cargo fleet
Organikos 