Sixty years before Lewis and Clark, there were the Verendryes.
Born in 1685, Pierre Verendrye started exploring the Americas fairly late in his life. From 1731 to 1737, he set up trading posts around what would be the Canadian-American border. In 1738, he and his son Francois went to North Dakota, building forts along the way, furthering France's reach.
In 1742, two of his sons, Louis-Joseph and Francois, started making their way to the Missouri River. It's possible they were the first Europeans to see the Rocky Mountains. In 1743, in Arikara territory, they put down a lead plate that declared French sovereignty over the surrounding area. At the time, the mission seemed like a failure because they didn't find the Northwest Passage.
In 1913, children were playing when they saw something black poke out of the ground. They tugged it out and almost got it melted down in a print shop when a historian was called. He saved the plate and got it to the South Dakota State Historical Society, where it still lies today.
A monument was built in 1933 over the site where the plate was found. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1991. It's a reminder of the pioneering Frenchmen that the world forgot.
An alien has landed in Woking, England. Thankfully, though, this one won’t go on any destructive rampages.
The Martian was installed by artist Michael Condron to commemorate the 100th anniversary of H.G. Wells' classic The War of the Worlds. In the book, one of the famous tripods lands and wreaks havoc in Horsell Common, which is not far from Woking.
While walking down the street, it’s hard to miss this enormous alienesque artwork. The Martian stands 23 feet (seven meters) tall, and its spindly legs are only seven inches (17 centimeters) thick.
There are three components to the sculpture: the Cylinder, Bacteria, and the Tripod itself. Slabs bearing images of the bacteria cover the ground below the capsule. You can see an alien's tentacles poke out of the bottom of the probe. Its back is turned to Horsell Common, where the UFO comes from in the novel. It's made of stainless steel and has a chrome finish.
High above Lake Gruyère, I round rocky curves on the road to Vuisternens-en-Ogoz, a French-speaking village in Switzerland. Along with my translator, Eva Winters, I am headed to La Ferme du Biolley, one of several local farms with an adjoining restaurant. With the Jura mountains bordering France to our right and the Alps to our left, undulating farmland unfolds as we approach a large wooden sign reading, "C'est la Bénichon." The Bénichon, a harvest meal meaning "blessing," has just begun.
Similar to an American Thanksgiving, the Bénichon is a weekend of fanfare and family celebrations. For most residents, though, the gathering is a larger event than even Christmas. The festivities mark the end of désalpes, or the return of the cows from grazing in the high alpine meadows during summer months. The dairy farmers, who have been living in chalets, fill their blue wagons with cheese-making equipment and begin the eight-hour walk back to the village alongside their flower-adorned herd. This reunion of friends and family calls for a celebratory, six-course meal that can easily last eight hours: the Bénichon.
Though désalpes happen throughout the country among the Swiss Alps, the Bénichon is unique to the French-speaking villages within the canton of Fribourg. Because the tradition centers on family, the meal cannot be fully experienced as a visitor. But several farms with restaurants, including La Ferme du Biolley, serve the traditional meal so guests can taste the centuries-old menu.
Traditionally, families traveled village to village after désalpes for hours of eating, socializing, and dancing. A meal of peasants' food, the Bénichon coincided with the benediction of the church, which is why the feast still takes place on a Sunday. Each village chooses its own Bénichon weekend, which once allowed all the villages to attend each celebration. With so many mouths to feed, the menu developed to be locally sourced and cost-effective.
At the Biolley farm, I take a seat at the family table next to owner Michel Bapst. Bapst's wife, Brigitte, appears to say hello, but then returns to the kitchen to work on the six Bénichon courses we’re soon to enjoy. Over glasses of pinot noir, Michel explains that he was born on the farm, which has been in his family since the early 19th century. As more guests arrive, he reveals that the dining room was once a hay loft. This is still a working farmhouse, and I can hear cows just below our feet.
Following Bénichon tradition, we first sample cuchaule topped with butter and pear mustard. The bright-yellow brioche made with saffron was once eaten as a light breakfast, but is now served as a bite-sized first course. Although saffron is commonly associated with Iran, it enjoys perfect growing conditions in nearby valleys. Chachule was created in Fribourg in the 16th century, and recently achieved AOP certification from the Swiss government.
AOP, which stands for appellation d'origine protégée, indicates that the products are truly from the region, of traditional quality, and quintessentially Swiss. (Similar certifications exist across Europe and the world.) Every course of the Bénichon includes local foods, some of which are AOP certified, such as cuchaule, Botzi pears, and Gruyère double cream. Other ingredients, such as carrots and celery, simply come from local gardens.
For the second course, Brigitte serves broth and vegetables, or creamy, spiced pumpkin soup for the vegetarians. Once we empty our bowls, a large, porcelain tureen makes the rounds for a second serving. Next comes a course of ham, sausage, and potatoes. Each year, the Biolley farm prepares 50 Borne hams, a 10-week process hailing from the Middle Ages. "Even if you can eat it all year, the Bénichon meal tastes best in September and October," Winters jokes.
