All posts by She Seeks Serene

My Journey of Reimagining Life, Love and Education

Travel & Design: Inside A “Whimsical & Wild” Home In Bangkok, Thailand (AD)

From an Architectural Digest article (April 3, 2020):

Whimsical, wild, and wacky are but a few words that most aptly describe Bill Bensley’s unique design aesthetic and the exceptional hotels born from it. Credited with upping the ante on Southeast Asia’s hospitality design, he is one of the most intriguing artists in the field today.Bill Bensley - Bangkok bungalow in Architectural Digest April 3 2020

 

Originally from California, Bill has called Asia home since 1984 when he lived in Singapore and Hong Kong before moving to Bangkok and setting up Bensley, a full-service hospitality design atelier made up of architects, landscape architects, interior designers, and artists.

“I can take you around the house and say, ‘The base of this column exists at Capella Ubud, and the top of this bathroom door is Four Seasons Chiang Mai, and this lantern is the prototype for all the lamps that we used at Four Seasons Koh Samui.’ There are still remnants of pieces here from probably 100 different projects,” says Bensley.

Read full article

New Travel Videos: “City Odes – Lagos, Nigeria” By Sheldon Chau (2020)

Directed, shot, edited by // Sheldon Chau

Produced by // Ella Utomi, Jide Adewale
Poem by // Ntongha Ekot
Starring, voiceover by // Jide Adewale
Music composed by // John Corlis

“EKO ILE” (CITY ODES) A CINEMATIC POEM SHORT FILM IN LAGOS, NIGERIA BY SHELDON CHAU (2020)

“Eko ile”

A man straddles a love-hate relationship with Lagos in which he attempts to not only grasp both the intensity and comfort that the city has to offer, but also to embrace it as his home.

—-

The City Odes Project is a passion project in which I collaborate with my composer, a poet and an actor to create a humanist, emotional, and visual story amidst the backdrop of a specific city. “Eko ile” is the second entry into this series and takes place in one of the most intense, vibrant, and overwhelming places I have ever been – Lagos, Nigeria.

The title “Eko ile” translates to “Lagos is home” in Yoruba, one of the primary languages in the country. For this piece, I wanted to capture the city in the language I encountered most when I was there – Pidgin English (which is sort of a local slang) as well as plain English, both of which my lead actor Jide Adewale (who also happens to be one of the producers) speaks as he narrates the poem. I wanted to create a character who personifies the feeling of living in Lagos in which the hustle is as real as it gets and the frenetic pace is nonstop. Lagos truly is one of a kind.

The final result here features the work of Ntongha Ekot – a Nigerian poet – who eloquently captures these push-and-pull feelings through her words, and my frequent collaborator John Corlis – an LA-based musician and composer – who complements the poetry with his emotional piano piece “Into the Atmosphere” from his latest album of the same title. My incredible producers Jide and Ella Utomi made it all happen by finding the locations, security and logistics; they took care of me during my memorable time there.

Website

News: “Shields & Brooks” On Coronavirus And Politics In Washington

Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the latest news, including how the coronavirus pandemic has taken hold in the U.S., American leadership amid the crisis, whether the $2.2 trillion stimulus package will help those besieged by the pandemic and whether there is a chance for bipartisan political action.

Travel & History Books: “Great Camps Of The Adirondacks” – Gorgeous Updated 2nd Edition (2020)

The foremost guide to the historic camps of the Adirondacks―a unique vernacular style of rustic architecture designed to complement the land. Now available in a Great Camps of the Adirondacks Harvey H Kaiser 2020second and enlarged edition, here is the foremost guide to the historic camps within America’s spectacular forest preserve, the six million acre Adirondack Park.

When first published in 1982, Great Camps of the Adirondacks launched a campaign for the preservation of these architectural treasures while also sparking a trend in great camp-inspired home design, a cohesive approach to building that author Harvey H. Kaiser named Adirondack Rustic Style.

Great Camps of the Adirondacks - Harvey Kaiser 2020

In this second edition, preservationists will find a success story. Designers and builders will discover page after page of inspiration. All readers will see the history of a region unfold as Americans from the mid-1870s to the late-1930s, including the very wealthiest New Yorkers, sought out the wilderness. The camps they built as private seasonal retreats are distinguished both as architectural responses to the Adirondack environment in the use of logs and stone, and as successful examples of buildings blended into the forest and the natural contours of the mountains and lakes―homes built to serve as beautiful complements to the land itself.

