Author: Ms. R.

The Sanctuary Stone sits on Castle Street in the center of Liverpool. It’s thought to be one of the oldest artifacts related to the beginning of Liverpool. The stone once marked the boundaries for the medieval markets that took place in the town for centuries. Three other similar stones may have also existed on High, Dale, and Water Streets. All would have been a few feet tall originally. Within the marked perimeter, goods could be taken from stalls, as……

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In August 2020, 46-year-old Natasha Kazmi returned from Virginia to Karachi, the city she had left when she was 19. Even as she built a life and raised two daughters in the United States, she had longed to return to Pakistan, counting down every Friday until her next visit. She had little by way of a plan, but she arrived as a pâtissier trained at the Cordon Bleu and Bellouet Conseil in Paris. In October, a childhood friend asked……

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On a modest street corner of Shiroishi lies the curious little object that gave the city in northern Japan its name. A small white rock (shiro ishi in Japanese) quietly gathers moss as most residents and tourists pass it by. Far more than just a geological landmark, this rock has a reputation for its magical properties. The rock measures about 1.5 meters in diameter and is composed of a grayish tuff. In feudal times, it was regarded as Shinseki,……

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The philosopher Luis de Miranda once wrote that neon carries “the poetry of nights.” It’s a nice sentiment, and one Len Davidson would surely agree with. Davidson was just a twenty-something working at the University of Florida in the 1970s when he and a friend were reminiscing about the old neon signs of their youth. A Philadelphia native, Davidson spoke wistfully of an old Pep Boys’ sign depicting company founders Manny, Jack, and Moe. That conversation sparked a lifelong……

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Located at the beginning of the Zêzere Glacier Valley, Covão da Ametade is surrounded by three high peaks. They are known as the Three Cântaros, or pitchers. There’s the Cântaro Raso, the Cântaro Magro, and the Cântaro Gordo. It is a popular place for hikers, mountaineers, and rock climbers. This stream of water is the starting point of the Zêzere River. It is surrounded by silver beech trees, which are reflected in the water. This makes it a very photogenic……

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At this site in the Kyrgyzstan‘s Ferghana Range, more than 90,000 petroglyphs are carved on black stones. In the Kyrgyz language, Saimaluu-Tash means “place of patterned or embroidered stone.” These works of rock art date back as far as 4,000 years ago, and were carved over time by a number of different groups.  There are two areas with carved rocks. The longest one is more than three kilometers long and between the two there is a pond. The large galleries……

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The center was established for the rehabilitation of confiscated, orphans and abandoned chimpanzees. Located just outside Freetown, in the Western Area Peninsula National Park, Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary provides guided tour in a unique context, a forest enclosures, where is possible to see chimpanzees up close. The sanctuary was founded in 1995 by Bala and Sharmila Amarasekaran. Starting in the late 1980s, the husband-and-wife conservationist team had worked with primatologist Rosalind Alp to gather data on chimpanzees in the pet trade in……

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Deep in the New Mexico desert, three miles from the Mexican border is a scaled-down replica of the Tomb of Meher Baba, an Indian spiritual master who was the center of a large spiritual movement in the 20th century. Baba’s following numbered in the hundreds of thousands—though some estimate it was in the millions—and largely concentrated in India, but with pockets in the United States, Europe and Australia. In his teachings, Baba described the observable world as illusory, and proposed……

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