Icelandic Cartography: ca. 1875(?)

/ Seth Inman / 4 Comments

Tourists’ Map of Iceland by Edward Weller

Although the paper documentation on this item give the date as 1860, when I looked at the map last week I noticed a discrepancy that made such a date of publication impossible. It’s all thanks to William Watts and his expeditions across the nice blank spot in the south-east corner of the island. When he crossed the Vatna Jökull, Watts helped add several landmarks to that white blotch (which, remember, was still in Gunnlaugsson and Ólsen’s 1849 “complete” map of Iceland) and Continue reading →

Chakkayappam – Flavours Of Kerala

/ Salim.E.I / 2 Comments

Chakkayappam (jackfruit dumplings) is a popular seasonal and authentic snack from Kerala. The main ingredients and preparations for Chakkayappam are a smooth paste made from chopped Jackfruit flesh incorporated with rice flour, grated coconut and jaggery mixed together to prepare a dough. This dough is then wrapped in fresh green bay leaves shaped into cones and steamed. The flavour of bay leaves and jackfruit together creates a deliciously unique taste. Continue reading →

A Tiger’s Tale

/ Amie Inman / 9 Comments

Photo credit: Sudhir Shivaram

A few months ago I wrote about the RAXA Collective and Pixetra Photography master bird photography class held at Cardamom County. It was an amazing experience in and of itself, but it also gave us the opportunity to meet the instructor, wildlife photographer Sudhir Shivaram, and some talented participants, one of whom is now a contributor to our site. (I’m always keeping my hopes up that others will join her!)

During the 3 day workshop, between treks in the Periyar Tiger Reserve, the Megamalai Wildlife Sanctuary and a private 200 acre cardamom plantation, I spoke with Sudhir about his experiences as a photographer and an ambassador for Indian wildlife conservation.

He’s been photographing wildlife in India for well over a decade, so I asked him to describe his most memorable “capture”. He shared this experience from 2006 in the Bhadra Tiger Reserve:

10 years of wildlife photography and I had never seen a tiger in the wild, let alone photographing one. Many of my friends advised me to go to Bandhavgad if I wanted to see a Tiger. But I always had the wish to see my first Tiger in the wild in the south Indian forests. On March 17th 2006, I had seen my first tiger at BRT Wildlife Sanctuary- just the body and the tail. That too for a fraction of a second. And this visit to Bhadra along with Vijay and Yathin proved to be a lucky one. I had shot my first Leopard at Bhadra on 31 Oct 2004 (which is my website logo). And 2 years later, I was seeing and photographing my first Tiger at the same place. Here’s the sequence of events which followed then. Continue reading →

Kuttanad – Alappuzha

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Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

Photo credits: Ramesh Kidangoor

The lush paddy fields of Kuttanad are referred to as the “Rice bowl of Kerala”. It’s one of the few places in the world where farming is done below sea level. This one-time prosperous trading and fishing centre is today a world renowned backwater tourist destination.   Continue reading →

Convocation Power Well Used

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Open, N.Y.

Open, N.Y.

We are grateful when people whose name and heritage give them convocation power use their power on behalf of others less fortunate (until they shake our confidence), so we give thanks to the New York Times and to Peter Buffett, both privileged, for sharing this startling opinion piece. We, a small group of moderately privileged people with a small platform for sharing ideas, are particularly interested in the intersection of good and market forces, so Mr. Buffett’s challenge here is germane to our mission and to our practice:

I HAD spent much of my life writing music for commercials, film and television and knew little about the world of philanthropy as practiced by the very wealthy until what I call the big bang happened in 2006. That year, my father, Warren Buffett, made good on his commitment to give nearly all of his accumulated wealth back to society.

Continue reading →

Noise Pollution’s Viral Enemy

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Yesterday was another milestone for anti-noise pollution’s cleverest activists in India. We have mentioned this project, introduced here when it was still just a catchy much-needed idea, but it has now become a movement. We are still hoping for an update in person from the idea’s originator, but meanwhile: don’t honk if you like HNOP, but like it on Facebook!

Suburbanosity

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St. Andrews Manor, Shanghai, China (2009)

St. Andrews Manor, Shanghai, China (2009)

Thanks to Atlantic’s far-reaching reviewers and commentators for their attention to this book:

Swedish-born photographer Martin Adolfsson has been living in New York City since 2007, but he’s spent a lot of his time documenting upper middle-class suburban enclaves outside the U.S. Continue reading →

Really, Charles?

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Prince Charles

Prince Charles, who has criticised the global food industry for shipping ‘vast quantities of commodities halfway round the world’. Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA

We have been impressed with him on occasion in the past, so it was with some surprise, and a tinge of nausea, that we read this :

Prince Charles is funding his charities with profits from shipping royal-branded mineral water 6,000 miles to the Middle East in an arrangement that has been described by Friends of the Earth as “completely insane”. Continue reading →

Reconsidering Deaccession

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DIA-II We understand and sympathize with Mr. Schjeldahl’s reconsideration of the implication of his earlier post, considering the volume of vitriol among the comments that followed it. But the core point of that post was lost in the reconsideration:

I take back my endorsement, in an earlier post, of the idea that the city of Detroit should ease its financial crisis by selling art works from the collection of the Detroit Institute of the Arts. I also apologize to the many whom my words pained. Continue reading →

Arum Lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica)

/ Salim.E.I / 1 Comment

The Arum Lily is one of the world’s most iconic and widely known plants. Native to Southern Africa, these long-lived flowers have been described with adjectives from the poetic: such as elegant, secretive, exotic, and expressive, to the mundane: decorative.  Continue reading →

Icelandic Cartography: 1849

/ Seth Inman / 4 Comments

Uppdráttr Íslands / Carte d’Islande by Björn Gunnlaugsson and Ólafs Nicolas Ólsens, 1849.

Björn Gunnlaugsson was an Icelandic cartographer who along with the Danish army cartographer Ólafs Ólsen is credited with the first complete map of Iceland, even though the ever-present “Vatnajökull eða Klofajökull” space in the south-east was still blank. The Icelander received the Danish Order of the Dannebrog and the French Légion d’honneur for his surveying work, but the map was published under Ólsen’s name in Denmark, so future travelers would constantly refer to the “invaluable Olsen’s map” as essential to their expeditions around the country. Continue reading →

Merging Urban & Rural

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Pastoral, rural, city, urban…words with plenty of meaning on their own.  Now, from Gus Petro, ideas and images merging them:

In the end of 2012 I travelled to USA to experience something new. And it was something I didn’t expect: emptiness and density. Continue reading →

A Life Well Lived

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Thanks to Paul Rosenfeld and Atlantic for this post and accompanying video, which is not just a nature-lover’s four minutes well spent, but a subtle tribute to the importance of collaboration in individual accomplishment:

“It’s in the wild places, in the damp clean air of an ancient forest, on a heaving ocean with unpredictable winds, on a snowy summit at the top of the world that I enter my own personal cathedral, and know where I fit in the vastness of creation,” says Jim Whittaker. Continue reading →

Theyyam

/ Salim.E.I / 5 Comments
Photo credits: Anuraj

Photo credits: Anuraj

Theyyam is based on a traditional belief system, and is a self-contained world without obligations to caste, community, society and religious faith. Fire has a major presence in many Theyyam myths. Continue reading →

New York Bike-Sharing Update

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We were happy when it was first introduced by others,  in other cities in the USA, and even happier now to see this news on the first month of New York City’s experience with bike-sharing:

It’s been a long slog for New York City’s bike-share program. Continue reading →