Author: Ms. R.

On an unseasonably warm October afternoon in the New York Botanical Garden, a girl with iridescent butterfly wings painted across the bridge of her nose watches Sergey Jivetin at work. He sits at a microscope, his attention focused on a seed beneath a jeweler’s blade. Patiently, he chats with her while etching on his Lilliputian canvas, until he hands the seven-year-old an image of a butterfly no larger than the tip of her thumb. Since 2016, Jivetin has carved……

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This is the boyhood home of Sinclair Lewis, who became the first American winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1930. The home has been restored and tours are available. The town of Sauk Centre inspired the setting for Sinclair’s 1920 novel Main Street, although in the book it is called Gopher Prairie. Astute readers will notice streets and other landmarks in the community that relate to the book Main Street and Sinclair Lewis….

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Josie Bassett Morris lived a colorful life, known in her younger years for her associations with Butch Cassidy’s “Wild Bunch” and later for selling alcohol during prohibition.  This dirt-floor primitive cabin, now a part of Dinosaur National Monument, was her home for the latter half of her life.  She built the cabin at 40 years old after a divorce and maintained a small cattle ranch there until her death in 1964.  In addition to the standing cabin and chicken……

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Excerpted and adapted with permission from The Power of Art: A Human History of Art From Babylon to New York City, by Caroline Campbell, published January 2024 by Pegasus Books. All rights reserved. “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” With this bleak sentence, at once familiar and dissonant, George Orwell begins his celebrated novel of life in a totalitarian state. I first read 1984 in the autumn of 1989. At the……

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Standing on top of Suur Munamägi, the highest point of Estonia, Taavi Pae got a glimpse of what it must feel like to be a real mountaineer. Pae, the president of the Tartu Students’ Nature Conservation Circle, felt dog-tired after battling knee-deep snow, freezing temperatures, and the absence of proper trails. Together with 39 other students, he had just skied more than 25 kilometers (15 miles) in the country’s hilly south, climbing Estonia’s 20 highest peaks in the process…….

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After admiring the grandeur of the Palace of Parliament in Bucharest, head to another storied site of pomp and circumstance. The House of Ceauşescu, also known as the Mansion of Ceauşescu, served as the private residence of Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu and their children, Nicu, Zoia, and Valentin from 1965 to 1989. Because it was protected during the Romanian revolution, it remains almost exactly as the family left it.  Architect Aron Grimberg-Solari designed this lavish abode using a mishmash of……

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The construction of this imposing fortress commissioned Pope Julius II bears the hallmarks of some of Italy’s most storied architects and artists. Donato Bramante initiated construction, while the outer ring with four towers was completed in 1535, by which time the incumbent Pope was Paulus II de Farnese. It was intended to protect the port and town of Civitavecchia, Italy from attacks by pirates during the period that it was part of the Papal States. The later elevated section of……

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