Because each course lasts roughly an hour, Winters and I lean back to watch the local guests smile and laugh over conversation with friends and family. The kids circle the tables to play before the next plate arrives. Taking another sip of wine, Winters and I talk with the farm's family about the evolution of the recipes' ingredients and Bénichon's traditions. While the eight-hour meal was once followed by dancing, most choose a night of good sleep instead these days.
After forks return to empty plates, we enjoy a fourth course: lamb, mashed potatoes, and caramelized Botzi pears in vin cuit, a sweet pear syrup. The pears are a variety that grows in clusters exclusively in Fribourg's Jura mountains, and they are unusually small, sweet, and rounded with long stems. Next comes a cheese plate of Gruyère, Vacherin, and brie with slices of pear and apple and salad. Workers at a small, nearby dairy cooperative make the Gruyère and Vacherin by hand, and except for a small percentage exported just over the border to specialty shops in France, it’s all sold locally. Many residents claim they can taste the different herbs and flowers that the cows grazed on.
The first round of desserts appear, and like the soft crunch of boots on snow, the tips of our spoons break the wavy tops of the long meringues, which allows thick Gruyère double cream to seep into the nooks and crannies. Later we enjoy coffee with star anise cookies and briclette, or thin, crisp, rolled waffles made with the same double cream.
Though the restaurant has a daily lunch menu in addition to serving the Bénichon meal during the second weekend of October, guests must make a reservation in advance. But it's possible to request the Bénichon menu for any time of year.
As the group pushes back from the table with a sigh of satisfaction, we notice a tall ladder hanging overhead. Decorated with vines, the fruit-tree ladder is now retired, but the farm has not given up its trees. Michel Bapst walks from an adjacent room with a tray of six types of homemade schnapps created from the farm's fruit trees. While many are a familiar cherry, plum, or quince, gentian is an herbal schnapps made from the roots of a yellow alpine flower. It is a digestif to sip and savor.
As we stand with full bellies and bodies warmed by the schnapps, Brigitte makes final rounds to say parting words to her guests. If at the end of the Bénichon you are too full—or inebriated—to drive home, the farmhouse keeps a double room prepared for overnight guests.
The Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel sits at the foot of Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales. For more than a century it has been a base for climbers, and most famously served as the training headquarters for the first successful ascent of Mount Everest.
Built in 1810, the Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel was originally a remote farmhouse near the foot of the mountain. It was then expanded and converted into a coaching inn, and by the 1860s was a popular hotel, a warm and comfortable place to stay for walkers and climbers exploring the mountain and its surrounds.
By the 1950s, Pen-y-Gwryd had firmly established itself as a favored haunt of the British climbing community. And it was here that Edmund Hillary, Tenzing Norgay, John Hunt and the rest of the British 1953 Everest expedition came to train before their historic ascent of the Himalayan peak.
Despite being dwarfed by the towering Everest, Snowdon was nonetheless a fine place for the team to train and test their oxygen equipment, and Pen-y-Gwryd provided some of the bare essentials: a cozy bed, a hearty fry-up in the morning, and a few well-earned pints at night.
On April 12, 1953, the expedition established its base camp at the foot of Everest, some 4,720 miles from the Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel. Chris Briggs, the hotel’s owner at the time, had become very close to the brave mountaineers, and had more reason than most to eagerly await news of the expedition.
After Hillary and Tenzing became the first men to set foot on the summit of Everest on May 29, 1953, Briggs was among the first people to hear the news. He heard of the historic achievement at 1 a.m. on June 2, and promptly informed his guests that anyone not in the bar in 10 minutes with a glass of champagne in hand would be thrown out of the hotel the following morning.
Pen-y-Gwryd’s connection with the Everest expedition didn’t end there. The conquerors of Everest came back to Pen-y-Gwryd the following October, and continued to meet at the hotel every year for dinner, and later every five years, on May 29. The hotel had become the spiritual home of the expedition, and remains so today.
The hotel itself remains steadfastly old-fashioned, and the interior is full of memorabilia from the 1953 ascent, donated by the appreciative expedition members. Boots that climbed on Everest hang from the ceiling, a cabinet contains the rope that tethered Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary together, and over the fireplace is a pebble that Hillary took from the summit of Everest. There are goggles, crampons, mugs, maps and ice-axes, and many fading photographs signed by members of the expedition.
It’s no surprise, then, that the Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel, once a remote farmhouse in Snowdonia, is now a place of pilgrimage for mountaineers from across the world.
Travelers in Lithuania may now notice something unique about the pedestrian traffic lights. The country's capital city of Vilnius has recently given some traffic signs a makeover to feature the female figure.
In honor of the centenary of women's voting rights in Lithuania, Vilnius has installed 14 female-empowering traffic lights as of November 2018. The female traffic lights appear along the main Konstitucijos Street, opposite some of the city's largest businesses.
Unlike pedestrian traffic lights that feature the male symbol, Vilnius' signs serve as a reminder of how far women in Lithuania have advanced and have yet to go. Like many other European countries, Lithuanian women earn 14 percent less than their male colleagues and only 17 percent of local women hold executive positions. There remains an undeniable inequality between the genders, which Vilnius hopes to address head-on.
"Modern society does not exist without fully empowered women, yet globally all of us are still halfway on this journey," said Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius via Twitter.
