Sergio García Sánchez is a cartoonist, illustrator and professor at the University of Granada, as well as co-author of the graphic novel “Lost in NYC: A Subway Adventure.”
It’s an instrument based on the most fundamental sign of life: breath. Listen to the best music ever written for it.
The flute is one of humanity’s oldest ways of producing a beautiful sound, and it is based on the most fundamental sign of life: breath. Made from bones, wood or reeds, the earliest specimens date from the Paleolithic era. The flute is often associated with things elegiac, poetic, angelic — with purity — but also with the world of magic; in mythology, Orpheus seduces the underworld playing the flute. In this excerpt from Gluck’s Orpheus opera, the flute is extremely sensual, and, with its lyrical soaring, takes us from earthly pleasures to heavenly ones.
Flute: Julien Beaudiment
Piano: Hugh Sung
If you’re enrolled only in original Medicare with a Medigap supplemental plan, and don’t use a drug plan, there’s no need to re-evaluate your coverage, experts say. But Part D drug plans should be reviewed annually. The same applies to Advantage plans, which often wrap in prescription coverage and can make changes to their rosters of in-network health care providers.
“The amount of information that consumers need to grasp is dizzying, and it turns them off from doing a search,” Mr. Riccardi said. “They feel paralyzed about making a choice, and some just don’t think there is a more affordable plan out there for them.”
When creation of the prescription drug benefit was being debated, progressive Medicare advocates fought to expand the existing program to include drug coverage, funded by a standard premium, similar to the structure of Part B. The standard Part B premium this year is $144.60; the only exceptions to that are high-income enrollees, who pay special income-related surcharges, and very low-income enrollees, who are eligible for special subsidies to help them meet Medicare costs.
“Given the enormous Medicare population that could be negotiated for, I think most drugs could be offered through a standard Medicare plan,” said Judith A. Stein, executive director of the Center for Medicare Advocacy.
“Instead, we have this very fragmented system that assumes very savvy, active consumers will somehow shop among dozens of plan options to see what drugs are available and at what cost with all the myriad co-pays and cost-sharing options,” she added.
Advocates like Ms. Stein also urged controlling program costs by allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies — something the legislation that created Part D forbids.
As Bjorn and I push through thickets of devil’s club and trundle over chest-high nurse logs, the trees seem to grow before our eyes. The forest stands as a witness to the passage of time, and a nearby stream as a lifeline to the past.
The saplings at the confluence of the stream mark the present, while the giant spruce and hemlock at its source likely predate the European colonization of the Americas — so that the only humans who could have witnessed the birth of this stand of trees are the area’s Tlingit and Haida peoples.
It’s late April 2019, and my traveling companion, Bjorn Dihle, and I are on a four-day, 30-mile excursion through the heart of Prince of Wales Island along the Honker Divide Canoe Route, the island’s longest trail. We have forgone the canoes and opted for packrafts due to their size and weight; they’re easier to schlep over logs and across the many short portages.
NYT Explorer. 100 Trips Around the World takes travel beyond the obvious with adventures in exotic places and new perspectives in familiar ones, all based on the distinguished travel journalism of The New York Times. Each journey features a first-person narrative and postcard-perfect photography, capturing the unique personality of the destination—as well as practical information to help get you on your way.
Whether it’s a culinary adventure in vibrant Mexico City, an historic and meditative train ride through Siberia, or a solo trip to Paris, get your bucket lists ready and share in the discoveries of Explorer a collection of 100 dream destinations—four volumes’ worth of adventures in one—from the Travel pages of The New York Times.
The Times writers offer guidance, from the personal to the practical, along with a wealth of color photographs that capture the catch-your-breath awe of each destination. Motor past pink sands and bougainvillea in Bermuda with Andrew McCarthy, follow Virginia Woolf’s footsteps through the English countryside with Francine Prose, or dare to pilot a boat through the Venice lagoon with Tony Perrottet.
Barbara Ireland edits the 36 Hours, Explorer, and forthcoming Cultured Traveler series of travel books in collaboration with The New York Times and TASCHEN. A writer and editor based in upstate New York, she is a former deputy Travel editor and deputy Op-Ed page editor at The New York Times. She is a graduate of Cornell University and was a John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University.
For years, Silk Road travelers made the grueling trek past towering mountain ranges and ancient cities now lost to time. Centuries later, one writer attempts to retrace the journey.
This year, T’s spring Travel issue is devoted to just five stories, each an account of its writer’s journey along a different section of the Silk Road — the ancient network of trade routes that until the 15th or 16th century spanned some 4,000 miles of the globe, from Central Asia across the Middle East to Southern Europe, and formed a vital conduit for both new commodities and new ideas. While venturing to faraway places might seem like a distant possibility now, a year after this issue began to take shape, as we reckon with the global pandemic, these pieces are a powerful reminder of our innate desire to move and explore.
From a New York Times online article (01/02/20):
In ways both subtle and substantial, Scorsese sees the world changing and becoming less familiar to him. He gratefully accepted a deal with Netflix, which covered the reported $160 million budget for “The Irishman.” But the bargain meant that, after the movie received a limited theatrical release, it would be shown on the company’s streaming platform.
Scorsese has other aspirations but they have nothing to do with moviemaking. “I would love to just take a year and read,” he said. “Listen to music when it’s needed. Be with some friends. Because we’re all going. Friends are dying. Family’s going.”
Martin Scorsese is the most alive he’s been in his work in a long time, brimming with renewed passion for filmmaking and invigorated by the reception that has greeted his latest gangland magnum opus, “The Irishman.”
And what he wants to talk about is death.
Just to be clear, he’s not talking about the deaths in his movies or anyone else’s. “You just have to let go, especially at this vantage point of age,” he said one Saturday afternoon last month.
Boomers Daily 