Author: Ms. R.

Frederic Remington is best known for his “Bronco Buster” statues and paintings depicting cowboys of the American West. Born in Canton, New York, Remington went on to travel the country as an illustrator for Harper’s Bazaar before becoming a sculptor. A true cowboy, he absolutely loved the frontier and collected materials to use as props for his illustrations paintings, and sculptures at his New Rochelle, New York Studio. Remington’s fame made him a favorite of Western Army officers fighting the……

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Every now and then, as daylight wanes in May or June in Ohio, the dim glow of a porch light might play tricks on you. At the margins of the beam, it may appear that the grass is waving. You might figure it’s just the wind, and most years, you’d probably be right. But other years, 2021 included, the swaying will be caused by insects—scads of them. When the cicadas of Brood X emerge from the soil after 17……

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“They call me the Queen of Snails,” Lyn Paxman says with a laugh as she guides me through her Somerset farm’s snail pens. As she talks about her free-range molluscs, she readies tiny electric fences and lays down salt traps for the approaching summer snail-herding season. Last year, Paxman’s prized Helix Aspersa Müller (the common garden snail) escaped and made short work of her vegetable patch. This year, she’s fortifying the farm. Eating snails fell out of fashion long……

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Created in 1827, this was the first European-style university in western Sub-Saharan Africa, and the first high-level institution since one located in Timbuktu collapsed. According to UNESCO, “The Old Fourah Bay College is perhaps the single most influential institution in Africa in accounting for the penetration and acceleration of the spread of Western education on the continent.” The building was used until the late-20th-century. It also once housed the Sierra Leone Government Railway headquarters, and later the Magistrate court. During……

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Taiyoshi Hyakuban opened in the Taisho era over a century ago in the largest red-light district in western Japan, Tobita Shinchi. Like many brothels of that era, it assumed the form of a ryōtei, a luxurious Japanese-style restaurant to avoid detection. Over time, it ceased its operations as a brothel and became a traditional Japanese eatery. Historically, red-light districts in Japan were characterized by their otherworldly extravagance, not unlike the bathhouse depicted in the 2001 film Spirited Away.  The shrine-style exterior alone is……

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Central Kathmandu, in an area north of the Bagmati River, once teemed with elaborate palace complexes built by kings and prime ministers. Today, with the exception of the famous and touristy Durbar Square, many of those palaces have been repurposed or destroyed by time and earthquakes. One of the most impressive estates was Thapathali Durbar, home of the Thapas. Construction of the palace began around the turn of the 18th-century under the orders of Nain Singh Thapa, an influential……

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