Lithuania was the first European country to grant women voting rights back in 1918, well before the United States. The use of female figures in pedestrian lights is rarely seen in countries, making this change small yet significant.
In Tibet, yaks make versatile, essential livestock, and the blood sausage known as gyuma is one of the most resourceful ways to put the animals to use.
In Tibet, bloodletting animals to make food conflicts with Buddhist teachings, which advise against cutting open living creatures for that purpose. Himalayan mountain dwellers, however, have long depended on the yak for survival and, in addition to dairy, yaks can continually provide blood without being killed. Like the Maasai of Kenya, who regularly drink cow blood, some Tibetans rely on their precious livestock for this nutritious, renewable resource. But in order to enjoy the sanguine substance with a clear conscience, herders often acquire blood as a byproduct of bleeding for other purposes. Most reasons for bloodletting center on the yak's health, ranging from preventing disease to maintaining a healthy weight to preparing the animal's body for moving to a higher elevation.
Butchers transform the blood into gyuma by mixing it with rice, ground yak meat, and salt, then stuffing everything into a natural (intestine) casing. Pan-frying sliced gyuma imparts a rich and unctuous mouthfeel that almost seems creamy, and the finished product is a glistening, deep purple-black. Cooks often serve the heavy sausage with a simple garnish of chopped onion, herbs, and a few fresh vegetables on the side. Surprisingly, despite being made of a rugged plains animal, there's no hint of gaminess to the decadent sausage.
Dedicated to the 600-million-year evolution of life and human culture, Zurich’s Kulturama provides a vast display of all kinds of objects related to the natural history of animals, plants, and the planet itself. A special light is shed on the miracle of the human body, illustrated by the museum's unique collection of skeletons.
One exhibit illustrates the evolution of humankind through models of the human brain; cultural and ethnological artifacts; astonishingly realistic reconstructions of early hominids; as well as mummies, artsy moulages, and several human skeletons—some carefully posed as if they are dancing ballet, sprinting, or caring for children. Nearby, the preserved skeletons of several animals show the anatomical differences and similarities between the species.
Overall the exhibition, which spans three floors, surprises visitors with spectacular fossils of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, a vast range of taxidermy animals, medical and biological models from different epochs, and liquid preservations like the spectacular sei whale heart that measures nearly 3 feet in height.
Summer in Edinburgh, Scotland, kicks off with an evening of whimsical revelry. Colorful characters parade atop a hill, dancing and marching to the beat of pounding drums. Fires blaze, warming the air with their bright, smoky flames.
Every April 30, the Beltane Fire Society puts on a spectacular show to celebrate the start of summer. Thousands of pagans, hippies, tourists, and curious locals gather to witness the wonderful wedding procession of the May Queen and Green Man, who herald the new season in the Celtic calendar.
The Beltane Fire Festival is a modern, revived version of an ancient Celtic tradition. It was resurrected in 1988, and is now the largest fire festival of its kind. Beltane was originally an agricultural affair—complete with cattle being herded between bonfires for cleansing—but today it’s a joyous night of fiery celebrations, music, and dancing.
Starting from the colonnade, the May Queen leaves with her torchbearers, drummers, and warrior women to meet her consort and proceed through the crowds. Each point of the compass the procession visits is dedicated to one of the four elements, and there will be a performance as they pass through.
At midnight, the lead characters will light a massive bonfire and announce the official start of summer. Some people like to dance naked around the fire and will do so if security is in a mellow mood, so be prepared for that if you are at all sensitive to such sights.
Watch out for Reds, strangely behaving mischief-makers covered in red body paint who will try to break up the wedding party. They may approach you, have a sniff, snarl, hiss, or even try to kiss you! They signify chaos in nature, and at the end of the evening, will be dancing with the May Queen’s attendants.
Around the holidays, receiving sweet treats from friends and neighbors can be as heartwarming as a cup of hot, spiced glühwein. But among the ranks of Christmas cookies, few are more fetching than Germany’s mold-pressed springerle. The delicate biscuits have been a part of the Bavarian holiday spirit since the 14th century, possibly even earlier.
The name springerle translates to “little knight” or “little jumper,” which people have postulated either refers to the jumping-horse designs imprinted on some cookies or the springy rising action of the springerle dough. In fact, before baking powder was common, bakers would use powdered, cooked deer antlers (known as hartshorn, or hirschhornsalz in German) as a leavening agent. Though ammonium carbonate is preferred today, the ingredient list is otherwise rooted in tradition and simplicity. Similar to a sugar cookie, flour, eggs, and sugar are combined with the leavening to make a soft dough, which bakers then chill before rolling and pressing. Then it’s time for the imprints.
Although early springerle molds were likely made from stone or clay, some of the most prized carved designs were made from hard pear wood. While the practice has since faded into a “folk art,” neighbors and families once carved their own designs, which included flowers, animals, and family crests, and exchanged springerle over the holidays and during other celebrations. The earliest carved wooden springerle mold features an intricately designed paschal lamb. During the 17th century, biblical images became a common theme with many of the molds. Often, the cookies were used divided into four so that each window’s image could be part of a story.
