Author: Ms. R.

In the front yard of a home in the picturesque town of Elgin, Nebraska is a treasury of more than 150 bells bought, collected, and curated over the course of decades. These bells ring out the story of the Great Plains, as they were formerly on church steeples and one-room schoolhouses just east of the Sand Hills of Nebraska. They rang out special occasions, emergencies, the start of church services and school days, and are firmly a part of……

Read More

Adrian Miller, the author of Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue, remembers how for his family, holidays like Juneteenth always meant celebrating with food. “We went to the public celebrations in the Five Points neighborhood, Denver’s historic Black neighborhood. At those events, the celebrated foods were barbecue, usually pork spareribs, giant smoked turkey legs, watermelon, and red-colored drinks.” To many Black Americans, barbecue and soul food mean victory. Cooking techniques passed down for generations speak……

Read More

Reforma #369 house often goes unnoticed when seen from the outside, but just knock on the door to enter a hidden cultural center dedicated to the world of puppets. The story begins when the building began a restoration. On one of its patios, one of the seven wells known to have been located in Guadalajara around the 16th century was found. Another discovery was made: an arch that had been hidden by a wall. According to some experts, these……

Read More

Who is making dinner? This is a question many American families find themselves asking daily. It’s not a new question, either. Generations have debated the delegation of kitchen duties, often touching on class, race, and especially gender. Most frequently, women have taken on home cooking, which often means hard work for little or no pay. Proposed solutions have ranged from equitable sharing of household labor between all family members, buying pre-made foods, and even kitchen-less homes and communal cooking…….

Read More

With growing settlement east of the Appalachian Mountains and into the Ohio Valley, a rapidly expanding United States needed better and more efficient ways to transport raw goods to the business centers on the Atlantic and finished goods to the growing frontier. Canal works sprung up where feasible, most notably the Erie Canal from Albany, New York to Buffalo, and the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal from the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington D.C. to Cumberland, Maryland. Alexandria city merchants, sensing……

Read More

Only a short distance from Mostar, the monastery in Blagaj stuns visitors with its exquisite natural setting. The modest, Ottoman-era building sits at the base of an enormous cliff, where the Buna river seeps out from a mysterious cave and over a small crescent waterfall as it courses towards the larger Neretva. The water flowing by the monastery is a stunning hue of blue and is said to contain mystic properties. The monastery itself was built in 1520 by……

Read More

It is rare that a wedding cake survives the wedding itself, but an elaborate four-tiered wedding cake has remained uncut since it was made in 1898. The confection was made soon after Charles H. Philpott and his wife opened their family bakery—C.H. Philpott, Baker and Confectioner—in Basingstoke. For 66 years after the bakery’s opening, the Philpotts displayed the cake in the shop window, before moving it to their home in 1964 after the bakery closed. In 1995, almost a century……

Read More

Hadrian’s Gate was built in 130 CE. A wall was subsequently built around the city’s old quarters (Kaleiçi) and the gate was incorporated into the design. Hadrian’s Gate can be classified as the typical Roman triumphal gate, with three archways of identical size. The total height of the gate is 26 feet (8 meters) and is composed of marble and granite. The two façades of the gate have four columns each. Floral decorations adorn the gate and stylized heads……

Read More