The downside of the history of technology is that it goes hand in hand with the atrophying of human capabilities as they are turned over to machines that do them much better. Nowhere is this truer than in the realm of memory. When the Greeks started writing down what had been oral histories somewhere about 2500 years ago, they started a trip down the slippery slope to our current state of affairs, where anyone who can actually remember the names of someone they met at a party is considered a unusual, and anyone who has actually committed, say, poetry, to memory runs the risk of being considered a savant. Continue reading →

Julia’s Kitchen is one of my favorite exhibits, especially because, like me (or the other way around, I guess) she has pegboards everywhere with all her kitchen “tools” hung from them.

Well, it will be back, and better than ever, in a new exhibit on American Food and Wine late next summer meanwhile here’s a gallery of shots of it in its current display.

Continue reading →

Image by Jorg Badura for The New York: TimesRunners on Governors Island.

Well, maybe not a caveman, because that’s more often than not a codeword for neanderthal, and though it may or may not mean anything, their stocky build doesn’t look anything like that of peoples with a knack for running. Long and lean. You know, like the Masai tribesmen? Continue reading →