After making their mark on the dough, bakers leave it to dry out overnight, a process that helps the cookies maintain their crisp designs, then lay it atop an anise-sprinkled baking tray. When baked, the design portion of the springerle forms a drier, harder crust while the lower, moister portion of the cookie rises to form a small foot called a füßle.
Today, industrially-made stamps and molds come in many shapes, designs, and materials. Some chefs prefer using a special springerle rolling pin that can be easily rolled across a slab of dough, imprinting it with that various designs that are carved into the cylinder. But some folks are still sweet on their family’s traditional molds, spreading the good cheer and a little neighborly competition as they hand out their holiday treats.
In the Vilnius neighborhood of Užupis—which translates to 'place beyond the river'—the statue of a distraught looking mermaid sits on the edge of the Vilnia River.
Created by sculptor Romas Vilčiauskas, the little bronze mermaid has become an emblem of the Užupis neighborhood. It has been likened to Copenhagen's Little Mermaid and is surrounded by the local superstition that those who fail to resist the mermaid's charms will live out their days in Užupis. Užupis, which is largely located in Vilnius' Old Town, is a beautiful enclave of history, street art, and historic homes. So, staying in Užupis would not be the worst of fates.
The mermaid sits perched in a little brick enclave. Her tail poised ever so slightly to the side, her bare chest exposed to the sun, her snake-like hair seemingly splayed out in all directions like Medusa. It is the mermaid's facial expression that is the most intriguing. With a look that is at once sad and longing, the mermaid of Užupis almost seems to be begging for company.
In 2004, the beloved mermaid sculpture was lost to the rising waters of the Vilnia River. Thankfully, the statue was found and restored to its little perch from which travelers and locals alike can see her. The mermaid is said to be a symbol of love, temptation, intuition, hope, and power that attracts travelers from all over the world.
Almaty’s Panfilov Park is named for the Panfilov division, a group of World War II heroes who gave their lives in the defense of Moscow. Inside the park, there’s a memorial to fallen Soviet soldiers that's based on that famous (if not entirely truthful) story of heroic sacrifice.
At one end of a long black plinth is an eternal flame dedicated to fallen soldiers of the Russian Civil War and World War II. At the other end is a black stone memorial, with the stoic faces of soldiers from all 15 Soviet Republics. Emerging at the front of the statue is a single soldier with arms spread up and out as if in flight, one hand wielding a fist full of grenades.
According to official Soviet history, on November 16, 1941, the Red Army’s 316th Rifle division took a heroic last stand on the road to Moscow. The 28 infantrymen, named the “Panfilov” division after their commander, held their ground and destroyed 18 German tanks, buying precious time for the defenders of Moscow to get into position. As the Nazis rolled closer, company political officer V.G. Klochkov called to his comrades, “Russia is a great land, but there is nowhere to retreat—Moscow is behind us!” and hurled himself under an oncoming tank with an armful of grenades.
All 28 men died, the last in a military hospital, where he recounted the details of the battle before succumbing to his wounds. A journalist for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper put the story on the front page and it took hold across the Soviet Union, inspiring patriotic songs and poems.
However, the military prosecutor’s office was forced to open a special investigation after two of the martyrs were discovered to still be alive. The investigation found that the entirety of the Krasnaya Zvezda’s story had been fabricated. There had been no last stand and the dramatic quotes were invented. However, the 1948 memo was not released to the general public until 2015, and by then the story was well entrenched as a national myth. Even in the wake of the memo disproving the story, a movie based on the story came out in 2016—and the man in charge of the national archives, which released the memo, was fired.
Reactions to the story are split. After the 2015 release of the document disproving the story, the minister of culture denounced the head archivist for reinterpreting history. While some deride the story’s mythological place in Russian culture, others defend it as a parable about the sacrifices of the Red Army during World War II. Whether the statue is a monument to heroism or propaganda is up for debate.
The statue is located in Panfilov Park, on Gogol Street, in central Almaty. It’s close to the beautiful Ascension Cathedral and the Kazakh Museum of Folk Musical Instruments. It is easily accessible on foot or by public transport.
The brightest comet to grace 2018 will curl over the sky this week as it inches closer to the Earth, leaving behind a barely perceptible tail. However, seeing it for yourself will take planning and effort, because although it’s the brightest, it’s still hard to see with the naked eye.
The Wirtanen Comet (or Comet 46P) may be the brightest comet of the year, but it’s still not all that bright. It looks like a “fuzzy blob in the sky,” according to Deborah Byrd, editor-in-chief of the EarthSky website. While it may not be as flashy as the gleaming planets or constellations in the December night sky, it is worth finding, says Byrd.
Comets are bits of space debris, flying time capsules of eons-old star stuff. Scientists believe they were formed at the birth of our solar system, over four billion years ago. They are sometimes referred to as “dirty snowballs,” because of their frozen centers and layers of dark organic material. They are some of the “small bodies” of our solar system, generally about the size of a small town. The Wirtanen Comet is 0.75 miles in diameter. “That's a tiny little speck,” says Byrd. “It’s a piece of dust compared to a planet like Earth.”
