The Bunker Hill Monument by Specterras on Sketchfab We humans, tend to embellish, exaggerate, and even conjure up stories out of whole cloth. Trusting an autobiography, a CV, or tales of former glory on the football field or classroom is a bit naive. Legends are often the result of embellishments. To use a contemporary example, Kim Jon Un is allegedly able to control the weather, cure diseases, and according to the Korean Central News Agency, “reconfirmed a lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong, founder of the Koguryo Kingdom.” His father, Kim Jong Il, a man of numerous talents, was reported to have concluded his first 18-hole championship golf course with a staggering 11 holes-in-one and a record-setting 38 under par. He was also reported not having the bodily need to pee and poop. I always get a good chuckle from propaganda. Still, it speaks to what can happen (in an extreme scenario) if a society does not have mechanisms to account for what is true, even if the truth is inconvenient, uncomfortable, even dangerous. Dave Chappelle’s Instincts about the Past Much of history as we understand it is a collection of stories, some accurate and anodyne, some laughably […]
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This area is not unlike St. John’s Wood, that is, the quant leafy location on the iconic Abbey Road Beatle’s album cover. Taken opposite the Boston Common during a BLM protest, the sizable police and military contingent cordoned off a commercial area in the Downtown Crossing neighborhood. To my back is the Boston Common, a location initially used for colonial livestock fodder. St. John’s Wood is also renowned for its sweeping green spaces, including, but not limited to, Regent’s Park and Primrose Hill. Of course, Beacon Hill, also to my back, is a historical neighborhood where many of Boston’s power brokers live and circulate (the state capital building, the Massachusetts seat of power, sits atop the hill like a golden bulwark). Similarly, Primrose Hill is the watering hole for London’s minted elites. Rihanna sold her stucco villa on St. John’s Park in September for a cool £32 million. At 6,332 square feet, that’s about $7,000 per square foot, admittedly more expensive than anywhere in Boston. As the global pandemic ebbs, it will be interesting to see where the real estate tides will take humanity, but what is increasingly certain is that the rapidly changing climate will have some cascading […]
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This is my friend Donatella and her beautiful and absorbingly congenial daughter Analisa. Donatella helps manage the wine cooperative in Dorgali that is responsible for the production and distribution of one of their increasingly popular wine exports: Cannoneau. The Cannoneau grape, which you might also know as Grenache, has become trendy in recent years, due to its noted association with long life. In short, the preponderance of grey hairs in this area of Sardinia has been attributed—dubiously, I’d say—to the high level of polyphenols in Cannoneau. And as health trends go in the US, as soon as something is coined a superfood or associated with longevity, it becomes a fad item that becomes, in some ways, a stand-in for all of the other important variables that make it a “health” food. The seniority of Sardinians is obviously more than just a matter of drinking large volumes of Cannoneau, though it apparently has not done any discernible harm. Interestingly, in a recent Lancet study (and in the American medical community more broadly), researchers claim that NO amount of alcohol is safe for consumption. Sardinians drink two glasses of wine per day on average, and while Sardinians alcohol consumption is well above the […]
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I half-jokingly asked an oyster farmer, “Do you reckon I should get a tax write off for buying oysters and mignonette? I mean, am I not doing an ecological service by eating oysters?” He laughed and said, “Yeah, you really should. It serves the environment much better than eating cheeseburgers!” This may have been a sort of tongue-in-cheek exchange, but having thought about it a bit, it isn’t such an outlandish idea. An individual adult oyster filters about 50 gallons of water per day–a staggering quantity considering their diminutive size. The general public is also becoming more conscientious about the environmental impact of the food they put in their mouths. In part, that is why so many environmentalists are encouraging people to eat less red meat, eat in season, and buy local. Oyster cultivation is an arduous task, or as I like to say, a labor of love, but the results are both very tasty and of service to waterways that supply our streams and rivers. Oysters are like the nitrogen-busting swat teams of our estuarine waters. To give you an idea of the scale of the nitrogen-related issues and their impact, it is important to take a step back. […]
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Who would have thought it would take a global pandemic to reveal the whereabouts of Tupac Shakur. For those children of the 90s, one would have expected a remote island in the Caribbean, but as it turns out, Tupac has been hiding in plain sight in Lexington, Kentucky.
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It is more than just a race, it’s a coming together of a community for a common purpose, and that is, the celebration of the human spirit in its pluckiest of forms! This part of the country is known for its work ethic...
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The COVID-19 outbreak was described this week by several talking heads, and the President himself, as a war on an invisible enemy, and just like a conventional war, pitched battles and entrenched interests are starting to take form. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis finally issued a stay-at-home order...
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