Tag: Vintage
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Food is Home
“A woman is like a tea bag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.”– Eleanor Roosevelt High up in the Bohea Mountains of China, farmers cut terraces into limestone crags and built dikes and drains in order to grow tea. Endowed with fertile soil and a mild,…
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Food is Art
The Last SupperPainted in 1498, Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper has been described as “one of the greatest manifestations of intellectual power in art,” the most literary of all great pictures. The painting interweaves powerful telling of the gospel story and visual techniques which illustrate the artist’s mastery. It tells the Bible story of…
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The Peacock
“The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!” wrote Charles Darwin in 1860. Darwin, along with other naturalists of his times, had theorized that the broad diversification in bird coloration evolved as a function of sexual selection. But the peacock took it to such extreme that…
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The Horses of Saint Mark
The tales of the horses of Saint Mark are, unfortunately, naught but tales of theft and robbery. The Saint A local cobbler, Anianus, was sitting as usual by the sea when Mark approached, for his sandal straps had come loose. While Anianus was mending the sandals, the awl slipped and pierced his palm. As he…
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New York
Precedingly named New Amsterdam, the city of New York was settled by Dutch traders in 1624 before being ceded to the English in 1667. After the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, it surpassed Boston as America’s business capital. By 1870, soaring real estate values in lower Manhattan pushed buildings up into the air,…
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Venice
Along the coast of northeastern Italy, where the rivers Brenta, Adige, and Po meet the Adriatic sea, lies Lido, a long sand-bank that forms a bulwark to protect the Lagoon of Venice from fierce storms sweeping often over this turbulent sea. Over thousands of years, sediment brought down from the Alps by these rivers built…
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Vienna
Inhabited since prehistoric times, the city of Vienna is much older than one may anticipate. Among the oldest known relics found near Willendorf, the Venus of Willendorf indicates this area to be occupied since at least 30,000 years ago. Since Roman times, Vienna has become a gateway between Western and Eastern Europe. For 600 years, the…
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Jupiter
In 1307, the Italian poet Dante Alighieri wrote The Convivio, a sort of encyclopedia of general knowledge of his time. In its second volume he paid tribute to his lifelong muse Beatrice Portinari, who lived “in heaven with the angels and on earth with [his] soul.” Proceeding to discuss the heavens, Dante allegorized them to…
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Mars
The planet Mars, also known as the Red Planet, is named after the Roman god of war. The association between Mars and war goes back to the Babylonian civilization, in which the planet was known as Nergal, the deity of death, fire, and destruction. Anthropologists disagree upon whether warfare was common throughout human history, but…
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Mercury
Across cultures since ancient times, mercury has been a substance of fascination and immense utility. Being liquid and shiny, it was commonly known as quicksilver and was associated with the fastest planet, which was named after the Roman god Mercury. In Greek mythology, Mercury is equivalent to the god Hermes, who was the “soul guide,”…
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