The remarkable thing about Wirtanen is that on its closest pass on December 16, it will be only seven million miles from Earth. That’s basically close enough for a high five, in space terms. “Wirtanen Comet’s closeness is what allows us to see it,” says Byrd. Her website has already received dozens of photos from amateur astronomers from around the world who have spied the comet through their telescopes. There are images from Hong Kong, Namibia, Chile, and Australia, among others.
To see it for yourself, Byrd recommends finding a local astronomy club in your area, ideally in a place with little light pollution and a great dark view of the night sky. If you live in a city, or can’t bear the winter temperatures, the Virtual Telescope Project will have a live showing of the comet on December 12 and 16 at 10 p.m. UTC when it's at its brightest.
If you do want to brave the cold, Byrd recommends trying to find the comet this week, with either a telescope or a pair of binoculars. A great time would be overnight, December 13 to 14, because then viewers can see the Geminid meteor shower along with the comet. Also, Byrd adds, the moon will be smaller this week, and less likely to outshine Wirtanen. If you stay out all night, you can admire Venus glowing in the predawn sky.
If you go out every night, you can track Wirtanen’s slow passage. “It doesn't just whoosh across the sky,” says Byrd, “but from one night to the next, if you track it carefully, you will notice that it's moving.” She says it will pass between the Pleiades and Hyades star clusters, which can be found on most maps of the night sky.
Comets have always been a wonder to humans. “They used to be considered omens of doom,” Byrd says. “Comets carry with them this sense of mystery at this sense of the unknown. They come and go. The fun thing about them is that they're not here for very long. It's an opportunity to go see something that maybe you've never seen before.”
Byrd wishes comet chasers well, but notes the most important thing to do is temper your expectations. “You're not going to see this super bright, spectacular thing. It's not like that,” she says. “You're going to look up in this dark sky, and you're going to spot it and you're going to be really proud of yourself for seeing it. It’s a quiet beauty.”
After a long night hitting the rakı, Turkey’s party-goers know how to get ahead of a potentially uncomfortable morning. Like Ecuador’s guatita, the Turkish tripe-infused soup işkembe corbası is known for its stomach-settling properties and is a common offering wherever late-nighters are lurking.
İşkembe corbası is a fairly simple soup consisting of the cleaned, boiled stomach of a lamb or calf that's thickened with flour, egg yolk, yogurt, and lemon juice. The pale bowl of işkembe corbası is a bit reminiscent of an oil-dappled congee or chowder, but like many a mild soup, it’s all about the customizing condiments. For those unconcerned with hangover halitosis, additives such as pure garlic juice and vinegar may be used with wild abandon to brighten up the mild and creamy concoction. Otherwise, feel free to stick to the pickles or piquant red pepper known as kirmizi biber.
Eaters seeking something on the heartier side can opt for tuzlama, a version of the soup featuring larger chunks of tripe. Though the odor of offal may be off-putting to tripe newcomers, in most late-night establishments the steaming vats of boiling innards are a welcome sign, and smell. Follow your nose and you too may become a corbası convert.
In 2011, Matt Green set out to walk every block in New York City—each named street and humble path, from bustling strips to sleepy routes through parks and cemeteries. When he told people about his plan, they jumped to a few conclusions.
Listeners assumed that he had some larger goal in mind—collecting data, logging observations, bringing attention to a cause, maybe?
Not really. The walk was the thing, the beginning and the end, reason enough for him to jump from apartment to apartment wherever there was a bed or a couch and a cat to be fed. (He quit his desk job in engineering, and tries to live as frugally as he can.) Moving through the city, block after block after block—that was it.
Green is no stranger to long days on his feet. He had walked clear across the country in 2010, when he was 30, from Rockaway Beach, Queens, to Rockaway Beach, Oregon, while pushing a tent, rain gear, food, and other sundries in front of him in a cart. But that was different. The route was long, more or less straight, following Google Maps directions he copied out by hand. Even if he wasn’t beelining for something novel, even if the stops were unremarkable, at least the landscape was always changing. "When you're walking at three miles an hour, you're able to see all those little things you don't see in a car because they go by in a blur,” he told the Daily News at the time.
Now, more than seven years into his wandering of New York’s rigid grid and twisting corners, the city doesn’t have that sheen of newness. But as he says in The World Before Your Feet, a documentary about his project made by his friend Jeremy Workman, living in a place doesn’t necessarily mean you notice things. Sometimes, the longer you live somewhere, the bigger your blinders become. It’s easy to say you know a block, for instance, by virtue of trudging along it on your daily commute, but do you really? If anything, that intimacy might make you more immune to its wonders.
Even if Green didn’t set out to see the city in a new way, his pavement-pounding (more than 8,000 miles and counting) has revealed some of the city’s more covert charms. He has become, quite incidentally, “an extraordinary micro-historian of the city,” The New York Times wrote, and a “connoisseur” of the particular targets of his attention—among them, scores of churches in former synagogues, still carrying stars of David, and slews of barbershop signs that swap “z” in for “s” (step inside for some “cool cutz”). He also catalogues legacies hiding in plain sight. In the documentary, Green narrates some of the histories of places he passes. In Brownsville, he points to the boarded-up building that sits on the site of New York’s first family-planning clinic (since demolished), where Margaret Sanger doled out information about contraception for a few days in 1916 before being hauled off to jail for violating obscenity laws. In Lower Manhattan, he lingers at the discreet placard memorializing the city’s slave market, a few blocks away. Someone walking past the site today would miss it entirely.
