Approaching the building, possibly the Magnum Opus of Frank Gehry’s career, is an unexpectedly emotional experience. Beginning with the childhood trope of, “Is it a bird, is it a plane…?” and continuing on to the discomfort of confronting extreme departures from form, the structure is composed of contradictions and surprises. Frank Gehry is an interventionist, […]
There are soldiers with guns positioned all over Paris, especially in the Marais where there are many Jewish businesses and synagogues. A very young soldier with a machine gun politely asked me not to take his photograph. So, I did not. These pictures of plaques commemorating murdered deportees and resisters are probably more appropriate, given […]
I’m not much of one for the whole pilgrim narrative and trying to figure out what to do with a 20 lb. bird (and its leftovers) is a bit of a conundrum. Still, despite the sorry events of this last week, there’s so much for which to give thanks. For many years, Thanksgiving has been […]
There is something magical and vaguely biblical in traveling across a frozen body of water. The color of ice is an indicator of how strong it is. Clear ice with a bluish hue is the most stable and has twice the strength of opaque ice, which appears to be white. Grey ice indicates water below […]
I had very mixed feelings about dog sledding. On one hand, you hear people talk about Huskies and how they love to work, that they are unhappy unless pulling human cargo across snow and ice. Sort of like you hear people talk about how Shepherds and other herding dogs are happiest when rounding up livestock. […]
As I made my way around Lake Minnewanka, words from Marilynne Robinson’s great novel, “Housekeeping”, provided a narrative text to accompany my journey around the perimeter of the frozen lake. “Imagine a Carthage sown with salt, and all the sowers gone, and the seeds lain however long in the earth, till there rose finally in […]
Some women fall prey to Manolos, while others lose their heads (and 401K’s) to Chanel or Louis Vuitton. I’m just not that kind of girl. For me, it’s kitchen stuff – wasabi graters made of sharkskin, spoons and ladles, stoneware, katsuobushi shavers. Above all, carbon steel, given a final bump and grind, while you watch, […]
Senso-ji, dedicated to the bodhisattva of compassion, Kannon, is metropolitan Tokyo’s oldest temple. Most of the temple was destroyed during Allied bombing raids in 1945 and rebuilt after the war. Senso-ji’s history dates back nearly 1400 years to 628 AD when, according to legend, two brothers were fishing in the nearby Sumida river and dragged […]
The vast majority of visitors to Miyajima remain on the island for only a few short hours, a day trip from Hiroshima. Not venturing past the torii gate, paying their respects at Itsukushima, they return to the ferry terminal, stopping along the way to shop on lively Omotesando street with its restaurants, food stalls, and […]
Ryōan-ji, a Zen temple located northwest of Kyoto, eponymous with its more famous rock garden, is truly one of the most serene places on earth. The temple garden is considered to be the finest example of a kare-sansui, or zen rock garden, in Japan. It’s my favorite garden in the world. The garden is best […]
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