Harvey H. Kaiser served as the Senior Vice President for Facilities Administration and University Architect at Syracuse University between 1972 and 1995. His 1982 book Great Camps of the Adirondacks popularized the term “Great Camps” to refer to the grand summer residences that wealthy families built in the Adirondack Mountains in the nineteenth century, and revitalized interest in these sites. Several studies on western national park architecture culminated in his 2008 book The National Park Architecture Sourcebook.

 

Steven Engelhart is the executive director of Adirondack Architectural Heritage (AARCH) located in Keeseville, New York. AARCH is a private, nonprofit. historic preservation organization for New York State’s Adirondack Park, whose mission is to promote better public understanding, appreciation, and stewardship of the region’s architecture, communities, and historic sites.

Read more or purchase

Personal Health: “Singing The Praises Of Prevention” (The Scientist Magazine)

From Bob Grant, The Scientist Magazine (April 1, 2020):

Prevention has been playing a growing role in other diseases, infectious and Singing the Praises of Prevention - The Scientist April 2020 - By Andrzej Krauzeotherwise, long before this latest global pandemic. Cancer, the focus of this issue, is ubiquitous, and one would be hard pressed to find a person anywhere on Earth whose life wasn’t in some way touched by the complex and vexing malady. 

This cancer-focused issue features a cover story in which we explore one facet of cancer prevention: exercise. In this feature story, Danish researcher Bente Klarlund Pedersen explains that studies have shown frequent exercise to be useful in avoiding cancer as well as in helping cancer patients lessen the side effects of their cancers and treatments. Her research and that of others is seeking to enumerate the molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie the benefits exercise seems to offer cancer patients. 

But when one considers the practical ripples that biology sends through societies—issues of public health and the shared goal of minimizing the impact of diseases on a global scale—human behavior and prevention become vitally important.

Read full article

Coronavirus (COVID-19): Safe Shopping at Stores and Pharmacies (JAMA)

JAMA Clinical Reviews LogoFood and medicine shopping is essential during the COVID-19 pandemic, but requires getting out and standing close to strangers at a time when social distancing and sheltering-in-place are recommended to slow spread of disease.

David Aronoff, MD, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, explains how to minimize COVID-19 risk while shopping.

 

Health Study: Older Adults With High Glucose Levels (A1C) Have Greater Cognitive Decline

From a MedPage Today online article (April 2, 2020):

Endocrine Society NewsThis relationship between higher glucose levels and poorer cognitive functioning extended beyond just CASI z-score, as well, Cukierman-Yaffe noted. Higher HbA1c levels were also tied to significantly poorer performance in other psychological tests, including the clock making test of executive functioning, test of discriminative ability, and for the test of verbal fluency.

Poorer glycemic control was tied to cognitive decline following a lacunar stroke in a prospective cohort study.

Among 942 individuals with type 2 diabetes who had a lacunar stroke, every 1% higher HbA1c was tied to a 0.06 drop in cognitive function at baseline measured by Cognitive Assessment Screening Instrument (CASI) z-score (95% CI -0.101 to -0.018), reported Tali Cukierman-Yaffe, MD, MSc, of Sheba Medical Center and the Sackler School of Medicine of Tel Aviv University in Israel.

Read more

Travel & Architecture: Inside The Greek “Villa Kérylos”, French Riviera

From a Cereal Magazine online article

Villa Kérylos France - Interior from Cereal Magazine 2020Throughout, the attention to detail is meticulous: mosaic floors of mythical beasts; intricately painted ceilings of interlocking wooden beams. The walls of the Andron, traditionally the male quarters of an ancient Greek household, are streaked with three types of Tuscan marble: ochre Siena, mauve Fleur de Pêcher, and grey-white Carrara. In Mrs Reinach’s bathroom, an immense bathtub weighing one tonne is balanced on two lion paws. Above its ornamental bronze taps, a low-relief frieze depicts the chariot of Demeter. From every window stretches a panorama of glittering blue.

 

“THE GREEK SPIRIT WAS FOR HIM BOTH DREAM AND REALITY, MEMORY AND PRESENT…”

Villa Kérylos France - Interior from Cereal Magazine 2020

The descent is steep, winding, and impossibly verdant for mid-winter. It is a clear blue day in the aptly named Beaulieu-sur-Mer, a pastel-hued seaside village on the outskirts of Nice. The road is lined with climbing vines and succulents, the air redolent of pine trees in the heat. Then, after a short drive alongside a golden bay, it appears, perched atop a promontory, jutting defiantly from the Côte d’Azur.

Read full article