You don’t need to drop everything and brave snowstorms and heat waves, as Green does, to engage with your city in a close way. In an interview with Atlas Obscura, Green shared a few observations from years of active ambling.
Zero in on little mysteries
Over the years, Green has started noticing standpipes—those little two-headed nozzles that poke out of a building’s facade and enable firefighters to pump water to higher floors. “If you saw one, it would look familiar, but it’s the kind of thing you pass all the time but you don’t really think about,” he says. “Once you know what something is, of course you start noticing it more and paying more attention to it.” Once he learned about them, he started keeping a lookout for how they are used in the urban landscape. He’s observed people using them as benches or a perch for a coffee cup, and has noticed some businesses taking pains to make them less inviting: “a simple bar that would go right in your buttcrack, physically blocking you from sitting down, or sharp, jagged spikes,” he says. “Now, if I see one that looks different, it’s really exciting to me.” Looking for these infrastructural Easter eggs has become a bit of a game, and the exercise is more fun when the item is more obscure. “If it’s not something you find in a book, you feel more ownership of it,” Green says.
Don’t think about the destination
It’s easiest to focus on the journey when there is no particular destination to begin with. “Randomizing a route so you’re not anticipating something up ahead would be a way to accomplish that,” Green says. When he strolls, it’s not with the intention of passing something especially exciting, or detouring somewhere interesting on his way somewhere else. “It sounds simple, but it’s something you almost never have in normal life,” he says. “All that I’m doing is trying to see where I am. I truly have nothing to do other than look around.”
Bring a camera
Green snaps photos as he walks and uploads them, along with some historic context, on his blog, I’m Just Walkin’. They pile up and he’s working through a years-long backlog. Still, “I know that it’s helped me,” Green says. Before he started indexing his sightings, he found that whatever caught his eye would slip out of mind soon after he moved along. Taking photos allows him to create a record.
Now we want to hear from you! What are your tips for seeing a familiar place from a fresh perspective? Tell us below, and we’ll include some responses in an upcoming post.
The New Year is almost here, bringing with it a wide variety of global traditions. In general, this is a time of renewal, reflection, and remembrance, but the changing of the year can also be celebrated quite differently depending on where you live. We want to hear about what you do (or avoid doing) in your area to ring in the new year.
In many parts of the world, it's traditional to stay up late and count down the turning of the year, perhaps sealing the moment with champagne and a kiss. But then what? Some people make a wish, while others decide on their resolutions. In Spain, it's tradition to stuff your mouth with grapes. In Scotland, you might celebrate Hogmanay by swinging fire in the streets. And in the Bahamas, you could be planning to break out your best technicolor costume for the annual Junkanoo parade.
Fill out the form below to tell us about your own New Year's tradition, how you came to practice it, and what it means to you. We’ll share some of our favorite submissions in an upcoming article. Let us know exactly how you wish for a happy new year!
Sometimes, it seems like orchids are the snowflakes of the botany world. Though these flowers bear some similarities—all of them poised in their fragility and charmingly irregular—no two are quite alike. They exist as limited-edition masterpieces, whose beauty is largely inaccessible due to their cost.
For hundreds of years, orchid breeders have been dedicated curators: They cultivate their crops in nurseries under near-neonatal care. One orchid species, the Neofinetia falcata, has a particularly distinguished history as the first orchid to be grown as a houseplant in Japan, marking the birth of a new art form. But today, Japan’s Ministry of Environment considers the jasmine-smelling Neofinetia falcata (along with over 70 percent of the country's other native orchid species) critically endangered, making its value even greater.
In the 17th century, Japan’s Edo period, Shogun Tokugawa Ienari became smitten with the Neofinetia falcata. This delicate orchid, endemic to the high mountains of Japan, was celebrated for its strong fragrance, activated at dusk. When found in the wild, these flowers were called “furan,” meaning “wind orchid.” Ienari was the eleventh and longest-serving shogun (or military dictator) of Japan, so his obsession quickly became a marker of cultural cachet. As a result, the wild furan became the upscale “fuukiran” meaning “orchid of wealth and nobility.” In line with the elitism of the fine-art world, the prestige of particularly outstanding orchids became a symbol of class. For a time, samurai were the only people permitted to grow the Neofinetia falcata (which spurred the nickname “samurai orchid”). Feudal lords seeking to impress the shogun would gift him the powerful plant and usually get their own estate in return.
The preciousness of the Neofinetia falcata was further cemented by aesthetically focused cultivation techniques, which gave way to a new era in Japanese cultural arts. In the homes of the ruling class, these orchids were displayed behind protective nets of gold thread and visitors had to cover their mouths with calligraphy paper to shield the flowers from their germs. Mounting and planting these epiphytes (organisms that grow on top of other plants) in traditional hand-painted, clay-fired pots became an art form unto itself. But beyond the overall aesthetic of the orchid’s composition, their flowers brought beauty to a space, too: The color of these orchids varies from linen white to raspberry, and their flowers reportedly smell of vanilla and coconut.
