From a Cotswold Life online interview/review:
“I suppose I started off with a fairly literal view of the world,” he says. “But, quite early on, it became clear to me that there was much more going on than simply the picture I was seeing; that the natural world had an agenda of its own; that it was going to live out life, regardless of how we viewed it and how we used it; and, indeed, regardless of the fancy metaphors that we used.”
Oh my goodness. Where to begin?
I could start with the ‘Praying Beech’ – a tree whose (‘whose’? The human possessive feels simultaneously wrong and yet just right) two branch stubs clasped each other like hands. Once, when the rain fell in an apocalyptic burst, Richard Mabey watched its bark melt in front of his eyes. It was, of course, no stranger to extremes of weather: one summer past, the tree had been split by lightning, bees hunkering down in its newly-created hollows. Sometime later, a storm had toppled it, leaving fungi free to colonise its delicious surfaces: knobbly coral spots; dead man’s fingers rising corpse-like from the tree’s own rot; white porcelain tufts, like Royal Worcester plates awaiting a delicate slice of egg-yellow sponge.
Dalí poses as the Magician, his wife Gala becomes the Empress, and the death of Julius Caesar is reinterpreted as the Ten of Swords in the artist’s extraordinary custom tarot deck. First published in a 1984 limited edition that has since long sold out, this lush box set brings back all 78 cards, each dazzling in color, along with a companion book on the making-of and practical instructions.
We conclude that Pollock avoided the appearance of the hydrodynamic instabilities, contrary to what was argued by previous studies. Pollock selected the physical properties of the paint to prevent filament fragmentation before deposition, and applied it while moving his hand sufficiently fast and at certain heights to avoid fluid filaments from coiling into themselves. An understanding of the physical conditions at which these patterns were created is important to further art research and it can be used as a tool in the authentication of paintings.
Considered one of the most prominent American painters of the 20th century, the life and work of Jackson Pollock have been the subject of books, movies, and documentaries [
Pure Market is offering consumers a chance to purchase products that have already been pre-graded in an effort to provide transparency and save time. Although the service just launched, it has reviewed the chemical compositions of several thousand products, with 805 in the food category and another 125 in beverages.
Sciolino’s keen eye and vivid prose bring the river to life as she discovers its origins on a remote plateau of Burgundy, where a pagan goddess healed pilgrims at an ancient temple. She follows the Seine to Le Havre, where it meets the sea. Braiding memoir, travelogue, and history through the Seine’s winding route, Sciolino offers a love letter to Paris and the river at its heart and invites readers to explore its magic.
To meet Passive House standards, the Cousins River Residence features an airtight building envelope, triple-glazed windows with a u-value of 0.16, a heat recovery ventilation system with 90% efficiency, and a 4.6 kW south-facing photovoltaic array on the garage roof that makes the house nearly net-zero energy.
Once owned by the Medici family, this 2,700-acre, 800-year-old medieval village in Montaione fell away from the public eye—that is, until lifestyle hotel brand TUI Blue saw its potential. With the help of the surrounding village’s government, the town has been resurrected into a sprawling five-star resort. Il Castelfalfi, the region’s first new-build hotel in years, offers suites with both sunrise and sunset patio views. Across the street, a disused tobacco factory is now an adjacent boutique hotel, ruinous farmhouses have become holiday homes, and acres of surrounding lands now make up Tuscany’s largest golf course.
Chief among these delicacies is Cuban lard bread, which is what inspired the opening of Pilar Cuban Bakery: Ricardo Barreras, the owner of Pilar Cuban Eatery, next door, decided to start baking it himself, using dough, shipped frozen, from a trusted supplier in Florida. When he realized that his kitchen wasn’t big enough for the operation, he figured he might as well open a second place.
A revelation for Moby-Dick devotees and neophytes alike, Ahab’s Rolling Sea is a chronological journey through the natural history of Melville’s novel. From white whales to whale intelligence, giant squids, barnacles, albatross, and sharks, Richard J. King examines what Melville knew from his own experiences and the sources available to a reader in the mid-1800s, exploring how and why Melville might have twisted what was known to serve his fiction. King then climbs to the crow’s nest, setting Melville in the context of the American perception of the ocean in 1851—at the very start of the Industrial Revolution and just before the publication of On the Origin of Species. 
Boomers Daily 