Several hundred years after the shogun’s Neofinetia falcata campaign, the French botanist Achille Finet, who specialized in studying native Japanese and Chinese orchids, discovered this orchid was distinct from another plant genus found earlier. In 1925, Hu Xiansu, a pioneering Chinese botanist and plant taxonomer, named the orchid genus “Neofinetia” in Finet’s honor.
The scalloped, variegated edges of orchids post-bloom illustrate their differences, yet the process of growing them is meticulously standardized. Joan Didion memorialized the artistic attention paid to the orchid life cycle in her 1979 essay “Quiet Days in Malibu” writing: “The silence in the greenhouse would again be total. The temperature was always 72 degrees. The humidity was always 60 percent.” This process of pursuing environmental perfection not only grows the plant, but grows the orchid breeder’s appreciation of the plant in kind. The Japanese viewed the Neofinetia falcata as living pieces of fine art, and so their cultivation of them was artistry.
Today, Neofinetia falcata are found most commonly across southeastern China, South Korea, Japan, and the Ryukyu Islands. Breeders keep these orchids damp to mirror the flowers’ natural environment from spring until fall (their growing season), as they like to soak up the stretching sunlight and thrive atop a throne of sphagnum moss which looks like a velvet green anemone. In Japan, the warm, wet monsoon season during June and July encourages the bulbs to bloom, and is promptly followed by a cool and icy winter when the orchids lie dormant.
At a Japanese auction in 2005, bidders paid up to $70,000 for a rare Neofinetia falcata variety, cementing the plant’s status as a work of art for the home akin to a famous painting or first edition manuscript. Registering and ranking fuukiran is handled by the official Japanese Fuukiran Society and permission to grow this exclusive orchid is by invitation only. Considered the “perfect orchid” thanks to its history as a Japanese shogun’s prized plant, these flowers occupy homes as living botanical paintings.
In late-19th-century Europe, the fashion of building aviaries to display exotic birds began to gain ground among the aristocratic upper classes. Owning unique species of birds as pets had been a popular hobby and status symbol since the 1600s, after the European colonization of the Americas. But the public display of such animals in ornate aviaries was essentially a Victorian phenomenon.
The Victorian aviary trend was deeply connected to the Rothschild banking family, whose members and franchises were found throughout Britain. The Rothschilds were originally a Prussian Jewish family that had risen to prominence through their involvement in international banking in Vienna. This was during a period marked by the rapid expansion of European empires in Africa, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, and Oceania, and over the years the Rothschilds profited greatly by investing in British and French and colonial enterprises in railways, mining, and other constructions abroad.
The era also saw improvements in technology and navigation that allowed for many species of animals and plants that had previously been unknown to Europeans to be shipped back to by merchants, explorers, and naturalists overseas. Exotic birds—whether alive or as taxidermy specimens—consequently became a fashionable accessory. The wealthy elite would display these far-off avians in their manor houses alongside sculptures and art, as extravagant status symbols.
The Waddesdon Manor Aviary is an example of ornate Victorian architecture built in 1889 by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild to display his collection of exotic birds. He had wanted the aviary to revive the extravagance and design of the French palaces of Versaille and so spent vast sums of money on the construction of its cast-iron trellis work and gold leaf paint.
It remains open today with a focus on conservation, housing many avian species that are endangered or even extinct in the wild. Some of the species kept here, such as the "Rothchilds mynah" or Bali starling, were first scientifically by Lord Walter Rothschild, the zoologist nephew of de Rothschild who lived nearby at Tring.
A tiny, crumpled-up butterfly clings to the right index finger of graduate student Sarah Steele Cabrera. It’s brand new to the world, so new that it can’t yet fly.
“Hello there,” she says. She gently places the Miami blue butterfly on a flower and walks back to the beach, where volunteers are sorting pupae into protective tubes. She hopes that after these critically endangered flutterers hatch, they will reproduce enough to establish a wild colony.
This one in particular will not. Before it’s able to spread its wings, it staggers off its perch and hits the ground. In less than a second, a lizard darts in and swallows it. Predators are one of the blues’ hurdles for survival. But these tiny fliers, which are about the size of a scrawny blueberry, and weigh no more than a dandelion puff, have faced bigger predicaments.
Miami blues once fluttered along 700 miles of Florida coastlines. They were common until the 1980s, when their numbers crashed, mostly because their preferred beach-berm habitat is also a favorite of humans (beach berms are the area between the beach bums lounging on towels and the thicker inland vegetation). As developers remodeled natural seashore into resorts and houses, a barrage of mosquito-control sprays and other pesticides followed. Miami blues were unofficially declared extinct after Hurricane Andrew wiped out their last-known colony in 1992.
Seven years later, a citizen-scientist found a small population in Bahia Honda State Park in the Florida Keys. Suddenly, the blues were un-extincted. The news was so exciting that scientists and butterfly admirers crossed the country to see for themselves. A breeding program and reintroduction attempts ensued. But they didn’t work, and the population eventually died out, partly because of a cold snap coupled with invasive iguanas eating their host plants. The last Bahia Honda blue was spotted in 2010.
All seemed lost, but wildlife biologists were quietly harboring some good news—they had found a couple of isolated populations on remote islands west of Key West. They had kept their discovery on the down low, so as to not draw attention to the ecologically sensitive islands, which are part of the Key West National Wildlife Refuge. Now these colonies offered the genetic infusion needed to restart captive breeding efforts. After a year of preparation, Cabrera and her colleagues at the University of Florida triumphantly scheduled their first reintroduction for early September 2017. They would start at Bahia Honda, with plans to work their efforts north onto the mainland.
They missed that date. It wasn’t their fault. That week, authorities called for a mandatory evacuation of the Keys. As hurricane Irma bore down, Cabrera watched with dread as the storm-prediction tracks narrowed in over the Miami blues’ islands. An hour before the most destructive bands would have hit those keys, the category-4 storm made a sudden jog, sparing the last-known wild populations, and instead destroying Cabrera’s house 70 miles to the east. A day later and 400 miles north, the same storm nearly knocked out the power to the breeding lab.
The storm decimated Bahia Honda, along with most every other other beach-berm area in the Keys. It took a year for any Miami blue habitat to heal enough to be suitable for a release (and a little shy of that for Cabrera to find a new home for herself as well), but by the end of 2018, the program was kind of working. Cabrera began releasing blues at Long Beach State Park. So far, they have been breeding, though the second generations have yet to take hold. It doesn’t mean they’re out of the woods, but it is a glimmer of hope.
“I feel pretty good we’re doing everything we can,” Cabrera says. It’s all a numbers game for how many eggs they can lay versus the weather and predators. “When you’re a teeny little butterfly, and it’s windy and rainy, you kind of have a tough time, especially when you only live a few days.”
Miami blues might be short-lived, but they are the stars of one of the longest-running insect conservation programs in the world, going on 25 years now. They also have a pretty large fan-base, including a cavalry of volunteers, a slew of ant species that protect their larvae, their own T-shirt merchandise, and brand of beer (it’s a bock). Many people ask Cabrera what is the point in saving them. Her answer: besides their inherent ecological value, they are the poster child for what happens next. They live at ground zero for sea-level rise, and are always one hurricane away from oblivion.
“In truth, they are just one piddly little butterfly,” she says. “But when one bug goes, more are likely to follow. We are losing massive number of insect species, in terms of both biomass and biodiversity. It is really scary.”
Studies from around the world are beginning to bring to light the seriousness of the insect crash, and what that means to the ecosystems on which people depend. Since humans don’t generally feel an affinity with insects, charismatic ones like the Miami blues are also ambassadors.
“Butterflies are a gateway bug,” Cabrera says. “Most folks aren’t really big fans of insects, but it’s hard not to like a butterfly.”
Sitting on the clock tower in Piazza dei Signori, the astronomical clock of Padua was built in 1344 and is one of the oldest clocks in the world still in working order. The designer, Jacopo de'Dondi, became so famous for this work that his family name was later changed to "Dondi dell'Orologio," or "Dondi of the Clock."
The magnificent timepiece has a 24-hour dial, so the hour hand makes a full rotation only once a day, not twice, moving at half the usual speed and pointing down at midday instead of up. The clock also strikes the hours on a bell from 1 to 24. The dial shows the day of the month, the current phase of the Moon, the motion of the planets, and the position of the Sun in the Zodiac.
After the original clock was destroyed at the end of the 14th century, a replacement was built in 1423 as a faithful copy of the original, with one exception: It was missing one of Zodiac signs, Libra. There are various stories about the origin of this curious lack, the most famous saying that the builder deliberately omitted the symbol, which is an emblem of justice, because he was not paid the amount of money he was promised. Another version of the story says that the symbol was also missing from the original clock as a protest by the designer against the rule of the Carraresi family.
In reality, this missing symbol comes from the use of the pre-Roman Zodiacal system, which united the constellations of Scorpio and Libra. The two halves of Libra were seen as the Scorpio's claws and later became the scales, but even today the name of the two most luminous stars in Libra are the Arabic names for "northern claw" and "southern claw." Anyway, some people say that the Libra sign is actually hidden somewhere in Piazza dei Signori—try looking for it!
As time-consuming as cleaning inside-out entrails can be, Nepalis consider khasi ko bhutan a delicacy worth the effort. Families prepare these crispy, stir-fried goat intestines alongside parts such as liver, tripe, heart, and rakti (congealed blood). After boiling the offal, cooks toss the medley in a kadhai (a wok-like pot originating from the Indian subcontinent) along with mustard oil, onions, red chili powder, and garam masala. The dish can also be made from water buffalo or lamb, but goat is a staple in homes and on restaurant menus.
Diners across the country enjoy khasi ko bhutan as a side, appetizer, and drinking snack, particularly during festivals. Some traditional restaurants just keep the dish on their menu year-round, usually served with chiura or murai (beaten rice or puffed rice). Unsurprisingly, the meaty medley's peak presence in Nepalese homes occurs during Dashain, a 15-day autumn celebration that honors the goddess Durga with many animal sacrifices.
